Coffee review

Why is Starbucks the boss of a Chinese coffee chain?

Published: 2024-11-03 Author: World Gafei
Last Updated: 2024/11/03, The article is reproduced from DT Financial WeChat account: DTCaijing author: Zhao Weiwen professional barista communication Please follow the coffee workshop (official Wechat account cafe_style) recently, the tea market is very popular. As one of the largest categories in the tea market, coffee has always been a battleground for soldiers. Especially in the first-tier cities with the largest audience, the competition among coffee brands can be fierce.

The article is reproduced from DT Finance.

WeChat account: DTCaijing

Author: Zhao Weiwen

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

Recently, the tea market is very popular.

As one of the largest categories in the tea market, coffee has always been a battleground for soldiers. Especially in the first-tier cities with the largest audience, the competition between coffee brands can be described as fierce.

Today, let's use the data to reveal the secret for you: is Starbucks a big brother in the coffee shop chain of Didu? what are the legends of this big brother and his friends?

Europe and the United States are at the top, and South Korean partners are still struggling to catch up.

If KFC and McDonald's love each other in the fast food industry, then the coffee industry will have to mention Starbucks and Costa.

However, only these two old familiar faces, the story is certainly not good enough. After searching the data of all the shops classified by the Beijing coffee shop on Amap, we found that in addition to these two veteran drivers, there are also two rising stars: man Coffee and Caffebene.

Two predecessors Starbucks and Costa were both founded in 1971, one in Seattle, the other in London, England, but it took a long time to enter the Chinese market. If you take the time when the coffee brand in Dianping won the first comment in Beijing as the time when they entered the public eye, Starbucks has been in the capital for three years longer than Costa. According to Starbucks' official website, Starbucks opened its first store in Beijing International Trade Center as early as 1999.

Until 2008, Starbucks enjoyed an uncrowded Beijing coffee shop market until Costa, an old friend, got on board. Three years later, perhaps inspired by Chinese enthusiasm for South Korean TV dramas, a Korean living in Beijing opened his first coffee shop in Lido, and then a large chain coffee shop in South Korea squeezed in with you.

Squeezing together, nearly 400 coffee shops were crammed into Beijing:

After there are more coffee shop brands, people will naturally exert their unlimited creativity and give coffee shops a variety of uses: buying a cup of coffee, having a small chat, talking about cooperation, self-study, or even just taking a selfie.

In order to meet their destined customers, these coffee shops avoid parks, which have no spending power, and are reluctant to make an effort to enter the university market and take a look around at most. They are interested in the major business circles in the center of the city, as well as intercity transportation hubs with strong business attributes such as railway stations and airports.

At the terminal, which extends to several subway lines on the outskirts of the city (Line 1, Line 6, Line 14, etc.), these coffee shops give up as soon as they are unable to squeeze into the prime section of the city center. They probably don't really want to occupy the living areas near the subway terminal, but are scattered along the subway line.

Coffee shops huddle together, a bitter history of Costa chasing Starbucks

When it comes to huddling, take a closer look at the small dense areas on the map. The most concentrated area of brand coffee in Beijing is near Dawang Road, as well as Financial Street and Zhongguancun in the west, and Beijing South Railway Station in the south.

According to the cluster map, we selected Huamao Shopping Center next to Dawang Road Subway Station, Financial Street Shopping Center of Financial Street, Beijing South Subway Station and Zhongguancun Subway Station, and took these four coordinates as the center of the circle. the data of brand coffee shops within a radius of 500 meters are obtained as the gathering place of the four major coffee shops in the capital.

Among the four major coffee shops, the number of stores in Huamao Shopping Mall and Beijing South Railway Station is significantly higher than that in Financial Street Shopping Center and Zhongguancun. In terms of the richness of coffee brands, Huamao and Zhongguancun beat the other two competitors by a narrow margin of "standard Starbucks Costa+1 Korean coffee shops".

From the location style of the contestants, we can see that Starbucks' coffee village "Mountain King" must be firmly seated, and it can be seen in all four gathering places. As the owner of the second village, Costa can only reluctantly follow in the footsteps of Starbucks.

In 2004, Starbucks opened a store on the first floor of the Parkson Mall in Fuxingmen, while in 2008, Costa officially began its trip to the Imperial Capital in Beijing's Jinghui Building, near ITC. In the white-collar ITC opened its own imperial market, Costa's initial choice can be said to be very safe, but the reality of late entry decided that it came to a hilltop that had long been occupied by Starbucks.

