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Article | Beverage Report
Do you dare to think about pouring coffee into crab shells?
Recently, cities such as Zhoushan and Ningbo in Zhejiang have launched a horseshoe crab latte, which is infused into the complete crab shell. In a short period of time, photos of customers checking in for crab shell coffee flooded the internet. Netizens have given the name "Fishy Bark Shell Coffee", and multiple topics such as "Zhoushan Fishy Bark Shell" and "Zhoushan Coffee Shop Owner Pulling Flowers on Shuttle Crab Shells" have sparked heated discussions.
When fragrant coffee meets fresh sea crab shells, netizen: How does the mind of Zhoushan baristas grow?
01. From crab shells to sausages, is the barista going to open a banquet?
In the second half of the barista's competition, was it for the "Chef Certificate"?
Before the "fishy crust", there was already a group of creative (exotic) coffee that became popular by incorporating vegetables into coffee. Among them, Zhejiang, the hometown of "fishy shell", is even more crowded to drive a series of traffic feasts. West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce, Meigan cai, Xiaoshan dried radish, children's urine eggs and other local customs line up to enter.
Zhejiang Chapter
Shuttle crab shell latte (fishy crust coffee): After cleaning, deodorizing, and drying, the crab shell comes with a light seafood sweetness, and then poured into the latte. The skilled chef will also add a latte to the milk foam. Even after crab shell coffee, oyster shell coffee emerged, which also sparked heated discussions.
West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce Coffee: West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce Coffee, "Hangzhou people are silent when they see it," became an unexpected hit in March this year. Afterwards, the 'National Tour' began. "2026 Shanghai International Coffee Culture Festival", "Road Star Picking Plan" and other activities have appeared West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce Coffee.
Boy Pee Egg Americano: "Outsiders may not dare to accept it," but at a local coffee shop in Dongyang, Boy Pee Egg Americano sold hundreds of cups per day during its initial launch. It is a product that combines children's urine eggs with American coffee. At present, it has been taken down, and the staff responded that 'if you want to drink, you have to bring your own eggs'. The store also launched a Meigan cai cheese latte, which "coffee" the local ingredients, and seems to be the "obsession" of the store.
Xiaoshan Carrot Dried Cheese Latte: A mix of intangible cultural heritage radish dried and coffee, this is a "cross-border coffee" jointly launched by Xiaoshan time-honored brand Wang Taihe Food and Deyi Coffee. The "sweet and salty" taste makes customers exclaim "special", and many customers "casually buy a portion of dried radish" when buying coffee
Sichuan Chongqing section
Fat Intestine Coffee: Another coffee that has silenced consumers collectively: "People who love to eat fat intestines and drink coffee have all gone silent." It combines the braised sauce of local braised fat intestines with coffee, and the merchant actively sets a three-level taste challenge, with the higher the level, the heavier the "fat intestine flavor".
Blue and white pepper latte: the soul seasoning of Sichuan cuisine has also been invited to the coffee bar, where customers can taste the distinct aroma of Sichuan pepper and latte at the same time. And this coffee seems to have become popular every year in the past two years, and last year, it even led to the popularity of Yongchuan green Sichuan pepper.
Round root pickled Chinese cabbage American style: Sichuan people say that everything can be pickled Chinese cabbage, and coffee can't escape. This coffee blends local specialty round root vegetables into American style coffee. During peak traffic hours, over 100 cups were sold in one afternoon.
Looking at the whole country, the trend of "coffee in vegetables" is far more than just in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Sichuan, and Chongqing.
The American style yellow wine from Xiangyang, Hubei, is packaged in coffee cups and has a daily sales volume of over 200 cups; The sand tea latte from Xiamen, Fujian, interweaves salty and spicy sand tea sauce with slightly bitter coffee; The fragrant green vegetable latte from Suzhou, Jiangsu, juiced national geographical indication products into coffee and sold over 10000 yuan in sales within 5 days of its launch; The pickled vegetable coffee in Fuling, Chongqing, is said to have attracted overseas human rights experts from more than 20 countries and international organizations to come and taste it; The salted vegetable coffee in Chaoshan, Guangdong, with salted vegetables, Century egg and bubble water, sells hundreds of cups a day at peak hours.
From crab shells to sausages, from yellow wine to pickles, the barista's menu is constantly expanding. You can never guess which hometown dish will be put into the coffee cup next.
Why are baristas so imaginative and enthusiastic about using food to make their coffee?
