Photo: http://www.thenational.ae

Ever heard of Black Ivory coffee? It’s exclusive, expensive and it’s made from poop!

It’s also providing villagers in Thailand and their families with better lives.

It’s Black Ivory Coffee and at $50.00 to $60.00 CAD a cup it’s rare, expensive and it’s made from poop! Actually, it’s made from coffee beans that are partially digested and then pooped out by an elephant. It’s being sold at 5 star hotels in Thailand and the Maldives, and believe it or not demand for Black Ivory Coffee is out pacing production.

Thoughts that came to my mind when I heard about Black Ivory coffee, after ewww that’s disgusting, were why would anyone pay that much for a cup of coffee, who thought of this, and how does it all work? According to an article by the CBC, “A Torontonian is the first person in the world to feed raw coffee cherries to elephants and harvest them from the elephant’s deposits to make some of the most exclusive and expensive coffee in the world.”

In the article, Blake Dinkin, who started it all, explains how he feeds the elephants coffee cherries, extracts the beans from their droppings and turns them into flavorful coffee. After the elephant eats the coffee cherries with its meal, it takes one to two days for the cherries to fully move though the digestive tract. The coffee cherries pick up flavors from the elephant’s diet as they go, they are expelled and then it’s time to extract the cherries from the elephant poop. It sounds simple enough, but it’s not. Dinkin explains, “A lot of beans are crushed when the elephant chews or lost in the river during bathing.” There seems to be many pitfalls during production and some are very costly. What happens if an elephant decides to poop in the river? Apparently this happens a lot. The article goes on to explain, “Once the elephant poop is wet, Dinkin can’t sift through it and recover the hidden nuggets of coffee beans hidden within. He’s already lost several thousand dollars this way.”

Dinkin works in partnership with a non-profit sanctuary for elephants called The Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation. Since he has partnered with the organization he has created jobs at the sanctuary for mahouts, people who are skilled at taking care of elephants, and their families. These jobs were desperately needed because in 1989 Thailand banned logging. As a result, many mahouts were no longer able to make an income with their elephants. “Many ended up living on the street, struggling to find a way to provide for their families and feed their elephants.”

In the end, Blake Dinkin is making money, villagers are getting back on their feet, elephants are being protected and rich people are drinking poop. What a cool business model!  To read more about it here is the CBC news article: