Interface News Reporter | Li Ye
Interface News Editor | Ya Hanxiang
This year, the main venue of the Shanghai International Coffee Festival on the North Bund attracted over 200 brands. Among them, there is an area that is different from previous years. It does not sell beans or make coffee, but instead gathers coffee making equipment.
One of the domestic grinder brands, LHOPAN, has set up its booth under the skyline of Lujiazui. This grinder, priced at only 168 yuan, is designed for daily household use, and its staff is introducing their products to those who stop by.
A coffee enthusiast on site said, 'I usually drink coffee casually and have a little bit of any flavor,' and then listened to the explanation from the European cooking staff with great interest.
This scene may illustrate the changes happening in the coffee industry in Shanghai.
The coffee festival is no longer just a coffee market, and coffee equipment is no longer just professional tools in coffee shops. With the continuous popularization of coffee consumption in Shanghai, the industrial chain links such as coffee machines, grinders, and roasting equipment are being pushed to a more daily position and promoting the development of related industries nationwide.
At the Shanghai 2026 International Coffee Festival, a coffee equipment company is introducing its products to consumers. Photo shoot: Interface News by Li Ye
The "2026 China Urban Coffee Development Report" released on April 30th shows that the scale of China's coffee industry will reach 354.9 billion yuan by 2025, a year-on-year increase of 13.3%; The number of coffee shops in Shanghai has reached 10336, officially crossing the threshold of 10000 stores. For a city with thousands of coffee shops, the spillover of coffee consumption is not only reflected in the number of stores, but also in the aggregation of equipment, supply chains, and service companies.
A coffee industry insider told Interface News that Shanghai has always been one of the most important distribution centers for China's coffee equipment trade and service system.
Many well-known coffee equipment trading companies, agents, and system service providers are registered or established in Shanghai, and use this as a window to serve the national market, "he told Interface News." The reason is that Shanghai has not only the earliest batch of high-end hotels, Western restaurants, and international chain coffee brands, but also boutique cafes, bakeries, and corporate coffee scenes that have grown rapidly later
However, this has also gone through a relatively long process.
Wang Jun, an experienced expert in the imported coffee equipment industry, told Interface News that in the 1990s, the price of a fully automatic commercial coffee machine was about 100000 yuan, which only high-end hotels could afford. At that time, most coffee machines were only placed in hotel restaurants to show off and create an atmosphere, and were rarely used to make coffee. "Guests don't know how to drink, and they don't understand
With Starbucks entering China, Italian espresso machines have become popular. Taking cappuccino as an example, in the 1990s in Shanghai, Starbucks, which used Italian style machines, could produce dense foam through steam sticks, while other coffee machines could not produce it and could only add some cream on top, resulting in a unique taste. This mechanized and automated approach was the trend at the time, "recalled a coffee enthusiast born in the 1980s to Jiemian News.
But it is not just a few international chain brands that are truly driving the popularity of coffee machines, but the emerging local chain and independent boutique coffee in Shanghai.
With the rise of independent coffee shops and boutique baking studios based in Shanghai, commercial Italian coffee machines have begun to offer different options such as fully automatic and semi-automatic. The former can be produced with just one click, while the latter requires manual operation by a barista.
Wang Li Coffee, who has been engaged in the supply of coffee beverage system services for many years, told Interface News that the demand for coffee machines during this period has clearly shifted from the previous "large-scale standardized demand" to "de elite personalized flavor demand".
This trend extends to the present day. In fact, over the years, the number of imported coffee equipment in the market has significantly increased. Although there are no macro statistics, the scope has clearly expanded from its customer base.
Taking Shanghai as an example, according to information provided by Wang Li Coffee to Interface News, the representative customers in the 1990s were some international fast food, Western cuisine, and high-end business hotels; From 2010 to 2018, there was a significant increase in customers for independent and cross-border stores; Since 2019, the newly added customers include community stores, campus stores, convenience stores, supermarkets, tea drinks, baking and almost all other formats.
