Coffee Stain
One café in Publika. Now four across KL, and one of the world’s 100 best.
- location
- Kuala Lumpur
- service
- Full System
- result
- 1 to 4 outlets
Coffee Stain opened in Publika in 2012, when KL’s specialty coffee scene was just beginning. There were no ads, no one showing the baristas behind the cups, and no plan for what a second branch would need.
The family wanted to grow. Growing meant every new branch had to arrive already known.
“When friends ask where to get coffee, this is the only place that comes to mind.”
A Coffee Stain customer
People don’t choose a café for its beans. They choose the place they’d recommend to a friend. So we stopped showing coffee and started showing the people and rituals behind it, so that every new branch arrived as somewhere people already wanted to try.
Launching TTDI
Before the doors opened, TTDI already knew what was coming. Six weeks of teaser content went out: the fit-out, the baristas who’d be working there, and the first pour on the new machine, all running as ads to the TTDI and Damansara neighbourhoods. Then we filmed opening day, and that footage ran as the launch-month ad.
The system, month by month
The team it replaced
- 1 → 4
- outlets since we started
- #84
- in The World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops 2026
Since we started
- Outlets went from one to four: Publika, Bangsar, Gamuda Gardens and TTDI.
- #84 in The World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops 2026, the first time Coffee Stain made the list. That’s their craft. Our part was making sure the world saw it.