Creator of Viral Tiger Bomb Coffee Considers Legal Action Against Indonesian Imitators

Caleb 'Tiger' Cha created the Tiger Bomb coffee drink when he opened his Melbourne cafe Tone Coffee in 2023. The former World Latte Art Champion launched the beverage at that time after spending the pandemic experimenting to match a name he had devised in 2016.

On the first day of sales a customer shared the Tiger Bomb on the Chinese social media platform Little Red Book and it went viral immediately.

"All of a sudden, everybody came to taste that coffee and it never stops," Cha said. The Tiger Bomb has since gathered fans and imitators as far away as Indonesia where a growing number of coffee shops are selling their versions of the drink. It has joined the list of Melbourne-inspired coffees on Indonesian menus including flat white, Magic, Mont Blanc and the Dirty.

Cha came up with the name Tiger Bomb in 2016. The word for tiger in Korean sounds similar to "bomb," he explained. " It took Cha 100 days to perfect the Tiger Bomb recipe. He discovered that coffee shops were selling imitation Tiger Bombs in Indonesia and told several cafe owners that he considered the beverage to be his intellectual property.

"Using the name for their menu could damage my reputation," he said. Cha has his own lawyer who advises on many things. He and his lawyer are collecting information on how imitators affect his business and how they make money out of that name.

Ben Bicknell, co-host of the It's Just Coffee!

Podcast, director of consultancy and training organisation The Sensory Agenda and a World Barista Championship sensory judge, said signature beverages like the Tiger Bomb and Mont Blanc were on the rise. "They're two of the more successful beverages that have gone viral in different ways," Bicknell stated. He added that Australian coffee culture is a big influence in Indonesia.

La Trobe Coffee & Brunch is a Melbourne-inspired cafe in Jakarta that sells a variation on the Tiger Bomb named Tiger Coffee. " His sister and co-owner Catherine Isabel said cafes doing their own versions of popular beverages could only be a good thing for the people who invented them.

Farchan Noor Rachman, the founder of Melbourne-inspired Yogyakarta coffee shop Wombats Coffee who used to live in Australia, named his version of the Tiger Bomb Melbourne Finest after approaching Caleb Cha for permission.

"We respect the creator," Rachman said. Melbourne Finest is the most popular drink at Wombats Coffee. Sarah Hook, an intellectual property law expert at the University of Technology Sydney, said in Australia recipes cannot be patented unless they are inventive.

"It is very unlikely in the food industry, unless you are experimenting with some very unknown chemicals and things like that, you would be able to patent a recipe for a cup of coffee, or a latte," she said. A product name can be protected by registering it as a trademark according to Hook.

Trademark applications can be lodged online and take at least seven months to process according to IP Australia.

Hook noted that trademarking a name does not stop rivals from making the coffee product but prevents them from advertising it under the branded name that has built reputation. Good Measure opened in 2021. The Mont Blanc is a cold-brew coffee served with a thick cap of whipped cream, orange zest and nutmeg.

Good Measure serves about 600 Mont Blanc coffees per day on a weekday and more than 1,000 per day on the weekend according to co-founder Brandon Jo. Abc reported that Jo said the Mont Blanc had taken a life of its own across cafe culture. He decided against registering it as a trademark because the business did not want to be possessive about the drink, recipe or creativity behind it.

Abc reported that several Indonesian cafe owners expressed respect for originators while noting practical limits on legal enforcement across borders. Hook explained that Australian courts have limited reach in other jurisdictions due to territoriality in trademark law.