Entrepreneur's answer | what do you know about starting a business and running a cafe?

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There is a word in Sweden called fika, which is translated into Chinese as a long list: have a cup of coffee and relax sometime.

Taiwanese James Chen Chih-Huang, who won the Nordic Baking Competition and specializes in Nordic coffee, opened a cafe called FikaFikaCafe.

This time, let's fika with him in Taipei and talk about the boutique coffee you are all talking about.

Boutique coffee opens up a new universe

TOPYS: you and your wife majored in photography in college. Why did you choose coffee as your career?

Chen Zhihuang: mainly like, really like. In 2000, when the so-called boutique coffee was about to start, we found something called Specialty Coffee in Europe and the United States through the Internet. It was dumbfounded when mail order came over. Its coffee beans are green and raw, so we have to learn how to bake. It's all on my own. It's like opening up a new universe. It's so interesting.

We made a website and wrote a lot of articles about how to bake coffee, how to taste it at home, what's the difference between fine coffee and ordinary coffee, and then sell coffee beans.

TOPYS: does your photography major have any impact on your current career?

Chen Zhihuang: there are many influences. Photography brings me the quality of aesthetics, so that I can integrate aesthetics into my coffee life. Later, when I was engaged in coffee roasting, I was surprised to find that there were many similarities with photography, such as the need to adjust the firepower and throttle for roasting coffee, which was completely similar to the need for photography to adjust the shutter and aperture. The experience of photography unexpectedly made me more comfortable on the way to baking coffee.

TOPYS: you started trying to bring online sales with lifestyle content more than a decade ago, and you're pretty ahead of time. When did you decide to open a brick-and-mortar store and build the whole chain?

Chen Zhihuang: the physical store was more than ten years later. At first, we sold raw beans, and one after another some customers wanted roasted coffee beans, so there were more and more customers, so we went to the United States to import coffee roasters to find out how to use them. The original intention is very simple. I want to stir-fry it, make it taste good, and sell it to customers. A study found that endless, because roasting coffee is actually easy to learn but difficult to learn, just like cooking, to be a great chef takes a lifetime.

TOPYS: what was the background of the customers at that time?

Chen Zhihuang: there are people at all levels, including office workers, school teachers, coffee players, and many doctors from all over Taiwan.

Taste is an amazing thing.

TOPYS: what people know most about you is the champion of the Nordic Bakery Competition.

Chen Zhihuang: every year, there is a Nordic Bean Baking Forum, in which there is a coffee roasting contest with the longest history in the world. Its competition system is very interesting. Elites from the catering industry all over the world gather together with no judges and no rules. Each participant in the forum has one vote. As long as you vote for the cup you think is the most delicious, the winner gets the most votes. I flew to Copenhagen for the first time in 2012 to participate in this competition and got the fourth place. It was a test for me, because it had been done behind closed doors, and the next year I went again and won two championships.

I also found that there is a different style of coffee from other parts of the world. Let's call it Nordic style coffee. They like to stir-fry the coffee beans very shallow, the more shallow the roast, the more sour, but its acid is very refreshing, the entrance is very comfortable, will soon turn into sweet. I like that style very much. At the end of 2012, I decided to open a coffee shop and wanted to introduce this style to you.

The champion medal of the Nordic Baking Competition

TOPYS: winning the championship is a big certainty, but do you think it is consistent with Taiwanese taste for coffee? People in different regions should have different preferences for coffee, right?

Chen Zhihuang: an American bean baker once said to me, "Let me tell you a sentence that I have not been able to use up to now. You are a bean baker. The only thing you have to do is to bake out the taste you like, and then find someone you like as much as you do." that's good. " Because there will be all kinds of people to tell you, this taste is not right, I like that taste, you will be unconsciously at a loss, do not know what is good. His remark is of great help to me, and I always keep it in mind. At that time, I didn't know if they liked this Nordic style coffee, but I was sure it was my favorite.

TOPYS: you also like delicious food. The coffee is very accurate and the oriental cooking guidelines are relatively vague. What do you think of these two different styles of cooking?

Chen Zhihuang: in fact, there has always been a debate about this vagueness and accuracy. to put it simply, Westerners are used to rational thinking and everything has to be digitized and quantified. the advantage is that it can be copied in large numbers, even for people who are not very experienced. 60% can also be made according to the existing parameters. But if you cook in the East, you actually attach importance to experience and feeling. I believe that for an excellent cook or barista, there is no way to quantify a lot of things. At most, it can only be replicated to a certain extent, and can never replace what the real experienced expert makes by feeling and experience.

TOPYS: perhaps the criteria are mainly at the entry level, and at a higher level, what is more important is personal experience and feelings.

TOPYS: do you supply your roasted coffee beans to other stores now?

Chen Zhihuang: there are supplies to some restaurants, our partners are very particular, demanding, and many of the ways of cooperation are very special. For example, Chef Jiang Zhencheng (Note: founder of RAW Restaurant) in Taiwan uses our coffee beans. He will have his requirements to match his dishes and his preferences. His range is very narrow. I will give him something in this range.

