With its ‘new retail’ approach, Fore Coffee is taking Jakarta by storm

There’s no shortage of coffee shops in Jakarta: international chains like Starbucks and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf have long been present. And third-wave coffee shops like Tanamera and One Fifteenth, as well as homegrown brands offering local-style coffee such as Toko Kopi Tuku and Kopi Kenangan, have started to emerge in recent years.

In August 2018, a new player called Fore Coffee joined the scene. Founded by Robin Boe and Elisa Suteja, the company has grown to 58 outlets across Greater Jakarta less than a year since its founding. In comparison, Starbucks opened its 364th store in Indonesia after operating in the country for 17 years.

Photo credit: Fore Coffee

Unlike its established rivals, Fore’s secret ingredient is the “new retail” approach, which has invited comparisons to China’s Luckin Coffee. Most of the average 300,000 cups of coffee it serves per month are ordered through its app.

New retail is a concept that first originated in China’s ecommerce industry and exemplified by the likes of Luckin Coffee and Alibaba’s Hema supermarket. As Jack Ma puts it, it’s the seamless combination of offline, online, and logistics, with technology at the heart of it.

Suteja, Fore’s co-founder and deputy CEO, explains the company’s market positioning: “We want to serve something as good as Starbucks, but also inject something that is a game changer, which is the tech side and the new-retail strategy.”

Investors have taken notice. Backed primarily by Indonesian venture capital firm East Ventures, Fore recently raised close to US$10 million in series A funding.

Quality coffee with a tech twist

At first glance, Fore isn’t terribly different from other coffee shops. It offers the usual espresso-based drinks (like lattes or Americanos), teas from premium Singaporean brand TWG, and specialty drinks inspired by local tastes, such as pandan- or rose-flavored lattes.

The company charges about IDR 35,000 (US$2.50) for a cup of iced Americano, which is on par with Starbucks’ prices. The design of Fore’s outlets is also dominated by shades of white and features wooden accents, a Scandinavian-inspired aesthetic favored by many third-wave coffee shops.

What differentiates Fore is its online-to-offline concept. Like Luckin Coffee, the company created an app that consumers can use to order coffee both in-store as well as for delivery. While some of its outlets are larger with more seating space, many are smaller as they’re optimized for delivery orders. It’s common to see a long queue of Gojek or Grab drivers at such outlets, which also allow Fore to save on expenses like rent and fit-out.

Photo credit: Fore Coffee

“Larger chains and third-wave coffee shops invest more in the experience, where people can sit down to enjoy their coffee and have meetings,” says Suteja, who was a senior analyst at East Ventures before founding Fore. “Local coffee chains, meanwhile, serve coffee at affordable prices but with a relatively lower quality. They are optimized by the likes of Go-Food and GrabFood, but don’t really utilize the new-retail strategy.”

Quality is a key focus. Like Starbucks, Fore uses arabica coffee beans – widely regarded to be of higher quality compared to robusta beans – for its beverages. Suteja highlights the startup’s close ties with Otten Coffee, an ecommerce platform for coffee-related products that handles the procurement of tools and beans for Fore, ensuring a certain level of quality.

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