To increase the coffee production, many labourers from China, mainly those of Hakka and Cantonese descent were brought to Tenom by the British as local workforce.[6] Today, Tenom is widely known as an agriculture site with large coffee production and has been dubbed as the "Sabah's coffee capital".[7] Together with cocoa, rice field and fruit crops, coffee is the second largest contributor to the Tenom agriculture economy after rubber.[8] Due to its large demand from other countries since 2010s, the government began to help to address the shortage of raw coffee supply in Tenom.[9]