Coffee is Traditional Chinese Medicine for Wellness! Ethiopian Sidamo is the Best Proof!

Coffee Is Traditional Chinese Medicine for Wellness! Ethiopian Sidamo Is the Best Proof!

Ha! Yes, this one is a meme.

It all started with a small town called Bensa in the eastern part of Ethiopia's famed Sidamo region. Most coffee there is grown in family backyards, so after harvest the cherries are sent to the town's processing station for centralized processing and then exported under the town's name—which is why beans from this area are also known as Bensa coffee.

For friends from Guangdong province, the moment they hear "Bensa" pronounced aloud, the herbal-tea DNA in their body sends an instant message to the brain: Wait—Bansha (herbal tea) coffee?! Hence the running joke: "Coffee is traditional Chinese medicine—drink more of it and it's good for your health! The fact that Ethiopia grows a bean called Bensa is the best proof."

Is Coffee Actually Medicine?

Whether coffee counts as medicine is open to interpretation, so we won't litigate that here. What's certain is that "traditional Chinese medicine coffee" has captured the hearts of a new generation of wellness-minded consumers in recent years!

According to the "2017-2022 China Health and Wellness Industry Market Development Status and Investment Outlook Forecast Report," people aged 18-35 make up as much as 83.7% of the health-conscious population. No wonder so many industries have piled onto the "health and wellness" bandwagon—and pairing traditional Chinese medicinal herbs with other products has become a guaranteed traffic magnet.

The Coffee Industry Joins the Health Trend

The coffee industry is no exception. Since coffee is itself a traffic magnet, "wellness" naturally came knocking first. In 2020, Tongrentang—a famous traditional Chinese medicine brand—opened a coffee shop blending Eastern and Western elements to help young people engage with traditional Chinese medicine, pioneering drinks like goji berry latte, motherwort rose latte, hawthorn-tangerine peel Americano, and longan red bean pour-over—along with slogans like "Never slack on wellness and you'll reach the pinnacle of life" and "Red dates with coffee, wake up early tomorrow."

The Rise of "Punk Wellness"

Herbal medicine plus coffee instantly became a consumer trend young people rushed to follow. The demand isn't really about any actual health effect. Precisely because these drinks can't truly deliver wellness, the sense of ritual has to be maximized instead—settling for the next best thing under the health principle of "staying up late is staying up late, but wellness can't be skipped." Welcome to "punk wellness."

Beyond medicine-plus-coffee drinks, more and more cafés are now decorated to look like traditional Chinese medicine or herbal tea shops—or actual herbal shops are being converted into coffee shops—so customers feel a strong sense of wellness the moment they walk in.

Creativity and Responsibility in Coffee Wellness

In these shops, aside from a few specialty drinks that actually incorporate medicinal herbs, the rest of the menu still centers on specialty coffee—hoping that a properly extracted cup might ease the psychological burden of "internal heat" (a concept from traditional Chinese medicine).

Creatively, this is all quite good. The coffee industry needs these striking combinations to spark public curiosity. But—not every traditional Chinese medicine can be mixed into coffee!

More and more shops are imitating the "medicine in coffee" formula, tossing in traditional patent medicines that are supposed to avoid cold and raw foods—like the "Huoxiang Zhengqi Iced Americano" that recently trended on social media... Every medicine carries some toxicity; used improperly, not everyone can bear the side effects. TCM in coffee should only ever use materials that are both medicine and food!

These seemingly simple pairings are a genuine test of the creator's grasp of both medicinal materials and coffee itself: understanding the herb, judging whether its flavor is too strong and might smother the coffee's own character, and asking whether the combined taste is acceptable to the general public.

Too many merchants launch whatever looks striking or is trending online, without ever asking whether the combination is appropriate.

"Medicinal coffee" may be fashionable, but everyone's sensitivity to each herb differs. Without a deep understanding of whatever "medicine" goes into the cup, we'd advise against blindly trying it. Being responsible to yourself is also being responsible to others.

Image source: Internet | Xiaohongshu

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Speaking of Sidamo: Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, home to countless heirloom varieties, and a treasure land in the eyes of coffee lovers. If the Bensa story made you curious about Sidamo beans, start with FrontStreet's natural Huakui from the Guji-Hambella district—dried for 21 days on raised beds, then roasted medium-light to reveal faint fermented winey aromas, florals, citrus and mango, with thick honeyed sweetness, cocoa depth and a long finish.

For something brighter, try the Hamashu lot from the same Sidamo region: built on the compact 74158 variety from JARC's 74 series, it opens with perfume-lemon, strawberry and starfruit sweetness, followed by delicate florals. And for the classic Yirgacheffe experience, the washed Guodingding Cooperative lot offers citrus and lemon brightness with elegant white florals—clean, luminous, and nothing like medicine.