"SATURNBIRD" Is Entering the Specialty Coffee Market?!

Many coffee enthusiasts are familiar with SATURNBIRD. When they cannot buy or order coffee at the office or at home, plenty of people reach for it as their lifeline.

Recently SATURNBIRD launched another new product: Espresso Specialty Coffee Liquid, which has officially gone on sale. According to the company, the black version is a light-roasted Americano-style blend using beans processed with raisin honey and natural methods, offering richer fruit acidity. The white version is a dark-roasted latte-style blend using beans processed with washed and anaerobic natural methods, providing more pronounced bitterness.

The new product looks more refined, with small capsule-like packaging that stays both compact and elegant.

Public information shows that SATURNBIRD was founded in April 2015 by Wu Jun. The company's quality control is overseen by CQI-certified coffee quality assessors, and it specializes in specialty coffee. By creating and expanding specialty coffee consumption scenarios, SATURNBIRD aims to make specialty coffee accessible to the masses, operating under the SATURNBIRD COFFEE brand.

Previously, SATURNBIRD focused mainly on freeze-dried coffee, while the company covers products across the entire chain, from coffee beans to coffee powder. Unlike the plastic bag packaging of regular instant coffee, SATURNBIRD uses colorful small cans categorized by roast degree with numbers from 0 to 7, where larger numbers indicate a higher roast level, offering both visual appeal and high recognizability.

Freeze-dried coffee itself is nothing new, but it was SATURNBIRD that popularized it in China. This Espresso Specialty Coffee Liquid is the company's first product in the category, and how the market responds remains to be seen.

In 2021, SATURNBIRD opened its first physical store on Anfu Road in Xuhui District, Shanghai. The store is positioned as the "into the force" concept store, extending SATURNBIRD's planetary culture. The entrance features exposed ceiling beams and concrete walls, with bench and table materials that balance roughness and refinement, creating a semi-finished base that highlights the "force flight" concept.

Earlier, Yongpu Coffee gained popularity online with its innovative cold brew coffee liquid and reached the top sales position for coffee liquid on Tmall. Despite the many convenient packaged coffee products on the market, such as instant coffee, coffee liquid, meaning concentrated coffee liquid that has been extracted, processed, and preserved, offers advantages that are hard to replace.

You could, for instance, make a latte by brewing a drip bag and adding milk, much as you would add milk to an Americano. With coffee liquid, however, it is equivalent to espresso plus milk, letting people enjoy a genuine latte.

Growing Competition in the Coffee Liquid Market

In recent years more brands have entered the coffee liquid market. Sumida River, Seesaw, Colin, and Ji Yin have successively launched coffee liquid products, while packaged retail coffee giants such as Nestle have also introduced them.

As the coffee market keeps upgrading, more enthusiasts prefer to extract their own coffee from beans with their own machine rather than queue at a shop. Extracting a cup with a machine, though, takes about 30 seconds, and with grinding included it requires at least 2 minutes, something office workers or the simply lazy may be unwilling to do.

As new coffee formats continue to drive consumer habits, coffee liquid options keep diversifying. After all, convenient, easy-to-operate coffee liquids that preserve flavor and keep for a long time have become the preferred choice for stocking up.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Convenience is worth a lot, but so is flavor, and if you would rather build your own latte at home, the bean you choose determines the result. For espresso and moka pot milk drinks, FrontStreet Coffee's Classic Blend and Commercial Blend are the top picks. Both add a small proportion of Robusta for generous golden crema and a thick, caramel-rich body, and both hold their own under milk.

For the nuttiest, creamiest milk coffees, FrontStreet Specialty Blend and Black Cocoa Blend are the best partners with milk. Built around a large share of Brazilian beans, they bring comforting almond, walnut, and peanut complexity with a silky, lingering body; the Specialty Blend adds Colombia's nut, chocolate, and caramel notes with moderate acidity, and FrontStreet Coffee's Black Cocoa Blend pairs mature Yunnan plum acidity with a creamy chocolate aroma for a balanced cup that suits Americano, latte, or specialty drinks.

If you want a fruit-forward milk coffee, FrontStreet Colombia Papayo is a double anaerobic natural from Finca La Divisoria at 1,650 to 1,800 meters, medium-light roasted to keep its jasmine and citrus aroma and a juicy blend of passion fruit, blueberry, grape, and apricot, finishing with cocoa. For cold drinks, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy Gesha Blend and FrontStreet Mozart keep a clear strawberry and raisin sweetness even after milk is added.