Interface News Reporter | Lu Yibei
This cup has Yunnan
Liu Xiaorong, a Yunnan Pu'er coffee grower, posted this message on her social media at 10 pm. She and her husband Wen Jun had just attended the 6th "Starbucks Yunnan Green Bean Excellent Supplier Conference" in Pu'er. Accompanying her are 1500 coffee farmers from major production areas in Yunnan, such as Pu'er, Baoshan, and Lincang. "The grandmothers, sisters, and brothers who grow coffee together in the village have arranged to come together, and some of them need to drive back and forth for 7 hours," she said.
On October 19th, Liu Wenjuan, Starbucks Global Executive Vice President and Starbucks China CEO, also came. She announced at the meeting that in the future, Yunnan coffee beans will be included in Starbucks' classic espresso used in China, and every Starbucks store in mainland China will also sell Yunnan single origin coffee beans.
This means that the Yunnan coffee beans produced by Liu Xiaorong and her fellow villagers will go to Starbucks' over 7300 stores in 31 provinces in China. In fact, her supply to Starbucks this year has exceeded 120000 kilograms, which is 2-3 times higher than five years ago, and this number will continue to grow in the future.
This was unimaginable in the past.
Unlike names such as Colombia, Guatemala, and Manila that often appear on the menus of boutique coffee shops, Yunnan coffee used to be a raw material for instant coffee, a representative of unstable quality, and the branding of its origin was almost unattainable. Even four or five years ago, when Yunnan coffee became popular due to the popularity of specialty coffee, Yunnan coffee beans were often used to blend with other coffee beans to fill its flavor gaps and lower overall costs.
And when big companies like Starbucks decide to put Yunnan coffee beans into commercial use on a large scale, it seems to be proving one thing to the entire industry - Yunnan coffee is already very different.
Classic espresso is Starbucks' most well-known, classic, and widely used coffee bean. To achieve this, Yunnan coffee beans need to reach a high level of production and quality, "said Liu Wenjuan. The data disclosed by Starbucks shows that the coffee passing rate through Starbucks' strict quality testing has increased from 20% in 2012 to 80% today.
In fact, it's not easy. In 2012, this coffee brand from Seattle, USA, entered Yunnan and established a coffee grower support center here. It also formed a joint venture with local enterprises to establish Starbucks Aini Coffee (Yunnan) Co., Ltd. for purchasing and processing coffee.
All farmers worldwide who want to sell coffee beans to Starbucks need to be certified by Starbucks' C.A.F.E. Practices for Coffee and Growers. This certification is evaluated by a third-party organization and includes aspects such as quality, social responsibility, and environmental protection.
It was not until five years after Starbucks ventured into Yunnan that the first Yunnan coffee beans that met Starbucks' selection criteria were launched. It took another seven years for Yunnan coffee to become one of the coffee beans blended in Starbucks' classic espresso, truly completing the closed-loop of the upstream and downstream industry chain from the "first ten feet" to the "last ten feet".
Of course, for local coffee farmers, Starbucks' standards are also a challenge.
In the past, we used to pick fresh fruits in a relatively crude way, just like this, we caught them all at once. "Liu Xiaorong and Wen Jun took over the coffee business that the older generation started during the supply and marketing cooperatives 11 years ago, and currently run a company called Manguotang Coffee, which cooperates with farmers to collect beans, and then carries out processes such as shelling fresh fruits.
The direct consequence of extensive production in the past was that coffee farmers and even managers lacked awareness and means of modern management of coffee beans for a long time.
Previously, we didn't have our own tables, and there was no standard for annual coffee bean production statistics. We also didn't know how many tons were sold, produced, qualified, and unqualified this year. Liu Xiaorong said that in the past, she always took her luck to sell beans to the consignee.
Starbucks has done a lot of work to harvest coffee beans that meet the standards in Yunnan.
Wang Wandong is an agronomist at Starbucks, and his daily job is to provide free and professional sustainable planting training for coffee farmers, regardless of whether the coffee beans they ultimately harvest are sold to Starbucks. During the coffee planting and harvesting season, he visits an average of 7-8 farms every day, with a cumulative mileage of over 480000 kilometers over the past 12 years, equivalent to circumnavigating the Earth once a year.
Wang Wandong's advice to local coffee farmers includes picking all red fruits and planting shade trees next to the coffee trees - avoiding sun damage when the coffee trees are not yet ripe, and creating a better microclimate around them to help the fruits absorb nutrients after they have formed.
He also tells coffee farmers that fertilizing before rain and flowering can effectively ferment fertilizers, while coffee fruits absorb more nutrients and grow fuller; Alternatively, pour quicklime into the wastewater treatment tank, as the wastewater produced by coffee washing is highly acidic and can cause environmental damage.
