Anyone listening to Nawar Adra would know he is well-traveled and nurtures a deep love for the coffee community. In our recent chat with him at the Shanghai Hotelex event, we discussed his vision for Stitch Coffee and the culture shock he experienced when visiting China.
Nawar Adra, founder of Stitch Coffee
Nawar Adra started Stitch Coffee in 2015 in Sydney, Australia, after getting into the coffee community in 2007 and falling in love with specialty coffee in 2010. Over time, he has built his catalog of coffee experiences by traveling far and wide and being particular about coffee cultures in different parts of the world, which he hopes to introduce to Australia too.
His earnest desire to learn about other coffee markets, audiences, and trends led him to visit China for the Shanghai Hotelex event, and this showed him a side of the coffee culture that he was unfamiliar with. From the seven cities he had visited in China, Nawar noted,
“Each city is a country on its own, with its own food, its own palate, and its own understanding of what coffee is.”
With the differing approaches to the coffee industry experienced by Nawar, he believes the Chinese market will be challenging, as it could be difficult for just anyone to navigate, and those interested in fully immersing themselves in the coffee culture could remain undecided for a pretty long time.
Regardless, Nawar sees coffee as a social enterprise bringing people together for the love of the product, not money. He also views coffee in its experimental stages, where innovations and inventions rapidly blossom as the industry grows, and this has kept him going.
“I stick to it because it’s an industry that is growing at the moment, and it’s a curious industry. It’s an industry where we see a lot of new processes. We see a lot of new trends. We still like developing it.”
Unlike the wine and whiskey industries, which are more mature and experience less experimentation, the coffee industry is growing constantly, making coffee enthusiasts desire even more growth and collaborations while building the community.
Nawar also enjoys the people in the coffee community because they are everywhere, and with the skillset of being able to roast and brew coffee, he believes he can survive anywhere in the world. But he ensures that all coffee comrades he meets understand that there is still a long road ahead of the coffee community.
“It needs a lot of patience and passion. Don’t take it as a fast-moving train. It’s actually very slow to grow, and you need to be in it for a while to feel the success. It is not success overnight; it’s a freaking long, long story.”
