The latest coffee news Shanghai Nanyang Road now 2 square meters boutique coffee shop hopes to promote the window store model

Nanyang Road in Shanghai is only a few hundred meters long, surrounded by two large office buildings Henglong Plaza (special reading) and Donghai SOHO (special reading), but there are nearly 10 independent boutique coffee shops on this road, one of which is only 2 square meters in area.

Around two or three o'clock in the afternoon, this window-style take-away coffee shop often lines up. Except for a bench at the door, Manner has no place for people to stay and chat in the general boutique coffee shop. Not only does it sell the common Italian concentrate, but it also offers individual hand-made and coffee bean retail. The freshly roasted coffee beans are packed in Yizhiyuan jars, which are baked by shopkeeper Han Yulong in Songjiang's factory every week.

Huang Junhao is the first international referee of China's COE Coffee Cup Competition, and his post "Coffee Map of Shanghai" last December included MannerCaf é. "there are only a few window shops in the boutique coffee industry in Shanghai, and Manner is the best coffee maker among them." Huang Junhao told Curiosity Daily.

MannerCafe close-up

Except that the place is extremely small, the lattes here are 15 yuan for small cups and 20 yuan for large ones. The sun Yega single item is also sold at the same price. In addition, there will be a reduction of 5 yuan for bringing coffee cups and 18 yuan for cans for selling coffee beans. By contrast, Starbucks' own cups are reduced by 2 yuan. According to the owner's estimate, every day 1 / 3 customers bring their own coffee cups, many of which are Starbucks cups.

In August 2015, Han Yulong, a native of Nantong, took down the small place, which used to be the window of the clothing store next door. Not long after opening, the average daily output of cups exceeded three digits, twice the working day of the general boutique coffee shop. The space of 2 square meters holds more than 40, 000 LaMarzoccogs3 single-head coffee machine, a Mahlkonig Devil's bean grinder and Mazzer's Robur bean grinder. Every time you grind beans, you can smell "meat" in the store, which is the smell of protein after being roasted. These machines are Han Yulong's biggest initial investment: "my family has a whole set of equipment, but when I come to Shanghai, I will replace it with a new one."

Single head coffee machine used by Manner

The main customers are office workers in nearby office buildings, and many Weibo and Dianping users have come to "pull the grass". Netizen @ AmaranthusFF commented that the coffee here reminds him of NYC's BlueBottle. With the popularity and the efficiency of the single-head coffee machine, although the barista can control the speed to 1 minute and a half a cup, he still often has to wait in line. Han Yulong's explanation of the fire is: "if the space is small enough, you are unique enough, breaking through everyone's conventional understanding of coffee." We have also made the price extremely low; secondly, our quality, not to mention perfect, is by no means worse than that of most boutique coffee shops in Shanghai. Even if the gesture is poor here sometimes, the price is there, and the guests will not be too demanding of you. "

The obvious benefit of low prices is the broadening of the customer base. The composition of the customers queuing here is more "complicated" than that of the boutique cafes next door. Wang Deping, the doorman in the neighborhood next door, now buys a cup as long as he works the morning shift, because he thinks "you can get 15 yuan for 10 yuan." before the store opened, he liked to make a cup of Nestl é instant coffee at home in the morning, but now he is used to buying Manner every day. Including Jiang Han, a manicurist from the opposite manicure shop, is also a customer of this small shop.

There are 5296 cafes in Shanghai, of which Lao Jing'an has the strongest atmosphere (Nanyang Road is here). In terms of area, there are an average of about 45 cafes per square kilometer where France, Britain and the public concession meet. In addition to the chain coffee brands such as Starbucks and Costa, which are opened in the business district and along the street, independent boutique cafes account for more, accounting for about 60%.

This is also the reason why Han Yulong is attracted to Shanghai for development. After graduating from college, he once ran a photography-themed cafe in his hometown, which was famous on Renren, which was still popular at that time. But after doing it for a while, he found that not many people actually came to drink coffee, but desserts and other things accounted for more sales. Han Yulong found it boring for customers to come to the store to party.

Then he closed the shop and started a coffee studio, making money from roasting coffee beans and training. "We did well, but we didn't save the money. It was early for us to bake (coffee beans) and make boutique coffee, and at that time some shops in Shanghai were just getting started. " Lu Jianxia, Han Yulong's girlfriend for many years and the barista of MannerCaf é, described the situation to us: "for about six years, it has been precipitating and precipitating. The money he earns is just to make ends meet. As long as you earn more, invest in it and buy raw beans. Including driving a Manner with him, my family also disagreed. "

What they imagined before opening the store.

