![\"Hugh](\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Hugh_Jackman.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He played Wolverine. But most people who drink his coffee don\u2019t know he founded the company\u2014or why.<\/p>\n
2009.Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia.<\/p>\n
Hugh Jackman landed at a small airstrip in the highlands of southern Ethiopia.<\/p>\n
He was 40 years old. He was the most famous Australian actor in the world. He\u2019d played Wolverine in four X-Men films. He\u2019d won a Tony Award on Broadway. He\u2019d hosted the Academy Awards a few months earlier.<\/p>\n
He was in Ethiopia as an ambassador for World Vision.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d come to make a short documentary about a community development project.<\/p>\n
He hadn\u2019t come to meet anyone in particular.<\/p>\n
The Land Rover drove him and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness six hours into the highlands, to the Yirgacheffe region.<\/p>\n
Yirgacheffe is the birthplace of coffee.<\/p>\n
The Land Rover stopped at a small farm. Two hectares. The house had dirt floors and no electricity.<\/p>\n
The farmer was 27 years old.<\/p>\n
His name was Dukale.<\/p>\n
He had a wife named Adanech and five children. His oldest son was five years old.<\/p>\n
His name was Elias.<\/p>\n
Hugh asked if he could spend the day working with Dukale.<\/p>\n
Dukale said yes.<\/p>\n
They started at dawn.<\/p>\n
They planted seedlings together. They worked the soil. Dukale showed Hugh how a coffee tree grows. He showed him the careful shade-growing technique he used. He showed him the small drying patio where he laid the beans out to dry in the sun.<\/p>\n
Hugh listened.<\/p>\n
Dukale told him about the price of coffee.<\/p>\n
Coffee farmers in Ethiopia received 1 to 2 percent of the final retail price of the coffee they grew.<\/p>\n
The other 98 percent went to middlemen, exporters, roasters, and grocery chains.<\/p>\n
A farmer like Dukale could work 12 hours a day for a year and still not have enough money to send his children to school.<\/p>\n
Dukale told Hugh he had a dream.<\/p>\n
He wanted Elias to be educated.<\/p>\n
He wanted all five of his children to be educated.<\/p>\n
Before Hugh left that evening, he and Dukale planted two more trees together.<\/p>\n
They named them after Hugh\u2019s children.<\/p>\n
Oscar. Ava.<\/p>\n
Hugh promised Dukale he would come back. He promised he would do something.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t know yet what.<\/p>\n
He flew back to New York.<\/p>\n
He couldn\u2019t stop thinking about Dukale.<\/p>\n
A few months later, he gave a speech at UN Climate Week. He stood in front of presidents and prime ministers and made a pleading case for the world\u2019s coffee farmers.<\/p>\n
He said the words \u201cfair trade\u201c twenty-five times.<\/p>\n
He told them about Dukale.<\/p>\n
He flew home from the UN.<\/p>\n
He realized a speech wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Hugh Jackman opened a small coffee shop in Tribeca, New York.<\/p>\n
He called it Laughing Man Coffee & Tea.<\/p>\n
He had one rule.<\/p>\n
100 percent of his personal profits from the company would go to the Laughing Man Foundation.<\/p>\n
The foundation would fund education, water wells, and agricultural training in coffee-growing communities.<\/p>\n
The first community it would fund was Dukale\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The cafe bought Dukale\u2019s beans directly. It paid him a fair-trade price.<\/p>\n
The most popular blend on the menu was called Dukale\u2019s Dream.<\/p>\n
It still is.<\/p>\n
In 2015, Hugh signed a partnership with Keurig.<\/p>\n
Dukale\u2019s blend went into K-Cups.<\/p>\n
The coffee Dukale grew on his 2-hectare farm in the Ethiopian highlands started being brewed in homes across America.<\/p>\n
By 2024, Laughing Man Coffee had grown into a national brand.<\/p>\n
Two cafes in Manhattan. Bagged products in over 6,000 grocery stores. A wholesale program serving hundreds of restaurants and offices.<\/p>\n
Every cent of Hugh\u2019s personal profits has continued to go to the foundation.<\/p>\n
The foundation has now funded education and infrastructure programs in seven countries.<\/p>\n
It has helped over 1,000 coffee-farming families lift themselves out of extreme poverty.<\/p>\n
It has built schools.<\/p>\n
The trees Hugh and Dukale planted together in 2009 are now 16 years old.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re bearing fruit.<\/p>\n
The coffee beans from the Oscar tree and the Ava tree\u2014named after Hugh\u2019s children\u2014are sold in the Tribeca cafe.<\/p>\n
Dukale himself is now 43 years old.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s expanded his farm. He\u2019s bought more land. He\u2019s opened his own cafe in his own town.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s built a larger house for his family with a tin roof and electricity.<\/p>\n
His son Elias is in college.<\/p>\n
Elias is the first member of the Dukale family to attend college in five generations.<\/p>\n
Hugh Jackman has continued, in the 16 years since that afternoon in Yirgacheffe, to act, sing, and tour.<\/p>\n
He returned as Wolverine in \u201cDeadpool & Wolverine\u201c in July 2024. The film grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.<\/p>\n
He won his second Tony in 2022.<\/p>\n
He hasn\u2019t been back to Ethiopia since 2009.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s said in interviews, more than once, that he\u2019s been waiting for his own children to be old enough to travel with him to meet Dukale.<\/p>\n
Oscar and Ava are now 25 and 19.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s told a reporter that the trip is on the calendar.<\/p>\n
There are now two Laughing Man cafes in Manhattan.<\/p>\n
The walls of both of them are decorated with photographs of Dukale and his family.<\/p>\n
There are no photographs of Hugh.<\/p>\n
He designed it that way.<\/p>\n
Most of the customers who come in for a flat white in the morning don\u2019t know that the cafe was founded by the man who played Wolverine.<\/p>\n
They don\u2019t need to know.<\/p>\n
The coffee is excellent. The price is fair. The beans were grown by a farmer in the Ethiopian highlands who\u2019s now able to send his children to school.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He played Wolverine. But most people who drink his coffee don\u2019t know he founded the company\u2014or why. 2009.Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia. Hugh Jackman landed at a small airstrip in the highlands of southern Ethiopia. He was 40 years old. He was the most famous Australian actor in the world. He\u2019d played Wolverine in four X-Men films. He\u2019d … <\/p>\n