How to relax when your ‘office’ is a cafe: Coffee Academics’ Jennifer Liu spills the beans
Jennifer Liu of The Coffee Academics travels the globe in search of crops, culture and human connections
For Jennifer Liu, the founder and owner of The Coffee Academics, the humble coffee bean has come a long way. What began as a student hobby has since been cultivated as a passionate business and grown into a way of viewing the world.
Liu was studying architecture at Cornell in the 1990s when she became taken with the question of what made a great cup of Joe. Soon she had decided it was her “intention to share my passion for coffee and its culture – to explain the coffee experience as a lifestyle”.
Over the years, that passion paid off in the business arena. Since opening in 2012, The Coffee Academics – “purveyors and roasters of specialty coffee” – has grown from one store to six in Hong Kong, plus one in Singapore and one in Shanghai. Another is to open in Beijing this year.
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Behind that success, in no small part, is the effort she puts into cultivating relationships with her employees and customers – something rarely seen in cities awash with coffee shops dominated by multinational chains. Her employees receive meticulous training and exposure to all elements of roasting and blending, turning many into highly sought-after expert baristas. “I am actually happy that employees have branched off on their own in Hong Kong, Sydney and Japan,” she says.
