Booming coffee culture is providing employment opportunities, job satisfaction
Hinichijou, also known as Bear Paw Cafe, opened a new outlet staffed by visually impaired people in Shanghai last month. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
In a small hutong in Beijing's Dongcheng district there is a cafe that is often quiet. Named Jingmo, or silence, the cafe was founded by Zhang Long, a 38-year-old barista with a hearing impairment.
More than a decade ago, Zhang quit his job as a web editor and enrolled in barista courses. One of the motivations for his career change was to work in an occupation where he had greater interaction with people.
Many disabled baristas possess excellent personal qualities and exceptional skills. They not only have a higher tolerance for hardship compared to able-bodied individuals but also show a strong dedication to mastering their craft.
Li Wei, deputy director of employment service department at the China Disabled Persons’ Federation Employment Service and Administration Center
In 2012, he found a job at a Starbucks store in Beijing, but left three years later to open his own cafe.
With his hearing disability, Zhang said the biggest challenge he has faced as a barista is frothing milk for drinks such as cappuccinos.
"In terms of coffee-making skills, frothing milk is the most challenging," he said in an interview via WeChat. "People with a hearing impairment cannot hear the sound of frothing milk, so they need to rely on their eyes to observe the swirling motion and use their hands to feel the vibrations of the milk froth."
After numerous attempts and experimentation, Zhang found a solution. He realized that he could use temperature as a determining factor, and discovered that milk froth had the best texture when it was heated between 55 C and 65 C.
While Zhang worked out his own method to overcome his disability, advances in technologies such as speech recognition and text-to-speech translators are helping create barista careers for people with disabilities, particularly those with hearing or visual impairments. The job opportunities are being created at a time when China's coffee market is rapidly expanding.
Li Wei, deputy director of employment service department at the China Disabled Persons' Federation Employment Service and Administration Center, says coffee shops catering to the needs of the disabled are rising in popularity, and more coffee shops are hiring baristas with disabilities.
"Many disabled baristas possess excellent personal qualities and exceptional skills. They not only have a higher tolerance for hardship compared to able-bodied individuals but also show a strong dedication to mastering their craft," he said.
"When disabled baristas receive recognition from customers and affirmation from society, their employment opportunities will continue to expand."
Pioneering paw
In December 2020, the first store of Hinichijou coffee opened in Shanghai, featuring only a hole in a wall with a QR code below for customers to scan and then place an order. Once the coffee is prepared, a furry "bear paw" hands the beverage out of the hole to the customer.
Managed by three people with disabilities, including hearing-impaired manager Chen Yingying who won first prize in coffee brewing at the sixth national vocational skill competition for disabled people, the "cute" bear paw soon went viral.
Jingmo Cafe, founded by Zhang Long, a barista with hearing impairment, is tucked away in a small hutong in downtown Beijing. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
According to Wang Tian, 39, co-founder of Hinichijou, when he was preparing to open the first branch, the baristas with hearing impairments said they wanted to avoid interaction with customers, so he designed the service hole.
However, Wang noticed as the hearing-impaired baristas interacted with customers through the "bear paw", many began to open up and become more willing to engage with people.
"When they see the joyful expressions of people outside the hole, they feel needed and experience a sense of accomplishment," he said.
Hinichijou coffee, also known as "Bear Paw Cafe", recently opened a new cafe in Shanghai's Jing'an district, run by three visually impaired people who perform the duties of baristas and store manager.
The process of buying a cup of coffee isn't much different from other Hinichijou cafes. Once the order is placed by scanning the QR code at the counter, the voice assistant software on the phones of the visually impaired baristas reads out the details.
Within 100 seconds, a freshly brewed cup of hot latte is ready for the customer, while the waiting time for an Americano is even shorter.
It is Hinichijou's second cafe that has employees with visual disabilities. The company has 10 other stores in Shanghai, which employ baristas with hearing impairments.
Zhou Lan, a barista with hearing impairment, who works at the Starbucks' sign-language store in Beijing's Fengtai district, performed well in a skills competition. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Boom time
The value of China's coffee industry was 200.7 billion yuan ($27.81 billion) in 2022, and is projected to reach 369.3 billion yuan in 2025, according to data and estimates from delivery platform Meituan.
By June 30, 2022, the number of coffee shops in Shanghai had reached 7,857, making it one of the cities worldwide with the highest number of coffee shops.
Apart from first- and second-tier cities, coffee consumption is also expanding in third- and fourth-tier cities. Meituan's data shows that last year, third-tier cities experienced the fastest growth in the number of coffee shops, reaching a growth rate of 19 percent.
Li from the Disabled Person's Federation believes the coffee boom provides great work opportunities for disabled people who are finding employment across a wider range of industries.
There are approximately 27.8 million individuals with hearing disabilities in China, the results of the second national sampling survey on disabilities indicate.
Li said with the assistance of advanced technology and education and training, 80 percent of people with hearing impairments are capable of communicating through speech.
"This has made their daily lives more convenient and expanded their range of job opportunities," he said.
"Hearing-impaired individuals can now work as clerks, text-based customer service representatives, and an increasing number of them are pursuing careers as designers, programmers, intangible cultural heritage artisans, quality inspectors, as well as baristas and beverage mixologists, among other high-skilled professions," Li said.
Many hearing-impaired individuals prefer working in front of a computer screen, while others are enthusiastic about interacting with people in their jobs. Some have discovered that being a barista is a profession that allows them to achieve this goal.
The federation established the China Disabled Persons' Employment and Entrepreneurship Network Service Platform in 2017. The platform offers a wide range of online training, job recommendations, and livestreamed on-the-job training services and has served over 2 million people to date.
