Nitrogen coffee, bicycle hawking. From Starbucks to Independent Brands, the Ice Coffee War in the United States

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In hot summer, hand drinks are readily available in Taiwan, and the trend of ice-brewed coffee blowing from New York has also spread all over the world. Walking into a coffee shop and having a cup of ice-brewed coffee to ward off the sultry heat is a new choice for young people born in the United States after the 1990s to drink coffee.

Innovation: coffee doesn't have to be hot! Ice-brewed coffee satisfies consumers looking for new flavors by adding bubbles, cold fermentation, and innovative packaging.

Starbucks, the leader of the coffee chain, has seen an opportunity for ice-brewed coffee in recent years, so it has teamed up with artist Steven Harrington to launch a limited number of pop-style (pop art style) Mason Jar bottles for iced coffee in the United States.

This group of practical and collectible glass bottles use funny, eye-catching tones, with well-known cartoon characters or California-specific palm trees as the main axis, designed to jump, colorful patterns. As soon as it was launched in the United States, it fell into a rush to buy.

And other stores, each using different methods, jumped on the ice-brewed coffee train.

(photo capture: kknews)

Three key points of this paper are as follows: 1. Ice-brewed coffee in aluminum cans makes you feel like drinking beer. two。 "the third wave" plus "ice brew", Gregorys Coffee insight into the niche market, creating a sales miracle. 3. Innovative packaging and sales methods, ice-brewed coffee attracts consumers who want to feel cool.

1. Ice brewed coffee in aluminum cans makes you feel like drinking beer

Traditional hand-brewed coffee needs to grind coffee beans, dissolve the smell of coffee powder in hot water, and then enjoy the unique flavor of hand-brewed coffee after two injections of water. Hot coffee will change its flavor with time and temperature, so it is usually the most appropriate time to drink it as soon as the coffee is brewed.

Ice brewed coffee soaks the coffee powder in cold water for 6-20 hours, cooling and slowly concentrating. Compared with the general production method, the coffee flavor is relatively stable and not easy to deteriorate. Therefore, many coffee brands in New York have launched ice-brewed coffee with less acid and warm taste in recent years, hoping to find a piece of life in the saturated coffee market.

For example, Stumptown Coffee Roaster from Portland in the United States launched nitrogen ice-brewed coffee (Nitro Cold Brew) in 2013. Add nitrogen to the iced coffee, so it bubbles slightly and tastes like strong black beer covered with fresh milk foam. And it is sold in easy-to-drink aluminum cans, which is loved by young consumers as soon as it is launched.

(photo capture: peterjthomson)

According to a 2015 report by US market research firm Mintel, 1/4 of ice-brewed coffee consumers said they preferred ice-brewed coffee to other takeaway drinks. Moreover, according to statistics, as of June this year, more than 13,000 Starbucks coffee outlets in the United States have provided iced coffee, and other coffee chains have followed suit, and the business opportunities brought about by iced coffee cannot be ignored.

two。 "the third wave" plus "ice brew", Gregorys Coffee insights into the niche market and creates a sales miracle

While coffee chains in New York are trying to develop new flavors of ice-brewed coffee, Gregory Zamfotis, the founder of Gregorys Coffee, is committed to maintaining the original flavor of ice-brewed coffee. He confirms only two things every day: "coffee quality" and "product consistency".

Gregory Zamfotis saw the "third wave" (fresh boutique coffee) and "ice brewed" coffee, so it opened its first Gregorys Coffee on Park Avenue in Manhattan in 2006.

Starting from 05:30 every morning, Gregory Zamfotis actually visits 5-6 branches, from confirming the origin of coffee beans, soaking and roasting coffee beans, to making coffee by hand, and strictly controlling every step of the store to ensure the consistent quality of the coffee served to guests every day. Gregory Zamfotis focuses on coffee flavor, so when building a brand, he will not develop other light foods to affect the taste buds of coffee, but wait for customers to identify and remember the brand before catering to the mass market to launch light foods to meet customer needs.

(photo capture: sprudge)

In addition to insisting on the quality of coffee, he runs the company by "organic growth" (Organic Growth). Zamfotis does not make an annual plan, but sets a six-month goal. Zamfotis has a regular meeting with the store manager every month, during which he asks the managers to provide a three-page review report to let him know the sales situation of each branch.

Therefore, Zamfotis can keep abreast of coffee trends. In the season of rising temperatures and increasing demand for cold drinks, he changed the proportion of ice-brewed coffee from 25% to 65%, giving Gregorys Coffee a head start, creating a staggering figure of 10, 000 cups sold that day during the peak sales season.

3. Innovative packaging and sales methods, ice-brewed coffee attracts consumers who want to feel cool

Gregorys Coffee attracts regular customers by insisting on the original flavor of ice-brewed coffee. However, there are also other merchants in the market who use innovative visual bags to match the novel flavor of ice-brewed coffee to open up the "blue ocean" market of coffee.

Wilkinson, co-founder of Cold Bruja, an ice-brewed coffee startup in Los Angeles, believes that things that require long-term fermentation, such as beer and ice-brewed coffee, can be connected to each other, and these similar features make it easier for the public to understand ice-brewed coffee. So Wilkinson uses bold and innovative ways to package Cold Bruja as beer, attracting young people to make drinking ice-brewed coffee a new indicator of popularity.

(photo capture: dailycoffeenews)

In addition to innovation in packaging, Cold Bruja should also be different in its sales model. They launched a black bicycle with a huge ice box on it and painted the company logo in eye-catching gold. Then, in a street, the bike will bring cold coffee to people in need. Such a sales model, not only does not need a lot of money, but also because it is rare and makes consumers feel very interesting, and then want to try their coffee.

(photo capture: laweekly)

In the United States, drinking coffee is as common as Chinese drinking tea. If you want to stand out in the saturated coffee market, apart from learning Gregory Zamfotis to insist on the quality of coffee, you can also give full play to your creativity. Through the concept of old wine in new bottles, drinking coffee can also experience different fresh feelings.