Rural coffee shops boost villagers' incomes

A rural coffee shop in a scenic spot in Zhejiang province, recently sold over 7,100 cups of coffee in one day, which it claimed was a domestic sales record.

The sales on Oct 2 during the Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, equated to one cup sold every 4 seconds over the 8-hour trading day. The "Deep Blue Plan" coffee shop in Hongmiao village, Meixi town, Anji, is located in an abandoned mine that had been idle for over ten years.

In Anji, a mountainous county in northern Zhejiang with a population of 580,000, there are more than 300 coffee shops, surpassing Shanghai in terms of per capita cafes and being acclaimed by Lonely Planet magazine as "China's Coffee Capital 2022".

The coffee shops are located in villages, many in abandoned mines, with some built over waterfalls and streams, attracting tourists with stunning scenery.

Gu Pingling, who works at the Deep Blue Plan, Anji, said, the sales on Oct 2 exceeded the previous domestic record the cafe held of about 5,000 coffee sales in one day.

"Young people nowadays enjoy drinking coffee, but what coffee shops sell is not just coffee anymore. It's the scenery," Gu said.

All coffee at Deep Blue Plan, be it a latte or an Americano, are priced at 68 yuan ($9.3) per cup. "This is equivalent to buying a ticket to enter the rural scenery, sit down, relax, and take pictures. Coffee is the ticket, the scenery is the product."

As the coffee shops are built near scenic spots, villagers can increase their incomes through cooperation with village collectives and young entrepreneurs.

Ying Zhongdong, Secretary of the local Party branch, said with several projects implemented under the "two investments and three returns" model, the village collective is expected to earn an additional 1 million yuan this year.

"This income will be used for the construction of village infrastructure, such as repairing roads, lighting roads, implementing garbage classification, and constructing cultural and leisure places such as libraries and art galleries for villagers," Ying said.