ZUS Coffee opens 12th store in Metro Manila
ZUS Coffee, a rapidly growing brand known for its high-quality, affordable brews, recently celebrated its grand launch at its newly opened kiosk in Metro Manila.
At the grand opening of its 12th store in SM Makati, ZUS Coffee CEO Venon Tian shared the company’s inspiring journey from a small kiosk in a Kuala Lumpur office building back in 2019 to a thriving coffee chain.
“The store size is probably 1/10 of this size. It’s about 20-ish square meters. It’s very very small so we [really] started from humble beginnings… after four and a half years, we are [now] the largest coffee chain in Malaysia,” said Tian proudly.
The grand launch was graced by Malaysian Ambassador to the Philippines Dato’ Abdul Malik Melvin Castelino, who joined ZUS Coffee Co-Founder and Head of Barista Terence Ho, ZUS Coffee Philippines Strategic Investors Janica Lao and Jared Lao, and ZUS Coffee Philippines Country Manager Correne Chen, for the new branch’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The coffee chain uses 100 percent Arabica beans from Guatemala, Kenya, and Papua New Guinea, which customers can choose from. Its signature range features the ZUS Gula Melaka, which is made from traditional Malaysian palm sugar. The brand also offers a wide variety of drinks such as mocktails, frappes, tea, and kid-friendly mixes.
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ZUS Coffee also offers food selections such as its Chicken Adobo Pandesal and Corned Beef Pandesal, which were locally inspired. Tian shared that while the brand was bringing a taste of Malaysia’s specialty coffee to the Philippines, they were also keen on taking some ideas from the local food and bringing it to their homeland.
“It’s no longer about Malaysia coming to the Philippines. It’s [also] the Philippines coming to Malaysia and potentially every other country that we go into,” said Tian.
The COO also shared the coffee chain’s sustainability efforts by replacing plastic straws with rice straws as well as using less plastic in their packaging as much as possible.
“We’ve got some complaints here and there because it melts and whatnot but we still hang on to that idea that it has to be sustainable. Whatever we do next to replace, for instance, rice straws has to be good for the environment,” said Tian.
“We’re looking into the entire packaging material from top to bottom… there’s still a bit of plastic elements [aside] from using paper but how do we make it much more sustainable? We’re looking into that for the time being,” he added.
Apart from its physical stores, ZUS Coffee has its own app where customers can conveniently make their orders and have the option to either pick them up at a nearby branch or have it be delivered to their doorstep.
The coffee chain’s branch in SM Makati serves as its second kiosk while the rest of the open branches in Metro Manila are fully-fledged stores, with the biggest one found at the University Tower España in Manila.
With the opening of its first branch in the Philippines last October, ZUS Coffee is targeting to have a total of 150 stores in the country by the end of 2024.