Warung Tinggi: A coffee story

Warung Tinggi: A coffee story

Yenni Kwok, Contributor, Jakarta

Tucked away in a small alley off Jl. Hayam Wuruk in Chinatown is a well-kept Jakarta secret -- Warung Tinggi coffee shop.

It boasts that it is Indonesia's oldest coffee company, with a history going back over 125 years. "Our coffee has come a long way, since the Dutch era, and the knowledge and expertise about coffee has been passed on from one generation to another," says Rudy Widjaja, the fourth-generation owner of Warung Tinggi.

In this modest, no-frills shop-house, you can buy coffee beans, have them ground, and also sample a cup of freshly brewed coffee of your choice.

The family-run business prides itself at selling its own unique blends of the archipelago's best coffees, from Java, Bali, Toraja, Sumatra's Mandailing, Lampung, East Timor and even West Papua.

Warung Tinggi started in 1878, when Rudy's great-grandfather, Liauw Tek Soen, a Hakka migrant from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, and his wife, an indigenous pribumi woman, opened a warung, a small eatery, on Jl Hayam Wuruk, not far from where the shop is now.

The locals called Liauw's shop Warung Tinggi (the high warung), because it was located on higher ground than the surrounding area.

Legend has it that the coffee of Warung Tinggi was more popular than its own dishes. Liauw was a tailor by training, but he proved to have a talent in preparing coffee.

He bought the raw materials from women foot-peddlers, who carried the coffee beans in a bamboo-woven basket on their head (and, whose image later became the logo of Warung Tinggi). Liauw roasted the beans on a big wok, sifted and ground them.

In 1927, the eldest of Liauw's three sons, Liauw Sim Yao, started to run the business and expanded the coffee operation. He designed and built a coffee-roasting machine to roast the coffee better. In honor of his father, Sim Yao named the business Tek Soen Hoo Eerste Weltevredensche Koffiebranderij, which roughly translates as Tek Soen's Shop, the First Coffee Roasting Company in Weltevreden (today's Kota).

Liauw Sim Yao's first son, Liauw Tian Djie, later known as Udjan Widjaja, inherited the company in 1948. At that time, Warung Tinggi sold only one kind of coffee, packed in simple brown paper.

"In the 1950s and 1960s, my father started to make more coffee blends," Rudy Widjaja, 64, said about Udjan. "Many of our customers were coffee addicts. The business kept growing, although we did not advertise our products. New customers came by word of mouth."

The names of the shop and the family were changed in 1967 after Soeharto's New Order regime discouraged the use of Chinese names. Tek Soen Hoo became Warung Tinggi. After consulting the Javanese primbon (divination manuals), the Liauws became the Widjajas.

After Udjan died in 1978, four of his 11 children -- Rudy, Darmawan, Suyanto and Yanti -- ran Warung Tinggi. Rudy was in charge of administration and marketing, Dharmawan of production and purchasing raw materials, Suyanto of production and sales, and Yanti was responsible for accounting and finance.

In the mid-1990s, the Widjajas decided to split the family's heirloom.

One son got the shop building on Jl Hayam Wuruk, Rudy procured the name and business rights of Warung Tinggi, while the rest shared the money inheritance. The shop was moved to its current location on Jl Tangki Sekolah while the factory was relocated to Daan Mogot.

During the May riots in 1998, his factory and house in Daan Mogot was looted. Rudy Widjaja and his family fled to Singapore and stayed there for one-and-a-half years. "I brought the important documents only, arrived in Singapore wearing a pair of flip-flops. I was traumatized, but I decided to come back later because what could I do in Singapore? My life was in Indonesia," he said.

After his return, he moved the factory to Tangerang. However, another tragedy struck some years later. In 2002, His son, Ferry, whom he had groomed as his successor, died in an accident. It hit him very hard but he also bounced back, eventually.

He is currently training his youngest daughter, Angelica, 25, in coffee production. "She isn't quite there yet, but I told her, `It doesn't matter. It took your brother some years to learn the ropes.'"

"Indonesian coffee is among the best in the world, although in quantity, it lags behind the three largest producers, Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam," said Rudy.

"Coffee is planted and produced all across Indonesia, but the quality and taste vary, depending on the climate, the soil and the care. Toraja coffee, I would say, is number one. But, in Warung Tinggi, we blend different coffee beans from various parts of Indonesia to get the best mix."

Warung Tinggi coffee provides eight types of coffee blends, from robusta, to arabica, from `male' and `female' beans to `excellence', with prices ranging from Rp 12,500 to Rp 87,500 per 250 grams.

For generations, Warung Tinggi has been a quintessentially family-run business that has stayed put in its Chinatown locale. But in this era of globalization, where franchise cafes are proliferating, it is looking to expand its business, opening cafes, albeit likely to start outside Jakarta, and producing flavored coffee.

Rudy does not see any competition with the other branch of the Widjaja family, his nephew and niece, who recently opened Bakoel Koffie cafes. "The most important thing is to maintain the high quality of our blends," he said. "That has been the recipe for our survival over all these years."

Warung Tinggi, Jl Tangki Sekolah No. 26 (off Jl Hayam Wuruk), Jakarta 11170. Tel 6256843, 6256875