What does Shanghai's specialty coffee market show?
Shanghai now has 7,494 coffee shops, more than New York, making it the city with the largest coffee shop count worldwide. Even so, Dianping data puts Shanghai's tea beverage stores at 9,056, so tea still outnumbers coffee. The gap matters because it shows how much room remains for specialty coffee to grow in China.
The tea side got there through quality upgrades, collaborations and e-commerce. Brands moved consumers from three-yuan powdered milk tea to the new-style tea drinks led by Heytea, and Chayan Yuese added an ancient-style angle. Specialty coffee, by contrast, still struggles with low consumer awareness of pour-over and single origin brewing, so coffee brands that explain culture and hold quality standards have the clearest path forward.
Shanghai has surpassed New York with 7,494 coffee shops, becoming the city with the most coffee shops in the world, and coffee culture is accelerating its penetration into daily life. However, data from Dianping shows that Shanghai has as many as 9,056 tea beverage shops, even more than coffee shops. From 3-yuan instant milk tea to the new-style tea drinks led by Heytea, and then to Chayan Yuese's ancient-style sentiment, tea beverage brands are deeply cultivating consumers' minds through quality upgrades, cross-industry collaborations, and e-commerce channels. In contrast, the specialty coffee market still remains to be developed, and most consumers have limited awareness of pour-over and specialty coffee. The coffee industry can learn from the successful path of tea beverage brands. Brands such as Front Street Coffee need to promote culture and ensure quality in order to move consumers.
Statistics show that the total number of coffee shops in Shanghai has already surpassed New York in the United States, rising to first place among cities worldwide, which reflects that coffee culture is increasingly integrated into people's daily lives. At the same time, many overseas coffee giants have also rushed to enter the Chinese market, such as Italy's leading coffee companies illy and Lavazza.
However, Shanghai actually has more tea beverage stores than coffee shops. According to data cited by Guangming Online from Dianping, Shanghai already has 9,056 tea beverage shops, while coffee shops number 7,494.
As is well known, Chinese tea culture has a long history, and drinking tea after meals is a daily habit for many elders; while the younger generation prefers drinks with milk added to tea—milk tea. When out and about, almost everyone has a cup of milk tea in hand, and the saying "milk tea sustains life" has even become popular, sparking a heated discussion on Weibo.
This shows how popular tea drinks are in China. It can be said that milk tea has become part of the lifestyle of contemporary young people. Whether in a good mood or a bad one, drinking milk tea has become an ordinary thing.
This scene was hard to imagine ten years ago. At that time, milk tea was mostly made by mixing saccharin and instant powder, and it was cheap, costing only 3 yuan a cup. It was not until the appearance of Heytea that new-style tea drinks gradually entered the public eye and changed people's habit of drinking cheap milk tea.
Although the price of new-style tea drinks is nearly ten times higher than the old 3-yuan cup of milk tea, such as Heytea, their formulas are healthier, made with fresh fruit, freshly brewed tea, and fresh milk, so many consumers are still willing to pay for them.
As China's economy continues to strengthen and people's living standards improve, their willingness to spend on food has also increased, and the tea beverage industry has developed rapidly by riding this wave. It can be said that tea beverage brands happened to seize a good opportunity.
In the early days, the barriers to entry in the tea beverage industry were extremely low, leading to a wide variety of tea beverage brands on the market. But to operate and develop a brand, it is difficult to gain a foothold without its own characteristics.
Take Chayan Yuese as an example. It first became popular thanks to its unique ancient-style positioning. Its product names are ingenious, and its cup shapes and ingredients are also quite creative, attracting a large number of consumers to visit and check in and share on social platforms, thereby reaching a broader customer base, and its fame rose rapidly. Consumers often think of the brand, forming an emotional connection, which in turn increased the repurchase rate.
In addition, well-known tea beverage brands such as Heytea and Naixue's Tea often carry out cross-industry cooperation, for example, jointly launching limited-time drinks with major brands to stimulate the desire to buy. They also sell bottled beverages through e-commerce platforms. These measures not only enhance brand awareness, but also allow consumers to drink their products at home at any time. Under multiple forms of information exposure, these brands naturally integrate into daily consumption and firmly occupy consumers' minds.
It can be seen that these tactics of tea beverage brands also provide a reference for the coffee industry to deeply cultivate the Chinese market in the future. After all, specialty coffee has not yet fully opened up the domestic consumer market. The public's impression of coffee still remains at the instant stage, and their understanding of pour-over coffee and specialty coffee culture is not yet deep enough.
The Chinese coffee market is still a fertile land waiting to be cultivated. To expand the coffee market, it is necessary, like tea beverage brands, to spread one's own brand culture, ensure product quality, and gain insight into consumers' purchasing motivations and consumption patterns, so as to attract consumers to choose one's products. Brands such as Front Street Coffee can learn from the experience of the tea beverage industry in this regard.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
