Vietnamese G7 Trung Nguyen coffee, as a representative of three-in-one milk coffee, has won the favor of many enthusiasts with its sweet and smooth taste. However, counterfeit products are rampant on the market, and the quality of products from different channels—whether brought back from trips to Vietnam, purchased online, or bought in supermarkets—varies greatly. This article uses a physical comparison of G7 coffee from four sources to teach you how to distinguish genuine from fake, covering dimensions such as packaging inkjet codes, powder color, aroma, and taste. The article also mentions related product information from Front Street Coffee, providing a useful reference for coffee lovers.
Detailed comparison of genuine and fake Vietnamese G7 Trung Nguyen coffee from four sources
Vietnamese G7 coffee is a milk coffee, a three-in-one mix of creamer, sugar, and coffee, suitable for friends who like coffee that is a bit sweeter. I only came across it this year, and I really enjoy drinking it. But once you finish it, you have to buy more. As someone who has been shopping online for 5 years, I basically buy everything on the internet, so of course I would buy this coffee online too. That is how my experience of buying G7 online began.
There are quite a lot of fakes when shopping online, so I was especially cautious. In this comparison, the four types of G7 coffee came from different sources, and all claimed to be genuine. Without evidence, anyone can claim their product is authentic, so I am doing a comprehensive comparison here to give everyone a direct reference. The four types of G7 come from: 1. Brought back by my father-in-law from a trip to Vietnam 2. First online purchase 3. Second online purchase 4. Department store supermarket. Just looking at the sources, aside from the one bought at the department store supermarket which can be immediately confirmed as genuine, no one can be sure about the other three. Posting is not an easy task, so now I will compare directly from the pictures. No more nonsense—once I finish posting, that will be that. I still have work to do later.
1. All together, front view
2. All together, back view
Just looking at the large images is only to give everyone a comparison. Without looking carefully, you cannot really notice anything, because even the one bought at the department store has packaging with unequal widths on its four sides, so look at the smaller images and examine carefully.
3. Individual photos (pay attention to the production date inkjet code)
The inkjet code in the image below is clear
The inkjet code in the image below is thick and heavy, with the strokes of the numbers connected, which is different from the dotted inkjet code
The inkjet code in the image below is dotted, but the dots are connected, and the ink is relatively heavy
The image below is what I bought today at noon at the Dream Island Department Store supermarket
The inkjet code is dotted, the dots are not connected, the ink is not heavy, and it is very clear
Therefore, the one bought at the department store is represented by a domestic agent, displayed entirely in Chinese, and the packaging is also different from the local Vietnamese one. The specifics can be seen in the group photos.
For a genuine-versus-fake comparison, you must have a genuine product there to compare against; only then can you draw conclusions and have a basis. Otherwise, if you compare using a fake or an uncertain one, in the end it is just a comparison between counterfeits. The genuine one I bought at noon played a very important and key role in this identification. The packaging is different, but the contents should be the same, right? Then let's pour the coffee out and compare.
Because it was taken at night, the light was inevitably insufficient, and I did not want to use flash, so please look at the image below again. I cropped them into smaller images so they can be seen clearly. Actually, when I poured them out, I already knew which of the other 3 packs in my hands were real and which were fake. The truth was revealed.
The comparison in the small images is quite clear. Whether there is real skill or not, just pour it out and you will know!
Do you see it? The first online purchase and the one bought during the Vietnam trip are both damn fakes—white, little coffee, and pale in color. When drinking them, real G7 is not that sweet and has an obvious coffee taste, while the fake coffee, not to mention being sweet, becomes cloying after drinking a lot, especially after it cools.
I am so miserable~~~ The coffee I bought in Vietnam turned out to be fake too, and more importantly, I thought the fake one tasted good, so I made my first online purchase of G7, and it turned out to be fake again, and I did not notice anything suspicious. It was not until the second purchase that I wondered whether this product might have counterfeits, so I switched to another store. During the process of switching, I also searched a lot online. I can only say that crown-rated stores also sell fake G7, and buyer reviews are only for reference, because after drinking a lot of fake ones, you do not know what real G7 tastes like either. So those sellers who tell you to look at customer reviews when you ask whether it is genuine G7 are talking nonsense! This trick is called: everyone says it tastes good, therefore my product is real. Even if in the end you say it is fake, the seller will say everyone says it is good XXXXXXX..., and you can only accept it, because you fell into the seller's trap. Do not think crown ratings mean no fakes. What I mean by fake includes high-quality imitations. As long as it is not produced by the authentic original factory, it is fake, even if eating it will not kill or harm you! Some crown stores sell even more fakes!
I have looked into why there are so many fakes of this G7 on the market. Is it not said to be very cheap? A big pack of 50 bags * 16g is only 25 to 32 yuan. Could even cheap things have fakes? Yes, counterfeit goods do not depend on the selling price of the item itself, but on the market sales volume. Once the volume is large, it is worth counterfeiting. No matter how good something is, if few people in the market know about it and few buy it, there is no point in counterfeiting it. But once the product volume becomes large, counterfeiters appear, and there are both convincing fakes and poor fakes. The first time I bought this G7 coffee online, I did not notice anything very wrong when I drank it after buying it, and I bought it at the normal market price. I did not buy it just because it was cheap, yet I still ended up with a high-quality counterfeit!
So do not think that cheap things have no fakes. Some crown-rated sellers of fakes have very large daily sales, and I have not seen buyers complain that they are fake or anything. Even if someone discovers it is fake, they just return it privately and that is the end of it; it will not let us know. The problem is that I am unhappy that I bought a fake. I spent the same money and still bought a counterfeit. If I were foolish and did not know, that would be one thing, but I am not foolish. That is why this time I was determined to identify it. Besides, I will keep drinking it in the future, so finding the genuine product is a must.
Finally, to summarize a few tips for identifying genuine authentic Vietnamese G7 coffee:
1. Look at the inkjet code on the packaging. The inkjet code is clear, the dots are not connected, the ink is not heavy, and the spacing between numbers is the same.
2. The fonts and writing in the description on the back of the packaging are clear, but without comparison it is not easy to tell. The four pressed edges of the packaging (the black pressed edge parts) do not necessarily have to be at equal distances, because even genuine products do not always guarantee that every side is the same. This point must be considered in context, especially for high-quality imitations, which are hard to detect.
3. Powder. Real G7 is not so snowy white; it is a mix of coffee and white non-dairy creamer and sugar, just as seen in the pictures. Fake ones look whiter because they contain more sugar.
4. Smell and taste. Real G7 smells strongly of coffee, while fake ones have a heavier milk smell, which is quite obvious. The same goes for the taste.
If we unfortunately get a pack of suspected fake G7, you need to work on the powder, the smell and taste, and the inkjet code. If one day counterfeiters also improve the inkjet coding process and use the same machines as the real factory, what then? In the end, you still have to rely on the powder. If you have one genuine pack in hand, there is nothing to fear. Fortunately, the second time I bought it, I got the genuine product.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
