Daylight Coffee is a new Amoy Street Food Centre stall selling specialty coffee at hawker prices
A no-frills cuppa at this new stall starts from S$1.90 and goes up to S$4.50 for an iced Spanish latte.
Following in the footsteps of young hawkerpreneurs behind hipster kopi stalls Generation Coffee Roasters and Mad Roaster is Daylight Coffee, a new entrant at Amoy Street Food Centre serving up specialty coffee at hawker prices.
The shop opened in October 2023, with a cute cartoon logo of a coffee cup with googly eyes.
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”.
Though most of them don’t have prior experience dealing with coffee (besides Jass who worked for over two years as a barista), they’ve spent the past few months honing their skills, sampling “20 to 30 cups of coffee a day just to get the taste (they’re) looking for".
They’re still in the process of finalising their menu, and “will be launching new coffee choices from time to time”. One of their potential new creations is this Dirty Matcha (green tea latte spiked with coffee).
THE MENU
Daylight Coffee’s cuppas are all brewed with their S$10,000 espresso machine, and start from S$1.90 for kopi, kopi O and kopi C that’s made with the aforementioned Grade 1 Robusta beans that Jass says are “similar to Nanyang beans but not roasted with (the unhealthier) sugar and margarine”.
Their “specialty coffees” are brewed with more premium Arabica beans, and include standard beverages like black coffee (S$3.30 hot, S$3.80 iced), white coffee (S$3.50 hot, S$4 iced), espresso double shot (S$3.20), and a selection of caramel, chocolate or vanilla lattes (S$4 hot, S$4.50 iced).
Their most interesting latte, however, is the Spanish latte (S$4.50 iced), a rich drink made with espresso, milk and condensed milk and a beverage that popular coffee chain % Arabica sells for almost double the price.
However, Daylight’s coffee offerings are a tad more expensive than their hawker rivals’: Generation Coffee sells their cheapest kopi O at S$1.40 and iced Spanish latte at S$4.30.
For an additional S$1, customers can also opt for oat milk instead of the regular stuff.
Daylight Coffee is located at 7 Maxwell Road, #02-126, Amoy Street Food Centre, Singapore 069111. Open Mon-Fri 7am to 3pm; Sat-Sun 10am to 2.30pm.
This story was originally published in 8Days.
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