Irony, it is the condition of coffee industry in Indonesia until a few years ago. The country is the world’s fourth biggest coffee exporter in the world. Yet it has the lowest coffee consumption per-capita in Southeast Asia. But Kopi Kenangan committed to make a change to this irony.
Erdward Tirnata, the co-founder and CEO of the coffee chain stated that it is because there are no large and affordable coffee chain with localized taste. This is where his company makes different.
How Kopi Kenangan wants to take both foreign chains and local street vendors
Kopi Kenangan only uses local ingredients. Not only the much prized coffee grains, but also milk and brown sugar. All from the leading local producer in Indonesia.
Tirnata wants to position his company between the foreign brands and local street vendor. Therefore, the price of the coffees are also between the both. In Indonesia, street vendors usually sell coffee below IDR 10,000 ($0.71). While foreign chains such as Starbucks menus are around IDR 42,000 ($3).
Kopi Kenanga sells its menus starting from IDR 18,000 ($1.3). A much cheaper price than the foreign chains but still keeping the distance to the twopenny instants.
The classic app, delivery and takeaway systems
Just like how Luckin Coffee gain popularity in China, the Indonesian company also uses similar strategy. It opens many stores in a blink of an eye. After the first launch in 2017, now it has more than 80 stores in 8 cities in the country.
It also plans on opening at least 150 more stores by the end of the year after a $20 million investment from Sequoia Capital earlier this month. By 2021, the company plans to have 1,000 stores spread across the country.
But even now the company has been doing the business impressively. Through the 80 something stores, it sells around one million cup of coffee per month.
To boost it sales, Kopi Kenanga also launched its own app, just like Luckin. Through the app, customers can order their coffees using the store’s delivery system. They can also get their custom coffee, allowing the customer to be their own personal barista using the app.
The kiosk model stores allows food delivery players such as Go-Food and GrabFood to take role in the store’s sale growth as well. Spreading the Kopi Kenanga fever even wider.
James Prananto, the company co-founder and COO stated that he wanted his company to be beyond a coffee chain. But become a lifestyle company instead.
