Shanghai Has 10,000 Coffee Shops: Is the Specialty Coffee Boom Sustainable?

 Over the past decade, coffee consumption in China has grown by 150%, far outpacing the global average.

As of 2024, Shanghai is home to 9,115 coffee shops—more than London, New York, or Tokyo.
Local roasters, specialty chains, and tech-driven retail concepts now form a complete ecosystem.
…

If you search online for how China’s specialty coffee market has evolved in recent years, you’ll see plenty of statistics like these. And Shanghai, more than any other city, stands at the center of it all. Whether viewed through the lens of history and culture, or through sheer economic momentum and speed of development, Shanghai has delivered what may be the most convincing report card for specialty coffee in China. These numbers almost justify calling it a global coffee capital—perhaps “one of” them, at least.

But numbers alone are never the full story. To understand their deeper economic meaning, one premise must be made clear: a city is not defined as a coffee capital simply by the number of cafés it has. What truly underpins today’s apparent prosperity is a convergence of factors—digitized consumption powered by the internet, unprecedented speed and convenience, and a young consumer base driven by curiosity and a desire to explore new flavors. Together, these forces have created the current boom.

New coffee brands are emerging and attracting capital at a remarkable pace. Investment pours in. Delivery platforms can bring you a latte in minutes. Cafés iterate their menus rapidly through O2O data feedback. Response times are faster, information is more transparent, and optimization cycles are shorter than ever before.

In many ways, Shanghai represents the most concentrated expression of this integration and optimization. It showcases what a new era of coffee consumption looks like: flavor experiences anchored offline, combined with technology-driven operations and community-building, gradually forming a complete coffee ecosystem.

Yet history suggests that growth rarely escapes a cyclical pattern. As we push forward and obsess over rising metrics, we must also acknowledge the hidden and potential crises lurking behind the data. In truth, I don’t see complete ease or unshakable optimism on the faces of café owners. Yes, Shanghai’s consumption potential remains strong, but with nearly 10,000 cafés—and likely already more than that—the market is inevitably entering a new set of rules. Who defines those rules? And how does one establish a true anchor point amid such overwhelming competition? The struggle to survive is real, and often brutal.

Young consumers today are driven by curiosity. If something tastes novel or looks interesting, they’re willing to pay for it. I say this as someone who has long since lost the sense of awe around coffee festivals. Back in their peak years—around 2017–2018—I could spend an entire day inside a single exhibition hall, unable to leave, because there were simply too many outstanding roasters from around the world worth exploring.

Today, that sense of fulfillment is much harder to find. Not long ago, I came across an interview clip from a coffee festival. One attendee said, “These coffees are great for photos. I drink too many Americanos in daily life—I like these little sweet drinks at festivals.” Honestly, just listen to that. But then again, it perfectly captures the core logic of many coffee festivals today. In that moment, I realized how closely the coffee industry is beginning to mirror—and even overlap with—the developmental path of the internet industry.

As global demand in Europe and the U.S. slows, Shanghai—arguably the flagship of China’s coffee scene—seems to be reshaping itself as an emerging market of its own. Cafés are no longer just selling standard coffee drinks; many now offer espresso-based creations branded as “creative coffee” or “coffee mocktails.” Whether this is genuine innovation or simply the creation of a new consumption track is hard to say. What is clear is that it allows for better margins and aligns perfectly with young consumers’ appetite for novelty.

But is this sustainable? Few seem to care about long-term accumulation or depth. Immediate returns and satisfying present demand appear to be the dominant logic. Is this really the safe path? Is it truly right? Or, more fundamentally—can we continue like this?

I don’t have a definitive answer. Sometimes I wonder what exactly I’m uneasy about. I also struggle to explain why I now feel almost no interest in most new cafés. Perhaps it’s because what I see is a kind of “glossy illusion” built on hollow demand. In the U.S., opening a café can easily take a year. In China, it might take a month. When one café closes, another often opens within weeks. I’ve even found myself awkwardly telling café owners, mid-conversation, “I’ve been to the café that used to be here… and the one before that.”

Even the equipment inside cafés has become a kind of mobile hard asset—second-hand, third-hand machines get recycled from shop to shop. Sometimes all it takes is a new sign, a refreshed interior, and the place reopens as a brand-new café, ready for another run. What I’m seeing may only be a fragment of the bigger picture, but it carries a sense of helplessness. Cafés have become the go-to entrepreneurial choice for many, largely because the barrier to entry is so low.

People rush in fueled by ideals and optimism, yet often you can predict the lifespan of a café from the moment it opens. And still, these cafés continue to appear—again and again. That’s why everything is moving so fast. But when physical businesses begin to operate at internet speed, I don’t feel excitement. I feel a deeper silence.

Recently, a friend vented to me about being crushed by the “delivery wars.” He complained that some roasters are selling beans cheaper than his own green coffee costs, leaving him genuinely confused about how anyone is making money. The market feels collectively absurd. As China’s coffee consumption evolved—from rigidly copying Western models to customizing its own demand—consumer behavior such as going to cafés primarily to take photos rather than drink coffee has been fully validated and embraced.

From a dialectical perspective, compared with Western markets struggling with aging consumers and shrinking demand, Shanghai’s emphasis on community and entertainment feels vibrant and creative. But if the industry caters endlessly to every fragmented consumer desire, what kind of outcome does that lead to?

In the short term, it looks like “user-first.” In essence, however, it reflects a loss of value and a blurring of category identity. Coffee’s core value—appreciating an agricultural product—gets reduced to a convenient vehicle for caffeine and sugar. Over time, consumers stop caring about bean quality altogether, and the industry loses its cultural and qualitative foundation.

The rapid cycle of openings and closures exposes another issue: homogenized competition and innovation turned inward—innovation for the sake of innovation. It becomes the emperor’s new clothes. Novelty spirals into absurdity: chili coffee today, cilantro Americanos tomorrow. These ideas are easy to copy and impossible to defend, offering no lasting brand moat. Competition shifts away from bean quality, roasting skill, or extraction technique, and instead becomes about who can be stranger or louder. The result is stagnation at the level that truly matters.

In the end, trying to satisfy every demand is itself a form of strategic laziness. Excessive pandering causes an industry to lose its sense of self, compete inefficiently, and cultivate consumers with increasingly extreme tastes but little loyalty. A healthy coffee ecosystem should be one in which practitioners and consumers grow together—embracing diversity while continuing to communicate coffee’s core value and cultural depth.