The Coffee Interview

I received an email request for a recorded tv interview, discussing in general about coffee, my work place and the competition or trend within this industry.

The series will be aired by the 2nd week of March 2014, produced by 2M Pte Ltd belonging to Najip Ali and hosted by Singapore Idol Season 3 winner - Sezairi Sezali.

Below are the excerpt and pictures. (Note that these are loosely translated as the interview was done in Malay.)

Tell us more about Toby’s Estate Café –

"Toby's Estate is an  Australian Specialty Roaster that have set up home in a picturesque enclave of Robertson Quay, Singapore on 8 Rodyk Street since October 2011. Singapore is their first outpost out of Australia, followed by New York that opened up just a few months later. Like all our signature cafes in Australia, the Singapore café focus squarely on high quality brews from our signature roasted blends (we roast it here in Singapore) and techniques that have since been perfected by the founder, Toby Smith himself from his humble beginnings in his mom's Woolloomooloo garage (in Sydney) over 15 years ago. We are a riverside café with a spacious indoor and outdoor seatings, high ceilings (the place used to be an old warehouse that stores green coffee beans back in those days), free wifi, signature coffee brews both from the fast and slow, all day breakfast as well as a tempting array of handmade pastries, locally sourced by independent providers, artisans in their own rights. Toby's Estate also have with them, the biggest national pool of competition baristas, with a World Barista Judge and 2 times Singapore National Barista Championship 2nd runner up, Suhaimie Sukiman and World Latte Art 13th place, Terence Tan within the stable of experienced Barista. We are technically experienced in all sorts of coffee brewing methods and with such passionate talent behind the counter and coffee pedigree to boot, Toby's Estate might just turn out to be your cup of tea (or coffee) "

What is the difference between Toby’s and major coffee franchises?

"With presence in whole of Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth) as well as Singapore, New York as well as wholesale accounts using our coffee in the Asia region (Sri Lanka, Bali, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur) we may be considered a global coffee chain by many but instead of allowing ourselves to be mentioned under the same breath with this mainstream beverage chains, we are actually very much artisanal with a deeper connection and appreciation to good coffee as well as maintaining the ideology that fresh is best. In all the countries that Toby's have set up, we always commissioned a full pledged roasting facility to roast all coffee in-house. We hired the best within the local industry, spend more time to provide additional coaching, more involved with ground work within the local industry (sending barista for competitions, volunteer as national judges, provide coffee workshops to the public), sourced most of our green beans direct from farms instead of buying all from traders. "

Will gourmet coffee be a lasting trend in Singapore?

"My humble beginning was with a global coffee chain for 9 years since 1998 before leading the coffee scene with a local coffee roaster for 4 years. These are all considered  gourmet coffees and they have been around in Singapore since the 1980s. We are now in the 3rd wave of coffee and in Singapore context, is traditional coffee (1st wave), gourmet coffee from global coffee brands (2nd wave) and now artisinal and specialty coffee roasters and cafes (3rd wave). There have been more cafes opening recorded the last 3 years than the last 20 years combined and a deeper connection to coffee from a consumer point of view. Coffee is now a lifestyle instead of just a beverage and the interest from the Y generation is very much welcoming and encouraging. Café operators and consumers are well travelled and expose to specialty coffee from their oversea studying stint in coffee developed countries like Australia, USA as well as London. Upon return to Singapore and with a higher demand of better specialty coffee, the scene is still 'hotting up' instead of reaching a saturation point. "