Cotti Coffee's square logo was meant to signal quality — customers saw confusion

On April 27, 2026, Cotti Coffee announced a brand upgrade that replaced its familiar round @-symbol logo with a square design combining the @-symbol with a coffee-cup silhouette. The stated rationale was to support overseas expansion, lower communication barriers, and reinforce the message that 'good coffee comes from good ingredients.'

The reaction was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. Chinese social media users compared the new logo to the Beijing subway sign, a water-dispenser icon on high-speed trains, and a generic tech-company mark. The criticism was not about the coffee — it was about the brand signal. Cotti had built its identity around affordable, accessible coffee; the square logo, with its sharper angles and more corporate feel, looked like a different brand entirely.

Industry observers noted that almost every coffee and tea chain in China — Starbucks, Luckin, Mixue, Bawang Chaji — uses a round logo, making the square choice stand out for the wrong reasons. The timing compounded the problem: Cotti was still best known for its 9.9 yuan ($1.37) price war with Luckin, and the logo change looked like an attempt to rebrand without addressing the product gap.

Cotti did not issue a formal apology or pull the logo. The company continued to roll out the new identity across stores and packaging, but the debate had already shifted from what the brand was becoming to why it had changed at all.

The square broke the round-logo convention of every Chinese coffee chain, so customers read it as a brand they no longer recognised, and the 9.9 yuan identity was lost.

The logo redesign was a brand signal that contradicted customer perception — a square, corporate mark for a chain built on affordable, accessible coffee

Cotti tried to signal a quality upgrade visually before making a product or experience upgrade that customers could feel

The round-to-square shift broke the visual convention of the entire Chinese coffee and tea market, making the change feel deliberate in a way customers read as wrong

No pre-launch testing or soft rollout caught the gap between what the company meant and what customers saw

A logo change signals what the brand is becoming, not what it is leaving behind. Cotti's square design was meant to say quality — customers heard a brand they no longer recognised.