TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Less than a year after starting a coffee shop in Jakarta, under the flag of First Crack Coffee, Evani Jesslyn expanded her business by opening her first branch at Pacific Place, Sudirman Central Business District (SCBD), in early March. "When it was offered, I immediately agreed," said Evani, when met at her new café.
Evani said she did not need to think it over very long when she received the offer to open a café in the capital city’s exclusive area. The reason: this finalist in the Barista and Farmer 2016-a competition held by the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe-saw that coffee had become integral to the middle-class lifestyle of Jakarta. The 27-year-old does not serve ordinary coffee. She only uses specialty grade arabica of the best quality, and fine robusta.
Evani started First Crack in August 2017. Located in the Altira Business Park, Sunter, North Jakarta, her shop offered a coffee academy and café. Each month, First Crack serves up 100 kilograms of coffee. Still a newcomer in Jakarta, Evani had opened a café called Strada Coffee in Semarang, her hometown, in 2012. "At the time the coffee shop business was just starting to grow," she said.
During those years, cafés were springing up everywhere. Mira Yudhawati, an administrator of the Indonesian Barista Guild, said that one reason behind the growth of cafés was the coffee ‘third wave’ which occurred from 2010-2011. "Most of the people had worked or studied abroad, say in Australia," said Mira, who is also a Q-Grader-someone who examines coffees and rates them based on their overall quality-from Caswell’s Coffee. "They brought over the café trend here."
This third wave is not just about drinking coffee in cafés. Casual drinkers fall into the second category. The third wave group consists of those who have begun to ask about the origin of the coffee beans being used, how they are processed, and how they are prepared. "Some are more particular than café baristas," said Mira.
Mira said that these third-wave coffee drinkers contributed to the growth of cafés in Indonesia. A report in the Financial Times in May 2016 said, data from the market research agency Euromonitor showed that over the past five years there have opened 1,083 new coffee shops in Indonesia. The majority of these cafés, with artisans or franchised, are concentrated in Jakarta. Euromonitor predicted that this number will continue to grow seven percent annually until 2020.
The café growth trend can also be seen from domestic coffee consumption figures. The International Coffee Organization noted that the increase in coffee consumption-both robusta and arabica-began to be noticeable in Indonesia starting in 2011. Based on data from that agency which often serves as a reference for world coffee prices, from 2006 to 2010 domestic coffee consumption stood at around 2.8 to 3.3 million tons of coffee annually.
Read the full article in this week's edition of Tempo English Magazine
