Shanghai becomes world’s most cafe-crowded city

SHANGHAI — A cafe boom is sweeping China, a country long dominated by a tea culture. A survey by a private company in 2021 showed Shanghai was the world’s No. 1 for the total of coffee shops: 6,913, beating Tokyo and London.

Starbucks opened a Reserve Roastery, a large coffee shop complete with its own roasting equipment, in Shanghai in 2017, and Blue Bottle Coffee opened its first store in mainland China earlier this year.