A smartly dressed gentleman walked up the steps into the Fairmont Norfolk with a package in hand. He was a bit embarrassed by the state of the brown bag he was carrying.
To an outsider, it looked like a soggy bag of chips. What Romal Shah had in his hand was 500 grammes of a premium product, a bag of coffee that would set the trajectory of his then-young career.
Mr Shah was born in London to Kenyan parents and was only a month old when the family moved back home. In his formative years, he moved back and forth between London and Nairobi for school and his career.
In the North, he trained as a manufacturing engineer and worked in the banking sector for a decade before calling it quits and moving back home to look for business prospects.
“I kind of stumbled into the tea business,” says Mr Shah. In London, he would have tea and coffee and knew where it came from but was surprised that it was not expressly stated that this product or a blend of it came from back home.
“I got some contacts in the tea industry and even visited the tea auction in Mombasa,” he says of his initial days while trying to set up a business that would market Kenyan tea, at home and abroad. He even took a tea sommelier course.
From the beginning, Mr Shah knew he couldn’t compete with the big players in his sector. “We don’t have the financial muscle to compete with them,” he says.
He went into a niche market. In his research, he’d heard of orthodox tea, a premium version of Kenya’s staple beverage, which unfurls in your cup, and as opposed to the powdered version marketed by 95 per cent of tea sellers, orthodox tea is what is referred to as full-leaf tea.
In 2007, Safari Lounge Tea was launched with their product packed into memorable zebra print tin cans.
The next step was to attempt a foray into the hospitality industry. Mr Shah walked into the Fairmont Norfolk in Nairobi and the chef there was amazed at the taste and ceremony that came with the product.
They quickly introduced the product to their tea lounge where Mr Shah was at hand from 9 am till late to take care of the new client. It worked. They took him on.
With such a reputable first client, Safari Lounge Tea found it easier to close deals with other hotel chains and has been their supplier since.
A few weeks after booking his first big client, the chef at the Fairmont Norfolk called. “He said he wasn’t happy with their coffee and told me to ‘find him some coffee,’” Mr Shah recalls.
That’s how he found himself with an oil-soaked brown bag of coffee.
At the time, he didn’t know that once the coffee is roasted, it emits oils.
Again, they loved his product. They only stated that he needed to find new packaging. He again went into research mode and imported his first coffee packaging from India.
Today, Safari Lounge Specialty Coffee is a bigger earner than their tea.
They have since innovated and grown and released compostable coffee capsules and are daily looking to be trendsetters in their field.
Just how important is coffee? Mr Shah retells a story told to him several times by a general manager friend of his.
“How a hotel is judged is their coffee, orange juice and croissant. If you get those three wrong, the experience in food and beverage is off!”
He says these are the first products a client will taste in the morning, and some will likely have an espresso after their dinner, making his product the first and last thing a hotel guest will taste.
Mr Shah has stayed in business through quality, consistency and after-sale service.
In his experience, feedback is the hardest thing to get so if a client calls, “I always take the complaint as an opportunity to engage the customer. If they call, it means they care.”
Romal Shah, Safari Lounge Coffee owner, at his roastery in Loresho on November 30, 2022. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NMG
He says he will drop everything else to ensure that when the client puts down the phone, they’re happy.
Six years ago, they acquired their current premises. On this day, his roaster was off with an ankle injury and he was doing the roasting himself on a behemoth of a machine.
Over the years, Safari Lounge has had its fair share of challenges. Just before the Covid-19 pandemic, they were in the final stages of setting up a roasting facility in Oman when everything ‘fell flat.’
In March 2020, he just managed to get back into the country from a deal that also went belly up in Egypt before the entire world shut down. During that time, he says they lost 80 per cent of their business but just managed to stay afloat.
Going forward, Mr Shah says theirs is a journey to find innovative products to stay ahead. In conjunction with Bio Food Products, they have invented ‘barista milk,’ a product rich in fat and protein to enhance the coffee drinker’s experience.
They also have biodegradable tea bags and are looking to be the first carbon-neutral coffee producer in Africa.
Away from his business, Mr Shah is a family man. His wife and daughter live in Scotland and he will travel to spend the holidays with them.
“I call them twice a day and visit as often as I can,” he says. There are doodles by his daughter in his office, one with the impression of the starting point of coffee, a bean which ends up as a steaming cup of coffee. The caption reads ‘Bean to Cup. Buy it Now!’
As for advice for the budding entrepreneur, Mr Shah says, “New ideas come in with new money every day. Be ready to compete with that. If you have an idea that you believe in, stick by it, and follow it through. Don’t listen to anyone else. You’ll have challenging days. Be prepared to make huge sacrifices.”
He advises preparedness for any eventualities, even the likes of war in Ukraine!
