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Women ran most departments behind Coffee Star’s Coffee ATMs, Sinar Daily reported
In an interview published in December 2022, Coffee Star’s founder told Sinar Daily that women headed most of the company’s departments, as its Coffee ATM network passed 70 machines in Peninsular Malaysia.
SHAH ALAM, 18 December 2022 — Coffee Star’s calling card was a machine: the Coffee ATM, a self-service unit that sold hot drinks. The people running the company behind those machines, its founder and chief executive told Sinar Daily, were mostly women.
Raja Ahmad Fauzan Raja Hassan spoke for Coffee Star when Sinar Daily interviewed him for Bang for Your Buck, a video programme. The paper’s write-up named the Coffee ATM as what set the company apart, then gave most of its space to the people behind it.
Sinar Daily described the company as deliberately widening the part women played in its leadership. He summed up the aim as balance. “We do have a balanced portfolio,” he said.
He singled out two functions in particular: business development and human resources. In his account, the women in those roles at Coffee Star had proven themselves. The paper did not say how many departments the company had, or how many of them women headed.
Neither was a back-office afterthought for a company as young as Coffee Star was then. One brought in the customers; the other built the team that served them.
The business had not grown in a straight line. He recalled a starting headcount of 12, before Covid-19 struck. The write-up gave no headcount for late 2022.
Sinar Daily portrayed him as undaunted by the setback. The paper credited the post-pandemic recovery with quickening Coffee Star’s growth.
By the time of the interview, more than 70 Coffee ATMs were in place across Peninsular Malaysia. His stated goal was a network of 100 by the close of 2022, and he told the paper he was confident of getting there.
Coffee Star now runs Auto-Baristas at more than 114 locations across Malaysia, and on 24 September 2026 it launched its fully managed Office Coffee Service at MIHAS 2026. The company has since been named National Winner, SME ESG Challenge 2025/2026 (SME Corp Malaysia × UN Global Compact Network Malaysia, Brunei & Cambodia) for Bean2Blossom, its coffee-grounds composting programme.
Original coverage
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- Sinar DailyCoffee Star: Empowering coffee and women ↗
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