For decades, there was not a coffee shop anywhere in Indonesia’s Toraja region, even as its high-quality beans grabbed top dollar on the international market.
Locals in the lush, mountainous area on the island of Sulawesi used the bitter beverage in traditional ceremonies, gave away their extra beans to neighbors for free or traded them for a sack of rice and livestock.
However, Toraja is experiencing a mini-explosion in cafes, with dozens of shops sprouting up in the region courtesy of entrepreneurs such as Suleiman Mitting.
Coffee was introduced to the region by Muslim traders in about the 18th century, but for most Trojans paying to drink it in a store was an alien idea.
“If I ran out of coffee, I’d just go to my neighbor’s place,” Mitting said from his 16-seat shop in North Toraja. “Us Torajans are not used to drinking coffee at a cafe.”
When world coffee prices dropped several years ago, putting pressure on local farmers, Miting said it opened a window for a new business in the area that squeezed out middlemen who largely controlled prices.
The situation in Toraja mirrors a coffee culture explosion across Indonesia, particularly among young people living in cities. The region mostly produces arabica beans, which have a milder taste and lower caffeine concentration than robusta beans.
Its unique coffee has won devotees abroad — particularly in Japan. The Toarco Toraja brand is well known in Tokyo and exports are mostly run by a Japanese firm that takes its beans from a 500 hectare plantation that is almost 2,000m above sea level.
However, Indonesia’s army of small-scale coffee farmers, who have little marketing experience and can have low yields, are still struggling in a competitive global market.
In recent years it has been knocked back to become the world’s fourth-largest coffee exporter, behind Brazil, Vietnam and Colombia. It was third globally until it was overtaken by Vietnam in the late 1990s.
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