About Utan Kopi
This Is Not Where the Story Begins
Before Utan Kopi, there was Sprezzatura Coffee.
In 2013, I opened Sprezzatura as a coffee shop in Petaling Jaya — one of a small handful of specialty coffee roasters in Malaysia at the time. Within a year it became a roastery, and for the decade that followed, I built it into a wholesale operation supplying freshly roasted specialty coffee to cafés, restaurants, offices, and hotels across the country. Sprezzatura became a gathering place for the coffee community — a venue where knowledge was shared, ideas were tested, and the Malaysian specialty scene found some of its early footing.
I also tried, three times, to expand the café business. Three times it did not work out.
I will not dwell on the details. What I will say is that each attempt taught me something different — about location, about timing, about the brutal economics of food and beverage retail, and about the difference between running a business out of passion and running one with a sustainable commercial logic. The lessons were expensive. They were also irreplaceable.
By 2019, I needed to pivot.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
After stepping back from café expansion, I noticed something that seemed obvious in hindsight but was invisible at the time: nobody was selling raw green coffee beans online in Malaysia. Not in small quantities. Not in a way accessible to the growing wave of home roasters and micro-roasters that were quietly emerging across the country.
So I built it. A platform called Coffee Marketplace — ilovecoffeemarket.com — selling green beans from as low as one kilogram. What I found, almost immediately, was that the market was far larger and more interesting than I had imagined. Small-batch roasters were everywhere — in homes, in shared kitchens, in tiny operations that had no storefront and no way to reach customers. They were buying green beans from me and roasting in small quantities, and they needed somewhere to sell.
So I built that too.
Buna Market launched in January 2020 — a multi-seller platform for Malaysian specialty coffee roasters and equipment suppliers to reach buyers who were looking for exactly what they were producing. I travelled north and south to recruit sellers, visiting twenty to twenty-five roasters and convincing four to join for the opening. It was a slow start.
Then March 18, 2020 arrived. The country locked down.
Within weeks, Buna Market became essential infrastructure for a coffee community that could no longer visit its favourite shops. By April, we had sold our first espresso machine. Revenue climbed 200%. Roasters who had been struggling to move inventory suddenly had a digital channel. Equipment distributors carrying brands like La Marzocco, Mazzer, and Fiorenzato joined the platform. Green bean sales scaled to tonnes per month, supplied to roasters who would go on to become some of the most recognised names in the Malaysian specialty industry.
What the pandemic took from the café industry, it gave to the digital coffee economy. I had stumbled into the right position at the right moment — not through foresight, but through the willingness to keep moving when the previous direction closed.
What Fifteen Years in Coffee Actually Teaches You
I have been in this industry long enough to have watched it transform completely.
When I started Sprezzatura in 2013, the Malaysian specialty coffee conversation happened between a small community of enthusiasts. Today there are hundreds — possibly thousands — of roasters across the country. A Malaysian barista placed fourth at the World Barista Championship in Milan in 2025 using Malaysian-grown Liberica. The café culture that once borrowed its identity from Melbourne and Tokyo is developing a voice that is unmistakably its own.
I have also watched the difficulties accumulate. The wholesale supply business that sustained Sprezzatura for years has faced intensifying competition as more roasters entered the market. The café closures reminded me — repeatedly — that passion and quality are necessary but not sufficient. Buna Market, which I built with genuine excitement about the potential of a local specialty marketplace, has struggled to compete with platforms that operate at a scale I cannot match.
Late last month, I made the decision to sell my roasting machine.
For anyone who has been in coffee long enough to understand what a roaster represents — the capital, the identity, the daily ritual of it — you will understand that this was not a small thing. It was the acknowledgment that the model I had built needed to change fundamentally, not incrementally.
What followed that decision was not despair. It was clarity.
Why Utan Kopi
When you have been in an industry for over a decade, you accumulate a particular kind of knowledge — not just what you know, but what you know that most people do not.
What I know is this: Malaysia grows one of the rarest and most extraordinary coffees in the world. Liberica — accounting for less than 1% of global coffee production — has been cultivated in Johor's clay and peat flatlands for over a century. MARDI has spent thirty years developing world-class Liberica clones. Malaysian baristas are using these beans to compete at the highest levels of international competition. And 97% of the coffee consumed in Malaysia is still imported.
That gap — between what this country grows and what this country drinks — is the problem Utan Kopi exists to narrow.
Not through lecturing. Not through obligation. But by producing a coffee so distinctly, undeniably Malaysian in character that the person drinking it feels something before they read the label.
Utan Kopi is built around two products for now. Bangkit — which means "to rise" — is a blend of Malaysian-grown Liberica from Johor, Selangor, and Sabah, with Arabica from Sabarica's highland farms in Sabah. Every component comes from Malaysian soil and I hope that more farms from other states will be a part of the blend in the future. Every purchase supports a farmer who chose to stay with coffee when the economics told them to plant something else. Dua Dunia — "two worlds" — is our Liberica-forward blend that sits between the intensity of pure Liberica and the accessibility of a more familiar specialty profile.
Both products are produced with certified roastery processing partners that I've known for years — the operational decision that came from selling the roasting machine, and one that allows me to focus entirely on sourcing, quality, and the brand story that I believe this coffee deserves.
What This Is Really About
I will be direct about something.
After fifteen years of building in coffee — the successes, the pivots, the failures, and the lessons that only come from doing things the hard way — I have arrived at a project that feels different from everything before it.
Sprezzatura was built around craft. Buna Market was built around opportunity. Utan Kopi is built around conviction.
The conviction that Malaysian coffee, and Malaysian Liberica in particular, deserves a brand that tells its story with the seriousness it has earned. That the farmers who kept growing this crop through decades of economic pressure deserve a market that rewards them properly. That the researchers who spent forty years quietly improving Liberica clones deserve to see the results of that work in the hands of people who appreciate it. That the Malaysian consumer who has been drinking imported coffee their entire life deserves to know that something extraordinary has been growing in their own backyard.
I started Utan Kopi not because it was the safest next step, but because it was the one that felt worth doing — worth the risk, worth the work, worth the long view that building something meaningful always requires.
Fifteen years in coffee. Three businesses. Countless lessons. One purpose, finally clear.
This is what Bangkit means.
The People Behind the Cup
Mirwan Badri — Founder, Utan Kopi. Fifteen years in the Malaysian coffee industry across café operations, wholesale roasting, green bean trading, and specialty equipment retail. Operator of Sprezzatura Coffee and Buna Market. Driven by the conviction that Malaysia's coffee story is not finished — it is just beginning.
Our Farming Partners — Smallholder farmers in Johor, Selangor, Melaka, Perak, Kedah, Kelantan, Sarawak and Sabah who have been growing Liberica for generations, and highland Arabica producers in Sabah working with Sabarica to produce specialty-grade coffee that competes internationally. Their land, their knowledge, their patience — in every bag.
Our Processing Partners — roastery and packing manufacturing certified partners managing roasting and drip bag production, bringing Halal certification very soon and production consistency to every Utan Kopi product.
Utan Kopi is operated under MBMK Coffee Sdn Bhd, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia.
We believe Malaysian coffee is worth knowing. We believe the farmers who grow it are worth supporting. We believe the story of Liberica — the world's forgotten bean that Malaysia never let go — is worth telling properly.
That is what we are here to do.
Explore our products at [utankopi.com] · Follow our journey on Instagram and TikTok @utankopi