Tongrentang turns its 351-year-old pharmacy into goji-latte 'Zhima Health' cafés

Tongrentang (同仁堂), the Beijing medicine brand founded 351 years ago, had spent decades as a purveyor of traditional remedies. By the late 2010s its health-products arm faced the same problem as many Chinese heritage brands: sales were sliding, and young urban consumers associated it with their grandparents' pharmacy, not with their own lives. Tongrentang Health's CIO, Yu Ruixuan, concluded that the fix was not a new product line but a new kind of store.

In October 2019, the first Zhima Health (知嘛健康) store opened in Shuangjing, Beijing. It looked like a modern café — coffee bar, pastry case, clean lines — but the decor was made of herb jars and walls of TCM ingredients, and staff in white coats moved between the counter and consultation rooms upstairs. The menu pushed 'medicinal foods': goji berry lattes, monk-fruit americanos, cinnamon cappuccinos, herbal soups and teas, all built on the Chinese idea of shiyao tongyuan (food and medicine share one source).

The store was deliberately layered. A 500 sq m ground floor carried roughly 1,000 products and made drinks the affordable, daily reason to enter; the second floor held TCM consultation, prescriptions and physiotherapy, the high-value services the group knew how to deliver. A membership program and a menu that changes every 15 days were designed to turn one-off novelty visits into a health routine — coffee as the loss leader, care as the margin.

The bet paid off in attention first. Zhima Health became a 'new internet-famous store', with long queues, influencers filming goji latte pours, and coverage across Xiaohongshu, Dianping and national media. By August 2020, weekend traffic reached 1,000–1,500 visitors a day, daily revenue hit around ¥100,000, and revenue since opening surpassed ¥7 million against a build cost of about ¥6 million. Three Beijing stores were operating, and the team spoke of standardizing the format for wider expansion.