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Saturnbird is indeed a milestone in the development of
Chinese coffee. It proves that it is possible for coffee to merge into
the Chinese lifestyle, and the way to do so might be out of our
imagination. Since Starbucks, the idea that instant coffee equals
to worse coffee got into people’s mind, and specialty coffee deep-
ened this perception. No one would ever expect that the key to
Coffee in China, from the start the next breakthrough of Chinese coffee is instant.
The success of Saturnbird has taught the Chinese coffee
Coffee consumption in China can trace its history back to industry that in order to expand the current pool of customers, it
Qing Dynasty, which might be a surprise to many. However, it is not enough to teach the market about specialty coffee as it is.
was not until the 1980s that the mass consumer market in China The new generation of Chinese customers has a much more ra-
was finally introduced to coffee, thanks to Maxwell and Nestlé. tional attitude on foreign products and ideas, and they are also
It’s been nearly 4 decades since then, today’s coffee market more rebellious to being lectured unless it’s done cleverly. There-
in China remains small, yet booming. Chinese coffee consumption fore, one way to proceed is to transform coffee to something that
has seen an increase of a spectacular 1023 percent between 2008 they are more familiar with through an agreeable way.
and 2018, making China one of the fastest growing coffee markets
in the world. Nevertheless, coffee consumption was only 9 cups Chinese fad
per person per year, compared to 367 cups in South Korea and
280 cups in Japan. FYI, in the US this number was 329. The past decade has seen a revival of Chinese culture, espe-
The fact that both South Korea and Japan used to be tea cially among Generation Z, which is the generation born roughly
drinking countries has served as a positive indicator of the huge between 1995 and 2010. According to a report published by one of
potential of China. Many analysts believe that though slow, China the Chinese leading search engines, Baidu, the total search volume
will become a leading coffee market. on the term “Guochao (Chinese fad)” achieved a five-fold increase
Nestlé entered China in 1989. Its instant coffee products between 2011 and 2021.
made coffee a reachable energy drink on white collar workers’ In general, Chinese fad represents a craze for products and
desks. Ten years later, Starbucks came as well. By creating its services not only designed and made in China, but also connected
signature “third space”, coffee was able to fulfil its social function, with Chinese culture and tradition. The rise of this trend is in line
and drinking coffee has become a social event. However, the price with the growing cultural confidence of Chinese youth, who grew
tag of Starbucks kept coffee within the circle of well-educated up in an era where China has been rapidly catching up with its inter-
professionals in tier 1 cities. national peers.
That said, the two coffee giants made concrete progress on In the eyes of the younger generation, local producers are no
educating the China market, which helped China ride on the wave longer considered lower quality, but reflection of their Chinese
of specialty coffee with the rest of the world. cultural identity. They turned to domestic brands in many industries
Specialty coffee started to represent a super cool and quirky that once were dominated by foreign giants, such as cosmetics,
lifestyle from the beginning of the 21st century. In cities now mobile phones, and electric vehicles. Furthermore, they want to
known as coffee capitals, such as Melbourne, London, and New display their taste in a loud way.
York, more cafes were claiming to serve specialty grade coffee. Where there’s a need, there’s businesses. Domestic brands
Within a few years, it arrived in China. quickly understood the message and started to demonstrate their
Chinese heritage with bold and eye-catching designs. The leading
Modern attempts of Chinese coffee Chinese sportswear brand Li-Ning is probably the best example. In
2018, Li-Ning released the Taoism-inspired collection “Wu Dao” at
As an increasing number of devoted and passionate people New York Fashion Week. The show went viral in town and online,
joining the specialty coffee industry in China, how to blend coffee and even up to today, some of the pieces are still the target of many
into the Chinese lifestyle has become a major challenge. collectors.
Among the many attempts, one of the most notable is from Such a phenomenon called many time-honoured brands in
Saturnbird. By focusing on a set of carefully designed usage sce- China to rethink their strategy. They realised that to get the attention
nario based on local customers’ habits, Saturnbird’s specialty grade of the young, they themselves would need to be young again. In order
instant coffee took every Chinese social platform, as well as the to carry out such a transformation, many of them redesigned the
market, by storm. Within months, those once alien names of packaging, reworded the slogan, rehired the brand representative,
coffee origins, such as Ethiopia; and coffee varietals, such as Sid- and even replanned the whole product portfolio. All the effort was
amo, started to come out of the months of trendy young Chinese to seduce and then convince this new powerful buying force that
who were not coffee drinkers before. those once outdated brands were now worth buying.

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