Tong Ren Tang, a traditional Chinese medicine brand, will enter the coffee chain

According to news in July, China’s best-known traditional Chinese medicine brand has set up a new subsidiary and the company will enter the chain cafe market.

As early as last October, a store called ZhiMa Health(知嘛健康) opened in a shopping mall in Beijing. Until recently, someone on Chinese social networking sites began to notice that the store’s parent company is actually Tongrentang, a traditional Chinese medicine company.

The shop has two floors. The first floor is a coffee shop, which sells all kinds of coffee, beverages, milk tea and Chinese dim sum. The second floor is a traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy, which sells traditional Chinese medicine that Tongrentang should have sold.

Unlike ordinary milk tea shops and cafes, ZhiMa sells healthy drinks with Chinese characteristics, or traditional Chinese medicine, such as Chinese wolfberry latte, motherwort rose latte, sour plum soup, black Chinese wolfberry grapefruit tea.

Yu Ruixuan, an employee at Tongrentang who is in charge of the business, told reporters that ZhiMa Health was not a real cafe or milk tea store, but a way to make Chinese young people fall in love with traditional Chinese medicine again.

Young people in China are paying more and more attention to health care, but unlike their parents, they hate to get rid of bad habits. “Wolfberry Coffee” used to be a meme, in China. It represents a spirit that “doesn’t want to stop staying up late and wants to keep fit.” Chinese wolfberry is a health medicine that is thought to be good for the brain, liver and kidneys.

In addition to coffee and milk tea, Zhima Health, there are a variety of snacks containing traditional Chinese medicine, such as licorice sugar, honey, Chinese wolfberry bread.

Yu says Tong Ren Tang will build its Zhima Health exactly in the way young Chinese will like. The decoration of Zhima Health, which combines the elements of traditional Chinese medicine stores with the decoration style of popular online celebrity stores, has quickly sparked a heated debate on Chinese social networks.

According to the official, Tong Ren Tang will open 300 Zhima Health stores in the coming year, and each store manager will open his own Tiktok account and build up a fan base, and add at least one new product to the menu every 15 days.

Tong Ren Tang was founded in 1852, and it is a pleasant surprise for a company with such an advanced age to formulate such a strategy.

Although the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine is still controversial, but as a health food and condiment, it is becoming more and more popular among young people in China.

• ZhiMa Healtj