“Home is where the heart is.”
As Singapore celebrates her 56th birthday, we look back at what home means to us and nothing speaks more love than food that brings people from all walks of life together.
This National Day, we collaborated with a local traditional coffee roaster- Kim Guan Guan to commemorate the heroes of our favourite local breakfast- Kopi and Teh.
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Kopi-Peng Smooth with a rich and robust kopi (traditionally roasted robusta coffee) flavour. The kopi is traditionally sock-brewed and features the distinctive fragrance of margarine roasted caramelised coffee beans. |
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Teh-Peng Creamy and aromatic teh (black tea with milk) flavour concocted with grade A fine Kenyan black tea dust and caramelised milk, and with a sprinkling of tea dust for added texture and fragrance. |
In this episode of our series: #CreamierandFriends:
We were happy to visit Jason Soon, the owner of Kim Guan Guan Trading Pte Ltd (on the right), and his wife, Wendy (on the left) at their roastery to learn more.
Here’s a short excerpt.
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What is your favourite cup of coffee? “I personally like kopi-o-kosong. Every morning after drinking a cup of kopi-o-kosong, at home, I will still go to the coffeeshop to drink another cup. At home, to save time, I would use our Kim’s Duet coffee bag to make coffee and drink because I prefer coffee with a stronger robust flavour”. |
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What qualities make a good coffee roast?
“To roast good coffee, there are a few components to do it well.
The first component is the coffee beans. For local coffee, we use robusta beans from Indonesia. Due to it being a seasonal crop, it is hard for us to predict the quality of the beans is at its best. Hence, during the roasting process, we will put in extra effort to make sure we get the processes just right. We test every batch of coffee beans to determine the optimum temperature for roasting each batch. The method of roasting is equally important.
The second component is the temperature. During the roasting process, we would require a minimum temperature of 240-245 degrees celsius to slowly roast the coffee beans to our standard. Our local traditional coffee features an unique caramelized taste so the sugar needs to be at a melting point of 160 degrees celsius.
We need to maintain a golden ratio – the maximum difference in time is between 1-2 minutes in combination with the sugar and the coffee beans, otherwise, the beans will be over-roasted.
The last component is the grind size which can greatly affect the quality of our coffee powder.”
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How has the pandemic affected your business?
“This Covid-19 pandemic has definitely affected our business. After the pandemic strikes, coffee shops find themselves serving a much smaller crowd, and the same goes for shopping malls. This has definitely impacted our sales. To pivot our business, we have tested the e-commerce platform by starting out on Shopee, Lazada and building our own online website. We are trying to cater to a B2C audience instead of just servicing B2B. The result of this pivot to direct customers, to our surprise, has brought in an increase in online sales and it is doing way better than we had hope for.
Right from the start, we have always wanted to start e-commerce but because we have not done it before, the notion of e-commerce had seemed very challenging and almost impossible. Because of the pandemic, we have no choice but to find an alternative to making sales since our B2B is making a loss. It gives us the opportunity to reach out direct consumers. After taking the leap of faith, we discovered that this B2C method actually works. Hence, we decided to develop our own coffee bag product line and to sell them online. I am very happy and satisfied with the results and reviews as many supporters and customers have come forward to purchase our products.”
Watch the interview here:
Don’t miss this limited edition treat! The Kopi Peng and Teh Peng ice cream is now available at all Creamier outlets in scoops and pints as well as on our online store and delivery platform for a limited time only.
