Why an Arabica Coffee Store Named a Latte After Vancouver

%Arabica launched a winter limited-edition Vancouver Latte on December 14, made with Canadian maple syrup and priced at 46 yuan, with themed setups in six cities. The name drew teasing from Chinese netizens in Canada because the brand has no branch in Vancouver. Reviewers described the drink as close to a sweetened hot latte.

The release continues a naming pattern the brand has used before, following products named for Spanish Latte and Kyoto Latte. The city-based naming has caused confusion about where arabica coffee from the brand is actually sold, since the labels reference places that are not store locations. The episode shows how product naming tied to real cities can misfire when the association is loose.

Coffee brand %Arabica recently launched a winter limited-edition new product, "Vancouver Latte," featuring Canadian maple syrup, priced at 46 yuan, and creating themed stores in six cities nationwide. However, this coffee named after Vancouver has sparked collective teasing from local Chinese netizens because the brand has no branches in Vancouver. The new product is said to have little actual flavor connection to Vancouver, more like a sweetened version of a hot latte. This article reviews the new product information, naming logic, and netizen reactions, and looks back at Arabica's past strategy of naming products after cities, providing reference for coffee enthusiasts.

Recently, the official account of coffee brand %Arabica posted a tweet stating that on December 14, a winter limited-edition coffee, "Vancouver Latte," will be launched in stores nationwide. The brand also introduced themed stores in six cities across the country, where completing designated tasks earns limited-edition fridge magnets.

Image source: Arabicacoffee

Similar in composition to its popular products Spanish Latte and Kyoto Latte, this new product named after the North American city Vancouver is actually a latte coffee with added maple syrup specially made by Arabica, said to be extracted from natural maple sap, giving the coffee a light maple sweetness. As for the price, it naturally continues Arabica's consistent style, with a single cup priced at 46 RMB.

In the tweet posted by the official account, Arabica described the romantic scene of "fallen leaves not swept" in the streets and alleys, where milk coffee with maple syrup gently wraps each maple leaf like the dawn mist in Vancouver. Now, everyone should understand why Arabica in various places was so frequently creating backgrounds of "fallen leaves all over the ground but not swept" some time ago.

It was expected that the news of the new product launch would excite % fans and encourage them to try it eagerly, but unexpectedly, few people posted about the coffee; instead, a group of Chinese netizens with Canadian IPs gathered in the comments section to tease Arabica and the name of this new product.

Since Arabica's Vancouver Latte happens to be directly named after the Canadian port city, big data naturally "prioritized" pushing this note to local Chinese, not knowing that Arabica has not opened any branches in Vancouver, and currently only has 2 in Toronto in all of Canada. That is to say, you can't buy "Vancouver Latte" in Vancouver; to drink it, you have to go to other cities with Arabica branches, which is like the three major "misconceptions" in Chinese cuisine: Hainan has no Hainanese chicken rice, Chongqing has no Chongqing chicken pot, and Lanzhou has no Lanzhou beef noodles.

Before opening the note, everyone was happily thinking that the internet-famous brand Percent would be opening a store in Vancouver, but after reading the note, they realized it was just a "pure coincidence," and immediately switched to a cursing mode.

"A blatant insult to Greater Vancouver," "We in Vancouver can't even drink our own latte," "When can Vancouverites drink Vancouver Latte?" "Did you consider Vancouver's feelings when naming this coffee?" "Vancouver doesn't have Arabica, but the world can drink Arabica's Vancouver Latte"... I believe you can feel the speechlessness of Vancouver netizens through the screen.

Looking back at %Arabica's past two popular items, Spanish Latte and Kyoto Latte, they are also directly named after countries and cities, with corresponding drinking scene descriptions added during promotion, but regardless of the coffee's ingredients or flavor, they have little connection to the region. It is not hard to see that this "Vancouver Latte" is the same.

As mentioned earlier, Arabica officially described this "Vancouver Latte" in the promotional copy as "the sweetness of the Maple Leaf Country," so some people think that since it's a maple element, wouldn't it be more appropriate to rename this coffee "Canada Latte"? As for whether the coffee has a "Vancouver flavor," it's up to individual interpretation. Many netizens who have already tried the new product say it's just a sweetened version of a hot latte, without a trace of "Vancouver" feeling, anyway, it's "a flavor completely unrelated to Vancouver."

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