This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on July 20, 2022.
This article was originally attributed to Wuduidui, written by Maikeke and supervised by Wu Duidui. It uses Dirty coffee's rise in China to examine how coffee innovation has moved from commodity trade to flavor-led product development, and why operators should treat milk, texture and localization as central to modern coffee growth.
Across nearly six centuries of coffee cultivation and commercialization, the article frames coffee's development in two tracks:
Product innovation took coffee from a bitter, acidic drink to beverages adjusted with sugar, milk, alcohol and other flavoring components. Cultural expansion moved coffee from a home-roasted mealtime drink to instant and canned functional beverages, then to store-based social, business and aesthetic experiences.
Europe first brought coffee into elite and social settings. In North America, coffee's rise was shaped by politics and economics: the Townshend Acts of 1767 and Tea Act of 1773 damaged the interests of intermediaries and colonial merchants, while the Boston Tea Party pushed anti-tea sentiment higher. Coffee became associated with patriotism and later became a core part of American culture.
From the 19th century through the late 20th century, North American operators helped move coffee from home roasting into batch-produced, prepared formats. Instant and canned coffee accelerated penetration, even if flavor and texture were sacrificed. Nestle and Maxwell House are cited as representative instant-coffee brands from this period.
After the first coffee wave, Starbucks, founded in the 1970s, became a central second-wave player. Like Peet's Coffee, Starbucks initially sold beans. Howard Schultz saw that North American coffee operators were forming their own views on roasting and beverage preparation.
The article credits Starbucks with two category shifts:
Schultz described Frappuccino as one of Starbucks' most successful product innovations. A Santa Monica store in Southern California found customers asking for flavored coffee with syrups and dairy. Although Schultz viewed the sweetened dairy mixture as not truly authentic coffee, store baristas experimented with starch, milk, ice, jam and coffee ratios. The drink reached 11% of summer sales that year and contributed USD 55 million to Starbucks' 1996 financial report.
The article's operator takeaway is simple: whether Frappuccino is classified as coffee or dairy, it helped Starbucks expand coffee consumption globally. At the same time, the growing role of milk in coffee created the conditions for the third wave's later emphasis on returning to the bean itself.
The article argues that if the U.S. needed Starbucks as its national coffee player, other markets also needed local coffee expressions. Food carries cultural meaning beyond taste.
In China, the boundaries between the three coffee waves were compressed. Instant coffee habits, Starbucks-style store coffee, independent pour-over culture and specialty-cafe premiumization all overlapped. Different consumer groups developed different needs: supermarket or vending-machine instant coffee, independent-cafe hand brews, and milk- or fruit-forward flavored coffees.
In that context, coffee innovation in an emerging market had to do two things:
Dirty coffee, made with chilled milk and espresso, became a breakout product. During espresso extraction, hot water under pressure dissolves carbon dioxide in the coffee grounds and creates crema. When espresso flows into chilled milk, the drink forms a layered visual and sensory effect: hot and cold, coffee aroma and dairy sweetness.
Korean barista Park Joong-sung, as transliterated in the article, said conventional cafes in Japan and Korea typically classify milk as whole, skimmed or reduced-fat, with about two brands in each category, yielding roughly six options. This simplifies quality control across dairy suppliers.
In Europe, where Italian-style coffee remains mainstream, milk differentiation is more about barista technique. Cappuccino, for example, requires espresso, steamed milk and milk foam, with differences in heating time and foaming method.
U.S. independent cafes often favor local or farm dairy brands, partly because major chains such as Horizon Organic and Hood Lactaid are already familiar to consumers. Vegan diets and environmental concerns have also widened the use of almond milk, coconut milk and quinoa milk. Storyville, a chain cafe in Seattle, is cited for clearly marking milk choices and offering a house coconut-cashew blend.
In China, milk choice expanded beyond fat-content categories. Under non-dairy options, cafes used plant-based milks from both domestic and overseas brands, including OATLY oat milk in Shanghai and Beijing, Campbell's pea milk, and YoFit's high-protein chickpea milk from a Canadian startup.
Park's explanation for Dirty's rise: Japan and Korea had cafes making Dirty, but only China turned it into a star product because the drink was more heavily localized.
The article identifies improved dairy quality and more advanced concentrated-milk technology as the key reasons Dirty spread widely in China.
Early concentrated milk for Dirty was often made manually by baristas. A method associated with Pang Hui of Beijing cafe September Up and Pan Zhimin of Beijing S.O.E involved freezing 1 liter of milk at -20°C, thawing it at 4°C, and using the first 0.5 liter to melt for Dirty.
Manual concentration added craft value, but it was hard to scale. Ice-making conditions, thawing temperature, freezer temperature and batch yield were inconsistent. Some cafes eventually abandoned manual concentration.
