How Do Students Make Coffee Without a Coffee Machine?

With universities under lockdown and off-campus cafés out of reach, Gen Z students have started running dorm cafés. Since most schools ban high-wattage appliances and even kettles, they rely on instant coffee powder, turning out drinks like raw coconut latte and iced orange Americano, with tutorials drawing large audiences on social platforms.

A search for dorm coffee returns over 30,000 posts, covering everything from setting up shop on bunk beds to sharing recipes. The trend also raises a practical concern: selling drinks involves money transactions without a license. For students who want to know how to use an American coffee machine at home, the dorm reality rarely allows it.

As the pandemic drags on with recurrent outbreaks, many universities have imposed lockdowns, cutting off the connection between Gen Z college students and off-campus cafés. Yet this has not dampened their passion for coffee; instead, it has spawned a wave of "dorm café" startups. From instant coffee powder to raw coconut latte and iced orange Americano, these simple yet creative drink-making tutorials have gained massive attention on social platforms. But behind the buzz, the issue of unlicensed business involving monetary transactions has also surfaced. This article will walk you through the ins and outs of this campus coffee craze and remind you of what to watch out for when stockpiling coffee in your dorm.

Once March arrives, legions of college students have to bid farewell to the comfort of home and return to their dormitories, kicking off communal living. For these young people, coffee has become an almost daily necessity. To put it a bit dramatically, today's Gen Z students are just as obsessed with coffee as the post-90s office workers. Add to that the special circumstances of pandemic lockdowns on campus, and more and more Gen Zers are starting to run their own "cafés" in their dorms.

A search for "dorm coffee" on a popular online platform yields over 30,000 related posts. In these posts, some document the entire process of setting up shop from their bunk beds, while others openly share recipes for making dorm coffee — and the engagement is considerable.

With the pandemic rebounding, schools have had to impose campus lockdowns to safeguard the health and safety of all staff and students, which means those on campus temporarily have no access to off-campus cafés. To satisfy their "coffee cravings" during lockdown, students have been racking their brains.

The hardware conditions in dormitories are extremely limited. Most schools prohibit high-wattage appliances — even kettles are banned, rice cookers must be used on the sly, and plugging in a hair dryer trips the circuit breaker. In such an environment, many conventional coffee brewing devices are naturally out of the question.

But this still doesn't stop the birth of the "dorm café." Since coffee machines are off-limits, they turn to instant coffee powder. Being able to enjoy a cup of coffee under such tough conditions is already a tremendous blessing. After all, many people in Shanghai can't even catch a whiff of coffee right now.

Many shared posts detail how to make this simplified "dorm coffee," with some even racking up over 5,000 likes. The most crucial element — the coffee base liquid — is typically made by mixing instant coffee powder with an appropriate amount of hot water.

So what kind of coffee do today's worldly Gen Zers favor? On many "dorm café" menus, hit drinks like raw coconut latte and iced orange Americano appear frequently. With the rise of new-style tea beverages, young people's gateway to coffee has mostly been through innovative coffee drinks, and Luckin's "raw coconut latte" played no small part in this. Fueled further by various online platforms, the direction of coffee drink innovation now leans more toward "fruit" and "ice" — elements that emphasize "freshness" and "refreshment."

These coffee drinks use simple ingredients and have a low barrier to entry, requiring neither much professional skill nor complicated planning. Some posts even show off the day's revenue from the blogger's "dorm café," sharing the joy of their earnings while introducing more people to the flavors of coffee.

Making coffee for yourself is fine, and sharing it with classmates for them to taste is understandable. But once you profit from homemade drinks or engage in monetary transactions, that constitutes unlicensed business operations and is illegal.

The sharing of "dorm café" content does add a touch of fun to life, and making the drinks requires some financial investment. But once money changes hands, unlicensed operation becomes an unavoidable fact.

If you need caffeine to perk up and want to start your day full of energy, consider stockpiling some coffee that can be stored at room temperature and is easy to brew.

Generally speaking, dorm conditions for storing drinks and ingredients are limited, so it's not advisable to buy products from these "dorm cafés."

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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