Debbie Wei Mullin

Debbie Wei Mullin is the founder and chief executive of Copper Cow Coffee, a Los Angeles–based specialty coffee company that produces single-serve Vietnamese pour-over coffee kits.^[6] Founded in 2017 out of her sister's garage with $100,000 from friends and family, the company has sold more than 20 million coffees and is distributed in over 3,000 retail locations including Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, Costco, and H-E-B.^[9][20] Copper Cow has raised approximately $11.5 million across six funding rounds, including an $8.5 million Series A in 2021 co-led by Cultivian Sandbox Ventures and Arborview Capital.^[6][17]

Before entering the food industry, Mullin worked in international development — first at The Asia Foundation and then at The World Bank, where she funded poverty alleviation projects across India, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.^[2][3] She holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[1] Her mother immigrated to the United States from Vietnam as a refugee in 1975, and Mullin has described her Vietnamese-American upbringing — and a visit to relatives in Vietnam at age 15 — as the experiences that shaped both her career in development and her decision to build a company around Vietnamese coffee.^[2][18]

Copper Cow's products — pour-over coffee bags paired with packets of sweetened condensed milk creamer — are sourced from farms in Vietnam's Central Highlands, where the company pays farmers twice the market rate and has invested over $100,000 in organic farm conversion.^[1][8] In April 2024, the company certified its first organic farm in Vietnam, positioning it to become the first certified organic Vietnamese coffee brand in the United States.^[5] Mullin appeared on ABC's Shark Tank in May 2021 and on PBS's Amanpour and Company in April 2025.^[12][10]

Mullin grew up in Mill Valley, California, a small town in Marin County, in a bicultural household.^[20] Her mother, a Vietnamese refugee who arrived in the United States in 1975, cooked exclusively Vietnamese food; her father, who is Jewish, was what Mullin has called "the original coffee snob."^[2][20] She grew up drinking specialty coffee with her father and sweetened condensed milk with her mother's cooking — a duality she would later build a company around.^[20]

As a teenager, Mullin was competitive and drawn to unconventional challenges. She was the only girl on her high school wrestling team and later played rugby at UC Berkeley.^[1] At approximately age 15, she visited relatives in Vietnam for the first time, an experience she has cited as the defining moment that committed her to a career focused on economic opportunity in the developing world.^[18][2]

Mullin earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from UC Berkeley.^[1] She then enrolled at MIT, where she completed a Master of City Planning in 2009, studying sustainable development in a program she has described as intensely interdisciplinary — spanning political science, design thinking, and zoning history.^[1] She has said the MIT curriculum's emphasis on collaboration and systems thinking became foundational to her approach to business.^[1]

The Asia Foundation and The World Bank (2009–2016)

After completing her master's degree at MIT, Mullin joined The Asia Foundation as a senior program officer, working on community empowerment and economic development across Asia.^[18] She subsequently moved to The World Bank, where she worked as a consultant in supply chain management and international development, funding poverty alleviation projects that took her from Washington, D.C., to India to Seattle.^[2][3]

The World Bank had been her dream job, but Mullin grew frustrated with the institution's bureaucracy.^[3] "I felt like a cog in a machine, and wished longingly for more authority and creativity in my work," she told Forbes in 2019.^[3] Her sister and brother-in-law, both serial entrepreneurs, became her closest sounding boards, and their example helped push her toward starting her own venture.^[19]

Wei Pantry (2014–2017)

In 2014, while still employed at the World Bank, Mullin began renting commercial kitchen space in her spare time to produce batches of a shallot-infused oil her mother had brought from Vietnam.^[1][18] The product developed a following and grew into Wei Pantry, a line of Vietnamese-inspired cooking ingredients — oils, vinegars, and condiments — sold through boutique channels including WomenMadeLA.^[1]

The venture stalled. Mullin discovered, via a Harvard study, that only about one in ten Americans regularly prepare their own meals.^[1] "I had no idea how little people cooked," she later told the MIT Alumni Association.^[1] She concluded the addressable market for specialty cooking ingredients was too small to build a venture-scale business. Nearly three-quarters of Americans, however, drink coffee — and no one had yet built a premium Vietnamese coffee brand for the American market.^[2] A key introduction during this period, to Binh Tran, a venture partner at 500 Startups with expertise in Vietnamese businesses, proved pivotal: Tran encouraged her to research the coffee category and made introductions to industry veterans.^[19]

Copper Cow Coffee (2017–present)

Mullin founded Copper Cow Coffee in January 2017 with $100,000 from friends and family, working out of her sister's garage in Los Angeles.^[9][2] Her original plan was to sell bottled Vietnamese cold brew with condensed milk, but the format failed due to preservation challenges just before the 2017 Winter Fancy Food Show.^[2] While visiting a supplier, she spotted a single-serve pour-over coffee bag on a desk — a format common in Japan but virtually unknown in the United States.^[2][11] She pivoted overnight, brought 19 prototypes to the Fancy Food Show, and was selected as one of the top five innovations at the event, winning the Innovation Award from the Specialty Food Association.^[2][6]