"We will increase online training efforts in areas such as baristas, professionals who make creative drinks, and more, based on demand," Li said.
Yin Tianbao, a visually impaired barista, received six months of training before starting work with Hinichijou coffee in Shanghai. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Building skills
Last year, Hinichijou opened a new branch in Shanghai specifically for 24-year-old twins, Yin Tianbao and Yin Tianyou, who have been visually impaired since birth.
In November 2021, Yin Tianbao, the older brother, began learning coffee making from the trainers at Hinichijou. He faced challenges in accurately determining the cup size and water level, sometimes pouring too much water.
When it came to making lattes, he was sometimes imprecise and spilled milk on his hand. Eventually, the right moves were committed to his muscle memory.
Yin Tianbao took six months to master coffee making, especially "latte art". Drawing on his big brother's experience it only took Yin Tianyou a month to become a competent barista.
With the experience of training the twins, Hinichijou last year established a training school for people with disabilities as well as able-bodied people.
At its smaller branches operated by visually impaired people, Hinichijou is exploring a business model that replicates site selection, product design, long-term planning and system training.
Wang said the cafes should be located on a route that white-collar workers pass by during their commute and have easy access. The floor space should be small to keep rent low.
On the product side, Wang said that 70 percent of the orders should be lattes, with an option for higher priced milk. "This will increase our costs significantly, but it also enhances the taste of the coffee," he says.
The newly opened store run by visually impaired baristas was constructed in just four hours. Wang has developed an efficient method to replicate a coffee store for people with visual impairment. The cafe is divided into several sections that are assembled like Lego bricks.
"The layout inside the store is an exact replica of the training environment in our coffee school," Wang said, adding that familiarity is essential for visually impaired people's movements as well as operational efficiency.
After completing training, visually impaired people can then return to their hometowns and open their own stores.
The twins' ability to successfully make a latte is also attributed to a specially customized set of intelligent machines and programs. Wang says their team is also designing a machine that makes milk tea or ice cream so that the visually impaired people have more options to open small businesses.
With the help of engineers from Meituan, Hinichijou recently found a solution for visually impaired workers to get details of takeout orders. He is also designing a special cafe for people in wheelchairs.
Hinichijou is planning to expand to 100 stores across the nation by the end of this year, providing more employment for people with disabilities. They have also leased two farms in Yunnan province, where they grow their own coffee beans. They handle the roasting and flavor design themselves, and have also employed many local hearing-impaired people.
However, for smaller players in the coffee industry like Zhang from Jingmo, survival is a more immediate concern.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced him to close two of his cafes, leaving the remaining one in the Dongcheng district hutong. The space is shared with a partner who turns the cafe into a bar at night.
"I hope I can find investors to sustain the cafe's operations," Zhang said, adding that the increasing number of cafes opening in Beijing over the past two years has made competition quite fierce.
Zhang Long, a barista with hearing impairment who owns Jingmo Cafe in Beijing, says he needs investors. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Corporate caring
Coffee giant Starbucks now has 13 sign-language cafes in different cities in China after opening the first one in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in 2019.
As the first and only such branch in Beijing, the cafe in Fengtai district may appear no different from the others at first glance.
However, a range of sign-language elements are on display at the premises. Outside the cafe, the Starbucks' logo is spelled out in sign-language symbols and inside a dedicated display stand showcases merchandise with sign-language themes.
Cafe manager Liu Jing said to facilitate communication between customers and baristas, the sign-language store has implemented a dual-screen ordering system.
"During the ordering process, customers can use the screens to verify whether their beverage order is correct. Additionally, the ordering station is equipped with a voice assistant that can instantly convert customers' spoken orders into text, ensuring clear presentation of the order details," she said.
To enhance the skills of the baristas with hearing impairments and to support their career development, Starbucks has three-month coffee courses based on their existing training programs, Liu says.
The Beijing branch has eight baristas with hearing impairments, six who work full-time and two part-time.
Liu says she and other staff members have learned a lot of sign language from their hearing-impaired colleagues. Many customers with hearing disorders have become regular customers as they can easily communicate with the baristas, she added.
Bright future
Zhou Lan, 34, is one of the hearing-impaired baristas whose life has been transformed by the Beijing Starbucks' branch.
Before joining Starbucks, Zhou worked in the kitchen of a fast-food chain where she rarely had the opportunity to interact with customers. The work was dull and monotonous.
Noticing the opening of the Starbucks sign-language store at the end of 2020, Zhou signed up immediately as she wanted closer interaction with people.
Over two years she went from being a novice to practicing latte art at home and becoming a "coffee master" who wears a black apron. At first, it was difficult to remember all the flavors of different coffee beans, she said.
Zhou said she now views latte art as a form of artistic creation, much like painting, adding it is also a means of communication and expression.
Last year, she took part in the Beijing Disabled Persons' Vocational Skills Competition. Her performance impressed the judges and she was selected in the Beijing team to participate in the 8th National Disabled Persons' Elite Job Skills Competition, which took place in late February in Hengyang, Hunan province.
The Beijing delegation came second among 34 competing teams. Zhou's coffee art and warm smile during the beverage competition left a strong impression on the judges. She drew a maple leaf shape in the latte froth — a design she said she had practiced hundreds of times — and finished fourth.
Liu said since taking part in the competition, Zhou is more confident when she communicates with people.
Zhou said she enjoys competitions and plans to take part in more. "I have met many excellent competitors and I am also becoming a better person," she said via sign language.
