the straight-line distance with the international coffee chain brand giant starbucks store is no more than 20 meters, but the boutique coffee shop "follow hey" opened in shanghai people’s square for four years, and its business has never been affected by the former. furong stewed coffee, yogurt coffee, alleys milk coffee...there are hundreds of coffees on the menu with a unique "chinese taste". now in shanghai, coffee not only flies into the homes of ordinary people, but also deeply integrates with shanghai style culture and chinese culture, radiating new meaning. according to the report "shanghai 2021 specialty coffee consumption observation" recently released by the coffee professional committee of shanghai food industry association and dianping, the number of specialty coffee shops in shanghai reached 3,244, ranking first in the country, with a cumulative increase of 124% in three years. in this way, "chinese coffee" full of national trend characteristics such as chinese stewed coffee, osmanthus latte, moutai coffee, etc., has also become popular in boutique coffee shops on the streets and alleys. not only "bring it", but also integration and innovation, which also reflects the unique life temperament and humanistic charm of shanghai, an international metropolis.
shanghai specialty coffee is entering the golden period of development
shanghai's profound coffee culture provides a rich commercial soil for coffee shop operations, and the inclusive shanghai style culture also promotes the development of specialty coffee. since 2018, boutique coffee shops in shanghai ushered in a boom in opening stores, with a three-year increase of 124%. the number of new stores opened this year reached 951, a year-on-year increase of 41.5%. the proportion of stock specialty coffee shops has increased from 25.2% in 2019 to 41.5% today. zhang xueqiang, chairman of the coffee professional committee of the municipal food industry association, said that shanghai specialty coffee is entering a golden period of development.
according to the report, the location of shanghai's specialty coffee shops is mainly concentrated in the downtown area. from the perspective of business districts, the huaihai road/south shaanxi road business district is the area where specialty coffee is most concentrated. others include the nanjing west road business district, the hongqiao gubei business district, and the xujiahui business district. ruijin 2nd road is the road with the largest number of specialty coffee shops. 83 specialty coffee shops are distributed along the street, with an average of one every 20 meters.
xu jian, deputy dean of the china institute of urban governance at shanghai jiaotong university, believes that the process of shanghai’s cafes from following, to parallel, to gradually leading, is like a mirror, reflecting the high-quality economic development and the high-quality life of the people. password.
"chinese coffee" has gradually become a new consumer fashion
shanghai's specialty coffee shops have not only increased in number, they have also led to many unique flavor innovations. coffee that incorporates many traditional chinese diet elements such as sweet-scented osmanthus, tangerine peel, fermented wine, etc., is forming a "national trend" in shanghai's specialty coffee consumer market.
the "follow hey" store offers a complete set of "shanghai" coffee series, including shanghai qing coffee, brown sugar qing coffee, shanghai milk coffee and so on. the owner, liu houjun, graduated from nankai university with a major in international economics in the 1990s. he is more than half a hundred years old and “goes to the sea” to study “chinese coffee”. he must use “industrial thinking to make chinese coffee”, such as the lane milk in the “shanghai” series. coffee is regarded as the basic platform for a kind of "chinese coffee". different flavors can be formed by adding fermented rice, red bean paste, tea, rice milk, etc. respectively.
liu houjun has been thinking about what can represent "chinese coffee". he summed up four points: to innovate on the basis of inheritance, to have original technology or machinery, to have localized innovative products, and to achieve a combination of chinese and western styles. conducive to popularization. in the "follow hey" store, the "furong" and "wuji" placed in the "c position" are products that liu houjun feels meet the requirements. these two coffees use the technique of high-temperature water stewing instead of the coffee machine to extract the original liquid and keep it the coffee flavor can make the taste more silky at the same time.
in the coffee shop "nine o nine" on maoming south road, mr. du, the owner of the post-90s generation, developed a moutai coffee. at the bottom is the taste of maotai-flavored liquor. the owner told reporters that he first worked in the alcohol industry, and later joined starbucks and was promoted to the store manager. after leaving the company, he had a whim, hoping to use national wine and coffee to flavor and differentiate his characteristics.
the report shows that compared with 2019, the keyword search volume of "chinese coffee" this year exceeded 280,000 times, an increase of nearly 10 times. among them, sweet-scented osmanthus latte, oolong latte, moutai coffee, brewed latte, and tangerine peel latte became shanghai the top 5 coffee flavors that consumers searched for.
young people are the best "communicators"
in the four years since its opening to welcome guests, "follow hey" has accumulated a number of loyal fans, many of whom are executives from foreign companies. an executive of ford's china electric vehicle division came to shanghai two years ago to do project development. he drank a "tangerine pickled cappuccino" in the store and couldn't forget it. in november of this year, the executive came to shanghai again and came to clock in as soon as the quarantine was over. he said frankly that "i thought about this taste for two years, and i couldn't drink it anywhere else in the world."
in xu jian’s view, whether “chinese coffee” can go from shanghai to the world is essentially to make locals, foreigners, and foreigners living in shanghai feel that they are inseparable from shanghai’s cafes and unique coffee tastes, and they are sincerely convinced. enjoy the shanghai way of life and become a "communicator".
liu houjun believes that if "chinese coffee" wants to go abroad, it is more necessary to catch young people. when this generation of young people punches in and likes "chinese coffee", they will naturally form their own standards of preference, combining the taste of "chinese coffee" with bring out the idea and communicate with the world. the report also shows a gratifying trend. young people aged 20 to 40 have become the main consumer of specialty coffee in shanghai, of which 60% are women, and the student population has increased by 17% year-on-year and 138% compared to 2019. "the number of cafes in shanghai is already the world's largest. in this round of localization innovation, a unique coffee culture and product flavors have been formed. in the future,'chinese coffee' will surely go to the world." liu houjun is full of this. confidence.