After coffee farmers produce high-quality coffee fruits, Liu Xiaorong will conduct small-scale experiments to determine whether to use treatment methods such as water washing and sun exposure. This process may last for more than three years. Nowadays, they demand that their self-produced coffee taste clean and pure. In addition to large-scale production, she also began to try planting coffee in different altitudes and microclimate plots, doing some special treatments, paying more attention to the sweetness of coffee, and approaching boutique coffee.
But once a coffee farmer is certified, it does not mean that their coffee beans can be purchased by Starbucks. Every morning, a large number of trucks filled with coffee beans queue up to enter Starbucks' local factory, waiting for Starbucks' layers of grading and inspection.
In fact, the reason why coffee farmers want to sell to Starbucks is not just the brand reputation, but the price.
Starbucks has stated that it will not only purchase high-quality coffee beans at a price 20% -30% higher than the market average, but also provide additional rewards for premium coffee beans that meet or even exceed Starbucks' purchasing standards.
At the beginning, it took 7 to 8 minutes for coffee farmers to pick flawed beans, and in the end, only 20% -30% of the coffee beans could meet the standards, not to mention the pure flavor, and some were even mixed with various flavors, "said Guo Qiong, a cup tester at Starbucks. Nowadays, the quality of Yunnan coffee has made a great leap." Even if you don't pick flawed beans for 3 minutes, the pass rate has reached 80%, and there are often stunning flavors
Currently, not only Starbucks has recognized Yunnan coffee.
According to data released by JD Consumer and Industrial Development Research Institute, the sales of Yunnan coffee on JD.com have increased by more than 30 times in the past five years, with a growth rate more than 5 times that of regular coffee. In 2024, the search volume for "Yunnan coffee" has increased by more than 30% year-on-year.
According to statistics from Yunnan Province, the export volume of Yunnan coffee beans has been declining since 2018. In 2022, 79.5% of Yunnan's coffee bean production was used to supply the domestic market. By 2023, the annual production of Yunnan coffee beans reached 146000 tons, with over 90% of Yunnan coffee remaining in the domestic consumer market that year.
But behind the hustle and bustle, Yunnan coffee still faces obstacles and stretches.
In the public perception, the emergence of Yunnan coffee is brought about by the wave of boutique coffee. From 2018 to 2021, the emergence of new local consumer brands and the rise of investment tide in the consumption field will gradually deepen consumers' recognition of Chinese brands, and the "China-Chic" Yunnan coffee in the coffee field will gradually stand in the middle.
At its peak, there were actually many outsiders, with the farthest being people from Northeast China who came to cultivate coffee. The climate here is also good, and they have money and want to invest in one, "Starbucks agronomist Zhong Keren told Jiemian News.
But compared to the surging hot money, what Yunnan coffee lacks more is people who are truly on the farmland.
Now it's not that we can't grow without land, it's just that there's a lack of people to manage it. If someone can manage and do this, our coffee production can actually be higher. But now young people are willing to work outside and don't want to stay here to make coffee. "Liu Xiaorong graduated from Yunnan University of Arts, studying visual communication, but for a long time, there were still few young people like her who had a bachelor's degree and were willing to run a coffee business, which constrained the increase in local coffee production.
But with the increasing market volume of Yunnan coffee, the situation has also undergone some changes.
Wang Chunmei returned to her hometown in Pu'er, Yunnan in July this year. This village called Baishapo has now transformed into a "Beautiful Star Village · Coffee Culture Experience Center". After wandering around as a tour guide for many years, Wang Chunmei became the first barista here.
Meilixing Village is a rural revitalization demonstration village created by Starbucks and the governments of Shanghai and Yunnan, with coffee as the theme and integrating agriculture, culture, and tourism. This coffee culture experience center, covering an area of 1700 square meters, is equipped with multiple restaurants and exquisite homestays that meet social media check-in standards, in addition to processing and tasting areas. It is jointly operated and managed by 21 local farmers, and some can even provide pizza ovens - this project attempts to create a "coffee tourism" industry with local characteristics.
But beyond these attempts, what truly determines whether Yunnan's coffee industry has enough talent to return is whether the entire industry chain is sound and whether it can truly make money.
For most farmers, coffee is just one type of crop, and they have also cut down coffee trees and planted fruits due to the cyclical decline in coffee market prices. If coffee cultivation is separated from gentlemanly and commercial sentiments, it originally belonged only to one of the traditional cultivation industries.
For any economy in the world, the scale and efficiency of agricultural development will always be the top priority.