Vietnamese man to rename US smallest town to sell coffee TUOITRENEWS Pham Dinh Nguyen poses for a photograph in front of the filling station at his town in Buford, Wyoming in this April 3, 2012 file photo. Tuoi Tre Pham Dinh Nguyen, the Vietnamese businessman who bought and became the new owner and ‘mayor’ of Buford, Wyoming, in the United States last year, will change the name of what is deemed the nation’s smallest town and sell Vietnamese coffee there. “I hope that selling Vietnamese coffee right in the US will help promote the products and the Vietnamese coffee-sipping style directly to the American consumers,” Nguyen, 39, told Tuoi Tre. Nguyen said he had ‘appointed’ former owner Don Sammons as ‘co-mayor’ of the town, which sits at 8,000 feet off the Interstate 80, the main cross-country route between New York and San Francisco. Don will continue his job of directly managing the town whose facilities include a trading post, a convenience store, and a filling station. In April 2012, Nguyen bid US$900,000 at an auction to win the town, and has since done nothing to it until he came up with the renaming and selling coffee plan, he said. Nguyen said he will rename Buford into PhinDeli. “It’s the combination of phin, the Vietnamese name for the small metal French drip filter used for brewing coffee, and deli, abbreviation for delicious,” he explained. “As of September 3, when the town will be renamed, we will serve coffee free-of-charge for visitors,” Nguyen added. Vietnamese coffee on US land Nguyen said he will turn the 200-square-meter convenience store into a café, which will sell two types of products, namely ‘deluxe’ and ‘super-clean’ coffee. The coffee is standardized and has passed all requirements by the US safety watchdogs to be sold in the country, and will be stored in 250 – 500g packs, Nguyen said. He added that the promotional campaign will be mostly done via the Internet and social networks because he “cannot afford the ad rates in the US.” “I hope that renaming the town will be a newsworthy event for local press and media that will help lure more visitors to the town,” he said, adding that new billboards with the PhinDeli name will replace the old ones along the highway from Cheyenne to the town to inform drivers. Nguyen admitted that it is a tough road ahead for his business to gain the first success in the US. The businessman said his first targeted consumers are the Vietnamese – Americans, who are somehow familiar with the Vietnamese-style coffee. Nguyen will first distribute the products via Amazon, and will try to have them on shelves first at the Asian supermarkets, then larger chains like Wal-Mart or Cosco, he said. “Everything is not simple, but I’m ready to pursue this dream of selling Vietnamese coffee in the US,” he asserted, adding that he is “as excited to begin this new journey as when buying the town.”