On 8 April 2025 Jakarta's stock index fell almost 8 percent in a single morning. Markets had reopened after the Eid holiday into the shock of American tariffs. Six days later a coffee chain was due to list. People inside Fore Coffee have said many doubted the IPO would work. The company went ahead anyway.
The chain had begun upstairs. Robin Boe started Otten Coffee in 2012, selling beans and machines, with the first store in Medan, his hometown. East Ventures' Willson Cuaca funded it. Fore grew out of a business incubator on the second floor of Otten's Jakarta office. It opened in August 2018 as Otten's second store on Jalan Senopati, in South Jakarta.
What nobody could have predicted was how that first foothold in delivery would look in hindsight.
The idea was to treat the phone as the front door. Orders came through the app, with delivery and loyalty built in, rather than a queue at a counter. In February 2019 Fore raised US$8.5m from East Ventures, SMDV, Pavilion Capital, Agaeti Venture Capital, Insignia Ventures Partners and angels. Vico Lomar joined in 2020 as chief executive, the same year the pandemic emptied cafes.
What nobody could have predicted was how that first foothold in delivery would look in hindsight. A chain built around the app survived lockdown better than one built around seating. It then grew outward. In November 2023 it opened a store at Bugis Junction in Singapore. By the end of 2024 reports counted 217 outlets.
The IPO tested the numbers. On 14 April 2025 Fore listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. The offering drew 114,873 retail investors and was oversubscribed 200.63 times. Shares rose 34.04 percent to Rp252 on day one. In the first half of 2025 revenue grew 47 percent to Rp662bn, and the chain reached 261 outlets. A Katadata report puts it at 363 active outlets by the end of June 2026.
The price of that scale is competition. Indonesian coffee is crowded with low-priced rivals and venture-backed chains, and every new outlet must earn its place.
Fore's story has a lesson for founders about where good ideas come from. It was not a grand launch. It grew in a spare room above an existing business, with a founder's first store in his hometown behind it. Start small, upstairs, and see what the customer actually opens on their phone.