A collaboration with Hong Kong specialty coffee roastery Urban Coffee Roasters

Dec 20

Written By Yilina

Hong Kong has always been nostalgic to me. Perhaps it's due to the countless HK dramas I grew up watching; maybe it's from the memories of revisiting my parents' honeymoon spots on family trips when I was a child; or it could just be my overwhelming love for dimsum and milk tea that created this special bond. Travelling to Hong Kong always felt like going home away from home - in so many ways the city was same same but different from Singapore.

With Hong Kong being a place that’s close to my heart, you can imagine how thrilled I was when we managed to land a trip there to expand our footprint! Everything happened pretty quickly, the trip was decided in April and we were to fly by early June.

By the time our air tickets were booked, my list of places to check out was already massive. But excitement aside, there was an important task ahead. Securing a trip was just tip of the iceberg, the real challenge was ensuring that a fruitful schedule was planned out and substantial outcomes were achieved from this time-off from Singapore. After many sleepless nights spent putting the plans together and through a series of hits and misses, we finally had a good itinerary ahead of us.

Among the many admirable entrepreneurs and inspirational business partners we met on the trip, a particular one struck a chord with me because of how similar their story was to ours. Urban Coffee Roasters is a specialty coffee roastery founded by Horry and Gary. The duo started out as friends and over time, bonded over their common interests - food, of course being one of those. In 2014, they turned that hobby into a business, starting off by serving coffee at pop-up markets before going full fledged into owning their own space. Check out their quaint little cafe at Tsim Sha Tsui!

While our trip lasted less than a week, conversations with the team continued and then THIS was born.

This limited release Banko Gotiti coffee chocolate bar we created in collaboration with Urban Coffee Roasters is made with a micro-lot coffee selected by Gary from Ethiopia Yirgacheffe in 2019 harvest season paired with our cacao beans from Rehoboth Estate in the Philippines. With this combination of coffee and cacao, you can expect floral notes with immense blueberry sweetness and a delicate tangerine finish. This bar will be sold exclusively at Urban Coffee Roasters (though we kept a bar for our own secret stash ha!) and since we’ve made a micro-lot, it is available in limited quantities only.

While we won’t be back in Hong Kong for a while, we’re happy to have found new friends and caught up with old ones during this trip. And to those who believe in us, thank you for your support and we really look forward to growing together in the coming years.

Till we meet again, Hong Kong!