Widayat Basuki Dharmowiyono knows very well that family heritage can be a blessing or a burden.

As a grandson of Tan Tiong Ie, a Semarang, Central Java, tycoon that established Margo Redjo, the first coffee production giant in the then-Dutch East Indies, the 78-year-old continues to live with the family business, embracing its golden years that were followed by decades of struggle.

He never knew his grandfather. Nevertheless, he accepted the wish of his father, Tan Liang Tjay, to take over the business in 1975.

“I didn’t have the heart to throw away the heritage. It is too precious. It has been passed down from my grandfather to my father and then to me, across decades,” he told The Jakarta Post recently at Dharma Boutique Roastery, a café and roastery established at the family’s home, from which the coffee factory was once run. 

The café is nothing like Jakarta’s sophisticated coffee parlors. As Widayat has sustained the family’s roasting business, along with its assets including a factory building and large roasting machines imported from the Netherlands, the joint is loud in coffee but muted in decor. 

A coffee playground

The factory building from Margo Redjo's golden years has now become a display room that resembles a candy shop for coffee. Varieties of coffee beans are placed in dozens of glass jars with colorful lids. In front of the house and the factory building, the patio has become the café’s outdoor seating where people can enjoy their coffee and chat amid the house’s garden. 

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