The baristas are going to panic! The world's first unmanned coffee shop officially opened

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

The sharing economy in the Internet field is hot, while in the retail field, "unmanned commerce" is becoming a recognized tuyere in the industry!

Just on September 2, Friendship Bar, the world's first unmanned coffee shop, officially opened at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Various data show that the growth of offline coffee shops such as Starbucks is reaching the ceiling.

On Aug. 9, the prestigious BMO Capital Markets Financial Group downgraded Starbucks because the company's growth in attracting new customers was slowing; its same-store sales in the United States were no longer as high as they used to be, maintaining only a low single-digit percentage, according to Starbucks' results.

On the one hand, the growth rate is slowing down, on the other hand, due to the rise in rents and labor costs, offline coffee shops such as Starbucks are suffering from an unprecedented impact. In the new retail era, it must not be diffuse coffee and coffee to accompany you, but the new species of unmanned coffee shop!

Unmanned coffee shop is subverting your imagination.

For the first time, I walked into the unmanned coffee shop of "Friendship drink Bar" in Beijing, and what came into view were: glass room, wooden tables and chairs, green plants, big menu screen, freshly ground coffee, pastries …... It's just that compared with the traditional coffee shop, without a waiter, there is no one!

I experienced that I was free to choose drinks on the order screen, and after clicking "iced latte", I was also free to choose the proportion of coffee beans, milk and sugar; then I entered the "payment" link, and I could choose to pay with WeChat Pay or Alipay; when I started to enter the production, the process of making coffee beans would be clearly displayed on the screen: grinding, bottling, injection of hot water, natural extraction.

Interestingly, the whole production process is full of science and technology and a sense of the future. You can see a manipulator holding an empty paper cup into the line of sight, picking up coffee and hot milk under the glass bottle. The other manipulator was put into the glass and stirred. After adding ice, the window opened automatically, and the manipulator sent a cup of ice latte to me from the window. The whole process is like a science fiction scene, like a robot making coffee on the spot. It also makes me feel good to have a real cup of iced coffee in hot weather.

The cool unmanned coffee shop has attracted the attention of young people, and there are a lot of people placing orders, and each order takes only about a minute to make. In addition to the coffee drinks mentioned above, you can also enjoy pastries, fruits and vegetables and other desserts here, a cup of coffee from 9.9 yuan, the price is affordable, really no one, "unmanned coffee shop" worthy of the name.

Speaking of "unmanned business", Jack Ma's "Amoy Coffee" is definitely the most famous. But in this so-called unmanned supermarket, the freshly ground coffee is still made by professional baristas. The so-called "unmanned" is only realized in the checkout process, not a real "unmanned coffee shop".

The "unmanned coffee shop" that Jack Ma has not yet realized became a reality in Beijing on September 2.

Grasp the equipment and operation, build the barrier of competition

It is understood that the operator of the "Friendship Bar" unmanned coffee shop is Beijing Yinbuer Technology Co., Ltd., which was established in September 2014. It is a professional unmanned coffee service provider based on the Internet of things and using unmanned coffee robots as the carrier. It focuses on the ability to build unmanned coffee machine design, equipment manufacturing, platform development, store location, operation and sales, and customer service around the "friend drink unmanned coffee machine" service. At present, it operates nearly 1000 unmanned coffee robots across the country. This unmanned coffee shop is a positive attempt to a new scene.

At present, through the mode of "unmanned coffee robot + coffee service", Youyin unmanned coffee shop has provided self-service freshly ground coffee service in office buildings, schools, public places and other scenes.

Friendly drinks are not the only companies with unmanned coffee machines, but they are companies with competitive barriers. At the core of unmanned coffee shops, or competition barriers, there are two, one is coffee machine equipment, the other is supply chain operation.

As early as more than two years ago, Youyin independently developed a desktop automatic coffee machine, and in November 2015, it launched a vertical smart coffee mill.

Recently, Youyin launched the fourth generation unmanned coffee robot, which invested more than 50 million yuan in technology and was manufactured in a top unmanned production line with an investment of 1.2 billion yuan.

The unmanned coffee robot has many leading technologies, such as horizontal wall-breaking grinding, double coffee bean box assembly, air mixing, closed glass trickling extraction, dry-wet separation, robotic arm three-dimensional air walk, and so on.

More importantly, this is an ice-making unmanned coffee machine with an overall ice-making function, which leaves enough room for imagination to open up the southern market.

The fourth generation of unmanned coffee robots have more than 50 SKU on shelves, more than double the number of devices of the previous generation.

Youyin unmanned coffee robot creatively realizes the flexible beverage making process. The so-called flexible production process means that the customer matches the taste independently, which is the core technology of the fourth-generation coffee robot. At the beginning of each cup of coffee, customers can set the amount of coffee beans, milk, sugar and so on independently, which is a powerful overall control system to achieve a perfect combination from the user interface to the production of equipment.

Now is the era of consumption upgrading, friendly drink unmanned coffee robot from the raw materials and services are on a par with high quality. For example, the raw materials are imported, such as illy imported coffee beans, pure dairy raw materials, Sri Lankan Ceylon black tea. In the production process, grinding bean components and brewing technology are the world's top, to achieve the balance of fine particles and fragrance retention, more than 30 processes automatically linked up, can achieve dozens of seconds from grinding beans to the end of brewing.

