Ona muggy February afternoon, the Kopi Kenangan café at the Alam Sutera mall in suburban Jakarta is buzzing with customers. The bestseller on its menu is Kopi Kenangan Mantan, a blend of Indonesian robusta and arabica beans, milk, creamer and gula aren, the local palm sugar. Queuing up to place his order, 23-year-old marketing management student Elson Rochilie says he appreciates the range of premium coffees on offer at pocket-friendly prices. Rochilie fits the customer profile the chain’s cofounder and CEO, Edward Tirtanata, was going after when he opened the first Kopi Kenangan grab-and-go store in the Indonesian capital in 2017: young people looking for an alternative to cheap instant coffee sold by street vendors but who didn’t want to pay more than double the price charged by international chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts. Positioning itself in that sweet spot has paid off for Kopi Kenangan, which became a unicorn in 2021 after raising $96 million in a series C funding round and overtook the local unit of Starbucks in retail reach two years later. Today, it claims to be Indonesia’s biggest coffee chain with a third of the market and 1,136 outlets, as well as 188 overseas, as of December. Eyeing what he reckons is a burgeoning customer base for quality Indonesian coffee, 37-year-old Tirtanata is brewing a plan to invest $200 million to more than triple the store count to 4,000 by 2030. By Gloria Haraito, Forbes Staff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices