A metal-organic framework Cu-MOF-74 was prepared by solvothermal method, and used as an efficient heterogeneous catalyst for the oxidative esterification of 2’-hydroxyacetophenone with benzyl alcohol to form 2-acetylphenyl benzoate. The copper-catalyzed direct C–O coupling reaction could proceed readily, with more than 95 % reaction yield being achieved after 120 min at 80oC in the presence of 5 mol% Cu-MOF-74 catalyst and tert-butyl hydroperoxide as an oxidant. The oxidant played an important role for the conversion, and tert-butyl hydroperoxide was the best choice. The CuMOF-74 displayed higher activity in this transformation than a numbers of MOFs as well as traditional homogeneous catalysts. Desired product was only achieved in the presence of the solid catalyst, and there was no contribution from leached active species present in the liquid phase. It was possible to reuse the Cu-MOF-74 catalyst numerous times in the C–O coupling reaction without a noticeable deterioration in catalytic efficiency. In the best of our knowledge, this transformation using heterogeneous catalyst was not previous mentioned in the literature