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Paro · Bhutan

Bhutan Mountain Coffee

Since 2015 · Karma Chime

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Overview

Bhutan Mountain Coffee was founded in 2015 by Karma Chime as a single café and roastery in Paro after a trip to Utrecht convinced him that the Himalayan kingdom needed a proper third-wave coffee operation. He is widely described as Bhutan's only certified and trained coffee roaster. During the pandemic he started a two-acre pilot coffee farm in Nyimaling, Samtse, and now contracts with more than six hundred farming households across the southern foothills, supplying his Mountain Café locations in Paro Town, Paro International Airport and Thimphu.

Known for

  • Founded 2015 in Paro by Karma Chime, a former tour operator who trained in coffee roasting in Bangalore
  • Operates Mountain Café & Roastery in Paro plus locations at Paro International Airport and in Thimphu
  • Pilot coffee farm in Nyimaling, Samtse Dzongkhag, started during the pandemic
  • Community model contracting with 600+ farming households in southern Bhutan
  • Provides free seedlings and technical support to partner farming groups

Why it matters

Bhutan has historically been a butter-tea country and most cafés relied on imported instant coffee until the 2010s, so building a domestic specialty industry meant building the supply chain from scratch — farmers, processing, roasting, training and retail. Karma Chime is the entrepreneur who chose to do all of those things at once rather than waiting for a market to form, which is why Bhutan Mountain Coffee functions less as a competitor to other Bhutanese roasters than as the operation defining what Bhutanese specialty coffee is.

Production

destoning
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head roaster
Karma Chime
color sorting
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roaster machine
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filter equipment
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cupping frequency
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roastery location
Paro Town, Paro Dzongkhag
espresso equipment
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annual volume tonnes
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Café

Town Square, Paro Town, Paro 12001

Sources

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