Starbucks enters China's ready-to-drink tea market with bottled Frappuccino for the first time selling more than coffee

For professional baristas, please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Starbucks, the world's largest coffee chain, is selling milk tea in China.

Snack Dai confirmed from Starbucks that bottled Frappuccino has just launched two new products-bottled Black Tea Star Frappuccino and bottled Matcha Star Frappuccino. This is the first time that bottled Star Frappuccino does not sell instant coffee, and instant tea drinks have been sold.

Snack Dai has previously reported that Wang Jingying, CEO of Starbucks China, disclosed at a recent results presentation meeting that the bottled Frappuccino business "has many exciting new products in the pipeline, including a delicious bottled Frappuccino tea". Now she has mentioned the following new tea products, has taken the lead in the Tmall supermarket listing.

"this is the first time that bottled Star Frappuccino has extended coffee drinks to tea drinks in China, and it is specially developed for Chinese consumers in terms of taste." Starbucks official said.

Taste more "Chinese"

Big data, a consumer from thousands of stores, has also helped in the taste choice of these two new instant tea products. Starbucks said that matcha and black tea drinks have always been high-order drinks for consumers in Starbucks stores in China, "which once again confirms the love of tea drinks among Chinese consumers."

The "local customization" of turning the popular tastes of offline stores into bottled products makes Starbucks feel more confident about the sales of new products. It is worth noting that this is also the first time that bottled matcha star cappuccino has been put on the market worldwide.

It is understood that it took nearly a year for Starbucks'R & D team to finalize the new product formula. In order to capture the picky taste buds of Chinese consumers, Starbucks R & D team "looked for tea ingredients from several well-known tea producing areas in the world, and went through repeated internal tests and multi-round tasting by external consumers."

According to reports, in order to present Starbucks instant tea drinks with "distinctive tea, smooth taste and popular with young consumers," Starbucks'R & D team matched tea from different regions of the world and used imported milk sources. and exquisite craftsmanship.

According to the preferences of different consumers, bottled matcha star cappuccino focuses on freshness, while black tea taste focuses on mellow.

Matcha Star Frappuccino is "imported matcha powder made by layers of steaming green and ultra-fine grinding technology, with high-quality imported milk sources, fresh and refreshing taste," Starbucks said in a notice.

On the other hand, Black Tea Star Bingle is "considering different combinations from many dimensions, such as tea feeling, tea aroma, brown color, etc., after dozens of rounds of selection and tasting, the raw materials of black tea are Ceylon black tea in Sri Lanka, Yunnan Dianhong in China, and black tea in Assam in India. The taste of black tea in these areas is mellow and full of tea. "

To make "interesting" tea.

With the post-80s and post-90s becoming the main consumer, they also put forward different requirements for tea products and brands. apart from being delicious, tea drinks with both "good appearance" and "interesting" are likely to become the next online celebrities.

Therefore, it can be seen that bottled Star Bingle tea, which takes the route of "rejuvenating high-end tea and drinking tea", has also put some effort into packaging.

The newly added tea "member" continues the concise packaging and logo of the bottled star cappuccino family, but it is more lively and bright in tone-the red tea star cappuccino is dominated by rose, while the matcha star cappuccino is dominated by grass green. it is more eye-catching when placed together with the star cappuccino coffee drink with brown as the main color package.

Snack Dai noticed that in order to create a "tea fun" experience and be an interesting tea brand, Starbucks also played AR cool techs.

After consumers buy bottled Frappuccino tea, turn on Tmall AR "scan" function, scan the bottle of the new Frappuccino, you can enjoy the "tea garden scenery" of Star Frappuccino from the perspective of AR. Starbucks has also added the interactive game of red packets. This is the first time that Starbucks has partnered with Tmall to have an interactive AR experience, which will last for one month until mid-June.

At present, in Tmall supermarket, snack Dai saw that the price of two bottles of star Frappuccino tea with six bottles is 93 yuan, which is about the same as that of four traditional ready-to-drink coffee cappuccinos (coffee, mocha, vanilla, caramel).

According to the sales data on Tmall's page, matcha-flavored Star Bingle milk tea seems to be more popular, with monthly sales of 5433 pieces, with a cumulative evaluation of 1302 items, compared with 1509 pieces and 362 items of black tea Xing Bingle milk tea.

Starbucks officials told the snack generation that because these two new instant tea products are not limited products, but will be sold in the Chinese market for a long time, so the prices are the same as the four bottled cappuccino coffee drinks on sale. "in addition to the e-commerce platform, the two products will also be sold in supermarkets, stores and convenience stores in major cities across the country, and the actual prices may vary slightly due to distribution channels."

Open up a new battlefield of instant tea

Starbucks' introduction of bottled tea means that the company's ready-to-drink business in the Chinese market has further expanded from existing coffee drinks to tea drinks.

The company sees the ready-to-drink business as an extension of its Starbucks store business. Starbucks said the bottled Frappuccino was launched to allow consumers to drink Starbucks drinks outside Starbucks stores. It has been revealed that in the future, Starbucks will also launch more innovative high-end ready-to-drink drinks in the Chinese market.

Since Starbucks launched four bottled Frappuccinos tailored to Chinese consumers in September last year, it has launched a new bottled Frappuccino in the Chinese market for the third time. During this period, Starbucks has successively introduced some concepts such as the store's best-selling drink taste and season limit to bottled ready-to-drink drinks.

Four regular flavors and "festive limited flavors" strawberry cheese milk flavor bottled Frappuccino

Snack Dai has previously reported that Wang Jingying, CEO of Starbucks China, disclosed at a recent results presentation meeting that Starbucks ready-to-drink business has tripled since the launch of bottled Frappuccino in China, and its market share has increased by 5 percentage points compared with the same period last year. At present, bottled Star Frappuccino has been stationed in more than 30,000 sales outlets in major cities across the country, including Shangchao and convenience stores.

The launch of bottled Frappuccino tea sends a signal to the market that Starbucks will continue to enter the high-end ready-to-drink market with a wide range of products. However, whether bottled Star Pingle Tea can be recognized by picky consumers in China, a traditional tea country, remains to be tested by the market.