Pu’er Coffee

 This question came up because not long ago, a café-owner friend of mine asked me for advice. He was considering adding a specific coffee bean to his menu specifically for making Piccolo, and wanted to know whether consumers today are interested in Piccolo coffee, and whether many cafés are actually serving it. My response at the time more or less touched on the core issue behind why certain coffee drinks struggle to make it onto café menus. That conversation got me thinking—it perfectly captures the fundamental pain point behind why drinks like Piccolo and Cortado are so rarely seen on menus in China. Before we dive into the deeper market dynamics, it’s worth clarifying what these drinks actually are. Piccolo and Cortado are simply two classic examples I’m using here, but what truly defines them is a shared characteristic: a much smaller cup size than most mainstream milk-based coffees , with a stronger emphasis on flavor clarity and technical execution. A Piccolo typically uses...

  I didn’t originally plan to write about this coffee shop. It just so happened that I had some time today, so I walked in and sat there for a while— about forty minutes in total. When I left, I suddenly realized something: I already knew why it never gets busy. The shop itself was actually very quiet. Not noisy. Not chaotic. The coffee wasn’t bad, and the space was fairly comfortable. If you were just passing by and took a quick look, you’d probably think there was nothing wrong with it. The first ten minutes felt completely ordinary. The barista was doing their own thing. Some people came in to order, and some left almost immediately. Everything sat in that vague middle ground— not good, not bad. At that point, I didn’t feel there was any obvious problem with the place. But slowly, I started to notice one small detail— Almost no one actually sat down. Over the next twenty minutes or so, I wasn’t deliberately counting foot traffic. I was just unconsciously ...

  Everyone Pays for Their Own Perception People who run coffee shops love doing the math. They calculate rent, labor, cup cost, gross profit—everything that can be quantified ends up in their Excel sheet. But what truly drags a shop down is often not those “measurable” numbers. I’ve seen countless shops where the rent isn’t high and labor is well controlled, yet the longer they operate, the tighter and more exhausting things become. Eventually, you realize what really drains them is another kind of invisible cost— Being self-opinionated. Not the arrogant kind, but the more common and subtle one: “I think this is the right way.” 01. Many shops aren’t defeated by the market, but by the owner’s own taste I’ve seen plenty of new shops where the moment you open the menu, you can feel it: The owner is creating “what they like,” not what “customers are willing to pay for.” For example: The owner doesn’t drink sweet drinks, so the menu has almost no sweet options The ow...

 In recent years, a strange phenomenon has become more and more obvious: Two coffee shops on the same street — one keeps raising prices and customers still happily pay, while the other has to keep offering discounts, giveaways, and promotions… yet business remains slow. Most people think the difference lies in “cost” or “how good the coffee tastes.” But the truth is usually this: It’s not about the coffee. It’s about which track you place yourself on. The coffee business has an extremely low barrier to entry. And in low-barrier industries, owners often get pushed into two opposite directions: Either you go up and create value, or you go down and compete on price. The middle ground is the hardest place to survive. 01. Coffee Shops That Can Raise Prices Aren’t Selling Coffee — They’re Selling Irreplaceability If a café can keep raising prices while customers continue to buy, it always shares one trait: People can’t easily replace it with another shop. This irreplace...