We come from restaurants. We make charcoal for them.
Thaan was born at Pok Pok in 2014. Today our charcoal and grills are in restaurant kitchens nationwide — and the homes of cooks who treat dinner like service.
Founder
Toby Roberts.
Toby founded Thaan in 2014 out of a clear restaurant problem: live-fire cooking deserved a better fuel, and the best fuel in the world wasn't going to scale sustainably. A decade in, Thaan supplies live-fire programs from coast to coast.
I grew up on the Olympic Peninsula, but my connection to fire started through food. What began as a curiosity about flavor became a deeper interest in the way live fire cooking brings people together across cultures, kitchens, and traditions. Through Thaan Charcoal, I'm focused on building products, stories, and experiences that help people cook with more intention. To me, charcoal is more than fuel — it's a starting point for better food, better hospitality, and more meaningful connection.
Born at Pok Pok.
Cooking with charcoal is a tradition as old as humanity — for millennia, people have harnessed its smoky magic to turn raw ingredients into something better. Today, billions of cooks across the globe still reach for it. Whether you're grilling yakitori in Tokyo or reverse-searing a tomahawk in Texas, charcoal is the through-line. It's the ultimate flavor conductor — the primal ingredient hidden in everything that tastes great over fire.
After decades of industrial briquettes, chefs and serious cooks are looking for charcoal that's pure, reliable, and sustainable — without compromising on flavor.
Thaan was founded in Portland, Oregon in 2014 as an offshoot of Pok Pok — a James Beard Award–winning, Michelin-starred restaurant group. The journey began with a search for an alternative to messy, unpredictable mesquite charcoal. Binchotan — the clean-burning Japanese standard — seemed like the obvious next step. But there was a catch: most binchotan is sourced from mangrove swamps in Malaysia. An environmentally precarious supply chain.
After testing dozens of charcoals around the world, the answer came from Thailand. Rambutan hardwood — a renewable byproduct of fruit orchards — burned for hours with almost no smoke, super-high consistent heat, and a gently sweet aroma. The dense, long-lasting Thai-Style logs delivered even, radiant infrared heat without flare-ups.
We'd found our forever charcoal.
Sustainable by source, not by marketing.
Every Thaan Charcoal and fuel product traces back to a renewable or byproduct material — wood that would otherwise be discarded.
- Original Thai-Style Rambutan hardwood from sustainable Thai fruit orchards. Trimmings, not live trees.
- Oak Lump 100% white and red oak from Chihuahua, Mexico. Selected for density and a clean burn.
- High Desert Blend Briquettes Juniper, oak, and pecan shell — the shell a byproduct of the pecan harvest that would otherwise go to waste.
We don't cut live forests to make our charcoal. We work with what's already being trimmed, dropped, or shelled.
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Cook with us.
Whether you're running a yakitori line or grilling for friends, the fire starts the same place.