[EXPLAINED] ZUS Coffee Boycott, Rewriting Origin Story, and Gaslighting Its Customers

Malaysian coffee chain ZUS Coffee has been at the centre of several questionable incidents such as when earlier this year, a customer was served a mouldy sausage roll, which they attributed to a malfunctioned chiller.

Last year, they came out with a passive-aggressive response to a customer’s complaint of being shortchanged by 5 cents, calling it a “mere 5 cents”. They even received flak for releasing CCTV footage of their customer which exposed the man’s identity.

Now, the company appears to be hilariously trying to spin the inspiration behind their coffee after customers threaten to boycott their associations with the Greek god, but it’s not working…

ZUS Coffee is a local brand which claims that it has sold 8.8 million cups so far since launching its first outlet in 2019. The brand’s logo depicts a bearded man in white against a circle of deep blue with a long beard and moustache who is wearing a laurel wreath, a symbol usually used in Greek mythology.

In case you didn’t know, Zeus is known as the King of Gods and the god of the sky, lightning, thunder, law, and order in ancient Greek religion.

White and blue are the colours of the Greek flag, and the same colours are usually painted on their island houses. All these similarities and the pronunciation of the name Zus being similar to Zeus would automatically lead one to assume that the latter is the inspiration for the brand’s image.

Damage Control

However, it now seems as if the company is trying to do some damage control after some Malaysians wanted to boycott the brand due to Zeus being a pagan god.

The issue gained traction again after Berita Malaysia, shared a post by Facebook user Amirul Hakimin ZH, saying that Muslims should not patronise an outlet which promotes other gods.

The post also confusingly has a buy 1 free 1 offer for Zus Coffee with a link to Shopee that Zus has addressed is a fake link.

“Muslims should have high sensitivity in the issue of religion. Supporting the existence of a god besides Allah is polytheism, even though it is just a brand.” They elaborated that ZUS Coffee was not owned by Muslims and hoped that JAKIM would revise the conditions of obtaining a Halal certificate.

They also rejected the following brand story given by Venon Tian Zhenhui, Zus' Chief Operating Officer, in an interview with Sin Chew Daily. He said that its name was a portmanteau of the words ZEAL and US, which he said showed "the brand's pursuit of excellent coffee".

In addition, Venon said that the portrait of the elderly man is actually an Ethiopian shepherd Kaldi who is believed to be the first to discover the effects of coffee beans, according to an Ethiopian legend. The story goes that Kaldi discovered coffee after he noticed his goats became energetic after eating berries from a certain tree.

He also emphasised that ZUS Coffee is halal-certified and hoped that Malaysians could be proud of their local brands.

The proof is in the pudding (coffee)

Facebook user Amirul Hakimin shared there are two since-deleted images which ZUS Coffee may not want its customers to see. In an Instagram post on ZUS’ page on 22 November 2019, the caption read, “As the name of ZUS is derived from the word ZEUS, we deliver premium coffee with powerful and speedy execution in Malaysia.

We aim to grow as fast as lightning, to make our existence increase the coffee quality within the community.”

Next, in an Instagram post on 20 April 2020 by Pineapple Studio which creates professional brand images for companies, they shared that ZUS Coffee is “derived from the name Zeus”. The image was accompanied by photos of Greece and a statue of Zeus. The post has since been deleted.

We think that the explanation from ZUS is SUS.

Image credit: Reddit, Amirul Hakimin ZH/Facebook, ZUS Coffee/Facebook