Recently, according to a report by the World Coffee Portal, a well-known coffee research institution, China has surpassed the United States, which has ranked first for 20 years, to become the world's largest brand coffee shop market.
In 2023, the number of branded coffee shops in China increased by 58% to 49,691. The number of branded coffee shops in the United States increased by only 4% over the same period, and the number of branded coffee shops was 40,062.
Why has China, a country that drinks tea, become a paradise for coffee brands? What are the new consumer trends behind the wild growth of coffee?
Mr. Tie Ding, director of the Agricultural Research Center of Yuanyi Think Tank and editor-in-chief of Agricultural Ginseng, pointed out that the coffee industry is an important position for new agricultural and food retail, which contains the pursuit of experiential products and brand trends by the new generation of consumers, and the explosion of rural cafes also reveals people's demand for a slow-paced life. In the future, agricultural products should be closely combined with new foods and new beverages for brand marketing, use high-end fashion images to increase penetration, and learn from the experience of fast-moving consumer goods.
China's coffee store is the world's first, why?
Chinese are keen on drinking tea, which is almost a stereotype all over the world, but today, we are beginning to suck ** tea. In 2023, there will be more than 500,000 new tea stores in operation across the country, and the output value of the industry will exceed 100 billion yuan, and it will still grow steadily.
Coffee is unstoppable as an important branch of the new tea drink, and Starbucks is the second-largest brand coffee operator in China by number of stores, with a net opening of 785 stores in China. At the same time, Luckin Coffee and Cudi Coffee expanded rapidly, with the two companies adding a net 5,059 and 6,004 new stores, respectively.
According to the "2023 China Urban Coffee Development Report", the scale of China's coffee industry in 2022 will be 200.7 billion yuan. It is estimated that the scale of China's coffee industry will reach 369.3 billion yuan in 2025.
Why do Chinese fall in love with coffee?
High-quality light catering has gradually become a life scene for young people. Compared with milk tea, the application scenarios of coffee seem to be more formal and diverse, in addition to entertainment time, coffee is also common in office occasions, school classrooms and other spaces. In the lives of Gen Z, drinks have become a necessity.
The World Coffee Portal surveyed Chinese users on their coffee consumption habits, and the report showed that more than 90% of the 4,000 Chinese coffee shop consumers surveyed drank hot coffee at least once a week, and 64% drank iced coffee at least once a week. Nearly 90% of consumers surveyed visit or order takeout from a coffee shop at least once a week. It can be seen that coffee has become a new consumption habit.
Fast-selling drinks satisfy the dotted pleasure of economic downturn. Coffee and milk tea have the nature of fast-moving products, while not affecting the main meal, **low, experiential, social, suitable for the current economic weak public demand. There are two secrets for coffee brands to attract consumers: one is to strengthen marketing, constantly introduce novel flavors and traffic co-branding, so that young people have impulsive consumption; The second is the low-price strategy, and the collective "99" The incident caused a wave of heat, grasped the psychological characteristics of people's "wool", and cultivated the habit of repeated consumption.
Branding and diversification promote each other to fill the market. In China's coffee market, there are not only leading brands to meet the needs of the masses and leading the trend of standardized products, but also some niche brands such as community coffee, county coffee, and rural coffee, which fill the pursuit of differentiation by coffee lovers and expand the diversified coffee brand pattern.
From "raw coconut latte" to "sauce latte", to niche flavors such as herbal tea, peppercorn, and sour horn coffee based on urban characteristics, Chinese coffee brands have shown unique vitality. Behind this is the change of China's consumption concept and the continuous growth of young life culture, and the experience of Chinese coffee will guide more new foods to complete the transformation and breakthrough of modernization.
When branding becomes a way of life
The power of coffee lies in its ability to occupy people's daily lives, which is the key to the brand's communication. The "National Coffee Carnival" can be seen from the intensive activities of coffee festivals held in various places. In May 2023, the 3rd Shanghai Coffee Culture Week was held in Xuhui Binjiang, Shanghai, and among the more than 100 coffee brands unveiled, there were not only big names in the industry such as McCafé, L**azza, Costa, and Peet's Coffee, but also upstarts in the industry such as Yongpu, Nowwa, and Luckin Coffee. Bring a feast of coffee tasting and cultural exchange.
A special booth for Yunnan coffee was also set up at the event site, and enterprises such as Yunnan Baoshan Bitun Coffee and Shiping Xiumei Yishan Culture were invited to the scene to play the popularity of Yunnan coffee. In recent years, domestic coffee beans have been sought after in the market, and the first level of Pu'er coffee beans in Yunnan has been rising, and even there is a trend of "one bean is hard to find".
Liu Haifeng, executive deputy general manager of Yunnan International Coffee Trading Center, said that Yunnan green coffee beans have risen from less than 13 yuan per kilogram during the lowest period to 37 yuan to 38 yuan per kilogram now. According to data from the Pu'er Tea and Coffee Industry Development Center, Pu'er is expected to produce 4130,000 tons, the average green bean** is 33 per kilogram93 yuan, to achieve a comprehensive output value of 30$1.9 billion.
