We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amanda Chinitra. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amanda below.
Amanda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Beaneka Coffee Roastery came from a need to balance coffee farmers’ economic growth, environmental sustainability, and social well-being through Indonesian specialty coffee.
Our values stem from witnessing the inequality in coffee industries towards coffee farmers. This issue could decrease the quantity and quality of coffee production if we don’t reward the farmers for their hard work.
Climate change is another challenge they have to overcome because it affects coffee farming and their income. Hence, environmental sustainability is one of our company’s pillars.
These missions are important to us because it rewards people who work the hardest so we can enjoy the good heavenly cup of coffee every morning, and the impact will echo to future generations.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
It all started in 2019; during a trip to Indonesia, we met a coffee farmer, Pong Simon who never drank his own coffee because he’d rather sell it to make money and buy cheap instant coffee. While he produced premium beans, he could not sell them for a fair price due to the market being manipulated by a few middlemen. This practice discourages his fellow coffee farmers from producing more, better-quality coffee beans.
He also stated that climate change affects coffee farmers because the weather has become unpredictable, making it harder to produce good coffee.
After the encounter, we started Beaneka Coffee Roastery to improve this situation in our small way. We prefer to buy from farmers who we have relationships with by visiting their farms, paying fair prices, and selecting their best beans. By bringing the best specialty coffee beans to the US coffee enthusiast, we seek to elevate Indonesian coffee to the next level.
We are also passionate about sustainability and being kinder to Earth by using an electric roaster that can be sourced from wind, solar, or hydro, using 100% compostable packaging, and we encourage farmers to use natural fertilizer/manure. We also partner with Java Halu, a coffee farm that practices zero waste program in West Java.
At the San Francisco Coffee Festival, we were surprised that many people had never heard of “Indonesian coffee.” Still, they knew Bali Kintamani, Sumatera Aceh Gayo, Sulawesi Toraja, and West Jawa coffee. Even a big chain coffee shop barista mentioned that he thought Sumatera coffee was from Africa.
A fun fact:
Indonesia is located in the “coffee belt,” an imaginary strip that runs through the equator where the weather is ideal for growing coffee. While the growing conditions are similar between the countries within the coffee belt, the variations in soil, temperature, rainfall, and altitude all significantly affect the flavor of the beans that the coffee plant produces.
Like wine, the taste of one coffee can even have dramatic differences from another produced on a neighboring farm. In addition, Indonesia has the benefits of being geographically widespread across the equator and with numerous interior mountainous regions on its islands, creating ideal microclimates for the growth and production of single-origin coffee beans with various notes and characteristics.
In other words, Indonesia offers great selections of premium, single-origin coffee beans. Hence, the coffee is usually labeled by the name of its specific origins, not as Indonesian Coffee.
The name “Beaneka” derived from the Indonesian national motto “Bhinneka Tunggal Ika,” meaning “Unity in Diversity,”
to unify the country’s rich diversity of cultural practices, ethnicities, languages, and beliefs.
The motto epitomizes Beaneka Coffee’s outlook on life for coffee enthusiasts. It also represents the diverse coffee single-origins growing in various regions, but they all come from one nation, Indonesia.
We at Beaneka Coffee would like to bring people together to enjoy various Indonesian specialty coffee one cup at a time while rewarding the origins from 8,000 miles away.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I met a group of Indonesian students a few months after moving to the US. At the time, I longed for companions who are familiar with my culture and language. So, I invited them for dinner. That evening, I was expecting 3-4 people. Guess what’s gonna happen if you invite hungry students for free meals? Yep! Eight people showed up.
After the meal, a 17-year-old named Bryan had a lengthy conversation with my husband, Adhi Jusuf, who is a coffee enthusiast. Through their talk, Bryan found his spark for coffee. Then, my husband gave him an old espresso machine. Bryan spent his night cleaning part by part and fixing it.
Eventually, Bryan grew a strong bond with us. He treated us as his family while continuing his study here.
In 2019, three of us went to Indonesia, and met the coffee farmer who opened our eyes to the inequalities in the coffee industry.
Afterward, Bryan took SCA certifications and passed Barista Education, Roasting, and Q-cupper exams at 20 years old. His knowledge, combined with our social and environmental missions, three of us started Beaneka Coffee Roastery.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
We had to pivot right before we started. After months of planning, we were offered an opportunity to open a coffee shop in Palo Alto. We got the beans ready and signed a contract with Bellwether. Everything was ready! However, the pandemic set us back to the point where we had to come up with a new strategy. So, we canceled our plan for the coffee shop and decided to navigate the unprecedented situation,
The online store was the only channel for us to sell, and we could not do much then. Many events where we were supposed to serve our coffee were all canceled.
Doing online marketing was challenging because people preferred to try coffee before purchasing. But doing a small step is always better than nothing. So, we learned (and still learning) to promote our coffee online and offline. Slowly, one step at a time. Sometimes we lost hope, but that farmer in Indonesia kept us moving forward.
When the Covid-19 regulations started to relax, we participated in the San Francisco Coffee Festival 2021, supported by the Consulate General of The Republic of Indonesia in San Francisco. It was a crucial moment for us because that’s where we’re testing the market. If people don’t like our coffee, then there is no point in continuing the business.
It turned out we sold out of all beans on the festival’s first day! So, I had to rush back before the show ended to roast more beans for the second day. Our roaster spun for another 12 hours, and we sold it out again on the second day. I still remember the feeling when we were cleaning up the booth. I was overjoyed and wanted to tell Pong Simon about all this when I see him again.
At the same festival in 2022, our sales surpassed the previous year sales.
Now, our coffee is served at Kopi Bar, an elevated Nusantara coffee shop located in Walnut Creek, 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.beanekacoffee.com
- Instagram: beanekacoffee
Image Credits
JeremyJ4K