02. When baristas start playing against common sense, what is the coffee industry causing trouble?
When crab shells and oyster shells become coffee containers, the vinegar glue of West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce is hung on the edge of the coffee cup, and the sauce of braised fat sausage is integrated with American style… All kinds of strange and creative coffee make many netizens directly say "they thought they were going to the wrong place".
Baristas across the country have staged a "career transition" and become chefs, bringing home cooked dishes cup by cup to the bar. Is this collective "clean-up" a new direction of internal competition in the coffee industry, or is there another way?
1. Breaking Boundaries: Making Coffee with a Cooking Mindset
Coffee is one of the few tracks in the catering industry that maintains positive growth. According to data from Narrow Gate Restaurant as of August 2026, the coffee industry has opened 77000 new stores in the past year, with a net growth of 16000. Among them, Luckin Coffee stands out with over 36000 stores, while Kudi has over 15000 stores.
Top brands are accelerating their efforts to expand their market share, while the survival space for small and medium-sized brands is becoming increasingly narrow. At the same time, the price of coffee has rolled up to the floor, and the flavor has reached its limit. Independent coffee shops need to change their gameplay in order to be seen.
The gameplay of "+dish" has been verified by the tea drinking circle. In the past two years, vegetables such as kale, red cabbage, and purple cabbage have moved from salad bowls to milk tea cups, creating the sub category of "super plant tea". This trend of "entering the food" has swept into the coffee industry, and Novacoffee has followed suit with red cabbage, purple cabbage American style, and kale light coffee. Tims has also launched a red cabbage, American ginseng energy bottle.
Crab shells, fat intestines and West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce on the hot search are just the epitome of the wave of "adding vegetables to coffee". When the thought of "cooking" enters the coffee bar, once the boundaries are broken, imagination breaks through the ceiling, and the scenery that used to be out of touch with coffee begins to pour into the coffee cup.
2. Creating a Topic: Turning Creativity into Social Currency
Crab shell container, fat sausage+coffee… These "dark cuisine" style combinations are themselves traffic passwords.
After the popularity of Fat Intestine Coffee, the topic "Has Coffee Developed Like This?" became a hot topic, doubling store sales and attracting tourists from Sichuan and Chongqing to check in. A cup of curiosity coffee turns a small shop into a tourist destination.
Similarly, West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce Coffee and Boy Urine Egg American Style have also become popular online search words in different positions. The dissemination path of these coffees is highly consistent – posting pictures on social media platforms → playing memes with netizens → trending online → checking in offline → secondary dissemination. On this chain of dissemination, the key identity of coffee is the "nine grid material". Compared to "whether it tastes good or not", customers are more concerned about whether they can attract "likes and discussions".
3. Taking advantage of regional culture: attaching a local ID card to coffee
In Zhoushan and Ningbo, baristas use local shuttle crab shells as cups; In Hangzhou, baristas "rush" West Lake Fish in Vinegar Sauce into their coffee cups; In Sichuan and Chongqing, green pepper has become the supporting role of coffee… Coffee has really "grown" in the soil of their respective cities.
A typical example is the Xiaoshan dried radish cheese latte, made with intangible cultural heritage techniques and topped with Xiaoshan dried radish, mixed with specially formulated milk and coffee. Coffee has gained recognition through regional culture, and regional culture has found a new way to communicate with young people through coffee. Through this cup of coffee, new consumption and regional culture have completed a two-way journey. In this two-way journey, coffee and regional culture complement each other.
At the end: Hunting for novelty carries risks, and caution should be exercised when checking in.
These coffees, being curious is the traffic code, but the taste that is curious enough is often difficult to please the public's tongue. The comments from netizens such as' the taste is hard to describe 'and' don't make things difficult for your taste buds' indicate that they are mostly more suitable for appearing in the Nine Palace Grid rather than on daily repurchase lists.
03. Beverage Report – Sir said
From the coast of the East China Sea to the plain of western Sichuan, from crab shell sausages in Jiangsu and Zhejiang to pickled vegetables and pickled vegetables in Chaoshan, baristas refresh people's understanding of coffee with cups of "hard vegetables". These coffees are no longer obsessed with pleasing everyone's tongue, but are enthusiastic about occupying the Nine Palaces.
It can be foreseen that the next cup of "fishy shell" will soon appear. And these seemingly outrageous ideas are essentially a collective dialogue between coffee and Chinese local culture. It no longer struggles with whether it feels like a proper cup of coffee, but instead begins to tell the story of Chinese coffee in a Chinese way. In this sense, what the Chinese coffee market is experiencing is not a carnival of curiosity, but a necessary path from "replication" to "creation".