Cupable, Coffee Shop in Yogyakarta A Place for Barista of Disability in Action

There is one unique café in Yogyakarta that you seem to need to go to, Kafe Cupable. This cafe is a silent witness for people with disabilities who are practicing to become baristas.

Quoting the Guideku.com team who visited Cupable on Wednesday (02/13/2019), the Barista training participants were mostly people with disabilities and transgender people.

Inclusive Barista Training is one of the activities in the YAKKUM Care Program.

This cafe is located next to the YAKKUM Yogyakarta Rehabilitation Center, Rippy, as the Project Officer, explaining the background to why a barista profession and coffee business is developing the abilities of the disabled.

“Cupable actually does not have YAKKUM, but has a close friend of the director. Incidentally he also cares about social issues and joins people with disabilities for this activity. Then, the trend of coffee is now rising, everywhere young people must often drink coffee. So we choose coffee so that the campaign spreads faster. The goal is to campaign for inclusion for disability, if you see them, they still think, “Ah, can he make coffee equipment operate?” “Well, we want to prove that they can,” Rippy opened.

Apparently it was not easy to become a barista, these participants even had to exercise intensely.

“Yes, training here is 6 weeks. They are also organized here specifically for training. The training here is from upstream to downstream. So starting from distinguishing the types of arabica and robusta coffee, the history of coffee, from planting to processing, new to making and brewing coffee. So they understand the world of coffee as a whole, “he continued.

What are the challenges of this Inclusive Barista program?

“The challenge may be more to their enthusiasm after returning to the community. Are they going to stay excited or not. So we also have business plan and network training for internships. The difficulties so far are normal, maybe more understanding because they are learning fast , there are also those who have to slow down and repeat until they understand, “

Going forward, Rippy stressed that he would always develop Cupable in an increasingly good direction.

“Actually there are many who want to join this program, not only those with disabilities. But now we focus on disability and transgender, still fixing from batch 1 as well. But in the future the coverage may be greater,” concluded Rippy.