While Sri Lanka may be best known for its tea, there is an emergent coffee culture in the island that has been growing in numbers for some time now. With cafés becoming increasingly popular amongst the youth, drinking coffee has become a daily practice that many have acquired a taste for; no longer something reserved for the older generations, coffee is on trend.
With the growing population of coffee enthusiasts, there has been a surge of numerous coffee brands flooding the market, both international and locally produced brands alike.
Kopi Ceylon Ltd. is one such initiative, born out of the growing demand for “good coffee”. However, in a bid to set themselves apart from the rest, Kopi Ceylon has made efforts to produce a unique blend of coffee that is rich, consistent, and also organic.
Kopi Ceylon CEO Jeff Rajasinghe shared that his coffee is organic and is a single-estate coffee, grown exclusively out of a single estate. He said that they make sure to provide their customers with a perfect product that is prepared painstakingly with great care.
He said that they offer a lovely medium roast; including only the best beans – discarding any cracked beans and avoiding grinding beans that are over-roasted – they are able to maintain a carefully well-balanced flavour profile.
Kopi Ceylon is the result of Jeff’s love of coffee. “When people visit another country, they are looking to experience what that country has to offer, and often, when foreigners visit Sri Lanka, what is served in hotels and various tourist outlets are international brands,” he said, going on to say that what he hoped to do was to add to Sri Lanka’s repertoire of our coffee offerings and to make something we can be proud of.
Coming from an entrepreneurial background, Jeff got to work looking for a suitable estate to grow his coffee and is now able to offer a great organic product that is “grown on the richest of island soil and roasted with expert precision” – a pure blend of Sri Lankan coffee.
Kopi Ceylon is currently offering only ground coffee, considering the pandemic and various logistical difficulties. Jeff shared that while there is a growing interest to purchase the coffee beans, it is simply too much of an obstacle to tackle this during the pandemic. However, they do hope to address the matter when things settle down soon.
As of now, customers are able to purchase coffee parcels ranging from 1 kg to 100 g and 200 g packets, and they also offer smaller sachets.
Jeff shared that he hopes to provide a quality alternative to Ceylon coffee that is also not overpriced, sharing that he does not wish to keep huge margins simply because he hopes more people are able to access his product. He also noted that while the current market alternatives that are locally produced and affordable are good, and he himself has been an avid consumer of these brands, they have a tendency to be inconsistent in quality, adding that when it comes to someone who relies on their daily cup of coffee and is an avid lover of the product, this cannot do. The customer deserves a consistently quality product that delivers every time, he shared.
IG: @kopi.ceylon
FB: KOPI – Organic Ceylon Coffee
