In 2023, the "involution" of milk tea has entered a white-hot stage.
In the first half of the year, the cross-border co-branding of Heytea and Fendi set off a boom in the circle, and in the second half of the year, the menacing national style milk tea "Bawang Tea Queen" rapidly expanded its store at a lightning speed.
And Tea Baidao, Shanghai Auntie, and Gu Ming did not rest, and opened stores in full swing, competing to complete the goal of "10,000 stores".
Not only peer competition, but also coffee and yogurt are the opponents of milk tea: first, he killed a Luckin halfway, played "coffee milk tea" to the extreme, and then came to a jasmine yogurt, which is still the road of milk tea: rolling fruits, stacking milk covers, and fighting for appearance.
However, young people are still enthusiastic about drinking milk tea.
From the perspective of the industry, the market size of milk tea consumption will increase by 44 year-on-year in 20233%。
From the perspective of consumption habits, Liu** has not reduced the willingness to consume milk tea, and about a quarter of people said that the willingness to consume milk tea has increased.
The data were sorted out from the dimensions of new products, co-branding, sales, and social media evaluations, and five new trends in milk tea consumption were sorted out.
At the same time, we also found that the milk tea brand is not completely ineffective involution, and the head brand has established a relatively stable brand advantage and has high user loyalty.
In 2023, how will people's milk tea consumption preferences change? What are brands doing based on these preferences? What can be considered "effective involution"? The specific findings are as follows.
According to the combination of raw materials, there are roughly four types of milk tea:
Fresh fruit tea, tea + milk + fruit + others; The classic milk tea represented by bubble milk tea, tea base + milk + small material milk cover, etc., has a strong taste; This year's new oneLight milk tea, tea + milk; Pure tea.
We counted a total of 269 SKUs from 7 milk tea brands, and found that the overall proportion of fresh fruit tea was 424%, which is higher than the classic milk tea, accounting for almost half of the country.
Although fruit tea has been rolled for several years, people's love for fruit tea is still the same.
According to the public data of the "Heytea 2023 Annual Report", half of the 8 selected drinks in this year's Heytea "Drink of the Year" (the most popular drink among consumers) are fresh fruit teas, namely: Succulent Grape Family, Cool Blackberry Mulberry, a large bucket of ** peach and Dongpo Lychee Drink.
This year's fruit tea is basically the use of seasonal fruits in the corresponding season, as well as the use of new fruit ingredients that emerged last summer, such as red heart bala, kiwifruit, and mulberry.
Different from previous years, brands now emphasize the quality and freshness of fruits: many brands of green grapes and grape series have emphasized "fresh fruits", "real pulp" and "fruit upgrades", such as the use of better varieties of fruits, or the use of smart equipment to improve the efficiency of fresh fruit preparation, so as to ensure the freshness and stability of production to the greatest extent.
The status of "fresh fruit tea" is still the same, and "light milk tea" (there is no unified name for this kind of milk tea, usually without adding additional ingredients and fruits, but emphasizing no flavor, using real tea, original tea, and fresh milk or buffalo milk for the milk base) is rising like a dark horse.
Although the number of SKUs is not large, it can be regarded as the brand's focus on new objects and popular products.
In 2023, Heytea will launch new products of "Light Milk Tea" and "Thick Milk Tea", Naixue will launch the "Original Leaf Fresh Milk Tea" series, and Tea Baidao will also launch a new "Light Milk Tea", and even Mixue Bingcheng, which has never rolled new products, has also launched a limited "Qinglan Oolong Milk Tea" in Henan. Tea brands are starting to roll up tea in an all-round way.
Looking further at their tea bases, we find that oolong tea is the most commonly used tea base, and under the category of oolong tea, there are some fresh and niche tea varieties that have entered the attention of consumers:
For example, Heytea and Barbie's co-branded "Barbie Powder Narcissus", the "Narcissus" in the name is a variety of daffodil fresh leaves from Fujian, which is famous for its mellow taste"Mellow is not more than narcissus, but fragrant is not more fragrant than cinnamon".
