Why the coffee of India now includes a post office cafe

India Post has opened its first post office cafe inside the Kolkata General Post Office, named Siuli, a Sanskrit word meaning a flower. The shop serves coffee alongside gifts, antiques, stamp albums and Ganges water in Gangotri packaging, with furnishings that include an 1850s parcel sorting table.

Postmaster General Niraj Kumar said the cafe aims to draw young people into post offices and lift the parcel business, as the postal sector faces express delivery competition and a narrowing market. The move follows China Post's own offline cafes and shows how the coffee of India is expanding into new retail formats.

After China Post opened offline cafés, India Post has also taken a cross-industry step. According to The Indian Express, India's first post office café has opened in the General Post Office in Kolkata, the country's third-largest city, named Siuli, meaning "a flower." This "parcel café" not only serves regular coffee but also sells gifts, antiques, and even Ganges water packaged in Gangotri. Most of the furnishings in the store are old furniture nearly two hundred years old, including a parcel sorting table from the 1850s and spears used by postal workers during British India. The Postmaster General said the move is intended to attract young people into post offices and boost the parcel business. Behind this crossover is the postal industry's attempt to adapt in the face of express delivery competition and a narrowing market.

Recently, the Indian media outlet The Indian Express reported that the country's postal department has opened its first coffee shop in Kolkata, India's third-largest city.

In most people's impressions, a post office is simply a place to send parcels or handle financial services. China Post's earlier foray into coffee sparked widespread discussion, with some netizens joking that "they haven't even figured out their main business yet and are already rushing into side ventures," while others asked when the post office would "open a shop right at their doorstep."

Now India Post has also joined the coffee race, showing that the coffee trend has blown all the way to India. This post office café is located inside the Kolkata General Post Office near Dalhousie Square in Kolkata, and is named "Siuli" (derived from Sanskrit, meaning "a flower"). The area where it is located was once part of the British colonial town of Calcutta, where locals were once forbidden to set foot.

Niraj Kumar, Postmaster General of the Kolkata region, said in an interview that the purpose of opening a café inside a parcel delivery facility is to attract young people to the post office and thereby boost the parcel business. Staff member Kumar added that this "parcel café" has also set aside an area selling gifts and antique treasures, with stamp albums, silver ornaments, and more, and even Ganges water packaged in Gangotri on sale.

In India's first post office café, the furniture is mainly old pieces, with wooden furniture and sofa seats in bright colors. Don't underestimate these old furnishings—they are nearly two hundred years old, and each item has its own purpose and story.

A table used for parcel sorting in the 1850s is now one of the decorations of "The Parcel Cafe." It once handled the sorting of letters for various small districts, and now serves both as a display and as a dining table.

Several ancient spears are also mounted on the wall. The story of the spears may be puzzling: during British India, postal workers traveled everywhere delivering parcels while carrying valuables with them, so they were often targeted by criminals, and spears became the self-defense weapons of these British Indian postal workers.

In earlier times, sending a family letter could take months, and that sense of "time passes, but romance never dies" continues to this day. However, profitability remains an unavoidable core issue. With the rapid development of online shopping, more and more express delivery brands have emerged in the postal industry.

In India, some private delivery brands even outperform state-owned ones. Even though state-owned postal outlets are numerous and their networks extensive, the volume of mail received by postal delivery services is still declining. Competition is intensifying across all industries—today one company launches a new product, tomorrow another releases a hit.

To expand the market as much as possible, crossover became an option. China's coffee sector remains hot: earlier, Heytea invested in SEESAW COFFEE; Tianjin Goubuli Group became the sole brand user of Gloria Jean's in China; and China Post also opened offline coffee shops. Coffee no longer appears as something highbrow, but more as an everyday drink akin to "Western soy milk."

If not for the pandemic, would you want to sit for a while in a post office café in this magical country?

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.