Barcelona’s News & Coffee has found its first Kuala Lumpur home in Else Hotel

It was in Barcelona that Habibah first encountered News & Coffee, and the kiosk quickly became a familiar faithful in her routine. “I would just pause at the kiosk and grab a coffee, even if it’s my second or third one,” she says. “And just browse, have a bit of a breather, find bits of inspiration in the books—even if it's graphics, or things in architecture, or things on serial killers, or Princess Diana as a mushroom. All these ideas would just bubble up. It was such a good recharge to the day. I wanted to carry that feeling back to Malaysia, this rhythm and a routine that I had made so concrete over the last two and a half years in Barcelona.”

There couldn’t have been a better time to open a print pop-up in KL. For those of a bookish leaning, these are exciting times: book clubs, launches, events, 24-hour bookstores, international players and independent curators. There’s an appetite for reading that is incredible to see. “Even before opening the space, people had come in thinking it was open. They just saw a glimpse of the magazines, and they walked in,” says Habibah. “There was this kid that came by who was just floored by the selection and the titles. And it was just like a reflection in the mirror. I thought, I know that feeling. And that was one of the things that actually validated the idea to bring News & Coffee in.” It was just the right time. “We have so many bookworms in Malaysia. Amazing bookstores and the coffee culture as well—it's such a mature market for speciality coffee.”

I don’t often like to use the word ‘synergy’, coopted as it is by corpspeak, but there it was when Else Hotel and News & Coffee came together. There couldn’t have been a more fitting first home for News & Coffee than SMTH, the miniature shopfront tucked along the side of Else.

“About two years back, we were reconsidering our context to the neighbourhood,” Justin Chen, co-founder of Else Hotel, tells us. “A big part of it was trying to bring forward, in our own way, a bit of culture for the city. We developed this space into a pop-up storefront; we wanted to have a space where we could really trial a lot of ideas. There’s a lot of joy in being able to just try new things. We had this window and 20 sqm or so to use as a sandbox to test out things both for ourselves and to allow for people to bring their kind of ideas into the space.”

“It's an open-source space that is accessible and open just from the physical format of it,” Habibah says in agreement. In the months since opening, SMTH by Else has seen creatives of all kind sitting in that shopfront. It ties in with Else’s larger connection to culture and its physical manifestations, as seen in their beautifully appointed hotel library, and in the regional reading room they curate with Suburbia Projects, working with independent regional publishers.

“We get all kinds of people travelling through the space, not necessarily people who are coming directly for a more curated experience, but people who might be your regular mom and pop, a tourist, a local who might be just passing by,” Justin says. “And we hope that we can tease them with the prospect of something different, to give them something that’s maybe outside of their usual routine or their expectation of this space. That’s a big part of what we try to do with the curation, that it should help to spark a bit of dialogue and conversation.”

And though News & Culture has landed on our streets from abroad, it’s not at all about just importing culture and transplanting it here. “I think we are so blessed to have such a strong reading culture here,” Habibah says. “What we want to do is add to it. Reading culture is one thing, but we’re also looking at visual culture. The contents of the books here are photo books, poems, critical reviews, from fashion to art and sports. And we do want to highlight a lot more Southeast Asian publishers, local publishers. That was one of the main missions as well, to bring it into a global platform, these talents. Also localising the brand into the Malaysian landscape.”

And of course, the real question: Is print dead? “It’s very interesting to keep hearing that phrase,” Habibah says. “Because we believe that print was never dead. The spotlight was just maybe dimmed slightly. But the gears are still turning. It’s very much alive, and I think more and more people are seeking something haptic, tactile experiences. The whole feeling of just holding a book, regardless if it’s an indie print or magazine or a novel, it’s flipping the pages and having the dog ears and the tags and it’s a whole experience as a whole. So the notion that print is dead is just wrong.”

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