It’s never too late to start in the coffee industry

About the Author

Wei Lingpeng

Co-founder of Coffee Salon Network, head of CREMA Coffee Training Institute (Beijing), international judge of WBC World Barista Competition, general manager of IIAC China, taster of Italian Coffee Tasting Academy, and the first coffee quality appraiser who passed CQI Q-Grader in mainland China.

I have been working in the coffee industry for 12 years. The most frequently asked question during this period is: How did you start making coffee?

The most common answer is: Because I like drinking coffee, I gradually want to do something I like. Another more inspiring version is: After I graduated from college and started working, there was a coffee shop near my home, which was opened by a couple who returned from overseas. At that time, there was an event of buy nine get one free. When I accumulated nine cups to exchange for the one free cup, I found that it was closed... From then on, I decided to open a coffee shop in the future and organize such events...

Seriously, I can’t really explain why I suddenly thought of making coffee. But it was obviously not my dream when I was young. When we were young, shouldn’t we all aspire to be scientists?

I remember wanting to buy some coffee utensils, but I didn’t know where to buy them (Taobao wasn’t popular at that time), so I thought it would be a good idea to open a store selling coffee utensils because there was a gap in the market. Now that I think about it, this was probably my initial idea to make coffee. Later, when I opened the store, I realized that no one was doing it because there was no market demand for it. The coffee utensils on the shelves could only sell a few in a month. Fortunately, the store didn’t just sell coffee utensils at the time, but also sold coffee beans and coffee drinks.

Photo of Beijing CREMA Coffee Roastery｜Wei Lingpeng

Before opening the shop, there was no plan at all, and there was no market research. I just started working. I believe that if I had done sufficient market research at the time, I would not have opened a coffee shop. So to this day, in my values, I believe that if you want to do something, just do it. If you do sufficient market research before doing it, you will probably find that it is impossible to do it.

The market situation at that time was like this: This coffee shop opened in 2005. It was very small, but it should be considered the earliest self-roasted coffee shop in China. I had never seen this type of coffee shop before, but I had a chance to go to Ethiopia and saw a local coffee shop doing this. I thought it was very novel. So I bought a very small roasting machine and started roasting coffee in the store.

Photo of Beijing CREMA coffee training classroom｜Wei Lingpeng

At that time, there was basically no concept of specialty coffee. Not to mention the various estate beans and auction beans now, it was already difficult to buy small batches of raw beans. What's more, we had to ask the coffee factories we were familiar with to sell some raw beans to us. Some friends even went to Ethiopia and asked them to bring back some raw beans. For example, Yirgacheffe, which is very common in the market now, was not even heard of at that time. My friend brought this kind of raw beans back from Ethiopia, and it tasted very good. I think our store should be considered the earliest coffee shop in China to sell Yirgacheffe.

At that time, I believed that as long as it was fresh, it was good, so I insisted on roasting it at home. Now I think that many of my ideas were wrong. However, in the first few years, I insisted on roasting coffee beans every day. Although I didn’t sell many and the variety of coffee was very small, it laid a good foundation for me to understand the taste of coffee.

Photo of Beijing CREMA coffee training classroom｜Wei Lingpeng

I persisted like this for several years until the 2008 coffee exhibition, when Mr. Yuan from Shanghai Jialumen brought back a variety of coffee beans from a Japanese coffee company. This really allowed everyone to get in touch with specialty coffee. I think that was the embryonic stage of the growth of specialty coffee in China. After 2010, the specialty coffee industry gradually became lively, and people began to pay attention to the quality of coffee. There were more and more shops that roasted their own beans, and more and more suppliers of green beans. It was no longer difficult to buy green beans in small quantities. You could drink the best coffee in the world in China, and international exchanges became more and more frequent at that time.

The industry started to develop very rapidly. When a certain imported brand of coffee roaster first entered the Chinese market, it only sold one per year, and it was even thought that it could no longer be sold. But in just a few years, the annual sales volume became hundreds of units. When we opened the store in 2005, the first coffee machine we used was ECM GIOTTO. At that time, a coffee shop on the market that had a semi-automatic coffee machine was considered professional. But now, to run a boutique coffee shop, the competition for equipment is becoming more and more luxurious, and various new equipment are emerging in an endless stream.

During this period, our business gradually transitioned from coffee shop operations to coffee training.

Photo of Beijing CREMA coffee training classroom｜Wei Lingpeng

Even in the training market, there have been huge changes, mainly in the composition of trainees. When we first started training, 90% of the trainees were basically for the purpose of opening coffee shops; but now more and more enthusiasts are joining the training purely for personal interests, and these trainees account for about 30%; there are also more and more enthusiasts who pursue high-quality coffee and want to learn more about coffee, which also shows the growth and maturity of the market.

There are more and more people engaged in the coffee industry, and many powerful large companies have also joined the industry, so the competition is becoming more and more fierce. After all, China's per capita coffee consumption is still relatively low, and there is still a lot of room for growth in the future.

Many students ask me if they are suitable to enter the coffee industry when there are so many companies in this industry and they lack experience. What I want to say is that the specialty coffee industry is changing so fast and so dramatically. Previous experience is not considered experience. For example, I said at the beginning that I have been in the coffee industry for 12 years. This does not mean that I have 12 years of experience. Looking at the present with the perspective of the past is meaningless. Only the experience of the last two or three years can be truly considered experience. The previous experience is just doing outdated things over and over again for many years.

Serving as an international judge at the WBC World Barista Competition Photo｜Dianne Wang

Nowadays, our lifestyles are changing a lot. Take our coffee salon forum for example. It was very lively a few years ago, but with the development of mobile Internet, we spend less time on computers, not to mention the time we spend on forums. Therefore, we must continue to transform ourselves. As long as we keep a learning attitude, pay attention to new trends, have an innovative spirit, and don't stick to the lack of previous experience, let's look forward to the future market.

So, if you really want to do it, just give it a try. It’s never too late to start.

This article is from "Coffee Salon | 2017 Coffee Yearbook" P264 Wei Lingpeng's "It's never too late to start in the coffee industry". More exciting content can be viewed in "Coffee Salon | 2017 Coffee Yearbook". Click " Read original text " to purchase.

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