I’ve spent this week traveling to Chongqing, China, which is the home of Transsion – the parent company of TECNO and Infinix. And I’ve learned quite a bit about the company, even though I already knew quite a bit. But there was one thing that I did not see coming. And that is TECNO’s own Coffee Factory.
Yes, you heard that right. TECNO has its own coffee factory at its headquarters. That might sound odd, but when you think about it, it really does make a ton of sense. Chongqing is where TECNO assembles and tests its products, so needless to say, there are a ton of employees there. And that means they likely go through a lot of coffee. While I don’t know the exact number of employees that TECNO and its parent company, Transsion, have in Chongqing, it’s a fairly large HQ.
Along with our tours of the assembly line and R&D labs, TECNO also took us on a tour of the Coffee Factory, which is right next to their lobby. It’s quite impressive, as TECNO uses Ethiopian coffee beans, which are high quality, but perhaps more importantly, it’s one of their bigger markets.
You can check out the tour of the coffee factory below. It is done in Mandarin and then translated to English.
Why does TECNO focus on Ethiopian coffee beans?
It’s because of the unique advantage that TECNO has in Ethiopia. As mentioned, TECNO is pretty large in Ethiopia and Africa as a whole. In fact, at MWC Barcelona back in February, TECNO announced that they had become number one in Africa. Which is quite an impressive feat in just a couple of years.
It’s pretty unique for a smartphone company to have a coffee factory on their campus. When we visited Samsung’s HQ in Korea last year, the company did not have a coffee factory, but it did have a pretty large dining hall for all of its employees.