Within this past year we’ve been riddled with coffee news. Starbucks opened their infamous Shanghai Starbucks Roastery in December, announced plans to double stores to 6,000 outlets by 2022, and began offering delivery last month. Luckin Coffee, the latest in tech unicorn startup, opened up 500+ stores within six months and threatened to sue Starbucks. McDonald’s jumped on the delivery bandwagon and Canada’s token donuts and coffee shop Tim Horton’s announced they were entering China and will open 1,500 outlets over the next 10 years. Oh and let’s not forget Coca Cola bought Costa Coffee for a whopping USD 5.1 billion dollars.
China’s coffee market is looking to grow from RMB 60 billion to RMB 79 billion by 2022 and trends from America and Europe find its way to Shanghai in a heartbeat. Want a coffee cocktail? No problem, head to Bitter. Craving coffee tonic? Check out Seesaw Coffee. (Love the interior design) Want nitro coffee? Make your way to Peet’s Coffee or if you really want something interesting, swing by Griffin Coffee for their coke and espresso mix. Options galore in a city where there’s an estimated 6,500 coffee shops.
It’s also not uncommon to see high-end retail brands open their own café. In 2016, we helped Mercedes launch their first lifestyle café, restaurant and bar in Beijing’s Sanlitun. Last year, Chanel’s Coco Café pop-up had people waiting in line for 2+ hours to try a few product samples, receive a free cup of coffee and of course snap a perfectly styled selfie. This bean grinding coffee fuelled market has a lot of big players throwing their cash around, so who’s next?
Maybe we should jump off to Bali and brand a set of coffee shops there! The clues were in the newsletters all along.
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