Coffee Shop Sells "Lianhua Qingwen Coffee"! Shanghai Market Supervision Bureau Launches Investigation

The "Lianhua Qingwen" Coffee Trend

Recently, "Lianhua Qingwen" has been pulling in enormous traffic across social platforms. Any product with elements resembling the name instantly becomes a hot topic—and inevitably, some merchants started looking for ways to ride the wave.

Regulatory Discovery

During a routine inspection, law enforcement officers from the Shanghai Qingpu District Market Supervision Bureau found a coffee shop selling drinks in cups labeled "Lianhua Qingwen Coffee." On the shop's delivery platform, meanwhile, customers had posted photos of beverages carrying the same labels.

An on-site inventory check revealed 290 paper and plastic cups printed with "Lianhua Qingwen Coffee," along with 6 green medium paper cups already fitted with beverage labels, ready to be filled and sold.

Even more striking: 1,058 unused "Lianhua Qingwen Coffee" labels were found at the scene. Officers ordered the shop to stop using the cups and to destroy all of the unused labels.

The Shop Owner's Explanation

According to the manager, a customer had shown him photos of other coffee shops using the same label and suggested he could sell this way too, predicting strong sales. He also found the wordplay amusing, so he ordered custom "Lianhua Qingwen Coffee" labels online and started selling labeled drinks on December 19, 2022.

Consumer Experience and Medical Perspective

To be fair, the label may have offered some psychological comfort. Some netizens who drank it claimed they'd endured headaches and nasal congestion for days and felt better after a single cup. Remarkable!

In reality, beyond the eye-catching packaging and name, the coffee had nothing to do with the medicinal functions of Lianhua Qingwen. If cold symptoms did ease after drinking it, caffeine is the likelier explanation.

Colds dilate blood vessels in the brain and press on surrounding tissue; caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and constricts blood vessels—an opposing effect that can calm a headache. Nasal congestion comes from congested blood vessels in the nose, and caffeine's vessel-constricting action may help there too.

Of course, everyone's body is different and colds have many causes. Not everyone will feel the same effect, and coffee is no cure-all.

Legal Consequences

Officers told the manager that "trend-riding" like this can easily mislead people into thinking his product was someone else's merchandise, or had some special connection to it.

Strictly speaking, "Lianhua Qingwen" currently holds no trademark exclusivity and the medicine box's design patent isn't at issue. Moreover, many of the cups used the characters for "connected flowers" rather than "lotus flower," so it arguably doesn't constitute infringement. Still, given the risks, regulators advise merchants not to do it.

The manager admitted the sales practice was inappropriate and said he wouldn't repeat it. The Qingpu District Market Supervision Bureau has opened an investigation into the shop's suspected unfair competition in accordance with the law.

Image source: Internet

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

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