Coffee is a good friend. The simple words spoken by Natasha when we asked to define coffee. Simple words but meaningful for Natasha and Amalia. Amalia’s interest in coffee started when she visited coffee shops regularly with her friends, but it was always the same not-so-pleasant experience. Unlike her friends, she experienced gastric pains and nausea everytime she drank coffee back then. But instead of banning coffee from her beverage list, she was determined to find out what causes this. Until one day she learned about Specialty coffee with Natasha and the two friends decided to open a coffee shop, selling coffee that can be enjoyed by other people with the same problem. They succeeded at this by observing all coffee processes and aspects.
Naming their coffee shop “Goreal-ah!”, they want to encourage everyone to be themselves and express it through coffee. Channeling their passion through communication and product development, they never felt tired in opening interesting conversation with their customer who visited Goreal-ah!, which is located at Green Lake City, Tangerang. Welcoming and Friendly is our first impression that we got when visiting their coffee shop.
Our chit chat continued towards the development of coffee industry. As small batch roastery, Goreal-ah! hope that coffee isn’t just becoming trend but they wish people can be more aware with the coffee itself. They believe with the right introduction they can introduce coffee to their customer with different angle. Communication has become the key for them. In addition, the challenge of small coffee shop and roastery such as Goreal-ah is the limited purchasing power of coffee beans in large quantities. “If there is a new coffee sample, we can’t buy it in large quantities, so we must really recognize the character of each coffee beans”, Natasha explained. “ And because we are a small batch roastery, if we want direct trade and buy from coffee producer, they certainly need us to buy in large quantities”, Amalia added. According to Natasha, IIT is a very helpful platform for small batch roastery such as Goreal-ah! by screening the quality of coffee beans. “Its very helpfull for small batch roastery”, Natasha said. The same thing also spoken by Amalia, “We want coffee in Goreal-ah! to always be fresh, no more than 14 days. So with the size of our small coffee shop, our market is not adequate if we buy coffee in large batches”, she said.
Business side, to be able to survive, not only they provide the best coffee, but understanding and recognizing your customer also plays an important part. As an SCA certified lady roaster, Natasha revealed that you should know your customer. “We didn’t roast for ourselves to drink, but to be served to public.”, she said. And again she added that communication with your customer is very important, from small talks there are always pointers that they can get to improve themselves in the future.
At the end of our conversation, we asked about their hopes for coffee industry. “Don’t be tired to share the story behind of a cup of coffee, don’t let yourself misunderstand the current product/menu (coffee) today, coffee has always been there, we need to be careful when entering the coffee industry. Do we want to just simply follow trends or are we really serious about coffee.”, said Natasha, who pursued her studies in Taiwan.
Amalia also underlined about the importance of being idealistic and realistic in coffee industry. “These two things have always been the choice in any industry, we believe that idealist and realist can walk together side by side, what we need is to play the rhythm in the right way. We cant just be idealistic if our purpose is to engage for the better. If we dont know how to play the rhythm of when to be idealistic and when to be realistic, the business will colapse for sure. So we need to be smart enough in managing both sides of these characters, an idealist that is also realist”, she said. Natasha added, “The most important thing is that you want to sell the coffee, so the beans has to be of good quality, dont be stingy in looking for the best quality beans.”
