Mikro, Coffee Shop, Melawati

Interview with Nas Jaafar, Mikro Coffee Shop, Melawati

What do you do and how did you get into the industry and ended up here in Mikro?
At the moment I’m doing everything from managing my team and the shop, to working as a barista and cook.

It started with me trying to join Starbucks and getting rejected twice. I then joined Grumpy Cyclist as part of their first team. I later had the opportunity to do coffee courses in London and upon returning back, I joined VCR. I then joined Aitch Coffee Roaster to learn more on coffee roasting. After that, I decided to open up W2 Coffee, my first coffee venture which then failed after six months. It was a good learning curve. I didn’t give up on that dream, so I teamed up with the Molecules team that had closed down a few months after W2 and thus Mikro was born.

What’s the best/ worst part of your job?
Meeting new people and learning new things from them. That interaction is what drives me. But meeting new people can be a bad experience as well. Tiring at times and some people are quite hard to deal with haha.

What’s your favourite meal at Mikro?
I love the Desperado (sea bass fillet with salsa and tortilla bread) and I drink espresso.

What’s one of the scariest or funniest things you’ve seen behind the scenes?
The scariest is coffee calibration training.
One of the funniest was when we were at VCR and the training was done from 7 pm – 9 pm and most of us were on opening shift the next day and we didn’t get any sleep the whole night. The next day all of us discovered that we all were thinking the same thing which was, “Do we really wanna do coffee for the rest of our life?”

The perfect day off would be…
A walk in the park with my daughter

A day in the life of a cafe owner is…
… grind, grind and keep grinding.

What do you do for fun?
Spend more time with my daughter and running.

What’s something you’d like guests to know about Mikro?
One of our good friends has a farm in Taman Melawati. We’ll be growing some veggies there that shall be used at the shop. We plan to have more farm to table processes included for Mikro. To anyone who would like to learn and help out at the farm, you are more than welcome! Also, we currently just started weekly runs at the shop every Friday at 8 pm. Starting from the shop we’ll run around Melawati. Any runners or anyone interested to run can join us.

What’s your favourite food and drink pairing?
Ice latte after any meal.

What’s your view on the food scene in KL?
It’s growing with a lot of creativity and growing fast.

What’s in store for you in the upcoming months?
We’re planning on expanding our kitchen. Meaning more menu items are coming especially for breakfast and dinner.

Check out the menu and a find out more about Mikro coffee shop here.

3 Comments

  1. If they stand strategically below the lights inside, they will look like halos above their heads. 😀 Desperado sounds like something I would enjoy too!

  2. Good interview …like the idea of farm to table

  3. Love these interviews always so interesting. Cheers Diane

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