Beachville Chennai hosts Raani Coffee from Atlanta for limited-edition specialty coffee takeover

Join Beachville Chennai for a unique coffee experience with Raani Coffee’s exclusive tasting event on February 20.

On Friday, the coffee at Beachville Coffee Roasters will taste a little less familiar, and that is precisely the point. 

For one day, the café will host a takeover by Raani Coffee, the Atlanta-based roasters founded by Praveena Sundarraj, a Tamil entrepreneur who left India, built a name in American specialty coffee, and is now bringing that journey full circle. The collaboration is facilitated by Foreword, a newly launched cultural IP company focused on building experiences across music, food and beverage, and lifestyle. 

“The idea is to bring people to the café on Friday and have a kind of coffee-party atmosphere,” says Divya Jayashankar of Beachville Coffee Roasters. “You walk in, taste interesting coffees, and chat with two people from Tamil Nadu who have done this outside, in the US.”

While roaster collaborations are common globally, they are still relatively new to India’s specialty coffee landscape. For Divya, the intention is a participation where guests can sit with distinct coffees, compare flavour profiles, ask questions, and engage directly with the people behind the beans. 

Raani Coffee | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Raani will bring three coffees to Chennai — two experimental Colombian co-ferments and one Indian single-origin from Ratnagiri, and each chosen to challenge what coffee is expected to taste like. “In India, coffee meant milk and sugar and a little bit of bitterness. When I moved to the US and entered specialty coffee, I saw how wide that world really was. I’ve always wanted to bring that back home to show that coffee can be brighter, fruit-forward, and complex,” says Praveena.