Whisk Coffee - MyTown | The Hidden Gem Series | Café Transformation | Café Culture

We have heard of the renowned coffee brands like Starbucks and Coffee Bean who are the pioneers in uplift of today's coffee and cafe culture. It is undeniable that more and more independent coffee brands, cafes and bars have mushroomed over the past decade. Today's episode on Design Seed, let us bring you to on our second episode of the Hidden Gems series. The Hidden Gems series is an episode which reveals cafe and commercial designs In the design world, impactful design is not only found and realised in private residences and homes. So cafe hoppers, food bloggers, design hunters, if you're not subscribed to us yet, do it now. This episode is going to be interesting. Not to be a spoiler, but do stay till the end of this episode to have a sneak peek of our next exciting surprise for you. So click subscribe and click on that notification bell, show us your support and sit back. Let us continue crafting more and more compelling episodes. Now, today's episode on Design Seed, we will be going in up close revealing a success story of a local independent coffee brand named Whisk Coffee. Hi, I'm Emma. I'm one of the co-founders of Whisk. That's me, my sister Nora, my brother Azlan and my mom. So the four of us basically started Whisk. The three siblings initially started their first Whisk Espresso bar in Empire Subang Jaya back in 2010. The family-oriented business had the impression that it would be just baking a few cakes, hanging around a cafe, hosting some friends who would drop by and chill for the rest of the day. However, in reality, the business boomed right from the very beginning of their journey. When we opened our first shop, we had no experience whatsoever in F&B. The main motto or mantra is just to make sure that we serve up good coffee. Coupled with good cakes and now we serve food at two of our locations. We've opened nine now. But what we've tried to do is keep each shop has its own individual characteristic. You walk into one Whisk, it's different from walking to another Whisk. Get different feelings and different experiences, I think, at each shop. So we heard such an inspiring story from Emma about Whisk Coffee. Let's get into the design details of the space. One of my favourite details is the hanging ceiling feature which sculptures like a floating concrete leaf. And the designers' bold decision in breaking the rules against practicality and achieving such a state-of-the-art cafe design. How the existing column condition was left alone the way it is, still complementing the design concept of the cafe. Only partial areas with inappropriate markings were painted in squares, which still end up as an artwork. That is the beauty of how industrial design works. Hi, I'm Xiaomin from Wando Mall. Me and our partners, actually, we really emphasise on natural finishers. Then the other thing is also about the experience overall. So when you go to different areas, you'll be able to see different corners at every angle that sort of sparks your interest in going. When we first saw the two columns, the two semicircles, we thought this will be a very interesting corner. So that's how we wanted to put the entire cafe there in the first place. We had to think about the bar and where it is. We sort of demarcated the different seating areas by having different kinds of floorings. We wanted to do something different to diffuse the light as well. So there is some vent blocks to cover too much of the glare. Polycarbonate is actually located in the centre of this really wide corridor. One of the main functions of this wall is also to lead people to the end of the corridor, which is going to be the cafe. But we didn't want to sort of do something absolutely solid where you can't see the other side. We wanted glimpses of it. So you'll see shadows of people walking on either side of it. We had the ceiling, but we wanted to keep the ceiling really clean. So that's when we started to come up with an idea is to have the lights to shoot on the ceiling. And that's when something we saw on site sort of caught our eye, which is something that the contractors made themselves to keep the area lit. So that one was the main thing that inspired us to do the shape of it. There are a few spots that you can sit here. You can sit just by the coffee bar. You can also sit like by the piazza area where there's lots of space and there's a huge window that you can just look out. Or if you just want to sit by the window itself. The good thing about this place, you get a lot of natural light. Being in malls, it's very rare that we get natural light, you know, inside. This is one of the few places where you can sit in a mall, enjoy a coffee and still see daylight outside. Like everyone else, this pandemic has been pretty difficult for all of us. Generally, I think it was just about trying to keep everyone's spirits high, keeping the team as motivated as possible, even though things were pretty quiet. But everyone was still happy to be able to come to work. So now that things are starting to open up again and dining in is allowed, we're seeing people coming back, which is good. And we're really excited to welcome people back to enjoy their coffee outside. But as always, it's important that everyone gets all the SOPs. Over the past year of the lockdown due to the pandemic, many independent restaurants, cafes and businesses might have been affected. However, over this period, there were also some new ventures waiting to be revealed, brewing or facelifting a more exciting experience crafted for the society to bounce back from all the recent negativity. The crew of Design Seed has been hunting high and low, toppling rocks over in search of all these exciting hidden gems waiting to be unleashed. Speaking of rocks, as I was referring to the location of this Whiz Coffee Cafe, it is located within a compelling gravel river path that leads to a remarkable ocean of 32,000 square feet of excitement. In our next episode, we will be revealing the mother venue that houses this hidden cafe, the intriguing story of the business and the design journey to its remarkable masterpiece. So don't forget to subscribe and click on that notification bell to stay tuned to our next episode of The Hidden Gems. My name is Alex Lee and I am from Design Seed. Thank you for watching.