Pu’er Coffee

  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...