Why it belongs in ORBIS
Koon Kee Tea & Coffee Factory has roasted traditional Penang white coffee for 70 years, founded by Choot Ching Khoon, who once delivered it himself by bicycle. It still hand-roasts by 'maestros', selling white coffee, beans, milk tea and premix combos.
Koon Kee's white coffee traces back to founder Choot Ching Khoon, who fled Hainan at age eleven amid war and later built a coffee factory in Penang from scratch. In the early years he ran it alone, roasting each morning and then cycling around the island on a bicycle he'd bought for ten dollars to deliver to customers directly — a founding story the company still points to as the root of its values. Seventy years on, Koon Kee Tea & Coffee Factory Sdn. Bhd. still roasts and packs by hand, crediting the work to in-house "maestros and their protégés" rather than automated lines, and still centers the same Penang-style white coffee that built the original business.
The range extends from the original white coffee and whole beans to milk tea and premix combinations for a quicker cup, packaged in unbleached paper instead of plastic as part of the company's environmental stance. What began as a one-man operation delivered by bicycle has grown into an export business, with Koon Kee now reaching hand-picked distribution partners in Singapore, China and New York City, carrying Penang's white-coffee tradition well beyond the old town streets where it started.