KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 1 — There is something distinctive about the aroma of coffee beans being roasted. It’s not exactly pleasant, and nothing like the smell of a freshly brewed cuppa — no, it’s not quite there yet — but it is thrilling.
It’s the scent of anticipation. From this, good coffee comes.
“Good coffee” is what Thomas Ooi believes in. Hailing originally from Sitiawan, the 33-year-old opened Owls Café in August 2014.
To ensure a regular supply of coffee beans roasted to his liking, Ooi started his own roastery, Ghostbird Coffee Company, in December 2015.
For years, Ghostbird was very much an internal affair, supplying beans only to Ooi’s various cafés. (There are now seven outlets in total: two in Bukit Jalil; one each in PJ, USJ, Mytown, Trec and Kuching.)
Today, Ghostbird has expanded to doing wholesale and providing their beans to other cafés and shops. But coffee is a competitive market and price sensitive with razor-thin margins.
What makes them stand out? After all, the definition of “good coffee” is kind of subjective, isn’t it?
Ooi offers their take: “Ghostbird offers a variety of single origin beans and blends that are positioned between commodity and specialty coffees. Take our signature Milky Way espresso blend: As black coffee, it has low bitterness and barely any acidity; as milk coffee, it’s chocolatey and Milo-like.”
Some might argue Ghostbird has priced its beans too low and thus risks spoiling the market for other roasters.
Ooi disagrees, explaining that “while others might portray themselves as specialty coffee purveyors, that’s not what we are claiming. Instead what we want to do is capture the sweet spot between low-cost commodity and premium-priced specialty.”
But what is commodity coffee and what is considered specialty?
According to Ooi, specialty coffee ought to be: Firstly, single origin beans; secondly, beans that score 80 points and above on a 100-point grading scale as per Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) protocol; and thirdly, of light to medium roasting.
“Typically, specialty coffee purveyors will look for around 83 to 85 points for their beans. Most importantly, you don’t do dark roasts if you’re talking about specialty beans. Beans for filter coffee ought to be light roast and for espresso blends a light to medium roast.”
A darker roast, Ooi opines, would produce “a more roasted flavour, like what you’d get at Starbucks. By contrast, specialty coffee ought to have the bean’s original flavour or ‘coffee as it is’ — an Ethiopian bean would have a jasmine aroma and a floral, honey sweetness, for example.”
Here is where consumer expectations come into play. Ooi says, “In reality, customers generally prefer a roasting flavour; we grew up drinking Milo and kopi O kaw after all. We can get this flavour by roasting further, until we turn the sugars in the beans into caramel. You get more of a toffee and hazelnut flavour.”
Yet café hoppers aren’t entering a shop with flat whites and Americanos on the menu and be satisfied with being served what tastes like Milo and kopi O kaw, are they? Hence the question of balance.
Ooi says, “Ghostbird is doing neither commodity nor specialty coffee as this would limit our product offerings. But how can we sell at competitive pricing yet provide our wholesale customers with good coffee that they can serve their own customers?”
The answer, apparently, lies with how beans are graded.
Ooi explains, “We mainly source for beans graded at 80 points, sometimes even 79 points. This is literally the border between commodity and specialty coffee. But a few points make a huge impact on pricing.”
The average market price for 80-82 point green beans is RM25-30 per kilogram while 83-85 point beans cost RM28-50 per kilogram, depending on the origin and coffee variety. The difference results in significant cost savings.
Ooi says, “Currently Ghostbird’s Milky Way blend is priced at RM80 per kilogram compared to the market price of RM90-RM120 per kilogram. We pass the savings to our wholesale customers, the café owners, and then through our Ghostbird Academy offer free training to their staff on how to brew a better cup of coffee with our beans of this grade.”
It all begins at Ghostbird’s roastery and headquarters in Seputeh. Michael Tan, a veteran barista and Ghostbird’s Wholesale Director, shows me around the space which is more than just the roasting machine.
Here is where they store their green beans, including Malaysian grown Arabica coffee beans from Sabah. There is their production room where the roasted beans are packaged for delivery.
With 80 point beans, there must be some trade-offs in terms of quality. Tan says, “Ghostbird sorts the beans twice — once at the roasting stage, and once again before the beans are packaged — to remove defective beans.”
Naturally the percentage of defects would be higher than for 83 point beans. At Ghostbird, for every 5 kilograms of beans, they remove about 15 grams of defective beans, which is considered reasonable by industry standards.
Tan adds, “Also we do a medium-dark roast, one notch above specialty coffee which goes only as far as a medium roast. That’s only an issue if we brand ourselves as specialty coffee, which we don’t. As long as the coffee is balanced and not too bitter, it’s what our customers are after.”
Clearly the strategy is working. Since late last year, Ghostbird has increased their wholesale accounts from 68 to 79 customers. And this is up from only four customers the year before. Ooi shares, “We do an average of 10 kilograms per week per customer. Some own multiple shops so they can reach as high as 100 kilograms per week.”
Next up for Ghostbird is their expansion into the coffee kiosk business, a smaller setup compared to full-sized cafés with the accompanying lower cost and agility; far easier to pack up and shift to new locations if the foot traffic turns out to be low.
Another development would be distributor accounts. Tan says, “We will partner with a few cafés in different states and regions so others can go to them and buy Ghostbird beans and receive training. We’re starting with one in Ipoh for the north and one in Seremban for the south, but eventually hope to expand to every state having its own Ghostbird hub.”
Which makes sense as the nation is not reducing its caffeine intake anytime soon. Ghostbird went from roasting 300 kilograms of coffee beans per month only a year ago, mainly for Owl Café outlets, to now doing 3 tonnes of monthly sales.
Make no mistake about it: a new goldmine in “good coffee” is up for grabs.
Ghostbird Coffee Company
9, Jalan Seputeh, Seputeh, Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 011-1638 8939
