Coffee brand partners with MGM to offer tourism products

Charles Shi (left) and Simon Leong

A local SME that sells organic coffee products has partnered with MGM China to offer its products as souvenirs for visitors to Macau.
Charlestrong Café Companhia Limitada’s Café Dilly coffee will be available to guests staying at the villas of MGM Macau and The Mansion at MGM Cotai as part of their partnership with the gaming operator.
The local firm uses organic coffee beans from East Timor, a Portuguese-speaking country in Southeast Asia.
With their own coffee farm in East Timor, the company has jumped onto the local specialty coffee bandwagon by establishing the Macau brand Café Dilly. They opened a factory in the city last year which produces locally processed specialty coffee products.
“We feel that Macau should have good quality coffee and that’s why we started with this brand. Macau is a tourist city so we believe that we also have to have good souvenirs aside from Portuguese egg tarts and almond cookies,” said the chairman of the company, Charles Shi.
“We feel that we have a touristic product. The products are imported from East Timor but we process them here with high quality equipment.”
Initially, Shi was part of a company that has construction projects in East Timor. While visiting the former Portuguese territory, he saw an opportunity to start Café Dilly.
For Shi, the city has a responsibility to continually be a platform for Portuguese-speaking countries. Therefore, the company remains committed to acquiring products from East Timor as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Some Macau companies have already established long-term trade partnerships with Portuguese-speaking countries, as the city has been strongly encouraged to play a long-term role as a bridge and platform for such trade.
“We have the mission to help Portuguese-speaking countries. We want to help the farmers and improve the economy of the country,” said Shi.
The chairman said that there is demand for a high quality of coffee in Macau, noting that there are only a few companies that process organic coffee.
According to Simon Leong, executive director of Purchasing at MGM Macau, the collaboration began because the company aims to facilitate the development of local SMEs amid the pandemic.
Given its own platform to promote local brands, Leong said that despite the business downturn caused by Covid-19, MGM took the opportunity to look for other products to improve its product offerings.
“We wanted to look for better quality products to serve in our outlets,” said Leong.
“Our aim is to look for certain products that are made in Macau, so we got [offers] from different suppliers. When we tried this brand, we found out that it was a green and organic product, and it matches with the company’s goal,” the executive added.
Retail products from the brand are now on sale and drip coffees will be served from August at Pastry Bar at MGM Macau and Anytime at MGM Cotai.