Michael Marvy Jonathan and the price of getting closer

A cup of boba can be inexpensive until it has to travel. Add the delivery charge, the service charge and the other small demands on a customer’s wallet, and the drink begins to acquire the financial personality of a much larger purchase. Michael Marvy Jonathan had built a business around accessible treats. Then the journey to the customer started getting in the way.

By March 2023, his answer had wheels. Xi Bo Bikes put drinks on mobile carts with electric bicycles, giving local partners a way to meet buyers without taking on a conventional shop. It was an appealingly literal response to a commercial problem: if the customer was reluctant to come to the counter, the counter could acquire a bicycle.

That decision offers a useful entrance to Jonathan’s working life. Known professionally as Marvy Jonathan, he is a co-founder of MBV, the Indonesian business associated with chocolate drinks, boba, snacks and ice cream. Across those ventures, he repeatedly returns to the distance between an attractive idea and someone actually buying it. Sometimes that distance is measured in rupiah. Sometimes it is a lease. Sometimes it is a few streets.

Before the bicycle, a very large meatball

One early glimpse of Jonathan’s food career comes in a bowl large enough to require company. In May 2019, Bakso Kemon offered a one-kilogram meatball shaped like a tumpeng, the familiar Indonesian celebratory mound. Called Bakso Gunung, it cost Rp230,000 and was intended for ten people. A solitary lunch would have required considerable commitment.

Jonathan was identified as one of Bakso Kemon’s founders. The business had opened in August 2017 and offered twelve meatball varieties. The giant version required an order at least a day ahead; its fillings included rendang or spicy meat trimmings. This was a recognisable food given a reason to become an occasion.

A shared dish changes the occasion before anybody lifts a spoon. There are people to gather, a portion to negotiate and a reason to remember the order. At that scale, the product supplies its own conversation.

The bowl also introduces a recurring feature of his commercial world. A customer needs to understand the proposition quickly. A mountain of meatballs does rather well on that test. Behind the joke-sized portion is a serious product decision: give a familiar purchase enough character that people have something to discuss before, during and after eating it.

Chocolate, then a partnership over tea

Co Choc brought a different sort of invitation. The chocolate-drink brand launched in Bandung on 28 March 2018. By July 2019, Jonathan was explaining its combination of distinctive products, competitive prices and a straightforward partnership arrangement at a Jakarta franchise exhibition. His pitch concerned both the person holding the cup and the person considering the counter.

Later that year, MBV joined Kulo Group around Xi Bo Ba. At the September 2019 launch in Menteng, Jakarta, Jonathan talked about making boba affordable while keeping the taste competitive. The name drew on the Mandarin expression xi yue, meaning joy or happiness. In his explanation, pleasure included the moment of paying.

There is a pleasing modesty to that ambition. The bill belongs to the experience. A product can be charming, fashionable and generously photographed, yet still leave its buyer calculating whether the next visit is worth it. Jonathan’s public case for boba put that calculation inside the proposition from the beginning.

The partnership matters just as much as the tea. MBV and Kulo brought existing food businesses and outlet relationships to the collaboration. Expansion therefore involved people prepared to operate locations, alongside a drink customers might order. A menu can travel on a poster. A functioning outlet needs someone to open the doors.

The second customer is behind the counter

In March 2020, MBV and Kulo were preparing Xi Ji Street Snack, extending their collaboration into ready-to-eat chicken snacks. The move broadened the menu beyond drinks. It also kept the partners working with an approachable product category: something that could fit between larger meals rather than requiring a special occasion.

By October 2020, Jonathan described a Xi Ji network of seventy outlets across Greater Jakarta and cities including Bandung, Surabaya and Jambi. The ambition was roughly 250. Those numbers describe different things: one was the operating network he reported, the other an expansion goal. The gap between them was occupied by decisions individual partners still had to make.

At a new-menu launch, he connected renewed customer interest with the confidence of those partners. More appealing, accessible products could give potential operators a reason to proceed. In that account, menu development served two audiences at once. The diner considered a snack. The operator considered whether the snack could support a business.

