About Us
Nine Lives Coffee Roasters is founded by two brothers from Perlis. The smallest state in Malaysia, if you know it. We moved to George Town, opened a coffee bar in a back lane, and never looked back.
That was thirteen years ago. The Alley, 5 Stewart Lane became our homeground — for us, for the baristas who came through, for an understanding of coffee that eventually had to go somewhere. Nine Lives Coffee Roasters is where it went.
The name is straightforward. F&B will take everything from you if you let it: thin margins, long hours, staff turnover, a pandemic that shut the doors with no warning. You need nine lives to stay in it. We've used a few. We're still here.
We source from regions others haven't mapped closely yet. We roast to get the most out of what's actually in the bean. We price at levels that keep cafes alive, because we run cafes and we know what a margin looks like from the inside. Thirteen years of supplier relationships make that possible — not marketing, relationships.
This was built for people who care what's in the cup.
Source. Roast. Brew.
Our Coffee Trifecta.
1. Source
Green quality is the whole game. You can't roast your way out of a bad lot.
We source from origins with unrealised potential — not because it's a better pitch, but because that's where genuinely interesting coffee is. We cup everything. We pass on infused lots and anything that fabricates flavour through external additives rather than finding it in the bean itself. Our preference runs clean and sweet. That's a position, not a compromise.
What makes it sustainable is time. Thirteen years of supplier relationships mean we access real quality at prices that don't break a café's unit economics. We know those unit economics. We're in them.
2. Roast
We roast light for single origins, letting the coffee's character lead. Blends go medium to medium-dark, built to hold up across different setups and different hands.
Our flexible roasting facility features 15kg and 3kg roasters, enabling us to create perfectly controlled small and large batches that highlight each coffee's unique characteristic
3.Brew
We have a way of brewing that we think works well, and we share it openly. Start there, adjust from your own experience, make it yours.