Taking the Swiss fully automatic coffee machine Thermoplan as an example, this type of machine has a high unit price. In the early days, only the world's top chains and a few multinational restaurants could afford it, leaning towards large-scale standardized production. Now, brands that pursue top-level stability and standardization are being included, including domestic top waist coffee chains, high-end tea beverage baking, business complexes, large airport high-speed trains, etc. ”Wang Li Coffee said.
Driven by the continuous expansion of the coffee market, coffee machines have also begun to move from commercial spaces into household settings.
In the past, home coffee relied more on instant, ear hanging, or capsule products, and the threshold for using professional coffee machines and grinders was relatively high. But with the increase in the density of coffee shops in Shanghai, the popularization of boutique coffee education, and the increasing acceptance of different coffee categories such as latte, American, and hand wash by consumers, more and more people are starting to bring home their consumption habits from coffee shops.
In addition to coffee shops, various coffee festivals, exhibitions, and offline experiential activities in Shanghai also allow coffee machines, grinders, and hand washing utensils that were originally hidden behind the bar to directly face ordinary consumers. Coffee equipment is no longer just a tool for baristas, but gradually becomes a consumer product in homes and offices.
This also explains why this year's Shanghai International Coffee Festival will specifically push the equipment to a more prominent position.
The Shanghai Cultural and Creative Industry Promotion Association told Interface News that in the early days, the coffee festival was more like a "gathering of coffee shops", but the participation enthusiasm of upstream enterprises in the industry chain was increasing. This year, the coffee festival specifically set up areas for baking and processing equipment, utensils and accessories, coffee raw materials and accessories, etc. The proportion of coffee and coffee industry related sectors reached 60%. The function of the coffee festival has changed from "drinking a cup" to "making a whole chain".
Equipment Exhibition Area at Shanghai International Coffee Culture Festival
The market and consumers' attention to coffee equipment is also a signal of the further maturity of the Shanghai coffee industry chain.
On the one hand, Shanghai's vast coffee consumption market provides equipment companies with intensive application scenarios. Whether it's testing new equipment for chain brands, trying new extraction solutions for boutique stores, or purchasing grinders and semi-automatic coffee machines for home consumers, Shanghai can provide a sufficiently rich sample of demand.
On the other hand, Shanghai is also a gathering place for a large number of coffee equipment trading companies and service providers. Many imported coffee machine brands enter the Chinese market through Shanghai, where equipment agents, training institutions, and accessory suppliers form a network and radiate their products and services nationwide. With the rapid expansion of coffee shops in China, Shanghai has also become an important window for many equipment companies to observe the Chinese market and adjust product strategies.
Another new change after market expansion is the rise of domestically produced coffee equipment.
Interface News saw at the Shanghai International Coffee Culture Festival that there were many exhibitors of domestic equipment. In the face of strong manufacturing power and increasing demand, many domestic coffee machine equipment have begun to impact the affordable consumer market.
Wang Li Coffee revealed to Interface News that in the past, imported mid-range models ranging from tens of thousands to tens of thousands accounted for a large share, while now domestic machines are rapidly catching up in terms of stability, functionality, intelligence, localization, price, and service. At present, the high-end market is still dominated by imported equipment, but it is also accelerating iteration and launching models that are more suitable for China.
The coffee enthusiast who stopped in front of the LHOPAN booth ultimately scanned the brand's QR code and purchased the equipment. This scene may have been relatively rare in the past: a domestically produced grinder priced at 168 yuan participated in the International Coffee Festival exhibition under the skyline of Lujiazui and was brought home by ordinary consumers.
Behind these details and changes is actually the popularization of coffee consumption in Shanghai, as well as the result of the continuous upgrading of the coffee equipment industry chain. The coffee story in Shanghai is no longer just about the number of coffee shops, but also about the growing equipment trade and industrial system behind these coffees.