Chinese Distributors Want to Import Coffee
Why Coffee demand is growing rapidly in China? Why do Chinese Distributors and food importers want to purchase massive among of coffee in China?
Quick hello before the details. I am Jon Wang, and I help foreign food and drink brands reach Chinese distributors and buyers. China was a tea country, and now it drinks coffee by the truckload. Distributors are actively hunting for new beans and brands. If you sell coffee, the door is wide open, and here is how to walk through it.
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We can Sell the Chinese Food Distributors list
We can contact them
We can help you to negotiate
We can organize a Marketing to distributors campaign
Email us for further information.
China’s coffee market is in fire in 2024
COFFEE MARKET IN CHINA (2022)
In short, the Chinese Government gives strong signals to local businesses to develop imported Products. source
Xi says China has made long-term commitment to buy US$30 trillion worth of goods and US$10 trillion worth of services in next 15 years
You should know that China is moving from a tea-consuming country to Coffee Drinking Market. (source)
the most promising market in the world for coffee growers and international coffee chains, with the rise of the Middle Class
China has about 3x more coffee shops than the US. If you live in a tier 1 city like Shanghai, there are large and small boutique cafes literally everywhere.
– Starbucks plans to open a store every nine hours to reach 9,000 locations by 2025 (it has about 6000 now). It is also opening a $130M roasting plant in Kunshan, its first in Asia.
– Tim Hortons opened its 600th location this year and plans to have 2700 stores by 2026.
– Lavazza, in partnership with Yum China, will open 1000 stores in the next 2 years.
– Luckin Coffee, the Chinese brand that was caught with accounting fraud in 2020 and almost went bankrupt, has been revitalized and has over 2000 stores.
– Manner Coffee, popular with hipsters and GenZ’s has over 150 stores.
– Cotti Coffee has opened 1300 stores and is aiming for 10,000 by 2025, surpassing Starbucks.
Consumers in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou drink about 300 cups of coffee a year, close to US levels. But across mainland China as a whole, the average is just nine cups.
The market is far from saturated… 10 years ago coffee was seen as an “exotic western beverage” that conveyed a western lifestyle, but now there were many Chinese brands.
There is still tremendous room for growth. source FT
Why is the Chinese Coffee Market important?
Hanging out in the cafes with the latest drinks represents a new lifestyle choice for Chinese urban consumers. As their standard of living improves, Chinese consumers like to explore new products and experiences, especially Western Brand…..
Coffee consumption in China
While per capita coffee consumption in China remains relatively low (three cups per year compared with 250 in the United Kingdom and 363 cups in the United States), total consumption has increased at an average annual rate of 16% over the past year.source
Influence of Giants
International coffee chains such as Starbucks are rapidly expanding their footprint: the company has tripled its number of stores in China, from 1,017 in 2011 to 3,300 in 2018. The online data show a similar growth pattern: In the last 12 months, 18 million Chinese consumers have bought RMB 2.5 billion of coffee products, up 18 percent year on year.
Starbucks is opening 3000 new shops per year in China
China’s coffee market has been drawing global attention. Starbucks’ recent plan to open 3,000 new shops over the next five years is just one of many developments highlighting China as a rising coffee-consuming country.
China is on track to follow the US to become one of the largest coffee consumers in the world. China’s craze for coffee at this time is very similar to that of Japan
Luckin the challenger
Luckin Coffee has quickly become the 2nd largest coffee store in China after Starbucks. As of March, it has opened 2,370 stores, very fast expansion, mostly in office buildings in 30 cities and sold 90 million liters of coffee per year, and already serves 18 million Chinese Coffee Clients.
This ambitious Chinese coffee brand aims to have 4,500 stores throughout the country by the end of 2019.
Opportunities for New coffee Brand Stores and online consumption
The world’s second-largest economy offers growth because of its increasing demand base and growing purchasing power of the Chinese young generation.
What Chinese Distributors are searching for?
Chinese distributors are searching for Coffee Brands, not raw materials, but real international Brand. They want high-end and premium brands, that are easy to resell to restaurants, or on the internet.
One Distribution recently purchase several million orders for Lavazza Coffee.
“we plan to resell Italian Coffee all over China through our 2300 stores and online resellers. We are actively searching for more than 20,000 other kind of products in our imported chain”.
Prepare a coffee Brand with a great lifestyle experience
And Chinese consumers want what’s good: they are trading more and more instant coffee for freshly made products, as quality and taste become more important. Fresh coffee sales posted double-digit gains in 2017, while instant coffee products performed poorly.
