The Lao Mao story

Like many Hainanese who came to Malaya, Mr. Lim, whom the family still calls 林老, started in the coffee trade without a name of his own. He roasted beans the Hainan way, with caramelised sugar, margarine and a pinch of salt, and the coffee went out under other people's names.

It was steady work, and it taught him the part of the craft that never shows on a label: how long to keep the beans moving, when the sugar has coated them just right, and how the same beans can taste different from one batch to the next if you stop paying attention.

Lao Mao was never about one famous product. It was about the ordinary cups: the Kopi-O drunk black with sugar, the Kopi-C with evaporated milk, ordered by the same regulars day after day. Those everyday cups paid for the roastery, raised the family and carried the business through to the next generation.

That is still how we think about coffee. A cup has to be good enough that people order it again tomorrow, and the day after that.

It was only with the third generation that the family began to grow beyond its own brand. The same roasting knowledge that once served other people's names now serves new brands again, but this time as a partner rather than an unnamed supplier.

Under KEFI, the family develops and roasts coffee for kopitiams, cafes, hotels and new brands, from private-label kopi and white coffee to functional coffee, working with certified partner factories in Teluk Intan, the Klang Valley and Johor and supplying customers across Malaysia and in Singapore.