A passion for coffee and the quest to find the perfect cup in the world brought Richard Hardwick, Neil Reilly and Ade Makmursyah together to establish Bespoke Beverages. They set out to become the purveyors of the most exclusive coffee in the world and, commendably, accomplish this with a conscience.
Coming from different corners of the world – Hardwick from the UK, Reilly from Canada and Makmursyah from Indonesia – their paths crossed while working on five-star luxury cruise ships. As they travelled the globe all three were able to indulge in their passions: travel, luxury goods and coffee.
Makmursyah was from the highlands of Sumatra in Indonesia and despite many cups in countless countries, he could not dispel the fact that the quality of his homeland coffee still remained superior.
Growing tired of this constant comparison; Hardwick and Reilly prompted Makmursyah to prove his claims. After finally trying a sample, they quickly understood why Makmursyah was never satisfied with any other coffee.
“Nothing came close to the rich, balanced, well-rounded coffee with a hint of bitterness and creamy caramel that had a surprising fruity finish that sat softly on the palette. This was what we had been looking for all along,” says Hardwick.
Secret of success
The secret of the coffee and what makes it so special is a combination of many factors. The unique terroir of a small plot of land deep in the Indonesian highlands of Gayo, the organic farming of the beans for hundreds of year and the dedicated generations of farmers who attended to the crops and collected the beans.
There was one last secret to the magic formula; the Asian palm civet cat, a nocturnal animal that feasts on the finest, ripest coffee cherries and passes it through its system. This unique process where the cherries are picked at the most opportune moment changes the chemical composition and acidity of the bean.
All three resolved to create a company that would source the finest beans and distribute them around the world. The end result is what is known around the world as Kopi Luwak (KL) coffee.
“It is the terroir, history, cultivating practices and production that create the gaps in the price point between the different wineries and brands. It was this experience that helped Bespoke Beverages create KL Ruby and KL Diamond, the most expensive coffees in the world,” explains Hardwick.
Caring for the community
Gayo is a region located on an altitude of 1,200 metres in the highlands of northern Sumatra, an area that covers a great many kilometres. Even though the region is vast, the coffee farming community is very close and supports each other.
As Makmursyah and Topo Sugiri, the company’s quality assurance director, originate from the Gayo region, the founding trio agreed that the new company should positively influence the lives of all who came into contact with the coffee; both the farmers and the end consumer. “We felt it was our duty to make a difference in the community, not just the farmers and collectors who supplied the beans,” says Hardwick. One of the challenges in attempting to help so many people was the amount of green beans they could source that met their strict quality guidelines. There was only enough to produce roughly 1100 kilograms (kg) of coffee a year.
To give a better idea as to how this compares to the global supply, Indonesia alone produces fewer than nine million bags of coffee, each bag contains 60kg of green beans, and the annual global production of coffee is estimated at 147 million bags. “It seemed it would be a difficult task to help so many when we only had so little to sell,” explains Hardwick.
At the time when Bespoke Beverages started, there were 1.97 million coffee farmers in Indonesia with an average of 0.6 hectares of land ownership. Assuming that a coffee farmer has a four-member family, this equates to at least 7.9 million people being dependant on coffee sales. “So, any change to the price on the open market impacts them greatly,” Hardwick states.
By setting the bar higher than anyone in the industry when it came to the quality and price point of a coffee, the trio understood that their success would only be possible if the conditions at the plantations were at their peak. This is when they turned their attention to the farmers, their families and the communities that supported them.
“Workers are paid very little as the price of coffee on the global market does not reflect what farmers are paid for their beans by exporters. With so little money to go around, most people in the region could not afford things like health insurance, university tuition and something necessary like paying to repair a leaky roof, a necessity during the wet season,” says Hardwick.
Bespoke Beverages decided to improve the fair trade model in their own way. Admirably, the company pays the highest price per kg to the farmers and bean collectors than anyone in the industry, but they did not stop there.
Currently, the company is finalising a deal to introduce health and life insurance for the families and bean collectors so that they are covered in the event of any illness or accident that might take away their ability to provide for their families.
Fulfilling dreams
Having worked on cruise ships for many years, the trio understood that so many of their colleagues from Indonesia and the Philippines were away from their families for up to ten months at a time so they could provide for their families and allow their children to go to the best schools and universities.
With this in mind, the trio is also in the process of creating a scholarship fund for the local Gayo community and have committed to donate 10% of their profits. In most circumstances this would involve building schools and local infrastructure, but what the families desired most was to go to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
“It is not often that you have the opportunity to make the dream of generations come true and over the next three years Bespoke Beverages aims to organise pilgrimages for all their farmers,” says Hardwick. In addition, they aim to make each family a stakeholder in Bespoke Beverages rewarding the skills of the often overlooked coffee growers of the world. Their long-term plans are continuing to search for unique plantations that produce exceptional coffee and trying to make the same positive impact on the local communities by applying the purchasing and support model to that region.
What’s more, they are trying to impel other local suppliers of Kopi Luwak to stop the practice of caging the civet cats to produce beans. This is a huge challenge in the industry as it is cruel to keep this animal caged and force fed coffee beans because it does not produce the same quality product as wild luwak coffee.
“Eliminating caged luwak coffee is a high priority for Bespoke Beverages and we are committed to only sourcing wild luwak coffee from our own plantations and network of farmers and collectors,” says Hardwick.
