Whole Foods Adds Flavored Ground Coffee Assortment

Growing up in Marin County just north of San Francisco, Calif., Debbie Wei Mullin was exposed to the food and culture of her Vietnamese family. Motivated by relatives who were in the food business, Mullin had a desire to start a company that would focus on the cuisine of her ancestral homeland.

Today, Mullin is the CEO of Copper Cow Coffee, which is focused on sourcing coffee grown in Vietnam. While many coffee connoisseurs may first think of South America, Central America or Africa as the source of origin for their daily cup of Joe, Mullin notes that Vietnam accounts for about 20% of the world’s coffee.

“Vietnam is much more conducive to growing coffee,” she explained. “There is a great deal of access to water and the country is more resilient to climate change.”

While the company has continued to grow in recent years, Copper Cow’s latest initiative has landed on the shelves of Whole Foods, with the exclusive launch of a line of flavored ground coffee, a first for the high-end grocer. Products are being carried in all Whole Foods locations and include three flavors; classic, vanilla and churro. 

There are a couple of major differences with Copper Cow’s assortment of flavored ground coffee, according to Mullin. The first is that the coffee is grown in Vietnam. Second, the flavors are all natural as the company uses 100% whole herbs and spices and vanilla beans in its ground coffee.

“We didn’t want to simply spray the essence of a flavor on our ground coffee,” she added.

Using natural ingredients to flavor the coffee is more expensive and does come with some challenges. When developing the churro line, Copper Cow needed to rework how it was grinding the cinnamon. 

“Initially, we received feedback from consumers that the cinnamon was clogging the coffeemakers and filters,” Mullin said. “We ran a number of tests before we got it right. We learned the hard way.”

Development of a flavored line of ground coffee came about from feedback Copper Cow received from consumers. Mullin then took the idea to Whole Foods.

“They are always looking to bring innovation to their aisles and want to be the first with better-for-your products,” she said. “We started talking about the idea last year and they were interested as they did not sell flavored ground coffee.”