India grows a great deal of coffee, yet it is rarely the origin named on the bag. That is the gap Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters walked into in July, when it opened its first UAE café at BurJuman Mall.
The menu is built around single-estate coffees from Indian farms, alongside signature blends, seasonal offerings and a range of brewing methods. It is a quietly ambitious idea for a city with no shortage of flat whites.
The numbers suggest the timing is right. India is the world’s seventh-largest coffee producer, and Coffee Board data shows its exports crossed $2bn for the first time in 2025. The UAE already takes about 5 per cent of those shipments. What Dubai hasn’t had is a café brand telling the Indian origin story on its own terms.
“India has an incredible coffee-growing heritage, but Indian speciality coffee is still relatively underrepresented internationally as an origin and Dubai allows us to take that story to a very global audience,” says Shivam Shahi, Blue Tokai’s co-founder and COO.
Blue Tokai started in 2013 as a small roasting operation. It now runs more than 250 cafés and three roasteries in India and works directly with more than 80 coffee farms, according to the company’s launch announcement. It also has a café presence in Tokyo.
Scale taught Shahi something that spreadsheets don’t. “The biggest lesson from our expansion in India is that scaling a café business is not just about replicating stores; it is about replicating the experience while staying relevant to each market and neighbourhood,” he says.
The company learnt about site selection, team building and operating processes along the way. But processes only go so far. “Coffee is ultimately a people business, and the quality of the barista, the interaction with the customer and the consistency of what is in the cup matter enormously.”
So the discipline travels. The template doesn’t. “As we enter the UAE, we are taking that operating discipline with us, but we are not assuming that the India playbook can simply be transplanted here,” Shahi says. “The objective is to create a strong, scalable foundation rather than pursue store count for its own sake.”
Why Dubai first
Few cities drink coffee the way Dubai does. The UAE coffee market is worth more than Dhs12bn (about $3.2bn), and roughly 93 per cent of coffee spending happens out of home, in cafés and restaurants. That is one of the highest shares in the world, according to figures released ahead of World of Coffee Dubai 2026.
For Shahi, the city was the obvious first stop in the Gulf. “Dubai felt like a very natural first step for us because it is one of the most diverse and experience-driven café markets in the region,” he says. Customers here already know speciality coffee, and they are open to brands they haven’t tried.
There is a home crowd, too. More than 4.3 million Indians live in the UAE, and India’s ambassador has said more than half of them are in Dubai. Shahi is careful not to lean on that. “There is also a natural connection to India, given the size and diversity of the Indian community in the UAE. But we see the opportunity as much larger than serving only the Indian diaspora.”
The bigger prize is everyone else. “The city’s diversity and openness to new concepts make it an exciting gateway into the GCC.”
Blue Tokai is coming to the Gulf through Ambrosia, which holds the master franchise for the GCC. The brand joins a regional portfolio that already includes Biryani By Kilo and Furn Beaino. The partnership also covers Blue Tokai’s packaged coffee for hotels, restaurants and direct-to-consumer sales.
Shahi won’t put a figure on the investment. He describes the UAE as a long-term market and talks about the near term in terms of brand building, not openings. “Our immediate priority is to establish the brand through product, storytelling and category education, understand the customer and build the right operating model.”
There is a target, though. “We have plans to build a meaningful café network in the UAE, with more than ten cafés planned across the region over the coming year.”
Ten cafés is modest for a company with 250 at home, and that is deliberate. “We are deliberately taking a measured approach to expansion. For us, the quality of each location and the economics of the business are more important than simply moving quickly.”
The coffee does the talking
Dubai is not short of speciality coffee, local or imported. Shahi knows another roaster with good branding won’t move anyone. “What we are bringing is a very specific point of view on single origin speciality coffee from India.”
That point of view starts on the farm. Indian coffee grows mostly in the Western and Eastern Ghats, across Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Smallholders account for nearly 99 per cent of holdings and about 70 per cent of output, according to an Indian government statement. The Coffee Board expects a record crop of 403,000 tonnes in 2025-26.
Blue Tokai buys directly from estates and controls sourcing, roasting and brewing itself, which Shahi describes as “representing one of the handful of full stack coffee companies across the world.” Indian coffee will stay at the centre of the UAE menu. “Expanding internationally should strengthen those relationships rather than dilute them.”
The economics are harder here. “Logistics, duties, real estate and operating costs all have an impact on pricing,” Shahi says. The aim is to absorb those realities without cutting corners on the coffee or the sourcing model.
And he is clear that a flag on the menu won’t win regulars. “But we don’t expect customers to choose us simply because we are an Indian brand. The coffee has to be exceptional, the experience has to be warm and approachable, and the overall proposition has to earn the customer’s loyalty.”
Same soul, local menu
The coffee, the training and the emphasis on traceability won’t change. Almost everything around them can. Shahi lists elements of the food menu, the pricing architecture, store formats and the overall customer experience as open to adjustment for UAE habits and occasions.
He sums it up in one line. “The balance we are looking for is consistent brand philosophy, locally relevant execution.”
Dubai is also a test bed. Saudi Arabia alone has more than 5,100 branded cafés, close to half of all branded cafés in the Middle East, and drinks more than 36 million cups of coffee a day. Shahi sees the UAE as the place to learn the region’s consumers, real estate, talent and operating environment first. “If we build the right model here, Dubai can become a strong platform for expansion into the wider GCC.”
He won’t set a store count for that, either. For now, the test is simpler, and it happens one cup at a time at BurJuman. “We want customers to come back because they genuinely love the coffee and the brand, and then discover the story behind it.”
