Shanghai coffee festival attracts 260 brands

People poured in to sample the delights, browse and chat at the 7th Lujiazui Coffee Festival, which was held recently at the Lujiazui Central Greenland – the largest open lawn in downtown Shanghai in East China.

The five-day event, which kicked off on March 29, was also held at a sub-venue at the Shanghai International Convention Center for the first time.

The festival attracted about 260 coffee brands from home and abroad to display their premium products and services, to the delight of coffee enthusiasts.

It featured a themed area called "Coffee City Roaming", which invited a dozen top coffee shops from 12 Chinese cities – including Beijing, Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Guiyang and Jingdezhen – to offer different coffee flavors and cultural styles to visitors.

Largo, a popular coffee shop from Qingdao city in Shandong province, brought its signature "HuaziCoffee" to Shanghai for the first time.

"We chose to participate in the festival because it is one of the top events in the industry, with a large scale and a high level of professionalism," said Ni Xue, a barista at Largo.

Some of the participating brands were industry giants including Lavazza, McCafe and Nespresso, while others were domestic newcomers like MQ Coffee and Seesaw.

The festival offered more than 70 special seasonal drinks that could only be tasted on site. It also sold coffee festival merchandise.

Only 24 brands participated in the first festival in 2016, but by the time of the sixth one in 2021 there were 213 brands. Since its inception, the number of participating brands has increased nearly tenfold in six years.