Not far from Liverpool Street Station, a convergence point for London’s dynamic financial sector, sits Zero to One, an independent Vietnamese specialty coffee shop. Tucked away from the bustling streets of commuters and surrounded by English pubs and chain businesses, its distinctive presence parallels its mission to change typical perceptions of specialty coffee.
Coffee production in Asia is a centuries-old craft, with records dating back as early as the 17th century. Producers across the continent have long supplied fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies, positioning Asia as a major producing region for multinational brands such as Starbucks, Nescafé, and Costa. And now London has seen a rise in cafes that champion Asian specialty coffee origins; these include Yunlan Estate Gesha from China, Sumatra Mandheling from Indonesia, and Monsoon Malabar from India, to name just a few, each one capturing the attention of coffee enthusiasts through retail displays.
“Vietnam is the second-largest coffee-exporting country in the world, but how come when you are going around London, you can’t see any Vietnamese coffee on shelves?” says Paige Tran, co-founder of Zero to One. Along with her partner, who is visiting Vietnamese coffee farms, the Vietnamese couple is inspired to celebrate the country’s coffee scene—one composed of different varieties and producing regions from Vietnam.
A fast-expanding cafe scene and a surge in domestic demand are shifts being experienced by many Asian countries that were once primarily producing origins. According to Precedence Research, the single-origin coffee market was valued at $14.1 billion last year and is expected to reach $23.19 billion over the next 10 years, with Asia-Pacific identified as a major driver of this growth.
“We’re still very commercial, working for different big brands and FMCG companies,” says Tran. “But we started to learn more about the concept of specialty coffee, and farmers nowadays have started to slowly change their mindset to focus more on bean quality.”
Alongside a rotating feature of a foreign coffee, the shop has a selection of five Vietnamese single-origin coffees. A few are naturally processed, with all roasted in-house in light and medium-light styles. Varieties range from Catimor to Yellow Cherry in the Arabica family, alongside Vietnam’s dominant coffee export, Robusta.
“It’s not like the perspective that people think,” says Tran. “People would think that Robusta—firstly, is cheaper, and secondly heavier, and that it’s not as balanced as Arabica. We are trying to change that perception.”
Their Robusta offering is a medium-light roast from Bao Lộc, produced using an anaerobic natural process and made from the Fine Robusta variety Xanh Lùn.
“If you know how to roast and brew it the right way, you still can bring out the balance,” she adds.
A similar story is happening at Bija, a specialty coffee shop focused on single-origin Indonesian coffees. Located in a busy shopping district in Central London, the cafe features Indonesian snacks and dishes lined up along the counter, with two hoppers at the end containing Old Brown Java and Sumatra Lintong. Leaning against the wall is a London Coffee Festival award recognizing Bija as Best New Coffee Shop 2025.
“The Indonesian coffee farmers are particular with their beans, and some are still using their hands to pick the beans,” says Devi Trianna, founder of Bija Coffee. “They are using a traditional wet-hulled process, or Giling Basah.”
“Indonesia is an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands, and many of them lie in volcanic areas,” Trianna explains. This geography has contributed to Indonesian coffees’ distinctive flavor profiles, which are often smoky and tobacco-like.
The menu lists several iconic Indonesian drinks: Kopi Tubruk, an unfiltered coffee served in a style similar to sand coffee; Kopi Susu, a condensed milk–based coffee; and an iced Arenga latte.
“For me, personally, yes, you have this specialty coffee, and you have to stick with that,” says Trianna. “But this is also a medium for us to create engagement through coffee—bridging cultures. We want to introduce Westerners to what we drink and what went viral at home.”
Hanging by the interior side wall is a decorative rug depicting a woman practicing Batik, an Indonesian cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO. Below it, retail shelves lay out the various coffees Bija has on offer, with Sumatra Lintong standing out as a dark roast.
“At the beginning, every roastery tried to influence me to start with a light or medium roast,” she says. “But it turns out customers like it, and within the first six months, it became our most popular coffee.”
In the early 2000s, the Sumatra region was often associated with earthy, dank, and vegetal coffees, explains Chris Kornman, Director of Education at Royal Coffee. “They would be roasted dark, and many still are,” he says. But with years of experience in coffee sourcing and research, Kornman has seen significant shifts in the specialty coffee landscape.
“The quality was assumed to be lower, and the roasting was generally taken pretty dark,” Kornman adds. “That’s why it was ignored or bypassed by many early or mid third-wave roasters.”
“I think that the resurgence of interest in Asian coffees within specialty markets is relatively new because for a long time, coffees from those regions were traditionally seen as old-school styles.”
In Northwest London, KillBean once had a mission to bring Chinese coffee to the United Kingdom. Surprised by its unexpected growth in popularity, Yanyi Xu, founder of the coffee business, has since redirected his focus to include other high-end coffees from Africa and South America, while continuing to roast and serve beans from Yunnan Province, a major Chinese coffee-growing region for decades.
“The Chinese coffee market is really big, especially in the last three to four years,” says Xu. As he explains, growing demand for specialty coffee has driven the need to improve quality in Yunnan, making it logical for Chinese coffee professionals to invest in their own farms.
“Emerging is a word that I still wouldn’t use for many of these places,” says Kornman. “Indonesia, for example, has been part of specialty-quality coffee for a very long time. It’s just the definition of specialty has changed, you know?”
“As a really precise example, wet-hulled Sumatran coffee is one of the most uniquely processed coffees,” he adds. “The flavors are idiosyncratic and unusual in ways that can’t be replicated elsewhere. That is specialty coffee, isn’t it?”
Twiggy Yeung is freelance journalist based in the United Kingdom. This is Twiggy Yeung’s first feature for Sprudge.