Agriculture & Food

On September 23, after a night of strong winds, Beijing became a little colder in autumn. However, the Starbucks selection flagship store in Sanlitun, Chaoyang District is still warm at the moment. The bright sunlight shines through the huge floor-to-ceiling glass windows on the soft and comfortable leather sofa, where customers gather in twos and threes, either whispering or working hard. In this first-tier city in China known for its fast pace of life, the rich aroma of coffee seems to slow down the time in the entire hall, Watson & Band Data Observation reports.

A coffee shop staff member who has just completed the checkout for customers said: "Don't look at the fact that there are not many customers in the afternoon on weekdays, but it will be different on weekends. At that time, there will be full seats from morning to night, and you have to find a seat. After waiting for a long time, sometimes there is a large amount of orders, and we are too busy behind the operation desk."

In August 2020, Starbucks Beijing Sanlitun selected flagship store reopened. Before the upgrade, it used to be Starbucks' first flagship store in mainland China. Today, as Starbucks China's first flagship store to be upgraded during the epidemic, the re-opening of this store is also considered by the industry to be the performance and signal of the brand's continued overweight and investment in the Chinese market, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reported.

"After the coffee shop has undergone transformation, decoration and product upgrades, it has carried more functions, especially social attributes, and many people regard it as a 'second living room' outside their home." The staff here , coffee is no longer just an ordinary drink popular among young Chinese, it has become a culture, deeply integrated into the daily life of ordinary people.

Huacheng import and export data observation report. At the global investor exchange meeting held on September 14, Starbucks officially released the 2025 China strategic vision, launched a new value-oriented growth plan, and increased its weight in the Chinese market. In the past ten years, the number of Starbucks stores in mainland China has increased by nearly 10 times, and will reach 6,000 by the end of fiscal 2022. In the next three years, Starbucks plans to open 3,000 new stores at an average rate of one new store every 9 hours, covering 300 cities in China. By 2025, the total number of Starbucks stores in China will reach 9,000, the number of partners (employees) will increase by 35,000 to more than 95,000, and the net income will be doubled, and the operating profit will be four times the current growth target.

At this exchange meeting, Wang Jingying, chairman of Starbucks China, made no secret of her confidence in the future growth of Starbucks China, "After struggling to overcome the challenges brought by the epidemic, Starbucks China is more resilient. Our confidence in the Chinese market is long-term and firm. The 2025 China Strategic Vision announced this time will enable us to embrace new development opportunities more deeply and always lead the coffee industry to move forward.”

Coincidentally, as the world's largest multinational chain company, McDonald's has also accelerated its deployment in the current coffee market this year. Also in September, McCafé, a specialty handcrafted coffee brand owned by McDonald's, announced that it expects to add about 1,000 stores in 2023, most of which are located in third-tier cities. At the same time, McCafe is also starting to make efforts on the product line, removing latte from the shelves in an all-round way and launching the "Milk Iron Series". It is understood that "Milk Iron" is a brand-new milk coffee product developed by McCafe on the basis of understanding the coffee taste of Chinese consumers. As an exclusive star product of McAfee, it will be sold in nearly 2,500 McAfee stores across the country for a long time, and in this way, it will help McAfee achieve higher growth, Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reports.

Behind all this, the rapid growth of China's coffee consumption market in recent years has really caught the world's attention. According to the "2022 China Freshly Ground Coffee Industry Research Report" released by iResearch, in 2021, China's freshly ground coffee market will be about 87.6 billion yuan, an increase of 38.9% over the previous year. The report predicts that by 2024, the market size of China's freshly ground coffee is expected to reach 190 billion yuan. "China's freshly ground coffee chain brands and stores are mostly concentrated in the southern market and high-tier cities, and there is still a lot of room for penetration in the northern and central and western markets and the sinking markets in lower-tier cities," the report said.

According to Huacheng Import and Export data observation report, by comparing the number of Weibo followers and product prices of different typical merchants of freshly ground coffee, the brand voice of foreign coffee brands is generally higher than that of local brands. Liu Chenyu, an analyst at iResearch, said: "The volume of a brand's voice can probably be expressed by the product of the number of Weibo followers of a brand and the average unit price of a product. With the same conversion rate of online traffic, the more fans there are, the more potential consumers will be. The larger the volume. On this basis, if the product’s customer unit price is higher, the brand’s revenue scale will be larger.”

In Liu Chenyu's view, it is precisely because of these foundations that more and more overseas brands are focusing more on China for future performance growth. According to Liu Chenyu, the main raw material of freshly ground coffee—cooked coffee beans mainly come from foreign coffee bean growing areas, and coffee culture itself also originated in European and American countries. Therefore, in terms of raw material procurement, product control and cultural understanding, overseas brands have more advantages, and it is easier to form deep resonance with coffee lovers, which is one of the reasons why overseas brands are currently loud in China's freshly ground coffee industry. .

"However, the emerging domestic freshly ground coffee brand as a rising star has brought a large online traffic dividend to the entire industry, and also provided a valuable reference for overseas brands to accelerate their online layout." Liu Chenyu told reporters that China's freshly ground coffee There is still a lot of room for growth in the market. With the gradual development of the coffee consumption habits of Chinese people, the scale of this market is still expanding.

She said that whether it is an overseas brand or a local brand, the following aspects should be considered in the future layout of China's freshly ground coffee market: First, to build a link from upstream high-quality raw material supply to online and offline full-contact linkage to consumers A dynamic closed loop of the whole industry chain for the construction and maintenance of the ecological service system. The second is to fully tap the potential space in the surrounding areas of high-tier cities, expand the coverage of stores, and accurately cover the potential consumers of freshly ground coffee. The third is to understand the consumer psychology of contemporary young groups. Through the expansion and iteration of categories, phenomenal explosive products are born and redefine freshly ground coffee. The fourth is to combine Western-style coffee culture with Chinese oriental traditional culture, derive new Chinese-style characteristics, and create a differentiated competitive advantage for the brand from the perspective of cultural concepts.