We come from restaurants. We make charcoal for them.

01Born 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.