The entrepreneurial history of Zhao Jiabao, director of Hong Kong Cupping Room Cafe.

Cupping Room, founded in 2011.

Turn from Lidong Street to nearby Shantou Street and you will see Cupping room, a coffee shop owned by Zhao Jiabao, a barista who won second place in WBC in 2014.

It's almost a boutique cafe that Hong Kong has to go to. Get to know the person in charge of Cupping Room, Zhao Jiabao.

Kapo Chiu was fascinated by the Blue bottle Cafe (Blue Bottle Coffee) when he was studying in San Francisco. At that time, he read MBA, probably using it as a case study of a business model, thinking about how to bring it to his hometown of Hong Kong.

In 2011, Zhao Jiabao opened his first Cupping Room in Stanley, Hong Kong, and in that year, he took part in the Hong Kong barista contest for the first time and was the runner-up.

Contestant Zhao Jiabao Kapo, surprisingly, his production process is very complicated. First of all, he used his gold powder to filter out the fine powder.

Carefully distribute the ground coffee powder in each shoot, this time the Kapo chooses the rose summer coffee beans from the Colombian Cauca producing area, using the washing method to best maintain the purity of the coffee, and the use of the powder sieve also better shows the rich dry aroma of the coffee in the Cauca producing area.

In his creative coffee, he rebuilt the flavor of Colombian rose summer. He introduced citronella, soda and Espresso into a smart cup filled with ice, flowed into the round cup below, and finally sprayed pineapple juice in the cup to increase the aroma level, very elegant and clear inspiration.

This seemingly cynical and cool barista, Zhao Jiabao worked in the catering industry for five years before opening Cupping Room.

Cupping Room is not the result of Jiabao's first venture. Jiabao once opened a coffee and tea beverage store. Later, because of its unfocused positioning, limited capital and unsatisfactory location, Jiabao began to prepare Cupping Room after selling its stake in that store to a partner.

In the whole process, at first Jiabao thought he was only interested in opening stores, exploring retail models, and then gradually realized that my passion was to enter the world of boutique coffee and understand those professional knowledge and culture.

At that time, Cupping Room bought coffee beans from different baking plants around the world, and Cupping Room had been working with Sweet Bloom in the United States to buy their coffee beans before starting its own baking business.

Zhao Jiabao met Andy Sprenger, the founder of Sweet Bloom, at the 2012 World Cooking Competition in Vienna, when Jiabao was a volunteer, Andy was participating, and Andy gave Jiabao a taste of his coffee beans, which Zhao used to win the runner-up in WBC in 2014.

Zhao Jiabao competed almost every year from 2011 to 2017, but at the same time he had to take care of the operation of the cafe.

The Cupping Room has four branches in Sheung Wan, Central and Wan Chai.

The roastery branch in Sheung Wan is not only a coffee shop, but also a bean baking factory for The Cupping Room.

Now that Cupping Room has grown to a certain size, Home Treasure's idea is simple: consumers in Cupping Room can drink the best coffee so that they can find one they like best.

CuppingRoom's baking style is to pursue extreme sweetness.