TOPYS: is that difficult? Because describing the taste is also quite abstract.

Chen Zhihuang: it is not difficult for me to communicate with Chef Jiang, because we are all engaged in taste, and we are all very demanding. He would like this analogy: this cup of coffee, there is a taste here, there is a taste here, there is a gap in the middle, I do not want this gap. I got it right away.

And baker Wu Baochun, I tailored a coffee for his champion bread, made pairing for his bread, just like red wine with dinner, and then made a gift box.

We all find this kind of cooperation very interesting and we can learn a lot.

TOPYS: as a baker, how do you keep your taste sharp?

Chen Zhihuang: the sensitivity of taste is very important. The most important thing is your usual diet. Some people said to eat very light, I later found that not necessarily, I eat very strong Sichuan food, after eating still feel that the taste is very sensitive, because those are natural foods, natural spices, will not hurt your sense of taste. The most dangerous are artificial compounds, so be careful not to eat them.

Running a coffee shop is not romantic at all.

TOPYS: in recent years, it has been said that young people in Taiwan enjoy "small luck". Many people choose to open cafes or other small shops as soon as they graduate, but they may not be in business for a long time. What do you think of this phenomenon?

Chen Zhihuang: in fact, young people often consult us on how to open a small cafe. We mostly advise against doing it because the success rate is very low. When the barriers to entry for an industry are too low, there will be problems. The coffee industry is easy to enter, but not easy to survive. The density of caf é s in Taiwan may be among the highest in the world. I have read an informal statistic that less than 25% of cafes will survive in two years' time.

TOPYS: what do you think is the difficulty in opening a boutique coffee shop?

Chen Zhihuang: what people in the industry generally think is more difficult is about people. You need to invite other baristas to open a coffee shop, find partners, how to share common goals and ideals with these people, which is very difficult, to treat your work partners with the greatest love, patience and care.

On the birthday of FikaFika employees, they can enjoy a discount on the purchase of their favorite coffee.

TOPYS: when you go out to play, will you have a destination to visit the store?

Chen Zhihuang: we hardly know how to do it. Because I want to keep the things in my head, the store filled with other people's things will be full of other people's shadow. In fact, this problem is very common now, and many cafes are very similar, which is actually very boring for consumers. The ideal coffee shop should be that each one has a unique character and a unique soul. In order to keep this unique, I try to avoid visiting cafes.

TOPYS: for the operator, imitation can avoid risks, and more importantly, he may not have enough to express himself.

Chen Zhihuang: yes, I have too many things to express myself.

TOPYS: if you just go for a coffee break, what kind of cafe will attract you?

Chen Zhihuang: there are two kinds. The first is that its environment is very comfortable, and the second, because I am a coffee roaster myself, if it is run by an experienced professional coffee roaster, I would like to go.

TOPYS: what is the general classification of boutique cafes?

Chen Zhihuang: in fact, there are many categories, some are very good at drawing flowers, and his whole store presents very exquisite flowers; some stores are opened by bakers, and its strong point is baking, his coffee beans; there are also professional aspects that are not strong, but they are especially good at the environment and make everyone feel very comfortable. So cafes can have many faces, but there must be one that is your entry point and a reason for consumers to visit.

TOPYS: what are some common misunderstandings about opening a coffee shop? Because a lot of things are not what they look like.

Chen Zhihuang: in fact, this is a big misunderstanding. The most common misunderstanding is that people think that if they open a coffee shop, they can be their own boss, and they don't have to work outside to see the boss's face. The second point is that cafes are beautiful and romantic, and it seems very comfortable to have a cat.

But what I want to tell you is that the romance of opening a cafe is a matter for the customers, not for the operators. The operator is not romantic at all and has to fight a lot of blood and tears. One of the things we baristas do most is to collect used cups, wash cups, clean the environment, clean coffee machines, and solve all kinds of problems. It is not beautiful at all, it is very complicated, the working hours are very high, very tired, and the competition is very fierce.

Opening a coffee shop is a very harsh thing, and you must treat it with a serious attitude. If you want to open a coffee shop, you first calculate how much money you have and what specialties you have that others don't have-not necessarily a coffee specialty. For example, you are a pianist. As soon as you open a shop, many piano artists will come here for coffee and exchange. Do you have such a market entry point? If you have it all, you have to start calculating how big the store is to open, how many seats there are, how many visitors are estimated every day, how much a cup of coffee can be sold, and how much turnover is in a month. Most people give up their decision after counting it.

TOPYS: what are the qualities that make you think he can give it a try?

Chen Zhihuang: people with the characteristics of entrepreneurs are usually very enterprising, not afraid of taking risks, may have a lot of bad ideas, and have a good relationship with others and have a lot of friends. Some people like to complain, complain in life, complain at work, so 100% will fail.

TOPYS: what do you think of the relationship between large coffee chains like Starbucks and boutique cafes?

