The '97-Born Who Brought a Coffee Roastery to a Rural Courtyard in Pinggu

At a Glance (China Coffee Network): Born in 1997, Ye Wenzhe – known as "Factory Director Ye" – runs a "front-shop, back-factory" coffee roasting works in a rural courtyard in Beijing's Pinggu district, sourcing imported green beans and serving both retail and wholesale customers.

Pushing open the courtyard gate, bamboo shades the view and the aroma of coffee greets you. This is both a cafe and a coffee-bean roasting factory. Born in 1997, Ye Wenzhe – everyone calls him “Factory Director Ye” – is the proprietor of this “front-shop, back-factory” coffee works.

From first encountering the coffee industry

to returning to Pinggu to take over the factory

Over two-plus years, this young fellow

has settled a professional coffee-roasting business in the countryside

letting coffee beans from all over the world

undergo their transformation on the land of Pinggu

before travelling into the hands of consumers across the country

Bonding with coffee was a natural, meant-to-be encounter.

Before returning to Pinggu, Ye Wenzhe had long been in coffee-machine sales, working with multiple brands and dealing with coffee equipment year-round, forging an early and deep bond with the coffee industry. When his child was born, he chose to return to his hometown of Pinggu, and by a stroke of fate joined this locally rooted coffee factory that had gone through several iterations. Starting as an employee and growing step by step, he gradually took on the heavy responsibility of running the entire factory.

When he first took over, the factory courtyard was run-down – cracked concrete paths, weeds everywhere, cluttered wall partitions. Ye led his team to renovate it by hand: resurfacing the ground, building a new gate, planting bamboo, and knocking through the partitioned walls, transforming the old workshop into a space that combines experience and production functions.

“When we took over, you’d frown just stepping inside; the look it has now, we built it up bit by bit,” Ye remarked with emotion. Today the courtyard lacks the privileged natural scenery of a mountain cafe, yet it possesses a down-to-earth bustle unique to a roasting factory.

Its biggest ace is the genuine quality of the coffee itself.

Stepping into the back production workshop, it is modest in size, with sacks of imported green beans neatly stacked. “Every sack of green beans is worth a fortune,” Ye said, his eyes lighting up as he talked about the coffee. “The beans come from origins across Colombia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Indonesia and more; we stock up in large volumes every month and do the sorting and roasting right here in the factory.” Rather than rely on smart preset roasting times, Ye and his roasters trust the experience built up over years. “We open the sampling port, observe the bean color, smell the aroma, and judge the roast depth by sense – adjusting the heat and airflow.”

The factory runs a dual track of B2B and B2C. The B2B business takes the larger share, mostly sold to Hunan, Hainan and other regions, and also supplied to several leading cafes and enterprises in Beijing.

“We have six or seven permanent staff, and add temporary hands when production is busy,” Ye said. When tasks pile up, Ye himself jumps into the workshop to help. “I’d love to do short-video promotion properly, but when production gets busy, there’s simply no extra energy for it,” he admitted candidly.

For ordinary consumers, a rich range of products – drip bags, instant coffee, blended beans – are sold both online and at the offline courtyard. As the National Day holiday approached, sales kept climbing, with daily revenue rising from about 1,000 yuan at the end of August to three or four thousand yuan. “Many Pinggu cafes sell the scenery; we sell the coffee itself.” Insisting on never using defective or broken beans and roasting only imported greens, the shop has won many coffee lovers as repeat customers.

Speaking of the future, this post-’97 entrepreneur has simple hopes. On one hand, he will keep refining the bean recipes and holding onto B2B regulars while running the online shop well; on the other, he hopes to keep improving the courtyard experience, build a brand style of his own, and tell more people the origin and roasting stories behind the beans. He wants more people to know that, in Pinggu, there hides a coffee factory that does roasting the real, honest way.

This holiday,

why not come to this coffee courtyard hidden in the village

and breathe in the rich coffee aroma after roasting

sip a cup of coffee straight from the factory

and hear the story of the ’97-born factory director and his coffee beans

Source: Beijing Hao | Author: Beijing Pinggu Official Release

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