September 2020 also brought Mo Tahu Aja!, a fried-tofu cart concept with Kulo. Jonathan emphasised keeping the initial investment small. Support included training, launch promotion and connections to delivery platforms. The humble cart had a practical attraction: it gave prospective operators a format with fewer physical demands than a full restaurant. Tofu was carrying rather a lot of business thinking.

A counter that could change its address

With Xi Bo Bikes in 2023, mobility became part of the design itself. Jonathan described customers choosing nearby drinks and reacting to the total cost of ordering, even when the product carried a promotion. A discount on the cup could accomplish only so much if additional charges arrived behind it.

The mobile format let partners operate without renting or buying a store. At the March IFBC exhibition, the advertised Rp35 million package included an electric bicycle, a cart and equipment. That was an event-era offer, rather than a price to carry forward indefinitely. The important physical change was straightforward: a selling point could move.

Consider the difference between choosing a flavour and choosing a route. One asks what customers might enjoy. The other asks where they will be, and how much inconvenience they will accept. Jonathan’s bicycle experiment put the second question in plain sight. A carefully developed recipe has limited influence over a customer who has already decided to buy whatever is nearby.

Ice cream comes with a location question

Xiyue added another cheerful product to the picture in 2023. At its May launch in Jakarta, Jonathan described wanting an ice cream business that could appeal across age groups. Cotton candy and caramel popcorn supplied some of the menu’s more theatrical touches. The launch pricing began at Rp8,000 a cup.

At the June IFBC exhibition in Bandung, Vanessa Rae Putri, identified as Xiyue’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, described a partnership package combining a booth, equipment, ingredients and marketing support. Jonathan, identified as CEO and co-founder, addressed the less decorative question of how long an operator might take to recover an investment.

His answer depended on the location and the crowds. Promotional payback estimates deserve their date and their conditions; they are no substitute for an individual shop’s accounts. The useful part of his answer was its geography. Even a product designed to please many people still has to find enough of them at a particular counter.

The meal beyond the queue

Jonathan’s own eating habits add a small complication to this pursuit of popularity. In his June 2023 interview, he described travelling with his wife and looking for places outside the obvious recommendations. Before a trip, he consulted local reviews or asked people where to eat. In Singapore, he said, he would look beyond the drink everybody else felt obliged to try.

That curiosity gives the commercial story a human scale. Someone who works on recognisable brands can still spend a holiday looking around the corner from the queue. It is easy to see the attraction: another neighbourhood, another flavour, a meal that has not already been chosen by everybody else’s itinerary.

His LinkedIn introduction offers the more public version of the same appetite: “Making the world a tastier place with MBVentura.” He lists business studies at Monash University, including accounting and business risk management. The combination suits the questions running through his food ventures: what might people enjoy, and what has to work around it?

“Making the world a tastier place with MBVentura.”Marvy Jonathan · LinkedIn introduction

A little Melbourne, with room to stay

By 2026, Jonathan and Vanessa Rae were also talking about Gould Coffee & Eatery. The couple drew on their time living in Melbourne to shape a café experience in Jakarta. Coffee, food and the room itself belonged together. Here, getting closer to a customer meant giving that customer somewhere to remain.

Gould expanded its space in Kuningan, South Jakarta, around its first anniversary in early 2026. The owners described an audience that uses cafés for work, conversation and time outside home or office. A larger, comfortable room answers a different demand from a mobile drinks cart. Both begin by taking the customer’s circumstances seriously.

In May, their Melbourne memories became particularly tangible: gyudon, meat pies, ricotta hotcakes and the jam doughnuts associated with Queen Victoria Market. These were foods attached to their own experience of the city. Asked about bringing more of that experience into the menu, Jonathan said, “Masih banyak banget yang pengen kita bawa” - there is still so much they want to bring.

The doughnut makes a fitting place to pause. After the partnership packages, exhibition booths and mobile counters, there is a remembered food someone wants to share. Jonathan’s career moves between those scales: the machinery required to sell something repeatedly, and the ordinary pleasure that makes the machinery worth switching on tomorrow.