When Coffee Met Chocolate: The Story Of Savorworks

There is no dearth of cafés serving specialty coffee in the city. In some places, however, visitors have more to cherish than just what is in the cup. They are made privy to the journey of coffee, from its source to the manufacturing process, to the people whose labour enables the perfect brew. In Delhi's Greater Kailash II, Savorworks has emerged as one such space. Part café, part roastery, part bean-to-bar chocolate factory, it is built around the idea that the journey behind food deserves as much attention as the food itself. That journey is incomplete without the founders, whose passionate love for coffee and chocolate render Savorworks its distinctive character.

Two Different Beginnings

Before co-founding Savorworks in 2020, Baninder Singh spent two years learning the science and craft of coffee. Alongside independent research, he earned Specialty Coffee Association certifications in roasting, sensory evaluation, and brewing, trained in Kuala Lumpur, and completed a coffee internship in Bangkok. In other words, he has studied coffee to a tee. However, despite his technical education, he says his biggest lessons came on-field, in the  coffee plantations.

"You can learn about coffee in a lab, a roastery, or a café," he says, "but plantations have a way of dismantling assumptions."

Standing on farms changed the way he understood coffee. Climate change had made harvests increasingly unpredictable, but what stood out most was the role of farmers themselves. "They do far more than cultivate coffee," Singh says. "They are educators, stewards of the land, and custodians of communal knowledge passed across generations."

That understanding is exactly what guides his work as a roaster now. Rather than treating roasting as merely a process of transforming coffee, Singh sees it as revealing what already exists within each bean. Every decision, whether adjusting airflow, temperature, or roast time, is intended to preserve the character of origin while bringing forward its best qualities. As he puts it, it is both intervention and restraint, a balance rather than a formula.

Across the room, Paweena Withyasathien Kochar’s approach to crafting flavours comes from a completely different discipline.

Trained as an interior architect in Bangkok before studying pastry in Mumbai, advanced chocolate-making in Switzerland, and bean-to-bar chocolate-making in Chennai, Kochar brings design training into her chocolate-making.

"Architecture and chocolate follow the same blueprint for me," she says. "I approach every chocolate the way I approach a space, with research, planning, design, and careful layering."

For her, chocolate is not simply something to eat but something to experience. Texture, aroma, and finish are carefully designed so that the palate experience mirrors the emotional response she hopes to evoke.

Learning To Read A Place

For both founders, one thing was non-negotiable, flavour begins with place. 

Singh believes Indian coffee is ready to define itself on its own terms. While specialty coffee in India often borrows the language of Western coffee culture, he argues that the country's own growing conditions, shade-grown forests, monsoon-influenced cultivation, regional processing methods, and farming communities deserve to become the benchmarks by which Indian coffee is understood. "India can build its own coffee universe," he says, though he believes developing that expertise will take time.

His relationship with growers reflects that philosophy. Speaking about Yercaud in Tamil Nadu, from where Savorworks sources much of its coffee, for Singh, the destination is memorable not simply because of the cup it produces, but because of its farming communities, local knowledge, and the rhythms of life that shape every harvest.

Kochar's understanding of the place is equally personal.

Having lived between Thailand and India, she speaks of learning to appreciate how climate, ingredients, and culture shape taste rather than searching for a single culinary identity. Today, she creates chocolate using Indian-grown cacao while drawing on experiences gathered across both countries.

When asked which destination most shaped her palate, she returns to her childhood home on Bangkok's Charoenkrung Road. Surrounded by southern Chinese, Cantonese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Italian, and American food, she grew up viewing unfamiliar flavours as windows into different cultures. "New flavours became invitations, not threats," she says, an openness that continues to influence the way she develops chocolate today.

Building More Than A Café

The overlap between these two philosophies helps explain why Savorworks extends beyond the conventional café model.

The founders envisioned it as a place where coffee, chocolate, food, design, and hospitality could exist under one roof rather than in separate spaces. Visitors are able to watch chocolate being made, interact with the production team, attend workshops, and move between the café and factory in a way that removes the barrier between making and serving.

That openness is deliberate. Instead of presenting authenticity as a performance, Savorworks invites guests into the process itself. Production staff are trained in hospitality, workshops encourage conversation, and even the chocolate kitchen is visible from the café. As the founders describe it, the aim is to "warm the factory into a café."

The same philosophy extends to how coffee and chocolate are evaluated. Singh cautions against confusing rarity with quality, arguing that experimental fermentations and microlots have value but should not overshadow the fundamentals of good farming, ethical sourcing, and consistent flavour. Long-term excellence depends less on novelty than on strong relationships between growers, processors, and roasters.

The Destination Is The Experience

Long before guests taste their coffee or chocolate, Savorworks hopes they notice something else.

"We want the mood to lift the moment a guest walks in," the founders explain. Aroma comes first, followed by curiosity, conversation, and exploration. Every element, from scent and sound to the visibility of the production spaces, is intended to guide visitors through that experience before the first sip.

The measure of success has little to do with photographs or social media. Success comes when someone remembers the taste, and how the place made them feel. That idea perhaps best captures what Savorworks is trying to become. It reflects a broader shift in food travel, where cafés are no longer just stops between destinations but destinations in themselves, places that encourage travellers to leave with a deeper understanding of flavour than they had when they walked in.

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