Fancy a cup of coffee with beans plucked from an elephant’s poop? That’s the promise of one of the world’s current priciest coffee options. Sold in two-serving packets for about $150, the brew’s served at luxury hotels and to VIP clients. A small amount is also sold online.
To make the pricey brew, captive Asian elephants are fed a mix of coffee cherries and fruit, and their stomachs break down the plant matter through fermentation, stripping it of its bitterness, according to company founder Blake Dinkin, a Canadian who launched the venture in 2012. He currently works with the owners of seven elephants in northern Thailand’s Surin Province to make his whole coffee line.
Dinkin advertises Black Ivory Coffee—the only major elephant poop coffee on the market—as having notes of “chocolate, cacao nibs, light peach, tamarind” and black tea, flavored in part by what else is in the herbivore’s stomach.
The coffee’s price has taken a leap over the years—from $60 for a couple servings in 2012 to $150. A full pound costs $1,500.
The pandemic boosted the company’s sales and global interest: Direct-to-consumer sales of elephant poop coffee exploded when people were at home and eager to try something new, Dinkin says. The product got a shout-out in a recent episode of Apple TV’s drama “The Morning Show.”
More poo-to-brew options are garnering interest. There’s Brazil’s bird poop coffee, made from the washed and roasted coffee cherries gathered from the feces of the jacu, an endangered South American bird. Also, monkey parchment coffee—monkey-chewed (but not pooed) coffee beans. Then there’s the most well-known “naturally refined” coffee option: kopi luwak, which is sourced from the poop of cat-like creatures called civets native to Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Civet poop coffee has been around for decades—National Geographic magazine first reported on it in 1981—but the product continues to resonate and has even grown in popularity. One recent market analysis valued the kopi luwak coffee industry at $6.5 billion in 2021 and predicted that it would reach as much as $10 billion by 2030, with growth particularly in Indonesia and India, among other locales.
“I think a large part of it is the novelty factor, having an interesting story to tell your friends,” says Neil D’Cruze, global head of wildlife research at London-based World Animal Protection, an international animal welfare nonprofit.