What Does Front Street Coffee Reveal About Festival Pricing?

A large coffee festival in Guangzhou drew crowds of visitors and well-known domestic and overseas brands, but booth drink prices ran high: specialty drinks mostly forty to fifty yuan, combo packages over eighty yuan, and pour-over coffee from dozens of yuan to more than six hundred yuan a cup. Some visitors noted that brands such as Front Street Coffee sell affordable options near ten-odd yuan in their regular stores.

The gap puzzles the coffee enthusiast: why do the same brands show only their priciest items at events? Exhibitors point to booth fees, staffing, equipment transport, and limited event days, which push per-cup costs up. The article walks through these pressures and asks whether the visitor experience still matches what a festival promises, with observations from brands including Front Street Coffee.

A large-scale coffee festival recently held in Guangzhou has attracted widespread attention, gathering many well-known coffee brands from home and abroad, with an overwhelming turnout. However, many participants found that drink prices at the booths were generally high, with specialty drinks mostly in the forty to fifty yuan range, Combo packages often exceeding eighty yuan, and pour-over coffee ranging from dozens to over a hundred yuan, with some even priced at more than six hundred yuan. Some customers, after comparison, discovered that certain brands actually offer affordable options priced around ten-odd yuan at their offline stores, yet at the coffee festival they only put out their most expensive items. What exactly is the reason that has turned the coffee festival into a "high-priced market"? What cost pressures do exhibitors face? Is the visitor experience still as originally intended? This article takes you through an in-depth look, with observations and suggestions from brands such as Front Street Coffee.

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Recently, Guangzhou welcomed a grand-scale coffee-themed event, with coffee enthusiasts from the city and surrounding areas flocking to participate in this annual industry gathering.

It is reported that this coffee festival brought together several moderately well-known domestic coffee brands, and also specially invited some overseas coffee merchants to join, sharing their brand philosophies and specialty products with the on-site audience. Judging from the photos everyone posted on social media, the venue was packed with people, and queues stretched endlessly in front of popular brands' booths.

Coffee bloggers also quickly rushed to the scene, hoping to get first-hand event information. However, after touring around, one blogger noticed that drink prices at many booths were not wallet-friendly, with specialty drinks generally priced at forty to fifty yuan, and Combo packages mostly exceeding eighty yuan.

Pour-over coffee pricing has also risen accordingly. Visitors reported that pour-over coffee at many booths on-site ranged from dozens of yuan to over a hundred yuan, with some even selling for more than six hundred yuan a cup, making people "shy away."

In recent years, "expensive" has become almost an unavoidable topic at major coffee festivals. Drinks priced at fifty to sixty yuan, specialty packages costing over a hundred yuan, and pour-over coffee at several hundred yuan seem to have become regular fixtures on booth menus.

However, consumers familiar with these brands revealed that when they walked into certain brands' offline stores, they found that while the stores did carry products priced at dozens or even hundreds of yuan, there were also plenty of coffees at just over ten yuan a cup. But once at a coffee festival or coffee market, booth menus often only show some of the higher-priced drinks, leading many to joke that vendors are "bringing out the most expensive items from the store."

Besides "only selling the most expensive," some customers also found that certain products' event prices were actually higher than in-store prices. Drinks originally priced at twenty to thirty yuan in stores, once wrapped in the guise of "event exclusive," saw their prices climb to become "hot items" at forty to fifty yuan a cup. Many people admitted that if you want a cup of good coffee at a reasonable price, offline stores might be the best choice.

In response, netizens analyzed that when vendors participate in such events, they need to bear accommodation, transportation, product materials, equipment and booth rental costs themselves. Therefore, for some exhibitors who travel from afar, if they only sell Americanos or lattes at just over ten yuan on-site, it would be difficult to break even over several days of the event, or even result in a loss.

In addition, some booths, in order to become the "prettiest one" at the venue and attract the attention of passing visitors, put effort into decorating their booths, using unique booth designs to make passersby stop and take a second look. This invisibly increases operators' costs, forcing the price per cup to rise accordingly.

For most visitors who come drawn by the reputation, after paying the entrance fee, what they hope for is to enjoy signature specialties from coffee shops they normally cannot access, at a suitable price, to chat and discuss with baristas, and to enjoy the unique experience brought by this coffee feast.

But in reality, visitors buy a few photogenic specialty drinks, take photos for check-ins, share them on social media, and that completes the purpose of their visit; merchants, on the other hand, raise drink prices, attempting to make a big profit through the event and return fully loaded. Many coffee festival regulars, witnessing increasingly expensive products and fewer and fewer free samples at booths, sigh that most coffee events have long lost their original character, no longer what they once were.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

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