The "Golden Peony" used in "Azure Rain" comes from Anxi, Fujian, which is actually a cross between Tieguanyin and Huang Yan, and is the new favorite of the tea circle in the past two years.
The popularity of this type of product can be confirmed by sales: Heytea Barbie Powder Narcissus sold 5 million cups in the first month.
Judging from consumer evaluations, there are two main reasons why young people like "light milk tea": the tea is full of flavor and refreshing and not greasy.
In the past, people often described milk tea as more and more like "eight-treasure porridge", and brands would always play tricks on small ingredients, milk caps and fruits, but now, people are paying more attention to the tea itself, and milk tea is gradually de-"eight-treasure porridge".
"Healthy sugar reduction" is a major consumer trend in recent years.
This year, people not only hope that milk tea can provide low-sugar, zero-calorie sugar options, but also want "clean ingredients" and "transparent ingredients". It is embodied in several aspects:
First of all, the sugar and calories of milk tea itself are not too high, and there is no burden to drink; The second is the "true" raw materials: fruits should be made with fresh fruits instead of brewing fruit powder, and fresh milk should be used for milk instead of milk powder and creamer, and should not contain non-dairy creamer; Finally, the ingredient formula is transparent, and you can clearly see what ingredients are added to a cup of milk tea.
Based on this trend, in 2023, tea brands will begin to publish information such as formula ingredients and nutrition facts lists. For example, Bawang Chaji has launched a "low-burden sugar control zone" in the menu and announced the product calorie list; Tea Baidao also officially announced the news of the sugar reduction of product ingredients.
What's even more ruthless is Heytea, which directly disclosed the formula raw materials, nutritional ingredients and raw material traceability information of all products on sale in October. According to preliminary statistics, Heytea has released the formula raw material information of more than 60 products, the traceability information of more than 70 raw materials, and more than 60 nutritional composition testing reports.
In addition to publicizing the calories, proteins, trans fatty acids, fats, and carbohydrates of each product, Heytea even attaches the ** of each raw material, even sucrose. This also makes each cup of product more transparent, and consumers have more basis when making choices.
If in the past few years, young people were still Buddhist health and liked to say that "as long as milk tea is added with ice, there will be no calories", then now, health is from a lip service "concept" to a real demand.
This year is still the year of the outbreak of milk tea co-branding. In terms of quantity alone, as of December 23, 2023, 10 mainstream milk tea brands have co-branded a total of 161 times, which translates to an average of one milk tea brand launching a co-branding every 2 days.
It is no wonder that DT's previous "Young People's Joint Consumption Survey Report" shows that as co-branding becomes more and more frequent, people continue to disenchant or even "numb" it, only 331% of consumers say they are more interested in co-branding than before.
If you only look at the total number of co-branded names throughout the year, the top three are Nayuki's tea (38 times), Cha Baidao (27 times) and Mixue Bingcheng (19 times).
In addition to the number of co-branding, we also combined the co-branding and social media popularity that consumers were impressed by in the survey, and roughly counted which ones are considered "effective co-branding", and the results showed:
On the "joint effectiveness", Heytea is 26The "effective co-branding rate" of 7% ranked first. This year, Heytea has co-branded a total of 15 times, but it has been "effective" 4 times, namely: HeyTea x Fendi, HeyTea x Chow Tai Fook, HeyTea x Genshin Impact and HeyTea x Female Star Loopy.
Clause. The second and third places you may be a little surprised, they are Shuyi Burning Fairy Grass and Gu Ming, and the selected "effective co-branding" are Shu Yi Burning Fairy Grass x "Fengshen" and Gu Ming x "Heavenly Official Blessing", although each has only one out of the circle co-branding, but because the total number of co-names is also small, the ranking is higher.
Judging from the joint content, the so-called "effective" actually has two meanings:
For one, the co-branding itself is creative enough to be unexpected and cleverly combined in the actual product. According to the DT Research Institute, the most popular co-branding features among consumers are:The product is creative, contrasting and easy to play.
