Rainforest Coffee-- making a profit in the first year from a strange point of view into the coffee industry

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About half of the young people in the world have ever thought of opening their own coffee shop. At the same time, it seems that half of the operating cafes are not profitable.

What you want to do can't support you, is it the market, or is it your professional ability?

If it is said that China's coffee market is really not small. Just last year, the 26th World Coffee Science Congress held a conference on the results in Kunming. According to the data disclosed at the meeting, China is currently one of the countries with the fastest growth in coffee consumption in the world. The amount of coffee consumed in China is about 200 billion yuan. The average annual growth rate of consumption is 20 per cent, compared with the world average of 2 per cent for aquatic products.

While the number of cafes in China exceeded 100000 in 2016, there was also a negative growth for the whole year, with a closure rate of 13.5 per cent, according to the first issue of beverage industry data from the "Ka Men" and "Meituan Dianping Research Institute".

With the rapid growth of China's coffee market, the number of employees in the coffee industry will increase proportionally, but at the same time, there are many pain points in the coffee industry, which is summarized as "the foundation of the coffee market is weak." market segments do not match supply and demand "and" non-commercially driven individual entrepreneurs ignore basic business skills ".

The lack of professional employees and the lack of in-depth understanding of the coffee industry is an important factor leading to poor store operation and increasing the rate of shop closure.

A friend of Bangge, who loves coffee, also sees the development and problems of China's coffee market and regards it as an entrepreneurial opportunity worth trying.

The silly-looking post-90s Jiangxi girl is Huang Ying, the founder and chief operating officer of Rainforest Coffee. The company specializes in coffee education, coffee manor experience, coffee roasting and boutique coffee and other businesses. In other words, she not only knows coffee, but also teaches others how to do a good coffee business.

Entrepreneurship: starting from Coffee and practicing in Education

Huang Ying's interest in coffee arises from the book club. In about 2009, Huang Ying was still studying at a university in Wuhan and attended a folk book club. Book friends need a comfortable environment and drinks to accompany them when reading and discussing, so they open a coffee shop together. Huang Ying is also involved in the operation of the coffee shop, so she is interested in coffee.

After graduation, Huang Ying found a job in the field of education, with a position in the market direction. Huang Ying needs to travel to many cities from Changsha and Shanghai to Chiang Mai, Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur. Every time she goes to a city, she will visit the local boutique coffee shop, or scan the relevant exhibitions, competitions and so on. Later, when I thought of linking coffee with education, I was also inspired by this education-related job.

In order to get in touch with the coffee industry, Huang Ying later joined a raw bean company to do quality control, began to come into contact with the more upstream coffee raw beans, in-depth understanding of coffee as a commercial behavior.

In the matter of opening a coffee shop, there are a lot of irrational cognition and behavior in the market, which gives everyone the impression that "opening a coffee shop does not make money or lose money, and some people will only throw it in if they have spare money." After a comprehensive understanding of the industry, Huang Ying found that the real coffee knowledge such as coffee roasting, equipment, and coffee producing areas had been ignored.

Coffee is a big market, and there must be a point of interest in the whole chain. "as I said, there is not so much financial support, so we need to find a relatively strange point of view to enter this market." I think coffee education is urgently needed by many people, and it is also an operational entry point for me. "

At that time, Huang Ying met the later technology co-founder Sam in Shanghai. Both of them love coffee and understand coffee, so they decided to do something together: set up rainforest coffee, starting with coffee education.

Sam Choi

Co-founder of Rainforest Coffee

AST International Coffee examiner

Judges of the 2015-2017 Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia Brista National Competition

Vietnam and Malaysia Brista champion coach

In order to do coffee training, it is best to do coffee education with local experience in coffee-producing countries where the industry is mature, which can bring the most intuitive experience to domestic practitioners who come to study: from the coffee cultivation of the manor to the operation of the local cafe. See what the mature and complete coffee industry chain looks like, and then reflect on what is wrong with your business.

When it comes to coffee producing areas, the first reaction is Brazil: mature coffee estates, with a long history of industrial development, wide acreage and rich varieties. However, after careful study, Huang Ying found that it is not practical: first, the air ticket is expensive, and second, the visa is not easy to handle, and the cost of the whole process is very high.

Brazil is not the only coffee resort. What Huang Ying has seen and heard in Southeast Asia tells her that it is also a popular place for coffee. In Vietnam, she saw cafes all over the street, just like teahouses in Chinese costume dramas. Vietnamese people drink coffee every day, regardless of age, morning or evening.

After further exploration, Huang Ying found that northern Thailand is very suitable for coffee education: the political situation is relatively stable, the visa policy is good, and visa on arrival can be passed; more importantly, there are mature coffee experts and strong international teachers. The 2017 world latte flower champion came from Chiang Mai. However, the value of these people has not been brought into full play, and people either enjoy life or go to other countries to do it, but they have not come to China.