Yunnan plans to achieve a 30% coffee bean quality rate in the province in 2024, exceeding the world average of 10%, and strive to build an important specialty coffee producing area in the world.
In addition to the intensive cultivation of raw materials, Yunnan coffee has gradually formed a cultural circle. In November 2022, the Yunnan Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs announced the results of the 2022 "Yunnan Specialty Coffee Manor" and awarded the selected enterprises. The coffee estate is an important carrier for the integration of coffee tourism in Yunnan, combining the rural scene with the slow-paced life of coffee culture to create a characteristic agricultural, cultural and tourism experience. For example, the "Internet celebrity" Xiaoaozi Coffee Manor and the "Wind and Rain Bridge" B&B café have pleasant scenery, and many young people come to check in and let go of the depressed body and mind in the city, and Yunnan coffee has become a way of life.
Mr. Tie Ding, director of the Agricultural Research Center of Yuanyi Think Tank and editor-in-chief of Agricultural Ginseng, once pointed out that the brand is to establish a special emotional connection. In the new consumption era, agricultural brands should not only focus on quality and expand sales, but also focus on the relationship with consumers.
Yunnan Rural Coffee uses unique regional culture to meet consumers' experience from product to space, establishes a strong community relationship, and continuously gathers innovative consumption power. Like Hema and Sam's, at present, sales is the point of interest, and the brand is to convey the concept, maintain a pleasant relationship, and focus on serving loyal customers with strong community connections, aiming to create a brand membership with endogenous power, and refining and customizing bulk products is what China's niche coffee brands are trying.
"New food" is the best solution for agricultural product brands
The new tea and coffee industry continues to heat up, and more and more agricultural products have entered people's field of vision through this opportunity and completed their own brand out of the circle. At the same time, the publicity cost of e-commerce is gradually increasing, and marketing strategies are more focused on efficiency.
The so-called new food not only needs to be healthy and delicious, but more importantly, it needs to be stylish, which can generate enough additional emotional value and drive the cultural extension of a circle. From the analysis of the development of Chinese coffee brands, we can build our own competitive advantages through the following aspects.
Lightweight. After agricultural products entered the e-commerce, they began to gradually evolve the characteristics of "online products", that is, they were no longer in the form of large boxes and bags as before, and began to do small-sized packaging, and strengthened the design of product packaging, such as daily nuts, 100g of small packaging yogurt, on the other hand, light meals also contain convenience food, no need to stew, such as brewing, instant hot food, mainly to meet the single needs of urban youth.
Quality. In the context of national cost performance, the pursuit of brands by young people still exists, and strong segmentation occurs. Quality means that the intrinsic value and external image of the product should match each other, double high-end. For example, some functional foods, sea buckthorn puree, bird's nest and other high-end health foods are deeply concerned by young consumers and are new foods with great potential.
Routine. The rapid expansion of e-commerce has made it more and more difficult for brands to accurately and efficiently convey their own tonality, compared with the previous single output and sales, the current media requires brands to have the ability to construct their own value in the long run, pay attention to offline activity experience, seize loyal customers, and form a stable brand culture on a daily basis. From this perspective, agricultural products must be prepared to transform from quality and functionality to cultural attributes, strengthen emotional resonance with consumers, integrate into life, and continue to speak.
Internationalization. From Mixue Bingcheng to Cudi Coffee, in the face of changes in the world economic pattern after the epidemic, fast-selling brands represented by New Food have gone overseas on a large scale, and have quickly developed overseas downstream demand and constructed a diversified marketing system by virtue of product diversification and advantages. China's agricultural product brands need to combine special foods to develop pre-packaging and other deep processing industries, such as snail noodles, which have a unique taste, strong cultural symbols, and are easy to spread and eat, is a huge blue ocean for agricultural food to go to sea in the future.
The light weight of coffee promotes its daily use, and at the same time, its cost-effective quality has become a strong advantage for it to go global. Continuing to be the world's No. 1 coffee store in China is a milestone for Chinese brands. The rise of new foods, represented by coffee, contains China's huge and growing market volume, from agricultural products to new foods, cultural tourism, to surrounding and circle culture, young people who continue to grasp the right to speak have created more diversified brand opportunities.
Chinese agricultural brands should learn from the development experience of FMCG, accelerate the transformation of new food, integrate technology and culture into the value system of their own brands, and tell stories that resonate with consumers while doing a good job in quality, so as to create a brand ecosystem with vitality.
References: 1] China News Weekly: Coffee has become the new national trend: the number of stores is the largest in the world.
2] Yunnan News Network: Yunnan coffee beans are popular! ** A new high, and it was sold out before it was still on ...... tree
3] CBNDATA Business Data Center: 2024, How to Win Brand Marketing?