The origin of coffee beans is more and more popular.

Blue Bottle, one of the representatives of American boutique coffee, recently launched a coffee bean from the Yemeni company Port of Mokha-its larger feature is "expensive".

The price of a single cup is $16, and the price of bagged coffee beans is $65, equivalent to 429 yuan. In addition to becoming the most expensive coffee bean in the Bay area, we can also compare it with the general price of boutique coffee: a 12-ounce bag of famous "Hair Bender" from Stumptown, which started in Portland, costs $15, and this Yemeni coffee bean is almost four times its size. And we have previously reported that Starbucks introduced the most expensive Blue Mountain Coffee from Valenderford Manor in Jamaica. The price of 250 grams is also 388 yuan.

So, in addition to the standard flavor description of boutique coffee, Blue Bottle must need a good story if he wants to sell this expensive bean.

The founder of Port of Mokha is Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a Yemeni who grew up in San Francisco. Over the past two years, he has spent a lot of energy working with local farmers to develop the coffee growing environment in Yemen. Generally speaking, Africa and South America are important coffee producing areas, which not only have the advantages of geographical environment, but also have a relatively stable social environment to rely on.

Yemen, which belongs to South-West Asia and borders Oman and Saudi Arabia, has long been at war. Today's country is divided into at least three parts, controlled by Husserl's armed forces, self-governing forces and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Port of Mokha, on the one hand, provides loans to coffee farmers and has set up six local offices to encourage farmers to focus on coffee farming. On the other hand, Mokhtar Alkhanshali is also actively looking for overseas markets for these coffees, including smuggling coffee beans at great risk. According to Luke Tsai, author of East Bar Express, some of the Yemeni coffee beans used by Blue Bottle are part of what the Yemeni authorities consider to be smuggling.

Mokhtar Alkhanshali and James Freeman

"how much profit has been returned to the beans in this $16 cup of coffee? How many were returned to Alkhanshali, which risked their lives? How much is net profit? " James Freeman, founder of Blue Bottle, said in response to the high price of coffee. And if customers care more about taste, Freeman will also say, "this will be one of the best coffee they've ever had in their lives."

Although people who haven't drunk it can't judge its taste, we may also want to interpret another purpose of Blue Bottle-if it can push Yemeni coffee to an expensive, high-quality level, it will be a big advantage for it to compete with other boutique cafes.