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Recent interest in Asia has seen a rise in Australian coffee roasters heading north to explore new markets, but for Single O, Japan has been part of its operation for over a decade. CEO Mike Brabant shares the roaster’s learnings and challenges.
Long-standing Surry Hills roaster Single O has always gone about business differently. From the company’s origins in the early 2000s, founders Emma and Dion Cohen have forged their own path instead of trailing the pack.
It’s this desire to pioneer trends rather than follow them that led the roaster to Asia in 2014, a decade before the current boom in interest. While its venues in Japan – of which there are now three: a roastery and café in Ryogoku, a coffee shop in Hamacho, and a new coffee bar in Shibuya which opened in July 2024 – have been successful, it was a chance encounter that inspired Single O to enter the Asian market.
“This is one of my favourite stories, and it all starts with one person,” says Single O CEO Mike Brabant.
“In 2008, Yu Yamamoto joined us on an overseas exchange from Japan, initially working as a dishwasher at our Surry Hills retail store. One day he tried an espresso and fell in love with it, and from there he worked in the café as a barista, going on to become a roaster and eventually a Q Grader.”
Mike believes that Yu, and his wife Mamiko, had possessed a desire to take Single O to Japan for some time. Despite the fact the company had no masterful strategy to expand to Asia, he says the Japanese market felt like a natural fit for the brand.
“We had the right people, Yu and Mamiko, who we trusted and knew understood the brand and the level of quality we strive for, but there were also supporting factors that made it the right time and place for us to expand,” he says.
“At the time [2014], specialty was starting to grow in Japan, a country known for its focus on quality. We could see the parallels to the scene in Sydney in 2003 when Single O started: it felt like there was excitement about specialty coffee but not a lot of it around.”
Taking the leap also made commercial sense, thanks to a few key customers, such as Bills, which had recently laid roots in Japan and wanted a roaster in the country that they knew could deliver consistent quality. The original approach for the roaster, therefore, was to grow alongside its wholesale partners in Japan as the specialty scene matured, just like it did in Australia.
Image: Koji Shimamura/Single O
“Working with Yu and Mamiko, we found a great spot in an up-and-coming area of east Tokyo for our roastworks. We installed a 22 kilogram UG Probat roaster and started roasting ” says Mike.
Opening a retail store attached to its roastworks, which hosted a tasting bar at weekends, enabled the Single O Japan team to make connections with the local community and build a reputation for its quality with wholesale partners.
“The vision was always to take the Australian independent specialty café culture to Japan, and people loved it,” says Mike.
“The tasting bar was pretty small, we started off with just a two-group espresso machine, and we’d serve a couple hundred customers a day over the weekend, and it gradually grew.”
In 2021, despite global lockdowns and restrictions, Single O opened its second venue in Japan in Hamacho. Located close to the original roastworks, the Tokyo flagship was the brand’s first dedicated café in the country. It was Single O’s first
venue to house free-pour batch on tap, serving a rotation of washed and natural single origins. This was served alongside its signature blend as espresso and a menu of eats blending Aussie and Japanese cuisines.
Riding on the success of the flagship and responding to its growing customer base, in April 2024 the team moved the original roastworks to a roomier venue nearby with space for an on-site café, quality-control room, and training space for wholesale partners. Hot on its heels came Single O Shibuya, a coffee bar in the busy district, in July the same year. Based on its Sideshow takeaway bar in Surry Hills, the latest venue brings specialty coffee to the streets, with espresso service and self-serve free-pour batch taps serving rotating origins and blends in one of the busiest places on Earth.
With a decade of experience in the country, Mike says there have been a few ‘aha’ moments along the way, one of which was Japan’s preference for filter coffee.
“This is one of the main differences between the Australian and Japanese markets. We introduced our free-pour batch taps at our venues in Japan and 40 to 50 per cent of the coffee we serve there comes through these machines, which has greatly influenced our model for growth and reaffirmed that Japan loves to taste specialty origin characteristics,” he says.
“It’s important to stress, however, that looking at the Asian market as a whole is a very broad perspective. While Japan is highly driven towards filter, in South Korea the espresso market is pumping.”
Convenience is another focus of the Japanese market that has influenced Single O’s venues.
“There are convenience stores on every corner, and hot and cold coffee from vending machines everywhere, so immediate access to products is essential. We’ve focused on blending that desire for convenience with quality, and the batch tap technology allows us to serve coffee in 15 seconds,” says Mike.
The Single O roasters in Japan roast the same signature blends and single origins as those in the original roastworks in Sydney.
“People who have visited our venues in both Japan and Australia will often joke that the coffee roasted in one country tastes better than the other, but we like to keep the flavour profiles consistent. We’re trying to express a specialty Australian flat white – and in Japan people are looking for that authentic Aussie experience,” says Mike.
Image: Koji Shimamura/Single O
While Single O’s expansion into Japan has been largely successful, Mike admits there have been a few bumps in the road.
“Navigating language and cultural barriers are an obvious challenge. There are times I’ve been in meetings with a translator and it’s been tricky to follow, or not understood how the region works, but that’s part of the journey” he says.
“It’s all too easy to dwell on these things. If you want to be operating overseas, you need to flip that around and embrace the differences and commonalities, and learn to adapt. You need to have a passion and desire to appreciate the nuances in any market to be successful there.”
Mike stresses how lucky the team have been to have Yu and Mamiko spearheading the project in Japan.
“We couldn’t have done it without them. Yu is a great roaster and thoroughly ingrained in the industry as a Cup of Excellence and Brewers Cup judge,” he says.
As for what’s next for Single O in Asia, Mike and the team already have their sights set on new venues in the region, although their lips are sealed for the moment.
“The main thing for us is to keep delivering quality and heart at home in Australia, and the doors tend to openfrom there,” says Mike
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This article appears in the August/September 2024 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
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