Chen Zhihuang: a small cafe is actually a derivative of the shopkeeper, it is full of flexibility and speed, so once there are new ideas and new equipment, we will usually see it in the small cafe for the first time, although it is not necessarily mature. So small cafes give people surprises, but they are often frightened.

Starbucks, a large chain store, presents things with a considerable degree of completion, which are more difficult to surprise and scare.

But in recent years, we have found a phenomenon, that is, Starbucks will actually create a trend created by follow small cafes, such as hand brewing is absolutely not done by Starbucks before, and roasting coffee in stores can only be seen in small cafes in the past, and there is also a thing called nitrogen coffee, which also sprang up in some small cafes in New Zealand and Australia. These all started with the small cafe, and when the technology is stable and mature, Starbucks will transplant it.

TOPYS: do you think this will squeeze out the space in the small cafe?

Chen Zhihuang: actually, I will, but the ones that are usually not good are squeezed out.

TOPYS: in the past two years, more and more customers are interested in boutique coffee, and they are becoming more and more professional. do you think this puts a lot of pressure on boutique cafes?

Chen Zhihuang: I think this is a positive cycle and good pressure. I also hope that there will be more and more such customers, because more such customers will actually help improve the quality of the whole market and eliminate some stores that do not do well.

The possibility of boutique coffee

TOPYS: many boutique cafes offer workshops, training and so on. Is there such a trend in Taipei?

Chen Zhihuang: there are many professional courses in Taiwan cafes. Last month, we just set up a lecture space in Erdian, called FikaFika academy, which can hold 50 or 60 people. I will invite some interesting people in the field of life and food to come here to share with you. Coffee is a way of life for us, a more fastidious and serious way of life, which brings this attitude into your life.

TOPYS: in your opinion, are there any new trends in coffee consumption in Taipei in recent years?

Chen Zhihuang: first of all, people in Taipei are drinking more and more coffee, thanks to Taiwan's high-density convenience stores, which started selling freshly brewed coffee about three or five years ago. Before this, most Taiwanese drank foam black tea and pearl milk tea, and coffee was a minority item. Since the convenience store began to promote coffee, many people began to try, he made this base for the cafe.

Many people have speculated about the future, but no one knows for sure what will happen next. I think it will be more popular next, even cafes will be focused, and cafes with different purposes and uses will appear. In addition, coffee will become more popular. in the past, some high-end coffee can only be drunk in very expensive and professional cafes, but now there are many small take-out cafes in Taipei. You can order a cup of Colombian geisha coffee for NT $70. This means that good coffee has always been popular.

TOPYS: you are a coffee roaster, so the first step in contact is beans. What is the situation of coffee beans produced in Taiwan?

Chen Zhihuang: the output of coffee beans in Taiwan has always been very small, and then the price is high. Half a pack costs NT $1000 to NT $2000. The biggest problem is that it doesn't taste good. Later, there were several key figures, one was the author of the book "Fine Coffee," Mr. Han Huaizong, and then there was another Mr. Wu Yuanbing, who went to connect many outstanding people from the coffee industry to go to the countryside to help farmers with coffee lessons, from the basic knowledge of coffee to how to harvest, how to make fertilizer, how to follow-up treatment, and how to bake. Like I used to teach baking. So about two years ago, coffee in Taiwan has changed significantly, and there have been a lot of delicious coffee. Coffee farmers also feel that they get more benefits from the improvement, and they will go to class more actively to improve its quality, so it is a virtuous circle.

TOPYS: Have you personally done anything else to spread coffee culture?

CHEN Zhihuang: Actually, we have done a lot of interesting experiments. I set up a professional five-star restaurant kitchen in the coffee roaster factory, where we held a three-day dinner party in late May this year, inviting a chef from Tokyo, known as the "magician of meat cooking," and I led the coffee team to pair his dishes with coffee. Most Western dishes are served with wine. In recent years, some people use whiskey, but coffee pairing is a new concept. It was an experimental dinner party, and we designed six very unique drinks to accompany his cooking.

TOPYS: We've always mentioned coffee as part of lifestyle, and I'd like to know what's the ideal lifestyle for you personally?

Chen Zhihuang: In 2000, I went to Seattle with my girlfriend and now wife Maggie. There is a cafe Espresso Vivace, owned by David Schome, the godfather of American espresso. We sat there drinking coffee in the morning until about 9:10 a.m. and saw David Schome lean his bike toward the door and he came in, looked left and right, got a cup of coffee, started asking questions about the store, and then disappeared within two hours. We asked the guy at the store where he was. The clerk said he went to pick up the kids. It turned out that his schedule was to go out for exercise in the morning, ride his bicycle to the store at 10 o 'clock to have a look, and then get off work at 12 o' clock to pick up the children on time. Afternoon was his family time. And we thought, well, that's great, that's the life we want.

Interviews, articles/ Vivi@TOPYS

Photo/FikaFikaCafe Provided

Interview Location/Taipei FikaFikaCafe Yitong