While netizens lament the Shanghai Mental Health Center’s (SMHC) decision to keep its famed mooncakes for internal gifting only and not releasing them to the public, it launched another collaboration to make up for it. Chinese coffee brand Yongpu, which specialises in ground and instant coffee, as well as coffee pods, is partnering with the centre to launch a drip coffee bag.
The SMHC, also known by its address 600 South Wanping Road, is known for its “mental health mooncakes” (精神饼 jing shen bing, a play on word with “精神病”, jing shen bing, lit. mental illness) and “mental health zongzi” (精神粽) earlier this year during the Dragon Boat Festival. The co-branded coffee is a drip coffee bag with the 600 South Wanping Road sign printed on the package.
What is interesting is how Yongpu markets the collaboration. On Weibo, it uses product photos to form the basis of the posters. The photos are set in a traditional Chinese medicine TCM pharmacy with images such as pulse taking and weighing coffee beans taken from a herbs drawer with a traditional steelyard balance. The posters are complete with punny taglines that give mental health advice with the coffee being called a medical recipe. The WeChat post, however, is in the same format as Yongpu’s other posts on the platform with a cartoon narrative of its mascot feeling down and seeking help, raising awareness of mental health upkeeping.
Yongpu Coffee, established in 2014 as an online coffee maker and seller, is expanding its presence both online and offline. It opened its first offline pop-up location in 2021 and its first permanent branch, called Coffee by Yongpu in 2022, both in Shanghai. It opened its first Beijing store near the Forbidden City at the end of August, The locations, as with this collaboration with SMHC, are all highly localised for each region with well-known landmarks in the cities.
