If you’ve met Frederick Ruben at a coffee events chances are you’ve seen the same thing we did. He’s friendly. Easy to talk to. The kind of person who says hello to everyone in the room. Over the past few years, we’ve crossed paths with him several times at coffee events and competitions. By the time we sat down for this interview, he was already the UAE Barista Champion, working with Archers Coffee and Benchmark helping shape one of the region’s most respected coffee programs.
Frederick Ruben
From the outside, his story looks like many successful coffee stories. A passionate barista who worked hard, kept learning, competed, and eventually stood on top of the stage.
But that isn’t the story Ruben told us. Because if you had met him a few years earlier, there is a good chance you would have found him standing alone at an airport, holding a passport he had only just managed to get back from his employer.
At that moment, he wasn’t thinking about championships. He wasn’t thinking about coffee competitions. He wasn’t even thinking about coffee. He was trying to figure out how to survive.
Ruben grew up in Indonesia and entered coffee almost by accident. Like many young people, he was simply looking for work after graduation when a friend offered him a part-time position in a coffee shop. The job slowly became a passion, and the passion slowly became a career. Then COVID arrived, disrupting life and work for many people. Around the same time, stories about the growing specialty coffee scene in the Middle East began reaching Indonesia. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia — opportunities seemed to be everywhere. Like many others hoping for a better future, Ruben decided to take a chance and move abroad.
The reality waiting for him was very different. The job he had been promised turned out not to be a coffee shop at all. Instead, he found himself working in a small sandwich shop. The salary he had been promised never arrived. The legal paperwork never arrived either. His passport was taken away. Days became fifteen-hour shifts. Three months passed without pay. He cleaned, served customers, prepared food, and waited for things to improve. They never did.
“I thought I was coming to change my life for the better.”
Looking back, Ruben says the hardest part wasn’t the long hours or even the missing salary. It was not being able to see a future. Every day felt the same, and every week pushed him further away from the life he thought he was building.
Eventually, he decided he had to leave. The problem was that his employer still held his passport. After weeks of trying to get it back, he came up with a desperate plan. He bought a real ticket home to Indonesia and showed it to his employer as proof that he was giving up and returning home. He even told his family he was coming back. Only then did they finally return his passport and drive him to the airport themselves.
What they didn’t know was that Ruben had already made another call. Before leaving, he had reached out to a coffee professional named Sumaiya, someone he knew through the local coffee community. He explained his situation and asked if there might be any opportunity available. Her answer was simple.
“Just come.”
“I don’t have any money,” he told her.
“I’ll pay for the taxi.”
The moment his former employers left the airport, Ruben turned around, got into a taxi, and headed back into the city. He wasn’t going home anymore. He was starting over.
The new job wasn’t glamorous. The salary was just enough to survive. Sumaiya helped him find accommodation and even supported him with rent until he was able to stand on his own feet. Looking back today, Ruben is certain that without her kindness, his coffee journey would have ended before it had really begun.
Life remained difficult. There were months when lunch and dinner looked exactly the same: rice and chips. Sometimes he couldn’t afford anything else. Most of his income went back home to support his family. Transportation was a luxury, and there were days when he walked long distances under the UAE sun simply because it was cheaper than taking a taxi.
“The only thing I thought was, if I can eat better one day, I think I’m already blessed.”
Many people would have gone home. Ruben thought about it too. His family owned a food and beverage business in Indonesia. Returning would have been easier and probably safer. But something kept telling him to stay.
“If I go home, I’m starting from zero anyway. Starting from zero in Dubai or starting from zero in Indonesia — both are the same thing.”
That decision eventually led him to Blacksmith Coffee in Abu Dhabi, where he found something he had been searching for since arriving in the UAE: a community. Surrounded by people who genuinely loved coffee, Ruben began investing in himself. He saved money for education, took his first SCA courses, started competing, and slowly built confidence in his own abilities. Competition wasn’t initially about winning. It was about learning. Every routine became an opportunity to improve, ask questions, and grow alongside other coffee professionals.
Years later, that journey led him to the UAE Barista Championship stage. This time, he won.
The coffee journey of Frederick Ruben
But when people see the trophy, they don’t see the airport. They don’t see the sandwich shop. They don’t see the missing salary, the rice and chips, or the phone call that changed everything. They see the champion.
Ruben remembers the rest.
When asked what he would say to the younger version of himself standing at that airport, uncertain about everything, his answer comes quickly.
“Don’t worry, bro. You will do it.”
Today, only a handful of people know the full story. His family. His closest friends. Sumaiya. The people who believed in him before there was any title to celebrate. Maybe that’s what coffee gave him in the end. Not a championship. Not a trophy. But proof that sometimes a single act of kindness can completely change the direction of someone’s life.
