7 Facts About Flash Coffee, Which Actually Just Received an Extra USD$50 Million Funding in May

Which coffee chain comes to mind for those who want to grab a quick coffee?

Is it Starbucks or The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (TCBTL)? Or is it Luckin’ Coffee or Mega Coffee?

Maybe with all the news and buzz about Flash Coffee, you may crave a drink from the bright yellow store.

But of course, that is no longer possible since the coffee chain closed all its stores and pulled out of Singapore on 12 October 2023.

That said, it’s sure a sad end of an era, given that the coffee chain had its iconic brightly coloured stores all around the island at one point in time.

We take a look at some of the facts about this coffee chain which you may or may not know about.

Flash Coffee Was Founded in 2020

The first thing you might want to know is that Flash Coffee is actually quite a young brand.

It was born in 2019 and only launched in 2020.

This means that the coffee chain has only been operating for about three years and is practically a baby.

If you are raising your eyebrows at the young age of the coffee chain, we have another piece of surprising news for you.

This coffee chain was born during the pandemic era in Singapore.

After all, we all know 2020 as the year when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Singapore, with multiple lockdowns and social distancing being implemented on our shores.

We have to say that the founders chose an interesting time to start a business in Singapore.

It could not have been an easy feat to make the business sustainable during the time when so many food and beverage (F&B) businesses were struggling to survive.

Flash Coffee Is Based in Singapore

The next thing that might surprise you about Flash Coffee is that it is based in Singapore.

Amazing, isn’t it? One might have expected the chain to come from Hong Kong or the United States.

We can help but feel proud that a coffee chain from Singapore evolved to have such a global footprint.

While Flash Coffee is no longer on our shores, you can still find Flash Coffee outlets in regional markets such as Indonesia, Taiwan, and South Korea.

It really is quite a shame that such a young company did not manage to sustain its roots in Singapore.

Perhaps it will make a comeback on our sunny island in the future?

Flash Coffee Is a Tech-Enabled Coffee Chain

Another thing you may have noticed about Flash Coffee is its interesting branding tagline.

For those who do not know, Flash Coffee brands itself as a “tech-enabled coffee chain” with good coffee at affordable prices.

If you are scratching your head about what “tech-enabled” coffee means, we’re with you.

But after some digging, we can happily say that we’ll break down the concept for you.

Basically, the idea is that this coffee chain utilises technology to maximise its operations and help develop the business.

For example, Flash Coffee had an app which allows users to easily order a drink and be provided with multiple updates on when they can collect their drink.

The app also leveraged technology to analyse the consumers’ preferences and profiles.

It could also understand the users’ spending habits, which would help the coffee chain better understand its consumers.

Tatler Singapore reported that Flash Coffee’s founder, David Brunier, intentionally used technology to his advantage when building this brand.

To Brunier, fleshing out their tech capabilities allowed the brand to “capture all of this valuable information that [could then] inform their business strategy”.

This data-driven approach to understanding customer preferences and habits helped the business make “smarter business decisions”.

We’re not sure about you, but it sure sounds very progressive and Gen-Z of them.

Utilising technology in the business from the get-go also allowed the business to scale at a large level, which the coffee chain eventually did.

There sure is a lesson there for other businesses to learn.

It Rapidly Expanded Over the Past Two Years

Next, in the years after Flash Coffee was established and launched, it rapidly expanded across the region.

We suspect that the rapid expansion was enabled because of the high technological capabilities of the brand.

Flash Coffee had over 30 outlets in Singapore, with 250 stores globally in its heyday.

That’s quite impressive, as the coffee chain was still relatively new and in the midst of building a loyal customer base.

Unfortunately, as we all know, the brand may have overexpanded and faced financial difficulties, leading to its sudden closure in Singapore earlier this week.

We can’t help but wonder if the tech capabilities the coffee chain prided itself on could have predicted the “downfall” of the coffee chain.

It Just Received US$50 Million in Funding

But just because the coffee chain is no longer in Singapore, it doesn’t mean that it is going to shut all its stores around the world.

After all, the coffee chain just received about US$50 million in funding.

Quite a big sum of money, yeah.

Why the fresh funds?

The money comes in the wake of Flash Coffee successfully completing its “Series B financing round led by White Star Capital”.

This means that White Star Capital is on the list of investors who have banked money in Flash Coffee. Some of these investors include Geschwister Oetker, and Conny & Co.

Delivery Hero, the parent company of food delivery giant foodpanda, is also part of the list of investors in Flash Coffee.

For those who are unaware of White Star Capital, it is a “global multi-stage technology investment platform that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, international businesses”

It has branches in London, New York, Paris, Montreal, Toronto, Tokyo, and Singapore to support its operations, and its global presence helps the firm partner closely with its investees.

Seems like a lot of big-shot investors were banking on Flash Coffee’s success.

Flash Coffee Planed to Use the Funds to Increase Profitability

Apart from celebrating the successful raising of capital, the coffee chain also announced earlier this year that they had grand plans for the fresh injection of funds.

The coffee chain wanted to use the fresh injection of funds to accelerate the company’s mission of achieving “group-level profitability”.

In particular, they had plans to “sustainably [grow] its footprint across the Asia Pacific region to serve high-quality specialty coffee to customers in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and South Korea, doubling down on technology and product innovation and further developing the sales performance of existing stores”.

Well, with the latest closure of stores in Singapore, we guess we can remove Singapore from that lengthy list of countries in the statement above.

Let’s hope they achieve that goal soon and not let the exit from the Singapore market throw a spanner in the works.

Indonesia Is a Key Market for Flash Coffee

If you were a fan of Flash Coffee and are feeling down because of the coffee chain’s abrupt exit from our local market, you may want to head over to Indonesia to get a cup of joe.

But we’re not sure if you want to head over now, given the hazy conditions in Singapore are caused by forest fires in Sumatra (located in Indonesia).

However, once the skies are clear, you can consider hopping over because Flash Coffee considers Indonesia a key market.

Flash Coffee considers Indonesia as its “most mature market” because growth is fuelled by a “fast-growing middle class” who rapidly consumes coffee.

Since Indonesia is also the most populous country in Southeast Asia, the market for coffee consumers is also much larger over there.

Here’s a short recap of Flash Coffee’s expansion into the Indonesian market.

Flash Coffee first entered Indonesia through Bandung and eventually opened “11 outlets across the metropolitan area of over 8.8 million inhabitants”.

It also opened branches in Surabaya earlier this year.

At this point in time, we can’t help but wonder if Flash Coffee also managed to source its beans from Indonesia.

Those of you who know your beans would know that the lands in Indonesia are suitable for growing coffee beans.

Whatever the case, it seems that Flash Coffee’s expansion in Indonesia is set to continue because 100% of their 92 stores in Indoenesia were profitable (as Flash Coffee bragged when it announced the US$50 million funding earlier this year).

Let’s hope things continue well for them and they can reopen in Singapore when they are ready.