Grid Coffee Completes Year-One Co-Planting Trial in Yunnan, Launches Coffee-Rice Milk Beverage and Origin Bean Selection

Grid Coffee has completed the first year of its long-term agricultural experiment, the "不可能计划" (Impossible Plan), which tests the co-planting of coffee and dry rice at the Sinkhole plot of Cangyuan Qiubo Estate in Yunnan. The trial is part of Grid Coffee's fourth consecutive annual "Yunnan Origin Season," a programme the brand has run since 2023.

Drawing directly from the experimental field, Grid Coffee developed a "咖稻米乳" (Coffee-Rice Milk) beverage made with dry rice seeds harvested on-site. The drink is gluten-free, free of soy allergens, and suitable for vegans. Alongside the beverage, the brand released a curated bean selection: a washed typica from Nujiang Yunman Estate, a honey-processed Sachimor from Dehong Jurassic Estate, and a "Border Blend" combining both.

To present the experiment's findings, Grid Coffee staged an archive-style exhibition at Chunfeng Xi Xi Bookstore in Sanlitun, Beijing. The installation was designed without a prescribed visitor path, allowing open-ended exploration of the materials.

The campaign operates across offline retail and café channels, with the Beijing bookstore serving as its primary public-facing venue.

The campaign reflects a broader appetite among Chinese specialty coffee brands for supply-chain storytelling that goes beyond simple origin labelling. By framing an ongoing agricultural trial as a public, multi-year narrative — and translating its outputs into both a functional beverage and a curated retail experience — Grid Coffee positions transparency about production as the product itself, a proposition that resonates with Chinese consumers who are increasingly attentive to provenance and food-safety credentials.