Coffee Becomes Increasingly Chinese-Style! Fried Dough Sticks and Large Pancakes Become Standard in Coffee Shops!

Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account: cafe_style).

For more specialty coffee beans, add FrontStreet Coffee on WeChat, ID: qjcoffeex.

Recently, M Stand officially announced a coffee combo built around youtiao (fried dough sticks) and shaobing (baked flatbread): the "Youtiao Croissant," crisp on the outside and flaking with every bite. Paired with a cup of coffee, this East-meets-West idea sounds delicious. Besides the original, there's also a Sausage Youtiao Croissant and a Beef Shaobing.

Eating youtiao and beef shaobing with coffee in a coffee shop: the domestic coffee market is really getting creative.

As early as February this year, a "Jianbing Guozi Coffee Shop" in Shanghai pushed the topic of Chinese breakfast plus coffee to the top of the trending list. Reports said many netizens were willing to queue for over an hour just for a jianbing and coffee breakfast combo.

At the time, the shop's jianbing plus coffee combo was priced at 28 yuan. The jianbing came with 2 eggs and optional fillings like youtiao, crispy crackers and meat floss, while the coffee was mainly Americano and latte.

The shop opens at 7 AM every day, which fits the needs of nearby office workers and students. The owner said the coffee shop has been open for 7 years and only started offering the "jianbing plus coffee" combination in early February this year. They didn't expect it to take off so fast: "We prep ingredients for about 200 jianbing a day, and sometimes they sell out before noon."

Coffee plus Chinese Breakfast, All Across the Country

After "jianbing guozi plus coffee" went viral in Shanghai, coffee plus Chinese breakfast combinations launched around the country were very well received, especially those built around local signature breakfast snacks.

In the Ningbo area there's "coffee plus local breakfast cifan tuan (sticky rice balls), youtiao and scallion pancakes"; in the Chaozhou area, "wugui (glutinous rice cakes) or yugui (taro cakes) plus coffee"; in Kunming, "meigan cai kou rou bing (preserved vegetable pork belly cake) plus coffee"; in Jingdezhen, "youtiao baomaci (youtiao with glutinous rice cake) plus coffee"; and in Shantou, "Chaoshan changfen (rice noodle rolls) plus coffee."

In Guangzhou there's even a beef offal shop offering "beef offal rice plus coffee." It seems it isn't just Chinese breakfast; even Chinese meals need a cup of coffee to feel complete.

We used to think coffee paired most naturally with Western baked goods, and we often see coffee shops offering bread, cake and coffee as a combo. But looked at the other way around, a coffee shop serving Chinese breakfast, or a Chinese breakfast shop serving coffee, both make perfect sense.

Netizens' Coffee plus Breakfast Pairings

Today, coffee shops are gradually moving beyond the Western preference for coffee plus pastries and turning toward everyday, down-to-earth, multi-scenario Chinese breakfast options that better fit Chinese consumers.

Deep in the subconscious of Chinese breakfast culture are soy milk, youtiao, buns and jianbing, as well as changfen, shaomai and mianxian. When coffee enters daily life and meets these foods, there's no need to resist; perhaps this is a chance for sparks to fly.

Coffee Becoming a Breakfast Staple

In 2021, Ele.me and Koubei Life Network jointly published a report on breakfast situations across China. Among Shanghai residents' breakfast choices, soy milk and coffee ranked in the top two. In the four major regions including East and South China, coffee was listed among the most popular breakfast items.

Compared with afternoon tea, breakfast is a more routine, higher-frequency consumption occasion. This also shows indirectly that coffee is gradually finding its way into the breakfast world and becoming part of many people's daily lives.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Pairing coffee with a hearty breakfast calls for a smooth, milk-friendly cup, and FrontStreet Coffee's daily lineup is built for exactly that. FrontStreet Premium Blend and FrontStreet Black Cocoa Blend are the best companions for milk: with Brazilian coffee in the lead, they bring out complex nut notes of almond, walnut and macadamia over a silky, lingering mouthfeel.

If you want more crema and a fuller body, choose FrontStreet Classic Blend or FrontStreet Commercial Blend, each with a small proportion of Robusta that adds golden foam and turns up the creamy body and caramel aroma. And for a bright, fruit-forward start to the day, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy blends Arabica from several regions into a vivid strawberry-gummy sweetness that works as a daily cup at home or a signature milk drink in a shop.