The major acceleration came from dairy suppliers. Using additive-free ice-distillation concentration, they removed part of milk's water content, intensified dairy aroma and created a cheese-like salty-sweet taste. This lowered Dirty's technical difficulty and prep time.
The article names Bior's "Ice Bock" product as a representative ingredient that became closely associated with Dirty and triggered further innovation among dairy raw-material suppliers.
Park, who had lived in Shanghai for five years, described Dirty as an extremely successful market-education product. In his view, regular cafe customers, including young university students new to coffee, had begun judging cafes by whether they could make Dirty properly: hot-cold layering, an iced cup, and ideally Ice Bock milk.
The iced cup itself became part of the product standard. Huazi, founder of Suzhou's Sparrow Cafe, borrowed from bartender practice and found that low temperature increased milk sweetness, slowed integration with espresso and helped release coffee aroma.
Independent cafes then used Dirty customization to build reputation. O.P.S., ranked first among Shanghai cafes on Dianping at the time, became known for specialty drinks. Its March 2021 menu included No. 3, The Winter Trio, described as an upgraded version of an earlier yuanyang-style Dirty, using honey and citrus to balance acidity and sweetness, with subtle whiskey and cinnamon.
Metal Hands Coffee, an early Dirty maker, helped define Beijing specialty coffee. The article also notes that independent cafes' influence on young consumers attracted international collaborations. At the newly opened Metal Hands Qingdao Fortune Center store, the cafe and Louis Vuitton launched two co-branded specialty drinks: Yangmei Purple and Lingnan Lychee Drink.
Specialty chain M Stand had recently launched a White Peach Dirty. The article reads this as evidence that specialty cafes' innovation culture was accumulating commercial brand potential.
The article argues that Dirty's growth depended on coordinated responses from baristas, dairy manufacturers and educated consumers. Dairy products became supporting ingredients that raised their own market share while pushing coffee category innovation and broader adoption.
Coffee analyst Graham, based in Oregon and focused on China, connected Dirty's popularity to Chinese consumer preferences. Chinese consumers prefer milk coffee; chilled milk increases perceived sweetness and fits sugar demand, while Ice Bock's process and taste soften bitterness while retaining body and aroma.
In this framing, Americano was a U.S. coffee-market legacy: espresso diluted with hot water to reduce bitterness. Ice Bock Dirty became a marker of China's coffee-market boom.
The article also cites a Reddit discussion from two years earlier as evidence that Dirty, described as an Asian coffee format, had attracted interest among U.S. users.
At the time of the article, Shanghai was said to have 6,913 cafes, more than New York, London and Tokyo. Graham argued that only a market with China's total capacity and segmented consumer base could fully test the influence of coffee innovation.
The article says flavoring is unavoidable in China's coffee innovation. OATLY, Ice Bock and coconut-based ingredients such as coconut extract and Fino all made coffee flavors more broadly accessible.
Many food critics, the article says, view milk as more inclusive and easier to accept than the pronounced acidity, astringency and bitterness of coffee or tea. This explains both Frappuccino's success at Starbucks and milk tea's enduring role in new-style tea drinks.
As milk tea brands reduced sweetness and created more flexible flavors, they also began entering coffee's territory.
The article predicts that coffee and milk tea will increasingly compete, with blurrier boundaries. The operator that captures consumer taste first gains more time to educate the market around specialty and premium products.
Coffee, tea and milk are described as three major beverages after water that have long competed for consumers and crossed into one another's territory. Dirty's birth in Asia and rise in China are presented as a signal that coffee can become more mass-market and higher-frequency, with milk acting as a supporting ingredient that helps coffee break out.
The article's main operating point is that product innovation is a prerequisite for mass coffee adoption. Consumer taste, not purity ideology, is the ultimate standard.
Operators trying to defend their base or lift coffee to another level may need to relax rigid views of "pure coffee." The article contrasts this with Japan, where cafe count and per-capita consumption had previously exceeded China but innovation slowed over the prior five years. Traditional siphon brewing and flannel drip still had a place, but flavored specialties were less common.
According to the cited China Freshly Ground Coffee Industry White Paper, by 2021 per-capita coffee consumption in China's first-tier cities had reached 326 cups, above Japan's 280 cups. Second-tier Chinese cities reached 261 cups, nearly level with Japan.
In the U.S., some cafes that once rejected sugar, milk and cream also began shifting. Oddly Correct Coffee Bar in Kansas City, Missouri, named by diners as one of the state's best cafes, started offering cream and milk. Partner Mike Schroeder said they realized they had to move the wall slightly so diners could enter the coffee experience they wanted.
Gotham Coffee Roasters in Manhattan, both a roaster and beverage seller, also introduced Dirty, reflecting a more open attitude toward a format popularized in China.
Note: Forward-looking comments about coffee and milk tea competition, and market figures cited from 2021 or earlier, reflect the article's historical perspective as of July 20, 2022.