Sofa Cafe's dream of Dong Menghao's old shop

International online report (Reporter Li Lu): Dong Menghao is a Taiwanese living in Beijing. He has many titles, cafe owner, gourmet talent, writer. He wrote hundreds of thousands of words about food shops and comments under the net name "Egg in Beijing," with countless followers, and the publication of a food travel book called "Taiwan Free Travel" earned him a reputation as a writer. But compared with all this, what made him invest most, what made his dream come true, and what made him an "entrepreneur" was the couch cafe (CafeDeSOFA), which opened on the back seaside in 2009.

Dong Menghao has been stationed in the mainland since 2000 because of job dispatch. In order to provide travel and catering guides to more Taiwanese on the mainland, he began to write a food blog in 2003, presenting the food restaurants he visited to readers in a more design form. By the end of 2008, Dong Menghao, who had traveled through Chengdu, Shanghai and other places, finally decided to settle in Beijing and start a business. Because of his special feelings for Beijing and the influence of his mother and brother in Taiwan who are famous foodies, Dong Menghao decided to open a cafe with Taiwanese cuisine near Houhai, where his grandfather lived.

Dong Menghao said, "there are several reasons why I opened a coffee shop. First, I chose the location in Beijing because there are a lot of delicious resources here, and the second is that I was brought up by my grandparents, who lived in Taiwan from Beijing, so I have to be in Beijing. Because this is the place where I miss the source of drinking water and miss the kindness of my grandparents. The reason why I chose the coffee shop is because my wife and I love to drink coffee. Although after my formal job, I majored in commercial marketing, but in the past, my part-time and part-time experience was in the coffee shop. Another important reason is that my mother and brother are both famous chefs in Taiwan. "

From his own design to personally participating in the decoration, every corner and every detail in the sofa cafe has been carefully deliberated and poured into Dong Menghao's heart. So far, the store still retains its original appearance, and the walls are covered with old photos recording bits and pieces of seven years. Dong Menghao said that although the rent is increasing exponentially, he has not thought of changing the shop, on the one hand, so that regular customers can find a sense of belonging here all the time, and on the other hand, it is also out of his determination to build a century-old store. The puppy image that can be seen everywhere in the shop is inspired by the "old employee" puppy balls that have accompanied the sofa cafe since its opening. Dong Menghao used his portrait as the logo of the cafe and applied for trademark registration.

Dong Menghao said, "the balls are redder than me, and all the guests come to the store looking for him." I have logo the egg balls. In the past, the logo in the store was just the English letter CafeDeSOFA, but now there is an avatar. The balls are very popular with us. I brought it here when it opened in 2009. I also set its birthday as the same day for the store. Maybe the balls will leave us in ten years, but I hope the sofa cafe is still there and the logo of the balls is still there. I really want to develop the cafe like the old one. Maybe my son will take over the store in the future. If an editor asks him why logo is not a sofa but a dog head, he can tell a story. "

The sofa cafe is quiet, but it is not as full of sofa seats as the shop name, but Dong Menghao borrows the relaxed comfort of the sofa to express a relaxation concept that he wants to advocate.

Dong Menghao said: "I think there must be three colors to energize the cafe, white, wood and green." My shop is very small, so I use mirrors, white and wood colors to make guests feel relaxed and green to provide them with a sense of vitality. This is why it is called a sofa cafe. It is not a place full of sofa chairs, but reminds guests of the relaxed and unburdened feeling brought by the sofa, taking its spirit. "

As sofa cafes appear in more and more articles and bibliographies recommended by Beijing cuisine, Dong Menghao made a major decision in 2014: to open a larger sofa cafe near the World Trade Center. But this attempt ended in failure. It was the experience of this failure that he once again put all his energies back to the old store that he had carefully managed for many years, and rethought his way of doing business. With the improvement of customer requirements for the quality of food and drinks, Dong Menghao began to try to introduce boutique coffee in the store. "in addition to the fact that we like coffee, we can see that the whole world is looking at the Chinese mainland market in the coffee industry. On the one hand, the Chinese mainland market is a potential producer and consumer. So when the Chinese market attracted global attention, since I opened a coffee shop and liked coffee, I saw the rapid growth of coffee, and of course I wanted to professionalize myself more quickly and forward. "

Dong Menghao bought a bean roaster in the store in 2015, and now he has passed many professional examinations in the field of baristas and roasters, and has contacted a coffee bean processing factory in Xiamen. He is determined to make the coffee business more professional, more refined and longer-lasting. "the first time I wanted to open a coffee shop like this-I had my own bean roaster, and there were many small shops with bean roasters in Taiwan. But there were two reasons for not doing so at that time, one was the lack of funds, the other was that my wife and I visited the coffee shop in Beijing at that time and found that many consumers who went to the coffee shop were mostly for the sake of the environment, and the requirement of quality was not the most important. Now, from 2015 to 2016, people began to pay attention to the quality of coffee. "

The ideal state conceived when the cafe was first founded in 2009 was finally realized seven years later, but Dong Menghao did not stop, and he also dreamed of sitting on the jury seat of the barista competition in the future and making himself a professional in the coffee field. Seven years are fleeting, what has changed is the rising demand of consumers, and what remains unchanged is Dong Menghao's persistence in service, quality and environment, as well as his desire to build a century-old store.