This gives Huang Ying an opportunity: if you connect coffee farms around the world, it's hard to find the perfect knot, but Chiang Mai is a very good point.

At the beginning, the tutors of Rainforest Coffee first helped coffee ranchers do a lot of things, such as the improvement of coffee varieties, training and improvement of planting techniques, such as pruning and fertilization, tree species identification, quality control and many other details. Many landowners need this knowledge very much, and the two sides have unwittingly established a good relationship in the process of communication.

These "idle pen" work paved the way for the later course cooperation of Rainforest Coffee: when Chinese students came to Chiang Mai to visit the manor, the owners of the manor were very cooperative, and the students could operate the machine and participate in picking. The workers in the manor will also come to teach everyone how to use the machine, and the students can really participate. Unlike some domestic coffee training, students can also visit the manor, but you can't touch this or that, and you can't do anything but look.

An experimental base in the tropical rainforest

Recently, Nine-One Manor in Chiang Mai has achieved in-depth cooperation with Rainforest Coffee to establish a joint coffee planting base in Saqi Mountain, Chiang Mai. There are more than 300 coffee trees in the rainforest on the hillside. Rainforest coffee can make full use of this experimental site to provide a more in-depth teaching experience for training courses.

Did you learn to pull flowers? Coffee knowledge is much more than that.

What courses does the mysterious coffee education include?

To do training, we must first have a complete curriculum system. Rainforest Coffee has introduced SCA's coffee diploma system.

SCA is the result of the merger of two major boutique coffee associations in the United States and Europe this year. To put it simply, it is the diploma system of the World boutique Coffee Association and related qualifications. The diploma certification system of SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) is divided into six modules, including coffee introduction, coffee roasting, sensory taste, coffee raw beans, grinding extraction and baristas. Each module is divided into primary, intermediate and advanced levels.

Most of the domestic training courses are set according to grades, the price of a single grade course ranges from 3000 to 5000 yuan, and the tuition fee of advanced courses is even more than 10, 000 yuan, which is expensive. As a result, many people only take one or more of these levels.

"We think that if you study one of these subjects alone, the things you come into contact with are very one-sided and you can't learn the real thing. So our teacher combines the six modules to form a set of courses that are more biased towards baking and sensory tasting. These two items are the more difficult parts of the coffee courses, and we hope to provide better training in these courses. " Huang Ying said.

Rainforest Coffee has partnered strategically with Doi Chang, Thailand's largest exporter of raw coffee beans, Wawee Coffee, a local coffee giant, and Nine-One Coffee, a pioneer in organic boutique coffee farms in Thailand. Integrate immersion learning from the whole chain of manors, processing stations, bakeries and boutique cafes. Provide coffee education products from the source, the most mature and both macro and micro perspectives.

It takes ten days to complete the complete course, and the students have classes from 9: 00 a.m. to 6: 00 p.m., with high intensity. The course price is 18800 per person. It opens every two months and enrolls four to six students each. Those who pass the exam at the end of the course will receive the official SCA Coffee Diploma.

Rainforest Coffee is about to launch a membership package, equivalent to an online course, which costs 299 yuan a month, including teaching videos and 2-3 packets of new high-quality coffee beans from the producing area.

The standardization and accuracy of the language help to correct the students' senses, so the teachers will teach the course in standard coffee language. The package will be officially launched in September and has not been promoted yet, but 20 people have signed up, basically introduced by veteran students.

Now, Rainforest Coffee has set up education project sites in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the business has entered a stage of stable development, and the company has been profitable in the past year. Now Huang Ying is back in China, working with her high school classmate Zhang Lingxia to set up the boutique cafe brand Tasto Cafe in China.

Zhang Lingxia, Chief Technical Officer of Food Unit

French Diploma in Blue Ribbon

Dessert Diploma from Tokyo University of Blue Ribbon, France

Diploma in Food from the University of Bangkok, Blue Belt, France

Master of Logistics and supply chain in UK; Bachelor of Finance in UK

It is natural for Huang Ying to open a coffee shop. "Zhang Lingxia and I were classmates in high school. When we were young, we always said that we would do something together. Now she makes dessert and I make coffee, and the combination of the two will be a bright spot. The boutique coffee shop will certainly become another of our main business in the future. "

Postscript:

This is not a start-up story with big ups and downs, no exciting amount of financing, no nb glittering characters to endorse. But in the past year, Brother Bang saw the coffee business of Huang Ying and her friends developing and improving every day in moments.

During the interview, Huang Ying told Brother Bang that some people in the middle had expressed their willingness to invest and own shares, but they were all rejected by Huang Ying after in-depth exchanges.

"there is a bargaining link, which I don't like very much, and it's not pure. And we have always been profitable, so if the amount is mediocre and unnecessary, we refuse to do so. "

Like-minded people, do what they like, this is probably the most beautiful way to start a business.