Erlin doesn’t flinch. Pererenan is a mess of aggressive first-time drivers, high rents, and low patience. She opened her café here way back when hers was the only building for miles. The streets were empty, just her and the stables. Since then, the area has exploded into a swirl of glossy cafés, boutique shops, and influencers posing on scooters. Most last in Pererenan for two seasons. Erlin has lasted almost ten. Why?
She knows her limits. She knows what she can do and what she won’t. While the rest chase trends, she moves at her own pace, letting the business grow slowly, deliberately.

Step inside Kinoa and you notice straight away: she’s not here to worship the hype. Erlin’s menu is the product of decades of trial, error, and obsessive refinement. Every baked good, every coffee blend, every gluten-free adaptation has been tested, tasted, and perfected by Erlin herself. With the precision of someone trained in chemical engineering, and the stubbornness of someone who won’t serve what she hasn’t mastered, she knows what feeds people and what keeps her grounded.

She chose to share the food that first kept her steady in her twenties, when both of her parents were diagnosed with cancer. What she cooks now is the same food she’s cooked for her family ever since: comforting, rigorous in its ingredients, healthy without being joyless or dogmatic.

Erlin shrugs off any labels people try to put on her and her business. “I’m not a woman in business,” she says. “I’m a businessperson. What matters is focus, consistency, and knowing what you stand for.” She says with a smile and no apology. In her world, what matters is grip. Like a gymnast: soft on the outside, unshakable inside. “You need to hold on when it matters, and let go when it doesn’t.”

Erlin moved to Bali to leave behind a lifestyle that no longer felt sustainable – going to bed at 1am, waking at 5, juggling two young children while keeping businesses alive. That’s why, in the beginning, Kinoa opened only for breakfast and stayed closed on Sundays. “It was the only way I could last,” she says. For years, the café kept that rhythm. Slowly, it grew: extending hours, adding more days. Now, in its ninth year, Kinoa has just begun serving dinner.

For Erlin, that is what sustainability really means: doing something in a way that can endure, not chasing every trend. “Business needs grip. It’s a lonely journey, but it can’t consume your life forever. You can’t keep running without rest, without refilling yourself.” When she turned fifty, she set her boundaries even clearer: one full day each week to step back, to rest, to reset. A reminder that endurance comes not from pushing endlessly, but from knowing when to pause.

And in Bali, that balance is essential. The island is beautiful but turbulent. Bali shakes businesses like a storm shakes a tree: floods, tourist droughts, fads that vanish before the ink on the menu dries. Sustainability here means survival. For Erlin, it’s what lasts.

And that’s what Kinoa feels like – something built to last. Comfort food done with precision and love. Now her son is behind the coffee and her daughter runs her own cake company. You could read that as continuity, as two grown kids deciding her rhythm was worth joining. Sustainability across generations. 

“If you don’t work on what you want, what you don’t want will take over.” Erlin turned that decision into a place. Kinoa endures because she does, precise in its offerings, stubborn in its pace. She may call herself a business person, but you feel her feminine logic served with every plate.