Alibaba opens a roaster Coffee store with Starbuck in Shanghai.
Luckin Coffee open a Music Coffee in Collab with Netease
Luckin Coffee and Netease Music open the first music-themed coffee shop in Shanghai
Online Coffee Market in China
Data from Alibaba’s platforms show that sales of coffee beans and coffee grew 60% faster than those of instant coffee in the last 12 months. Sales of coffee capsules on Alibaba’s platforms have increased tenfold over the same period.
The upgrade for coffee is accompanied by a growing demand for innovative experiences from Chinese consumers. China’s upscale brewery bars have turned coffee shops into attractive places for a cup of Joe’s coffee destinations. Starbucks operates beer bars in one-third of its 3,300 stores in China, where certified coffee masters showcase their brewing expertise.
We can help you to sell your coffee brand in China :
Small Business
- Market your Coffee Brand to Chinese Distributors
- Identify Distributors and wholesalers (we have a list yes)
- Contact them, and introduce your Brands/ products to them
- We can be your agent in China
Ambitious Brand
- Brand Building
- Social Media Marketing (WeChat & Weibo )
- E-Commerce plateform Tmall
Contact us to know our Pricing (really affordable) and our case studies
The China coffee opportunity at a glance
| What | 2025-2026 reality | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Market size | ~$5.8 billion in 2026, growing | Big and still early for many niches |
| Imports | ~3 million bags, Brazil leads | Distributors want new supply |
| Habit | Luckin and chains made coffee daily | Demand is mainstream now |
| Where it sells | Distributors, Tmall, Douyin livestream | Combine trade and online demand |
How we connect food brands with China
We are a small Shanghai team, and we started from the ground up, learning how Chinese distributors really choose brands. One French food brand came to us unknown, with no distributor interest at all. We built their Chinese presence, created visible demand online, and turned them into a brand distributors wanted to carry. The cold meetings became real deals. For coffee it is the same play: show demand in China first, and distributors come to you instead of the other way round.
Want Chinese distributors to chase your coffee instead of ignoring it? We are friendly, our prices fit smaller brands, and our results are real. Get in touch through our contact form and we will tell you honestly how your brand would land here.
Luckin now sources beans by the boatload, and that pulls imports up
In April 2026 Luckin opened a huge roastery in Qingdao, and by the end of 2025 it ran 31,048 stores. To feed that, it signed a deal for 240,000 tons of Brazilian green coffee from 2025 to 2029, and China imported about 3 million bags of green beans in the year ending September 2025, with imports up 32.5% in 2024. The big chains roast at scale, so distributors keep hunting for finished brands they can resell instead. That gap is your way in: a recognised coffee brand is easier to place than raw beans. Daily Coffee News.
What Chinese pros say on Zhihu
On Zhihu, one of the most read coffee threads asks a simple money question, and the answers are honest rather than hyped.
Q: “Can you still make money opening a coffee shop now?”
A (translated): “The market is still rising and far from full, so the room is real. But the shops that last for years win on operations, not on the coffee itself. High rent kills most of them. Prepare at least a full year of running costs before you open, or do not start.”
The lesson holds for foreign brands too: demand is real, but you win on execution, not on the bean alone. Read the thread on Zhihu.
The opportunity, and how to take it
A $5.8 billion market in 2026, rising imports, and chains that roast their own beans all point to one opening: distributors want finished brands, not raw supply. The way it converts is two-fold. First, a credible Chinese presence that pulls distributor enquiries to you, real B2B lead generation. Second, a small e-commerce store to prove demand before anyone signs. We are a small Shanghai team, Chinese-native, and we report results instead of vanity metrics, with prices that fit smaller brands. Talk to us and we will tell you honestly how your coffee would land here.
Sources: coffee market data from Mordor Intelligence and Statista.
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Hello WangLei,
We add you in our distributor data base. And we will be glad to contact you and introduce our clients.
keep in touch.
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Mister Wang is in our database.
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We are company from Papua New Guinea – we have Arabica coffee plantations and produce various coffee products under brand ‘Mosin Coffee’
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VITIS INDUSTRIES LTD
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We are a store chain store of imported products and we are thinking of a western brand of coffee to resell in our offline and online stores. We would like to collaborate with a premium brand with good branding, and want to make a great partnership with exclusive distribution.
Hi Sam
we produce Arabica roasted coffee from Papua New Guinea – washed and unwashed (Red, Yellow, Natural, Black) – whole beans, ground, drip, Nespresso capsules, filter bags – dark, light, medium, Italian, velvet roast – storage time 3 years.
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