Lu Yan

Café owner Liu Houjun gained a little online fame withhis unique coffee brewingbravura. Formerly thedirector of a listed company, the coffee lover, in his 50s,decided to quit his joband open a coffee shop to develop innovative blends.

“Different regions in the world allhave their own ways of making a cupof coffee with local characteristics. Ifigured maybe we, as Chinese, couldalso invent our own unique coffeeextraction method,” Liu said. Andinvent he did. After slowly addingwater to the ground coffee powder,he puts the container into a pressurecooker filled with water and boils itextensively to complete the extraction.

He explained that this processleaves the coffee with a smoother and lighter taste, much to the palate ofmany customers, contributing to the shop’s 70 percent returning customer rate. Apart from his special coffee-brewing technique, Liu has fashioned a range of innovative coffee products, like espresso made with the help ofyogurt and rice wine.

“I hope more of these Chinese-style coffee varieties can reap some worldwide recognition,” Liu said.

A Cool Sip

According to YiMagazine, afinancial media outlet in China,Shanghai currently has about 7,000coffee shops, excluding coffeeservices in convenience stores andfast-food restaurants, ranking firstnationwide—or even worldwide. Thenumber of coffee hangouts per 10,000 people in Shanghai is 2.85, similar tothat in London, the UK, New York, the U.S., and Tokyo, Japan.

Major chains like Starbucks and Costa Coffee account for 35 percent of total coffeehouses in Shanghai, the report added. Luckin Coffee, one of China’s largest coffee chains established in 2017, managed to quickly expand by weaving some marketing magic combining expedient delivery service and discounts.

“Many people believe it was Luckin that showed Chinese customers who had been less familiar with coffee the ropes, lifting the entire market toits next level,” said Zhang Mingzhu, General Manager of Mellower Coffee, a Chinese specialty coffee company.

To attract more customers, many café proprietors are seeking stateof-the-art suggestions to give their place that little extra pizzazz. Coffee is mixed with ingredients that are more commonly spotted sitting next to a traditional Chinese meal, like soybean milk, tangerine peel, or even Moutai, a prominent brand of distilled Chinese liquor. Among the innovations, latte with sweet-scented osmanthus, the aromatic flower that is native to China and prized for its intoxicating, apricot-like scent, proved most popular, with more than 60,000 searches on Dianping.com, a Chinese restaurant review site, in 2021 alone. The search term “Chinese-style coffee” was entered over 280,000 times.

According to another Dianping.comreport released in December 2021, specialty coffee, often referred to as quality coffee, is gaining increasing popularity among customers in Shanghai. The term refers to coffee that has scored over 80 points on a 100-point scale by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

The group aged between 20 and 40 is the main consumers of this coffee type in Shanghai, with women accounting for 60 percent. Compared with 2019, the proportion of student consumers in the past year has increased by nearly 2.4 times. They usually opt for a boutique coffee shop to study, socialize, or take a break. People over the age of 50, too, have become more curious about and fond of specialty coffee. Compared with 2020, this group’s orders have increased by nearly 143 percent.

“The quality of coffee beans is not the only customer focus; the ways of brewing and extraction, as well asthe uniqueness and creative designsof coffee shops, all play a vital part,”said Zhang Xueqiang, chairman of the Coffee Professional Committee of the Shanghai Food Industry Association,adding that Shanghai specialtycoffee is entering a golden age ofdevelopment.

Shanghai-based entrepreneur WuYue said that in the past, he wouldinvite potential business partners toa restaurant to talk shop; they mighteven go out for some drinks after. “But today, I usually take my prospectivebusiness partner to a coffee or teashop, as it is healthier and moreefficient. I’ll take a date there as well,” 28-year-old Wu said.

Ample Supply

Many coffee shops in Shanghaiflourish on an ample supply of coffee beans from Yunnan Province. Onesuch example is Mellower Coffee,established in 2011 in Kunming,capital of Yunnan, and nowheadquartered in Shanghai, withchain stores in other parts of China, as well as in Singapore and the Republic of Korea. Yunnan is the largest coffeegrowing province in China and,for years, the province’s yield hasaccounted for more than 98 percentof the country’s total. According tothe Yunnan provincial department of agriculture and rural affairs, 131,000tons of coffee beans were produced in the province in 2020.

Pu’er City is one of MellowerCoffee’s main sources of coffee beansaside from other places in majorcoffee producing regions in theworld like Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombiaand Guatemala. The city’s coffeeplantation area, output and valueranked No.1 in the nation in 2021. And it’s also a famous tea-growing area.

Yunnan’s coffee history datesback to the 1950s, when scientistsbegan their research on plantingthere. The year 1988 was the startingpoint for Yunnan coffee to makeits mark beyond China, when thelocal government launched a coffeeassistance project, assisted by theUnited Nations Development Program and the World Bank. Swiss food andbeverage giant Nestlé introduced new bean varieties and smart productiontechnologies to Pu’er, and otherplaces, transforming Yunnan intoa global golden belt for its coffeecultivation.

Coffee grows in semi-tropicalclimate, with an average temperature between 20 and 27 degrees Celsiusand abundant rainfall, making Pu’erthe perfect candidate.

However, in the past, Yunnancoffee was considered a relativelymediocre variety as its quality highly fluctuated due to inexperiencedproduction, unexpected bad weather occurrences and insect plagues,according to Hua Runmei, a coffeeentrepreneur in Pu’er.

The incentive to improve its quality was further dampened by a price drop. “With the development of the globalcoffee market, mechanization andlarge-scale production and processing in Brazil, Vietnam and other countries, the price of traditional commercialcoffee beans has gradually fallen,making it less profitable for farmers,” she said.

Hua can recall her grandfatherand parents growing coffee beansfor a living ever since she was little. “Though they were cultivating it,farmers of their generations neveractually tried the coffee, let alonestudy it and see how to improvethe taste, which is vital in marketcompetition,” Hua said. She addedthat the younger generation todaycan open up more possibilities forcoffee plantation by transformingit, developing specialty varietiesand adopting digital technologythroughout the entire process,rendering product quality high and unwavering.

Hua is currently preparing tolaunch her own brand, creatingmore coffee-related products andcontributing her share to makingquality Pu’er coffee known across the globe.