What Does Mellow Coffee Meaning Mean in Tea and Drink Names?
Mellow coffee meaning points to a smooth, rounded, low-acid cup with a soft body rather than a sharp or bitter bite. The term describes how a drink feels on the palate: gentle sweetness, balanced flavor, and no harsh edges. In the Nayuki duck shit fragrance milk tea case, tasters used mellow to describe the tea base's rich, sweet, floral character.
The difference between aroma and fragrance in coffee is a related distinction worth noting. Aroma refers to what rises from the brewed liquid, while fragrance is the scent of the dry or ground beans. Nayuki's affiliate, Shenzhen Pindao Catering Management, filed trademark application 60287873 for Nayuki Duck Shit Fragrance in November, now in the application stage.
This October, duck shit fragrance milk tea set off a craze on social media, bringing Chaoshan's Phoenix Dancong into the public eye. After Nayuki's Tea seized the momentum to launch a duck shit fragrance drink, it then applied to register the trademark "Nayuki Duck Shit Fragrance," sparking heated discussion among netizens. Supporters see this as a differentiated brand layout, while opponents question whether a famous regional tea should be monopolized by an enterprise. In fact, tea beverage brands such as Uncle Qiu had long used duck shit fragrance as a regular tea base. Is the binding of a niche ingredient with a commercial brand reasonable? This article walks you through the whole incident and explores the boundary between innovation in the tea beverage industry and trademark protection.
In October, a topic named #HowDeliciousIsDuckShitFragranceMilkTea# climbed onto the trending searches, successfully recommending Guangdong Chaoshan's Phoenix Dancong Duck Shit Fragrance to tea beverage lovers across the country.
Before that, duck shit fragrance had already entered the public eye by virtue of its distinctive aroma and rich, full-bodied taste. Two explanations circulate about the origin of this odd name. First, the soil where the tea trees grow is yellow, and locals call this soil "duck shit soil," so the tea leaves grown from it were called duck shit fragrance. Second, tea farmers, worried that their tea trees would be stolen by others, deliberately gave them an unpleasant name to confuse people. And the force behind duck shit fragrance's current rise to fame is Nayuki's Tea.
In October, Nayuki's Tea launched a new milk tea using duck shit fragrance tea as an ingredient. It tasted mellow and sweet with a natural floral aroma, quickly triggering a consumption craze. On November 2, information from the Tianyancha app showed that Shenzhen Pindao Catering Management Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Nayuki's Tea, submitted a trademark registration application for "Nayuki Duck Shit Fragrance," with registration number 60287873, under the international classification of convenience foods. The trademark is currently still in the application stage. This incident then fueled the topic #NayukiTeaAppliesForDuckShitFragranceTrademark#. However, in sharp contrast to consumers' praise for the product, netizens clearly expressed distaste for this move, believing that duck shit fragrance is a famous local specialty of Chaoshan and should not be forcibly tied to Nayuki's Tea.
It cannot be denied that Nayuki's Tea, as an "internet-famous" brand, comes with its own traffic. Using duck shit fragrance tea base as an entry point for innovation, after tasting success, it hopes to use labeling tactics to make consumers firmly remember the brand. In addition, a unique tea base also helps build product barriers, form a monopoly advantage, and highlight brand differentiation, so Nayuki's move to preemptively register the trademark is not entirely incomprehensible.
Using duck shit fragrance tea to make milk tea is now increasingly common. According to statistics from Yinli Laboratory, it is currently known that quite a few tea beverage brands have set their sights on the "duck shit fragrance" cake and all want a slice of it:
Did you notice? "Duck shit fragrance" shares similarities with the previously viral oil mandarin and wampee—novel names and distinct regional characteristics. According to Tianyancha information, the trademark name applied for by Nayuki's Tea is "Nayuki Duck Shit Fragrance," showing that the brand is trying to closely associate a niche ingredient with itself. Many netizens said bluntly, "This isn't quite appropriate, is it!"
As for whether Nayuki's duck shit fragrance drink is truly innovative, some netizens also questioned it. Some爆料 claimed that they had drunk milk tea with a duck shit fragrance tea base at a local milk tea shop in Chaoshan, and not only was the flavor similar, even the nut crumbles and cream used as garnish were exactly the same. Other netizens pointed out that Uncle Qiu tea beverage shops under Guangzhou Shanqiu Catering Management Co., Ltd. had used duck shit fragrance as a regular tea base since the beginning of their business, and promoted it with the slogan "Floral fragrance and wine fragrance are not as good as duck shit fragrance." Browsing Uncle Qiu's official website, one can find that most of its tea beverage products use tea infusions with local characteristics: Shizhu tea, bud-tip yellow, Wuyi rock tea Shuijingui...
Seeking innovation, exploring new possibilities, and flexibly using and integrating new ingredients can often open up new market space. In today's increasingly fierce competition, registering a trademark for a product can indeed protect the enterprise to a certain extent and shape a unique brand image. But if "everything can be registered as a trademark," it deviates from the meaning of trademarks themselves and instead appears unsightly.
Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
