Beijing Opens "First Staffless Coffee Shop in the World"

Hailed as the "first of its kind in the world," a newly-opened staffless coffee shop in Beijing can't deny the fact that it is, in its most basic definition, just a couple of vending machines and a table.

The Friend Drink Bar (友饮吧) opened for business last Friday at the Hongyuanlou girls' dormitory at the University of International Business and Economics, offering customers a selection of 20 beverages from its two automatic drink dispensers.

Priced between RMB 10-16, the drinks are made with freshly ground coffee beans, allowing users to adjust settings for milk and sugar.

A third vending machine sells snacks such as Orion moon pies as well as fruits like apples and grapes (RMB 8 for two, and RMB 16 for a box, respectively).

A reporter for the Beijing Evening Report admits that demand for Friend Drink Bar is so high that the line extends outside the door. In the same report, the Friend Drink Bar is revealed to be about 10 square meters in size.

Besides a table and some plants, there's not much more to the Friend Drink Bar that separates it from an employee break room. And yet, that hasn't stopped some Chinese press from using buzzwords like "smart" and "staffless" to praise Beijing's newest employer of mechanical baristas.

In its report, iFeng Tech says the "world's first staffless coffee shop" is a "need breed of retail store" that "will ultimately defeat Starbucks."

Filled with more exclamation points than the average Chinese news story, the article explains that the BMO August downgrading of Starbucks' stock rating is of slow growth, concluding with the sentence: "Usually secure in its position, [the rise of staffless coffee shops] should drive Starbucks into a panic!"

Undeterred, the Seattle-based coffee retailer is aggressively expanding into China, looking to open 5,000 stores in the country by 2021.

As excited as iFeng Tech is for Java-coded java-makers, others aren't as perky about the personless percolator.

The China Economic Report duly noted that for a staffless store, employees were seen servicing the machines, described as suffering from operational problems. Aside from not being equipped with surveillance video or anti-theft devices, the store's retail plan is not clear and no management standards are being demonstrated.

However, the criticisms were taken in stride by general manager Zhang of the One Not Two Technology Company that is responsible for the store. As Zhang explains, the UIBE campus store is only meant to be temporary, and will soon relocate to Fudan University to set up a new shop there.

If that doesn't sound like a good business model, you should keep in mind that Zhang's company doesn't operate coffee shops as their main business. Instead, they have been selling and operating some 1,000 automated coffee machines in 18 Chinese cities since 2014.

Yup, it seems that in the end, the "Friend Drink Bar" is just another act of self-promotion in China. Soon to disappear from Beijing, it's sad to think the shop will never give locals a chance to acclimatize to their new favorite drink: a hot cup of Zhou.

Images: Senn.com.cn, NetEase (163.com), iFeng Tech (winshang.com), BJ Evening Report, TakeFoto (takefoto.cn)

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