Typical examples are Heytea x FENDI, as well as Luckin x Moutai in the coffee industry, playing "the first FENDI for young people" and "the first cup of Moutai for young people", so that "affordable luxury" has become the capital to highlight personality.
Second, you can co-brand with popular IP, but you can't just set the shell of IP, find an existing product, and add IP to the packaging is perfunctory. Even if you choose a popular classic IP, you still have to work the taste of the product itself and the combination with the co-branded object.
For example, the new co-branded products launched by Shuyi Burning Fairy Grass and "Fengshen" have now become a permanent product on the menu. And Heytea's cool blackberry mulberry, which was co-branded with Hiroshi Fujiwara in 2022, will still sell out without a joint name after returning in 2023, with a cumulative sales volume of nearly 20 million cups.
These cases all show that even without the blessing of IP, a good co-branded product itself has a strong product power.
The drinking scene of milk tea has become richer.
In the relevant notes of Xiaohongshu's "milk tea", in addition to the "afternoon tea" scene, there are two types of high-frequency scenes, one is to order a cup of milk tea to celebrate, such as "birthday", "ashore", "pass the assessment" and "get the certificate", and the other is young people who are still taking the postgraduate entrance examination, taking the public examination or working overtime, and reviewing before the exam, who bear a lot of pressure and will buy a cup of milk tea to soothe their emotions and cheer themselves up"A cup of milk tea, good luck".
In addition, from the perspective of drinking time period, there will be 30 milk tea takeaway orders in the first half of 20238% were for dinner, and 124% was during the late-night snack period, which saw a 31% and 40% year-on-year increase in orders, respectively.
In the sharing of netizens, this kind of "shore milk tea" and "evening milk tea" often bring more emotional value to themselves.
Some people work overtime at night, and on the way home, they see that the milk tea shop is still lit up, buy a cup of hot drink, and the fatigue seems to be instantly smoothed.
Under this trend, brands are also working the drinking scene, such as extending business hours to the early hours of the morning, or opening a 24-hour business system.
Marketing on 520, Valentine's Day, National Day and other festivals has become a basic operation, and Heytea has also launched the activity of "Newcomers with Certificates to Give Hey Tea Drinks", so that young people can "be happy on the big day" and "happy and happy".
Nowadays, milk tea is not only an "afternoon tea" for migrant workers, but also an "emotional partner" that can provide daily companionship for young people in various scenes.
Judging from the above 5 trends, young people should not only drink milk tea: it should be healthy and delicious, but also emotional value.
We looked at the hot topics and high-frequency words related to milk tea on Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and found that "scene" and "emotional value" are the most frequently mentioned words.
On social networking**, whenever there is a new milk tea product or joint launch, there will always be a group of "famous milk tea tasters" online, and a large number of "peripheral heads are ecstatic".
For them, when they are alone,"The companionship of milk tea is joy"., when you're with friends,".Two cups of milk tea, double the happiness. ”
When learning to work,".Drinking a cup of milk tea is the smallest scale of vacation。After all, "the work is not finished, and I see it."I finished the milk tea first
Looking back, for the milk tea brands that are rolling up and dying, what matters may not only be the number of stores, new products and co-branding, but how much product value and emotional value these actions can provide to consumers in the final analysis.
It is often said that milk tea, as a frequently new "mass consumer product", basically has no brand loyalty.
However, we have found that there are still milk tea brands such as Heytea, which have accumulated brand potential energy.
According to iiMedia Consulting data, in the 2023 consumer preference survey of new tea drink brands, Heytea ranked 581% of the votes ranked in the top 1.
The so-called brand potential energy, or brand power, is constantly precipitated in specific details:
The excellence in the research and development of new products, the high requirements for the quality of raw materials, the repeated adjustment of packaging colors, the careful selection of co-branded objects, and the continuous improvement of store efficiency ......It allows consumers to obtain the dual value of products and emotions in specific milk tea consumption scenarios and experiences.
This kind of brand potential energy is not only about whether the milk tea itself is good or not, but also about emotional care, and even the imagination of a better life.
Just like the slogan of Heytea:"A cup of happy tea, joy happens".