Our story
We started with one roaster and a corner shophouse.
White Coffee Co. opened its shutters in 2013, in a narrow pre-war shophouse two doors down from the old bicycle repairer on Jalan Sultan Iskandar. Ipoh is white-coffee country, so the name was never really a choice. It was simply what we were going to make, and make well: beans roasted in palm-oil margarine until they turn a pale, caramel gold, then pulled thick and poured over condensed milk.
For the first two years it was just Mei Ling behind the counter and a secondhand drum roaster that rattled if you leaned on it. Regulars came for the kaya toast and stayed for the arguments about football. When the unit next door came up for rent in 2016, we knocked through the wall and put in the long communal table that most of Ipoh now treats as their second dining room.
We are not a chain and we do not plan to be one. We roast on Tuesdays, we know most of our morning crowd by name, and we still write the day's specials on the same chalkboard that has been leaning in the doorway since the beginning. Whether you are here for a quiet flat white with the paper or a long lunch with half your office, the table is yours for as long as you want it.
Our beans come from smallholders across the region, from the highlands of the peninsula to farms across Southeast Asia that we have visited more than once. We keep the sourcing simple and the roast honest, and we would rather sell out of a good lot than stretch it thin.
