Malaysia’s kopitiam culture owes a great deal to the Hainanese: the kopi roasted with butter and sugar, the kaya toast, the chicken chop. But many of the old recipes and methods are being simplified, or quietly disappearing.

JJ Phun grew up in that tradition. His family’s story goes back to a 1938 coffee shop at the Kluang railway station, and in 2005 he took that heritage to the Klang Valley as Kluang Station, opening its first outlet at 1 Utama.

Now he and his brother are starting again with Arang, a modern Hainanese kopitiam they launched in 2026. It is self-funded, and they say it is already a seven-figure business in its first year.

JJ joins us to talk about turning heritage into a business, what two decades of running kopitiams has taught him, and why culture only survives when it stays commercially relevant.