This is a business developed from a hobby, but it is difficult for Nantong to satisfy Han Yulong, who is driven to Shanghai by his thirst for a high-quality market environment. Because of his four years of coffee roasting experience, he worked as a roaster at Caf é delVolcan in Shanghai for one year. This is a boutique coffee shop of German origin. It is very famous among foreigners. It runs on Yongkang Road, which is also a "coffee battle zone".

While working in Caf é delVolcan, Han Yulong looked all over the coffee market in Shanghai and finally chose Nanyang Road. "the only criterion for site selection is to reduce the cost, small enough and cheap enough, so that I can do it at the price of 15 yuan. And there must be a good coffee shop nearby. " Compared with the tens of thousands of store rents in the Huaihai Road business district, only here is the price Han Yulong can afford, and there is also a coffee atmosphere nearby. The landlord here considered other options at the time: a little oil fume, who sold burritos or made milk tea, but gave it to them because the business in the nearby cafes was good.

"there are only two pieces of rent and beans, which cannot be saved anywhere else." Now, three or four days a week, Han Yulong goes to his bakery in Songjiang, Shanghai to bake beans. The advantage of controlling the upstream of the industry is that it can reduce some costs. The most expensive are labor and milk-at least 30,000 yuan a month (baristas do five days off, four to six thousand), while the milk used by Manner is the only product of Asahi Luyuan, which retails for 24 yuan a carton.

In addition, the disposable cup provided in the store is also the simplest white, self-sticker. Because printing plate making is not only more expensive, but also order quantity, cash flow problems make it impossible for them to buy a large amount of goods at one time.

Han Yulong said that he can make a gross profit of 5 yuan for a 15-yuan cup of coffee, but he can hardly make any money if he brings his own cup. " Although the profit margin is meagre, if the current operating conditions continue, it is said that the cost is expected to be recovered by the end of this year. Some customers will be surprised to say that a take-out window coffee shop still sells its own coffee beans, so he will joke: "how can you play at this price if you don't sell beans?"

Because some colleagues are also in the coffee business, now Han Yulong's own focus is no longer in the store, slowly shifting to the baking plant, in order to survive baking beans, do some small wholesale production. The factory can produce about 300 kilograms of beans a week. You can use 1x4 on your own and sell the rest to others. In addition, he also registered a company that specializes in trading bar equipment and importing coffee machines to sell to others. This is also the network he built when he worked in the studio. According to Han Yulong, retail, wholesale coffee beans and selling machines each account for 1/3 of the profits, but none of them will make a special profit.

"the coffee industry is not yet in a position to make money. If you don't swim up, as we do, it may be more difficult to open a store. "

This mode of relying on the volume of the cup to maintain business is a kind of consumption to people, and Han Yulong often thinks of giving up, sometimes feeling that he can never see the money and is in a hurry. However, Lu Jianxia, another "partner", felt that when it came to tiredness, it was much better than when she was in Nantong, "because I was so ignorant at that time that I didn't know why I wanted to do this job. But after making coffee for a long time, you will have a little confidence. "

Throughout late March, because the world coffee competition authority WorldCoffeEvents moved the coffee competition to the Shanghai International Hotel supplies Fair, many visitors to the exhibition will choose to visit several cafes to taste fresh. Nanyang Road is almost a must-visit-if they have done their homework, they may also go to Wukang Road, Yongkang Road and Fengxian Road, which are all gathering places for fine coffee. Each of these local coffee shops has different formats, including those with the theme of Dead Flying, those that sell jeans, or those that specialize in promoting Yunnan beans. But even Caf é delVolcan, which has opened in Shanghai for four years, currently has only one store. Some people have made statistics that more than half of the cafes in the Shanghai market are independent cafes with only one store.

The booming market has caused a gap in coffee education, baristas are never enough, and the shortage of human resources makes quality control very difficult. When Huang Junhao wrote the Coffee Map of Shanghai, he felt that many stores thought their quality was already very good, but in fact they were just sitting in the well and watching the sky. As for those boutique coffee shops that can achieve scale, most of them have made more or less sacrifices: for example, Seesaw, a boutique coffee chain run by Zhejiang businessmen, many baristas used to be Starbucks employees. What they do is to set up a brand in the core business district and gain more living space. On the other hand, the long-famous boutique coffee "quality Restaurant" has been open for "zero yuan" since March 2015, and the new stores have been changed into small shops of 40 square meters, mainly take-out, and the machines have become fully automatic. "people move. I should rely less on people, or I won't be able to open a second one. " Zheng Songmao, founder of the quality Museum, told the media at that time.

In the final analysis, cafes are a very geographically restricted business. People may buy Starbucks for convenience. Starbucks has the ability to open a store a few hundred meters away from the city center. But for independent cafes, even putting aside human resources, the most difficult part is how many shops with strong demand around and whether they have the ability to win or not. even if there are, the owners may prefer to cooperate with a Costa or Starbucks.