About Seesaw Coffee
Seesaw Coffee is one of the pioneer specialty coffee chains in China: founded in 2012 in Shanghai, it opened its first café-roastery on Yuyuan Road and helped introduce single-origin coffee, artisanal brewing and third-wave coffee culture to the urban Chinese market, years before coffee chains multiplied across the country.
The company roasts its own beans in dedicated facilities and combines its cafés with retail sales of beans, blends, cold brew and brewing equipment. Its menu mixes specialty classics with creative drinks designed for local tastes, and its stores are designed as meeting places where different creative fields collide, with frequent collaborations with designers and brands.
From Shanghai it expanded to cities such as Shenzhen, Suzhou and Beijing, with locations in landmark malls such as Pudong's IFC, and it is still cited in international guides as a key name for understanding independent Chinese coffee. For a visitor, Seesaw offers a different reading of the sector: less about scale and takeaway price than the big coffee chains, and more about the bean, the brewing method and the space.
The company roasts its own beans in dedicated facilities and combines its cafés with retail sales of beans, blends, cold brew and brewing equipment. Its menu mixes specialty classics with creative drinks designed for local tastes, and its stores are designed as meeting places where different creative fields collide, with frequent collaborations with designers and brands.
From Shanghai it expanded to cities such as Shenzhen, Suzhou and Beijing, with locations in landmark malls such as Pudong's IFC, and it is still cited in international guides as a key name for understanding independent Chinese coffee. For a visitor, Seesaw offers a different reading of the sector: less about scale and takeaway price than the big coffee chains, and more about the bean, the brewing method and the space.