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For Coffee Star, the biggest return on its BISA award was credibility
Coffee Star’s chief executive told Sinar Harian that its BISA 2023 innovation award counted most in meetings with prospective customers, and explained why the company chose to grow without loans or outside investors.
KUALA LUMPUR, 13 April 2026 — Some awards pay off on the sales ledger. For Coffee Star, the return on its BISA award showed up somewhere less visible: in meetings with customers who had not yet decided to buy.
The award came from the Bisnes Sinar Harian Awards (BISA) 2023, which recognised the company for innovation. Coffee Star’s founder and chief executive, Raja Ahmad Fauzan Raja Hassan, summed up what it had done for the business in one line to Sinar Harian’s Sinar Bisnes section.
“The biggest impact is not directly on sales, but on credibility when meeting customers,” he said (translated).
What the company carried into those meetings, he said, was proof: the award itself and the press coverage it had received. The logic is easy to follow. A prospective client sizing up a company it has never dealt with has little to go on, and outside recognition gives that client something to weigh.
The award also came with an obligation. The plan itself had not changed, he said: more sites, consistent product quality and a steady commitment to business partners. What had changed was the standard Coffee Star held itself to. An award for innovation, in his view, set an expectation the company now had to live up to across all of its operations.
Growth, in his account, was a trade-off between outside money and control, and Coffee Star chose control. Expansion had come in stages, with no loans and no outside investors, so that no one else could set the company’s course. That meant turning down offers that did not fit, a cost he judged worth paying to keep ownership and direction in the company’s hands.
“We believe the ‘grow slow but solid’ approach gives a stronger foundation for the long term,” he said (translated).
The difference the award made could be felt outside the company and inside it. The recognition brought a firm that few had noticed into view, he said, and gave its own team a lift in confidence and pride.
He closed with a word for people starting out: measure progress against your own road, not against someone else’s results.
Today, Coffee Star 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. Its record of recognition now also includes National Winner, SME ESG Challenge 2025/2026 (SME Corp Malaysia × UN Global Compact Network Malaysia, Brunei & Cambodia) for Bean2Blossom, its coffee-grounds composting programme.
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- Sinar HarianBISA tingkat kredibiliti Coffee Star ↗
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