Most family businesses in Indian hospitality begin with a recipe. This one began with an argument about grind size.
Ritika and Aditya Sharma, who run Pour Over Coffee Roasters, are among a small group of sibling founders reshaping how India drinks coffee. On Raksha Bandhan, a festival built around what a brother and sister owe each other, the two made the day in the least sentimental way available to them, at a cupping table in Khan Market, tasting through the last of the season’s Colombian arrivals.
The division of labour is settled by now. Aditya, a certified coffee professional who spent four years on a diploma at the Espresso Academy in Florence, runs the coffee programme, the sourcing and the roast.
Ritika drives the business, the formats and the expansion. Between them they have taken a store in store roastery in Malviya Nagar and turned it into a brand operating out of Khan Market, the Santushti Complex in Chanakyapuri, Noida and, since June, McLeodganj.
The Colombian season
The most visible piece of that work this year has been the Colombian Collection, a limited run of lots from Huila that landed in July and is available across all four cafés.
Two have carried the season. The Papayo Natural comes in with pineapple, tropical fruit and berry, a silky body and a bright line of acidity. The Colombian Blend Natural is the rounder of the pair, layered with red fruit, cacao and a sweetness closer to wine. The Papayo was picked in January at Acevedo in Huila, fermented naturally for 96 hours and given a medium roast.
Each cup arrives with a card carrying the origin, the SCA cup score, the harvest, the process and the roast level. It is a small thing that has done more for the brand’s reputation among serious drinkers than any campaign.
“Every lot in this collection was selected because it represented something unique, a producer, a process, a variety or a story worth sharing,” Ritika Sharma said. “This launch is not about importing coffee from another country. It is about building a bridge between origin and cup, between producer and consumer, and between Colombia and India.”
Indian beans, roasted in house
The imports sit alongside what remains the base of the business. Pour Over works only with 100 per cent Arabica single origin beans from estates in Chikmagalur, Coorg and Sikkim, roasted in micro lots at its own roastery and held in climate controlled storage. International coffees from Ethiopia, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica and Indonesia round out the range.
Aditya Sharma has described the approach as stripping the process back rather than dressing it up. “From sourcing to cup, each stage is consciously driven, keeping global marketplace value in mind, its impact to livelihood and coffee innovation, yet removing the fluff and providing authentic, honest and seriously brewed coffee, accessible by everyone,” he said.
The work that gets least attention is the fermentation. Direct relationships with producers have let the roastery push processing at origin rather than pick from what is already on offer, which is a slower way to build a coffee list and a harder one to explain.
Cupping, in public
Cupping is the trade’s own tasting method, a fixed ritual of grind, steep, break and slurp that buyers use to score a lot before they commit to it. It is normally done behind a closed door. At Pour Over it is run in the café, in front of whoever has walked in that morning, and Aditya Sharma is the one at the table.
His training is what makes the session work. The Florence diploma was four years of exactly this, learning to place a coffee by taste alone, and he now walks customers through the same sequence he uses to decide what the roastery buys.
On the brewing that follows, he keeps the framing plain. “Our brewing culture is simple, come over to our café and enjoy your cup brewed to precision from temperature to ratio, or request for beans ground to your size and choice of house blends,” he said.
For Ritika, the sessions are the argument for the whole business. “Once people can taste the difference for themselves in an open, unintimidating setting, quality stops being a luxury conversation and starts being an obvious choice,” she said. “That’s the slower, more deliberate kind of scale we’re betting on.”
She is direct about where the growth is. “The biggest untapped opportunity isn’t in the metros anymore. It’s in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where a large, aspirational, digitally native consumer base is already primed but hasn’t yet been offered better coffee in a way that’s accessible rather than intimidating.”
After dark
The Khan Market flagship, revamped this year, now runs from 7 am to midnight on an AM PM format that turns a coffee bar into a cocktail bar as the evening comes on.
The espresso martini is built with vodka, espresso, house made coffee liqueur and cacao buttermilk. Among the cold brews, the Golden Brew sets mango against the bitterness of the coffee, while the Red Eye Salsa runs tomato and jalapeño through it and divides opinion on purpose.
What comes next
Expansion runs on three tracks. More retail in key Indian markets, deeper business to business supply into hotels, restaurants and institutions, and Indian specialty coffee taken abroad through hospitality partnerships.
“Our focus is on building Pour Over into a strong, profitable and scalable Indian coffee brand, rather than pursuing growth at any cost,” Ritika Sharma said. “Build a strong unit economics model at every location and channel, then use that foundation to scale the brand sustainably.”
Whether the cupping table stays in the middle of it, on Raksha Bandhan or any other day, is one thing the two of them do not appear to disagree about.
READ: Contemporary Mexican Restaurant Selva Launches in Delhi
Dining and Cooking