Coffee, what a mellow and graceful way of life

Time flies, it has been nearly five years since I entered the coffee industry in a twinkling of an eye. Over the past five years, we have gradually grown up, and we have seen our coffee consumption gradually move from the altar to the public, from the clouds to the ground, from a dispensable luxury to a necessity for daily work and life. have you not seen those office workers hurrying around with coffee cups on the street? Don't you see the white-collar workers who are busy drinking coffee in the office building? Didn't you see the men and women talking and laughing in the cafe? Don't you see the Chinese businessmen shuttling through coffee farms around the world? With China's integration into the world, coffee has also been integrated into life. When the cafe has increasingly become an indispensable third space for people, coffee has been interpreted as a graceful and mellow way of life.

Coffee, as the second largest natural resource commodity in global trade after oil, as a religious sacred product with great health benefits (Islam and Christianity), and as a fashionable drink rich in caffeine, the only legal stimulant, more than a billion people on the planet enjoy it first thing when they get up every morning. It has also created numerous legends in the commercial field, such as Starbucks, COSTA, Green Mountain, Nestl é, McCoffee, 85C, Shangdao Coffee and so on, giving birth to a large number of emerging cultural industries and value-added services. I attended the exhibition in Hong Kong in 2010, and a senior American colleague praised it as "the most exciting traditional industry in the network information age." he even told me. Many catering giants, including McDonald's, have turned to vigorously develop coffee, and even shift the whole strategic focus to coffee. A sense of pride and comfort arises spontaneously.

Coffee, with the rapid rise of the market, does not seem to be as colorful as wine or as elegant and charming as Chinese tea. but this silent power is the most powerful and invincible-whether it's drinking wine, tea, Chinese food or western food in a cafe. In a cafe, whether a person is in a daze, or whispers between lovers, or even a group of people talking and frolicking, are very reasonable, this is the great power of all-inclusive coffee. There is also a more extreme but reasonable comparative argument: drinking tea and drinking in a cafe is very reasonable, but drinking coffee and drinking in a teahouse is very weird. Can you refute it?

Some people say that Dionysus worship is not only the need for people to vent their feelings, but also the original soil of wine. The first rise of coffee and tea is related to religion, the former is Islam, the latter is Buddhism-refreshed believers can engage in religious activities more piously and persistently. After that, Europeans showed extraordinary enthusiasm for coffee, with no taboo about its origin-the sacred goods of pagans, so caffeine awakened Europe from alcohol intoxication and put Europe on top of the world. The great geographical discovery, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific and technological Revolution, the Internet Age. The waves are all related to the internal drive of coffee. At the same time, Chinese tea culture went its separate ways and went to another way of "meditation, nourishing spirit, self-cultivation and the unity of man and nature". When engaged in the spread of coffee culture in recent years, the author likes to compare coffee to the Confucian philosophy of actively joining the WTO, and Chinese tea to the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi who were born with nothing to do. Confucianism and Taoism are the two indispensable elements that make up the Chinese people's complete attitude towards life. Confucianism occupies a dominant position when it is plain sailing, but when it is hit, it is wonderful for Huang-Lao philosophy to breed in the dark. Perhaps, coffee and tea will also become the two major drinks that exist together and embellish Chinese life together.

With the rise of coffee consumption, every cafe has become a wonderful work in the city, positioning it in the catering industry and focusing on catering management, and positioning it in the cultural industry, thus injecting some with rich humanistic connotations. More cafes choose to "live on the wall". In addition to daily catering operations, they are like wonderful containers, broad platforms and broad carriers. A large number of emerging cultural elements, business models and business opportunities are brewing here. One of our cadets, because he loves magic, plays magic in his own cafe, runs magic salons, and sells magic props. He doesn't want to gradually become famous and famous in just two years, and there are a lot of friends from home and abroad who come here. Naturally, the benefits are also considerable.

"I'm not at the cafe, so I'm on my way to the cafe." A sentence that has been talked about and widely spread by people has been traced back to its roots for more than a century, but it is the truest portrayal of coffee culture. Even if it is not in a cafe, there is a taste lingering in the tongue, a mellow and graceful way of life.