Serious about espresso
Outlet aims to serve high quality espresso
Outlet aims to serve the best cuppa that will keep you wide awake and make you go back for seconds.
KUALA Lumpur may be full of kopitiams, Starbucks and other international coffee chains but for coffee enthusiast Bob Leong, 38, there is a yawning gap in the market that can be filled by the rise of artisan, independent cafes.
Leong’s business, espressolab, opened in July last year and has since procured a loyal following of coffee afficionados who travel from all over Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya to secure their fix of quality y blended, roasted and brewed espresso coffee.
“Malaysia has a legacy y with the kopitiams, so my y business venture is not an effort to displace anyone already in the coffee market,” Leong said.
“Like the Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed d milk, we are providing an alternative experience.”
This experience is constructed nal by four crucial things, said Leong: a freshly and independently roasted coffee supply, the training of the baristas, the quality of the coffee and engaged customer service.
From the outside, espressolab’s tucked away location on an upper level in the Solaris Dutamas commercial complex looks nondescript and almost clinical, but the decor and ambience belie the value placed on making the perfect cup of coffee.
Leong said he “skimped out” on the interior design so as to invest more heavily in coffee beans, research, equipment, barista training and public awareness programmes.
The sparkling Synesso Cyncra espresso machine reflects this priority.
Quietly rumbling, frothing and humming in the front corner, the machine is single-handedly worth tens of thousands of ringgit.
Add to that the grinders and alternative brewing options that line the tables, benches and floor space and even the most coffee illiterate passer-by can understand this place is serious about espresso.
Leong said he was not worried about the huge capital needed to establish espressolab, as the company’s operations transcend the standard coffee-based hospitality business.
Espressolab is intending to become one of Kuala Lumpur’s select independent roasters, while also enlarging its training academy for the next generation of baristas adept at making artisan coffee.
“We talk to potential clients not just on a coffee quality level but on a lucrative business proposition.
“If you sell good coffee, people will buy a second, a third and most probably return to your cafe. If you sell a good pasta, a person is full,” Leong said.
Espressolab is also expanding operations to sites in Singapore and Sydney, Australia by mid-year.
Leong is confident Malaysian coffee expertise from businesses such as his and R.A.W (Real and Wholesome food) has progressed to a stage of export quality.
“We started with the bitter, strong robusta coffee at kopitiams and have now had them for a hundred years.
“Then in the mid-1990s, we moved to the coffee chains like Starbucks,” Leong said.
Although the majority of coffee afficionados sneer at the quality, commercialisation and diversification of mega international coffee chains, Leong is quick to identify the merits of having an already entrenched espresso culture in Kuala Lumpur.
“No one before them was willing to pay RM6 or RM7 for a cup of coffee. They paved the way for the new approach to coffee culture,” he said.
“In the last couple of years, we are now seeing Malaysians who have travelled to Europe or Australia wanting to replicate their favourite cafe experiences there, and the response to independent cafes in Malaysia has been phenomenal.” When asked if there was any blip on the horizon for coffee lovers, Leong warned of an impending supply-and-demand crisis, with the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, still major tea consumers and yet to be activated to an espresso-based coffee culture.
“(China) is still at the Starbucks stage of their coffee culture,” Leong said.
“When these countries wake up to espresso coffee, then prices will rocket.”
For more information, go to www.myespressolab.com
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