The trendy-looking stall is owned by cousins Jass, 27, and Aaron, 29, and their friend Han, 27.
When asked if they’d been inspired by the similar hawker coffee stalls mentioned above, Jass laughs and tells 8days.sg that he “didn’t even know they existed”, despite Mad Roaster being located in the same hawker centre. He explains that they simply “don’t care about competitors, nor did (they) scout (for competitors in the area)”.
This is the trio’s first hawker venture: Jass worked in marketing, while Han used to be a technician and Aaron a mechanic. Currently, Jass and Han work full-time at Daylight Coffee, while Aaron still has a day job and visits the stall from time to time.
Jass shares that he “wanted to do F&B all along” but didn’t have a chance in the past. After months of planning, they finally decided on doing something that could make a difference as “coffee prices are rising in cafes due to inflation”.
With the thought that “people deserve to drink better quality coffee beans at a cheaper price”, the young towkays decided to set up shop in a hawker centre.
They invested over S$30,000 (US$22,100) in their business, but admit that they are far from recouping their investment for now. Jass explains that “the crowd isn’t enough, rent is expensive, and goods are expensive”.
The hawkers fork out around S$4,000 per month for rent, which makes it “difficult to cover salary (costs)” at their current slow rate of sales. They also use a rather pricey Nuova Simonelli machine from Italy that costs close to S$10,000.
He reckons that their low sales might be due to “people thinking (their coffee) is expensive when it’s already the cheapest you can find for such good quality coffee”, and the fact that they have competitors but “aren’t good with the social media stuff”.
As a rough comparison, their standard coffee costs S$1.90 versus Mad Roaster’s which costs S$1.80, and their hot matcha latte costs S$4, a tad cheaper than Mad Roaster’s S$4.20.
THEY USE ARABICA AND ROBUSTA COFFEE BEANS
Unlike many kopitiam stalls that use Nanyang-style beans (which are mostly just lower-grade robusta beans roasted with butter and sugar), the trio chose to blend their higher Grade 1 Indonesian Robusta with Brazilian and Indonesian Arabica beans that are “way more expensive”.