22/03/2026
Wow it’s our 10th anniversary 🎉 ! It all started 10 years ago in March 2016 in a smaller than small hole in a wall space in Uptown, Damansara Utama. I still remember the faces of our early customers who would come by for their daily coffee. The 6 days (we used to close on Sun) of hustling long hours for very little earnings (how does less than RM90 in sales for the whole of Saturday sound?). I appreciate every customer who would forego their usual green mermaid coffee next door and gave us a chance to tell our story and what our mission was. For a decade, it has never changed and that was to serve the most value for money specialty coffee to our local working communities.
It has not been without challenges. The skepticism that we faced about the quality of our coffee (so cheap must be lousy!), the competition that we faced (mega global coffee chains, Japanese and Korean convenience stores etc), a world stopping pandemic crisis, copy cats of our business model down to our pricing, store hours and locations and most recently this wave of China businesses flooding the market with unbelievable prices.
As we celebrate our 10th anniversary, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to our loyal customers, partners/suppliers and most importantly the present and past baristas who have supported and elevated us every step of the way. As we raise our cups to toast to a decade of good coffee and memories, I invite you to join us in celebrating our journey together by sharing a few memories of your early memories with us either in the comments below or in the Stories section. We’d love to hear from you even if you are no longer working in the areas where we are located. It inspires us to be better and to fuel us for the coming years!
We have a few surprises in store to commemorate this milestone in the following days and weeks so stay tuned!
X🩷XO,
Aaron and the Baristar Family
📍 Taman Connaught, Cheras (Shell)
📍 Uptown, Damansara Utama
📍 Dataran Sunway, Kota Damansara
📍 Taman Megah, SS24 (opposite Megah Rise mall)
📍 SS15, Subang Jaya (Roastery)