It began as something my mum and I wanted to open together.
She would run the bakery. I would run the coffee shop.
But the idea had been forming for years.
I first moved away from home when I was nine. In every city, town or village where I later lived, studied or worked, there was one coffee shop that became mine.
I would find a particular seat and return to it every week or two, usually around the same time. The servers and baristas came to know me. I helped whenever I could. Eventually, I stopped feeling like a visitor.
Those coffee shops became my home away from home.
Ten years ago, the journey began with tattoo and coffee shops—ink on skin and coffee in cups.
Over time, the canvas changed. Skin became real canvas. Tattoos became paintings, illustrations and stories. The coffee shop grew into a studio. But the ink, the coffee and the desire to create a place where people could feel at home never left.
Seven years ago, that journey became Tiger Way.
And slowly, other people began to call it theirs too.
Regulars found their seats. Friends found a common meeting ground. People came to work quietly, think clearly, have proper conversations or simply breathe away from the maddening crowds.
They were accepted as they were.
They remembered where things belonged, pitched in when help was needed and became part of the rhythm of the place. It grew into a small community hub—not loud, not fancy and never impersonal.
Tiger Way was not a place to merely occupy a table.
It was a hosted space. A third place between home and the rest of the world, where guests were known, welcomed and trusted to treat the space as their own.
The locations have changed.
The interiors have changed.
The canvas has changed.
We have changed.
But the heart remains the same.
Properly brewed coffee. Food made by hand. Art with a story. A quiet place where people can work, meet and feel at home—without pretence.
I wasn’t simply building a coffee shop.
I was building the kind of place that had once made me feel at home.
Ten years later, my mum is no longer here, but we still are.
Still brewing. Still creating. Still holding the door open.
She never got to see Tiger Way but I think she would have been proud.
For the Few, Not the Fancy.
This is the Tiger Way.
☕🐅
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