Among the four gathering places, Starbucks arrived at the Financial Street Shopping Mall, Zhongguancun and Beijing South Railway Station (where Costa has no branches). But Costa still has a heart, because among the four coffee shop centers, Costa finally found a piece of land not yet occupied by Starbucks in 2010-Dawang Road, and started the crazy enclosure mode. It wasn't until five years later that Starbucks arrived late. At that time, there were already two Costa here.

No matter how sad it is, people still prefer to be neighbors next to Starbucks.

In the coffee shop gathering map, there is only one Korean coffee shop in the vicinity of the Financial Street Shopping Center, where the two major Korean coffee shops are not involved at all.

In order to visually show the actual distance of each coffee shop, we collected the distance data of the nearest four different coffee shops in each coffee shop and made this picture of the coffee shop.

It seems that coffee shops are interested in being neighbors with Starbucks.

Due to the absolute superiority in the number of stores, the distance between each brand store and Starbucks is the closest, basically no more than 1000 meters. In the face of the coffee village "Mountain King", which is a very successful business model, all the small brothers in the village are trying to get on the train to get rich together with their father Xing.

Among them, the Korean cafe showed great enthusiasm for his father Xing. Even though it is two or three kilometers away from your own store, Man Coffee and Coffee accompany you to set up shop no more than 700 meters near Xing Dad. In other words, although they are fans of Star Dad, the average store distance between the two brands is about 2500 meters, which reflects their mutual avoidance incisively and vividly.

When it comes to avoidance, the relationship between Starbucks and Costa is actually a bit delicate. Even though Costa has significantly more stores than two Korean cafes, it still maintains a respectful distance of 1000 meters from Starbucks.

Approaching or fleeing? Imitation or complementarity?

If the Starbucks model is so successful, why does Costa vaguely keep a safe distance from it, while Korean cafes implement close tactics?

I'm afraid it has something to do with the collision between coffee shops.

After selling coffee for so many years, Starbucks has sold more than just refreshing coffee cakes or taste buds stimulating coffee cakes. Cups, membership cards, and zongzi and moon cakes that cater to the Chinese, Xing Dad uses every possible link in the coffee shop. As a result, there is a saying that Starbucks sells a way of life.

How can such a competitor make other brands not want to be it?

These years, you walk into a Costa and you will find that there are all kinds of English coffee cups in the most prominent position in the store. They also do as the Romans do and launch a points system with Wechat. These movements are more or less the shadow of Starbucks.

In this way, Starbucks and Costa attracted a group of office workers who took the time to buy coffee at noon. This kind of positioning makes them all drill into the hot business circle, but they do not want to drive directly next door, thus giving rise to this sense of distance.

When Europe and the United States used the same trick to cut each other, the two Korean boys who sprang up after 2011 actually began to use their own Korean trick to hurt each other.

The national husbands born in South Korean TV dramas have been shipped in batches to the eyes and hearts of Chinese Internet girls in recent years. As Korean brands, Man Coffee and Coffee accompany you in the strategy of opening up the Chinese market, of course, they also bring their own Korean TV series genes. Zhang Genshuo and Kim Soo-Hyun, two former national husbands, both became the spokesmen for coffee to accompany you when they were most popular. Although Man Coffee, which is born and raised in China, does not have the advantage of Korean stars, it will also give you a teddy bear doll with a girl's heart as a delivery logo after ordering.

▲ Coffee accompanies your spokesmen Zhang Genshuo and Kim Soo-Hyun

Obviously, they are not very interested in courting people who buy and leave. With huge storefronts, a wide variety of drinks and menus featuring staple food and dim sum, what these Korean coffee shops want is to restore the Korean TV series itself. All they think about is how to serve the romantic people who are willing to stay in the store forever, so that they don't have to miss the fancy world from breakfast coffee to dinner.

However, no matter how fierce the internal struggles between the European and American and Korean factions are, they still have to admire the crazy pursuit of star dads in Korean coffee shops. There is a deviation between the customer groups who do not pay much attention to buy-and-go, and the location of their father Xing is so affirmed by the commercial market. Of course, Korean boys should be as close as they can.

0