The award opened doors to approximately 1,000 brick-and-mortar retailers, and Copper Cow generated $170,000 in sales in its first year.^[9][6] Revenue tripled annually in the company's early years: $500,000 in 2018, $1.6 million in 2019, and $2 million in 2020, when the company reached profitability.^[6][4] Early retail partners included Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, and Williams Sonoma — roughly 90 percent of revenue came from wholesale, with about half of that from department stores.^[4]

The COVID-19 pandemic collapsed the department store channel almost overnight. Purchase orders sat on docks; major accounts paused new orders indefinitely.^[7][15] Mullin shifted the business toward direct-to-consumer and grocery, and by mid-2021 wholesale had dropped to 20 percent of revenue as e-commerce tripled and grocery sales doubled year over year.^[4]

Copper Cow graduated from the 500 Startups accelerator in June 2018, receiving $150,000 for 6 percent equity.^[14] In December 2018, the company raised a $2 million seed round led by Silverton Partners, with participation from Montage Ventures, CRCM Ventures, AmplifyHer Ventures, and Social Starts.^[14] In May 2021, Copper Cow closed an $8.5 million Series A co-led by Cultivian Sandbox Ventures and Arborview Capital, with participation from Siddhi Capital, Silverton Partners, Social Starts, Montage Ventures, CRCM, and Stormbreaker Ventures.^[6][17] The company formed an all-female board of directors following the round.^[17]

On May 21, 2021, Mullin appeared on Shark Tank Season 12, Episode 25, seeking $600,000 for 4 percent equity at a $15 million valuation.^[12][9] Robert Herjavec offered $600,000 for 8 percent equity; the deal did not close after filming.^[9] The appearance nonetheless drove a significant spike in Amazon sales and brand awareness.^[15] "The Shark Tank effect is real," Mullin told Modern Retail. "The Shark Tank demographic is not one-to-one with who we would normally sell to — it's a little bit of an older demographic. We don't sell that much decaf, for instance. But we saw a huge spike in people wanting to buy these things that you don't normally see."^[15]

Distribution expanded rapidly after the Series A and Shark Tank appearance. In October 2021, Copper Cow entered Whole Foods Market nationwide — a milestone Mullin had used as a pitch shorthand since the company's earliest days.^[4] "When I was first pitching the company I would usually say, 'It's a Vietnamese coffee that could be sold in Whole Foods' because it signified the standard of quality I was going to uphold," she told NOSH.^[4] By 2024, the brand was in approximately 1,200 Walmart locations, 469 Target stores (expanded from a 55-store California test), and had entered Costco, Sprouts, and H-E-B.^[5][16] The company reported 50 percent year-over-year revenue growth in 2023.^[5]

Copper Cow's supply chain reflects Mullin's development background. The company sources Robusta and Arabica beans from farms in Vietnam — the world's second-largest coffee exporter — and pays farmers twice the standard market rate.^[1][8] "Our farmers are paid two times the market rate to ensure a higher quality of life and the most delicious coffee we can produce," Mullin told Entrepreneur. "This is the reason why I started this company. I want to lead by example: We can build sustainability into the way we do business and also be successful and make an impact in the world."^[8] In April 2024, the company certified its first organic farm in Vietnam, with certified organic coffee launching in retail in early 2025.^[5] Packaging is produced through a woman-owned factory in Vietnam, and fulfillment in the United States is handled by a woman-owned center.^[8]

In April 2025, Mullin appeared on PBS's Amanpour and Company to discuss the impact of tariffs on American businesses with overseas supply chains.^[10]

Copper Cow Coffee won the Innovation Award at the 2017 Winter Fancy Food Show, one of the largest food trade events in the United States, at the brand's debut.^[6][2] The company graduated from the 500 Startups accelerator in 2018.^[14] Mullin appeared on ABC's Shark Tank in May 2021.^[12]

Mullin has spoken at MIT alumni events, including the MIT Club of Southern California 2024 Annual Brunch.^[1] She appeared on PBS's Amanpour and Company in 2025 to discuss trade policy and its effects on small businesses.^[10] She has been profiled or quoted in Forbes, Modern Retail, FoodNavigator-USA, Entrepreneur, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.^{[2][5][6][8][7]}

Mullin is of Vietnamese and Jewish heritage.^[20] She lives in Los Angeles.^[11] She is an avid outdoorswoman and has described taking a 10-day backpacking trip to Denali National Park in Alaska, where she brewed Copper Cow coffee twice daily from a collapsible mug on mountain cliffs.^[1]