World of Coffee Asia 2025 (Jakarta)
After a hectic trip to Jakarta for Indonesian Coffee Roasting Championship 2025 (which... went about as one could expect), we returned to Jakarta the week after for WOC Asia.
This is my first of hopefully many, many times attending a WOC event. Here's my recap:
Delicious coffee!
There were so many interesting booths, especially in the Roaster Village area. I was intrigued by the relatively new "supernatural" and "dark room drying" processing methods that could be found at booths like Ratnagiri Estate. It was really fun to wander around and taste each booth's brews and/or open cupping sessions.
Terrible layout.
WOC Jakarta was massive, with tens or even hundreds of tenants spread out across 3+ halls of JCC, but despite the massive area it was just packed. Booths like Taster's Coffee, Hacienda La Esmerelda, and Philocoffea were all in the Roasters' Village, and this area especially was so cramped:
Maybe at first glance this doesn't look so bad, but when you see how much space it has compared to the rest of the event:
At some trade events, guests can access each tenant's booth area to walk or look around. That wasn't the case with this event — at WOC Jakarta, guests had to queue or stay in the aisles between booths. Because the aisles themselves weren't wide enough for the number of guests, it was very difficult to get around. This was a huge killjoy that led to lots of people skipping out on some popups and bar takeovers that they'd initially been looking forward to. Below is just one example (Mikael Jasin's quick bar takeover at the 1Zpresso booth):
Wonderful WBRC schedule and layout.
We allocated some time each day to watch competitors' Open Service routines. Compared to smaller national events, it was a lot easier to hang out to watch each competitor's routine. There was a dedicated seating area and the broadcasted audio/video was easy to hear.
So many tenants...
A and I had prepared this list of tenants we wanted to visit. A snippet of it here:
There were some really interesting tenants that we were able to visit!
At the same time, it felt that something was missing from the event overall. It was difficult to locate the booths and/or tenants that were selling interesting drippers and gear. For example: we didn't even realize that Solo Dripper had brought stock to sell until after the event ended. Even when we did arrive at the tenant, the small-ish space and huge crowds became issues. Additionally, perhaps it was because the booths were so expensive that the brands had no choice but to sell high, but in many cases, the prices for single servings, roasted beans, and gear proved challenging for us Southeast Asian folks.
In contrast, I really liked the Loveramics and Coffee n' Art booths. They were crowded at times, but the product offerings were well-presented and the layouts were pleasant overall.
Overall, I think World of Coffee Jakarta was an OK event.
I regret not exploring more, though I also feel that it was kind of impossible to do that considering the layout (plus, with baby R so far along, the amount of walking and jostling I achieved was already a miracle).
There were a lot of booths where it wasn't 100% clear if they had items to sell or not.
A lot of booths were sold out of the items they brought on the first day!
I attended one SCA Lecture — I really liked it! I was really impressed that all the Lectures seemed to be quite packed with guests. I regret not attending more.
Some of the longest queues for products were at Niko Neko Matcha and Roti Macan. I have no strong opinion on this, I just think it was very interesting.