Tongrentang's Zhima Health sells goji lattes — a 351-year-old pharmacy becomes a café hit

Beijing Tongrentang, founded in 1669 and one of China's most famous pharmacy names, faced shrinking pharmacy margins and an ageing customer base. Its health unit, Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical, created the sub-brand Zhima Health (知嘛健康) in 2018 to court the 'punk wellness' generation with food-as-medicine ideas that felt like modern retail instead of a medicine hall.

Give a 351-year-old TCM pharmacy a young café format: an 'herbal health store' selling goji lattes and licorice coffees, where the drink is the gateway to the clinic.

A zero store opened at the group's Daxing industrial campus in December 2018 but stayed internal; in October 2019 the public flagship opened in Beijing's Shuangjing district — roughly 500 square metres over two floors, nearly 1,000 SKUs, a café bar, a wall of herbs and products, and a TCM consultation and therapy floor upstairs. The menu turned the medicine chest into drinks: goji latte, luohan-guo Americano, licorice latte and motherwort rose latte, made from herbal extracts prepared to doctors' ratios. Store plans ranged from community outlets to mall and office formats, with coffee positioned as the loss-leading lure for health products, apps and membership.

By mid-2020 the Shuangjing store was a certified internet-famous check-in spot on Xiaohongshu and Dianping, with young customers filling the tables on weekdays. On 15 August 2020 it sold 200 goji lattes and passed ¥100,000 in single-day revenue; in November the topic '同仁堂推出中药咖啡' reached Weibo's trending list via CCTV Finance coverage. By January 2021, Yicai reported the Shuangjing store's annual sales could reach about ¥20 million in its first full year — with the company saying the coffee itself was the draw, and profits to come from health products, consultations and membership.

In 2018 Tongrentang Health Pharmaceutical — the health-retail arm of Beijing Tongrentang, founded in 1669 — created Zhima Health as a new-retail sub-brand aimed at young consumers. The parent's core business was under pressure from falling pharmacy margins, and 'punk wellness' (朋克养生) — young people who party and then seek remedies — was a rising cultural meme. The idea was to build stores where food-as-medicine meets a modern café.

A zero store opened on the group's Daxing industrial campus in December 2018 but stayed internal, and in October 2019 the public flagship opened in Shuangjing: about 500 square metres across two floors, nearly 1,000 SKUs, a café bar at the entrance, a floor-to-ceiling wall of herbs and packaged products, and a TCM consultation and therapy space upstairs. The menu read like a medicine chest — goji latte, luohan-guo Americano, licorice latte, motherwort rose latte — brewed from herbal extracts prepared to ratios set by doctors.

By mid-2020 the store was an internet-famous check-in spot on Xiaohongshu and Dianping, with young customers queueing even on weekdays. On 15 August 2020 the Shuangjing store sold 200 goji lattes in a single day and passed ¥100,000 in daily revenue; in November the topic '同仁堂推出中药咖啡' hit Weibo's trending list after CCTV Finance covered the store, with the best-selling goji latte peaking at roughly 300 cups a day at the Beijing trade fair.

The business model was explicit: coffee was the recruiting format, not the profit centre. Yicai reported in January 2021 that the Shuangjing store's annual sales could reach about ¥20 million in its first full year, while Tongrentang said profits were meant to come from health products, consultations and membership systems behind the café. The store count stayed small — three experience stores by early 2021 — but the idea had already returned a 351-year-old pharmacy to young people's attention.

The café gave an abstract heritage brand a tangible, photogenic product young people would try on their own.

Herbal lattes sat at the intersection of two trends — coffee culture and 'punk wellness' — so the store was discovered through normal social channels.

Putting the clinic upstairs meant every curious latte drinker met the serious side of the business by design.

The coffee was deliberately a loss leader, which freed the format from café unit economics and let it scale as a retail concept.

A 351-year-old name doing something absurd was itself the news hook that carried the store onto Weibo and CCTV.

A heritage brand can hand its oldest knowledge to a young format: let the fun product recruit, and sell the serious service once curiosity brings people in.

Rollout stayed far behind the early ambition — plans for dozens of Beijing stores in 2020 became three experience stores by early 2021, and Yicai reported the concept was profitable mainly as a funnel for health products rather than coffee itself. Zhima Health continued anyway: the official brand page documents later stores in Beijing and Shanghai and a food-as-medicine research institute, and the herbal-café idea became a visible template for other Chinese heritage brands looking for a younger audience.