Produced by One View Business.
Written by Meng Jiayi.
Edited by Wooden Fish.
Picture: Tea cat
Cudi Coffee finally rolled up to tea.
On February 2, the first store of Tea Cat, the second brand of Cudi Coffee, landed in Beijing Hopson Hui.
In store design. Compared with Cudi's black and red color scheme, Tea Cat uses white as the main color, uses fluorescent green to emphasize the brand logo, and also places a large "robot cat" stand in a prominent place in the store. The signboard uses cold white light, the store uses a lot of warm light, and at the same time, the tea cat also displays the raw materials used in the manual ordering area, which coincides with the "pure cup" played, making the store particularly eye-catching among many catering brands.
In terms of positioning, the positioning of tea cats focuses on health. It focuses on raw leaf fresh milk tea, focusing on promoting "health" and "low calorie". At the same time, the upgrade of the super large cup activity was launched, and the specifications of all tea drinks were 20oz (about 591ml), which exceeded the capacity of most tea brands on the market, which is in line with the consumption psychology of young people pursuing "affordability" and "health". However, compared with other tea brands, the "Jasmine Cuida Sprouts" and "Caramel Biscuits" promoted by Tea Cat are not particularly prominent, and they are highly replaceable and reproducible. During the opening period, the single cup of tea cat ** is about 10 yuan, which has a strong attraction.
It is worth noting that the sense of science and technology is the most unique label of the tea cat. On January 3, Cudi officially released the human-machine collaboration strategy to implement the application of commercial robots on a large scale in stores around the world. In the store, consumers can see two blue and white mechanical arms working, from cup taking, production, sealing, all completed by the mechanical arm independently, many consumers said "the first time to see the machine shake milk tea". One view business observation found that it takes about 35 seconds for the robotic arm to make a cup of milk tea, and it can produce about 100 cups in an hour. It is said that the speed can also be adjusted and accelerated, which greatly saves labor costs.
In addition, Cudi told One View Business that the operation of the robotic arm can not only ensure the formula ratio, stabilize the product production standards, and improve quality control, but also effectively improve the quality of hygiene and make the consumer experience better. The human-machine collaboration also provides a new idea: as long as the raw materials are sufficient and the machinery and equipment are properly maintained, Chamao is very likely to achieve 7*24 hours of uninterrupted work, or even complete unmanned sales.
Overall, Tea Cat is a new tea brand that continues Cudi's low-price strategy on the top of the market, and at the same time uses health and technology as the main selling point. So far, the first wave of consumer feedback has been good.
In fact, it is nothing new for new tea companies to make coffee across borders, but there are not many coffee cross-border tea drinks. Before Cudi, only Starbucks and Manner had reached out to tea. Other coffee brands basically focus on coffee and have no intention of launching tea brands.
Why did Cudi start making tea? In the view of One View Business, it is mainly to get rid of the "volume" of the coffee track.
From the perspective of competitors, there are more than 20 well-known coffee brands, and there is no shortage of "private cafes" and "customized coffee" in the coffee track10,000 coffee-related businesses, and the number is increasing. In addition, there are many cross-border coffee enterprises, Dongguan Sports Lottery launched "Sports Lottery + Coffee", Dior's first coffee shop Café Dior settled in Shanghai, and Tongrentang launched Goji Berry Coffee ......With more companies and more brands to choose from, Cudi needs to find ways to attract potential consumers and compete for audiences from other coffee brands.
In terms of the number of stores, the chain coffee brands tracked by One View Business for a long time have expanded from 21,250 stores at the end of 2022 to 38,609 stores by the end of 2023, with a growth rate of 8169%, of which Cudi is the most - nearly 7,000 new stores are opened a year, with a growth rate of more than 8,000%. Many brands have followed suit and begun to expand their business territory.
The rapid increase in the number of stores has led to competition for points. For coffee brands, the degree of product homogeneity is high, and when the product is not unique enough, consumers will choose whoever is close to the consumer. Secondly, there is the competition for customers, after all, multiple coffee brands can be stuffed in an office building, but more consumers cannot be created out of thin air.
From the point of view, in February last year, Cudi launched the "Coffee Carnival in 100 Cities and 1000 Stores", and Luckin followed closely behind and launched the "10,000 Stores Celebration Activity". Tokudi and Luckin's Blessing, Coffee** managed to drop to a single digit in 2023, less than 10 yuan. The extremely low ** also compresses the profit margin, the enterprise can only increase efficiency by reducing the cost, when the "cost" can not be reduced, it is the time when the enterprise finds another way.
The rapid expansion in the early stage and the low-price strategy brought not only traffic, but also store closures. One Business Observation found that many coffee brands have closed stores on a large scale. According to the statistics of One View Commerce, Nova Coffee has more than 500 fewer stores than at the end of 2022; Pacific Coffee experienced a large-scale closure of stores, reducing the number of stores by about 100; In addition, the overall number of Seesaw Coffee, T97 and Costa Coffee also showed negative growth.
Therefore, in the case of the continuous involution of the main track, Cudi had to find a new growth curve. According to the "2023 Douyin New Tea Drink Track Special Report" released by Douyin Life Service, the market size of new tea drinks is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan, and this scale is still growing, which obviously has investment value.
Lin Xianping, secretary-general of the Institute of Cultural Creativity of Zhejiang University City College, once said that the "cross-border" between coffee and new tea drinks is a normal market phenomenon, which reflects the competition and innovation within the industry, and also witnesses the competition between the two major beverages of tea and coffee. Tea Cat can enrich Cudi's product line, increase brand attractiveness, and bring new revenue growth points.
After all, in the current consumer market, there is a certain overlap in the consumer groups of coffee and tea. To a certain extent, lovers of Cudi will support the development of tea cats. At the same time, Tea Cat can also reach the group of students who did not drink coffee before, helping Cudi expand its brand influence.
However, the tea track is more volatile than coffee, and the tea cat has many challenges.
First, in terms of the number of stores, there are 103783 stores of the 20 new tea brands that have been tracked by Yilan Commercial for a long time, which far exceeds that of coffee. Not to mention consumers, major tea brands are basically competing in the stock market, seeking incremental growth to become the same demand. As an emerging brand, how should Tea Cat strive for the advantage of points, and how should it "snatch people" from other brands?
Second, low-cost tea is not scarce, and it has even been subdivided into 3 yuan a **band, each of which has a strong brand, and it is not yet known whether the newcomer tea cat can beat the old employees. At the same time, the low-price strategy reduces profit margins, and has higher requirements for the first chain, and there are certain differences between the coffee chain and the tea chain, and the past experience is difficult to apply directly. Compared with other tea brands that have been cultivated for a long time, especially Mixue Bingcheng, which is also famous for its low price, the challenges faced by Tea Cat are not small.
Third, from an operational point of view, various activities in the tea industry are endless: "one small joint in three days, one big joint in five days" milk tea co-branding; labeled milk tea with a series of social labels such as "national tide" and "health", and played tricks in packaging and concept; Even decorate the bubble tea shop more and more exquisitely, it doesn't matter whether it tastes good or not, the key is to "get out of the film". Whether the tea cat can "fight a bloody way" in the eight-sided melee depends on how well it plays in marketing.
In short, the competition in the tea market will only be more fierce than the coffee track, and it will not be easy for the tea cat to win a place.