Report: Coffee culture on the rise across China

Visitors line up to enter the Coffee Night event during Shanghai Coffee Culture Week.

The number of posts containing the keywords "county" and "coffee" on the Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book, lifestyle platform had increased by 202 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2022, according to the 2022 coffee trend keywords report released on Saturday at the Bund Financial Center shopping mall in Shanghai.

This finding means that coffee culture is no longer exclusive to major cities and more coffee shops have taken root in the counties, a representative of Xiaohongshu said during the Coffee Night event during Shanghai Coffee Culture Week.

The report also showed that searches related to convenience store coffee on Xiaohongshu grew 117 percent year-on-year, an indication that consumers have no qualms switching between specialty coffee and convenience coffee.

Visitors enjoy coffe at the Coffee Night event during Shanghai Coffee Culture Week.

In addition, the report stated that young coffee lovers are more inclined to make coffee at home and try their hands at latte art, with searches related to homemade coffee increasing 17 times compared to last year.

The searches for special brew coffee and coffee grounds also increased by 333 and 168 percent respectively.

Considered one of the major events at this year's Shanghai Coffee Culture Week, which kicked off on Aug 4 and will run to Aug 18, Coffee Night at BFC saw also the release of the 2022 Shanghai Top 100 Coffee Shops List.