The first "friendly drink bar" unmanned coffee shop is to put friendly drinks on their own, but the friendly drink model is also more flexible, and you can also cooperate with the place. From the scene, it can be divided into three types: unmanned coffee shop, unmanned coffee machine and open coffee bar. In addition to the unmanned coffee shop, I saw the friend drink unmanned coffee machine in the rest area of the nearby apartment and the lobby on the ground floor of the building.

In operation, the new generation of friend drink unmanned coffee machine has also been strongly upgraded. First of all, from the previous independent operation to the remote management of the Internet of things, remote networking control can be realized; secondly, it can also be intelligent in operation, such as out-of-stock early warning, replenishment early warning, and so on. Fully automated and intelligent operation will greatly reduce management costs and improve operational efficiency.

It is understood that the core members of Youyin's team have a background of physical retail, chain management, Internet of things communications, media, commercial real estate, self-help selling and so on, which is the reason why it took the lead in making a breakthrough in the unmanned coffee machine.

Intelligent consumption analysis to create a thousand shops and noodles

In operation, the new generation of friend drink unmanned coffee machine has been strongly upgraded. First of all, from the previous independent operation to the remote management of the Internet of things, remote networking control can be realized; secondly, it can also be intelligent in operation, such as out-of-stock early warning, replenishment early warning, and so on. Fully automated and intelligent operation will greatly reduce management costs and improve operational efficiency.

In terms of consumption data, the annual compound growth rate of unmanned coffee machine sales in terms of consumption trend is about 53%, which is higher than the average of 20% of the coffee industry; in terms of customer nationality composition, 11% of friendly drinks are foreigners; in terms of customer unit price, the unmanned coffee robot is about 12 yuan, only 40% of that of Starbucks.

In terms of taste, milk tea and latte are favorites of post-90s young consumers, while boys prefer American and Italian coffee; in terms of regional characteristics, southern consumers taste sweet and northern consumers taste strong.

In terms of time characteristics, coffee drinks in the morning and afternoon and milk tea drinks in the evening. In the northern region with significant climate change, the consumption of hot drinks is significantly affected by seasons, and the consumption of hot drinks in winter is 2.3 times higher than that in summer.

It is understood that the Youyin unmanned coffee machine has launched the Thousand Dian Project, and Youyin has carried out customer portraits of nearly 1,000 unmanned coffee robots in operation, each of which is an independent sales unit. around the core of improving customer experience, personalized collocation can be achieved in the selection of goods on the shelf, display and switching in different periods, taste setting, replenishment time, fuselage appearance and so on.

Hit the pain point and open up the imagination space of income

Why is "unmanned business" so popular, is it a gimmick or is there a real opportunity?

There is only one principle to determine whether any technology or model can become popular, that is, whether it can bring value to users, whether it can reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Unmanned coffee shops do not need waiters, saving staff costs; moreover, unmanned coffee shops buy and leave, so that they do not need a venue or only a very small venue, but also save the cost of the venue. These cost savings, in turn, can benefit users. Judging from the "Friendship Bar" unmanned coffee shop of the University of International Business and Economics, the price is very competitive. The cheapest coffee is 9.9 yuan, and the expensive one is more than ten yuan, which is a great bargain compared with Starbucks' price of about 30 yuan.

The first users of unmanned business must be young people who like to try something fresh. It is also for this reason that the unmanned coffee shop of Friendship drinks initially expanded the market to the group of college students. Unmanned coffee shop, in addition to affordable prices, the technology is very cool, to be able to DIY is also a major feature to attract personalized, technology-conscious young users. Imagine that you can choose the proportion of coffee beans, milk and sugar, and then watch your coffee made step by step. Isn't it a very pleasant thing in itself?

Of course, for operators, because of saving space and labor costs, unmanned coffee shops have achieved cost reduction and efficiency improvement compared with traditional coffee shops, and it is also a great progress in the development of retail.

Nowadays, the field of coffee is a hot spot of innovation. Generally speaking, there are three types of coffee: coffee shop, coffee takeout and unmanned coffee maker. Coffee shops are headed by Starbucks, and in recent years, there have also been representatives of diffuse coffee and various entrepreneurial cafes. Coffee takeout was born with the birth of fast-paced life, and even coffee (Coffee Box) has a good reputation among white-collar workers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The reason why the unmanned coffee machine can rise as a new force is that it has unique advantages over coffee shops and coffee takeout, not only because it is placed flexibly and can be distributed widely, but also because the price is affordable, it can be DIY, and the selling speed is higher, so unmanned coffee machines and unmanned coffee shops are bound to become popular quickly and occupy their own place in the coffee business.

For unmanned coffee machine / shop service providers such as Youyin, there is a lot of room for imagination. In addition to the income from equipment rental and food supply, advertising revenue and the user value of coffee sales are also a gold mine that can be tapped.

What can be compared is the vending machine operator Youbao, whose 2016 annual report shows that the company's revenue is 1.58 billion yuan, up 29.29% from the same period last year, and the net profit is 77.5 million yuan, up 245.34% from the same period last year. Among them, the income from selling goods is 1.151 billion yuan, the income from vending machine sales and leasing is 134 million yuan, and the income from advertising and cargo channel display is 289 million yuan. Youbao is constantly developing electronic screen advertising and mobile payment page advertising services to form new profit growth points.

Vending machines are the originators of unmanned commerce. In terms of vending machine density, Japan has one vending machine for every 24 people, the highest in the world, the United States has one for every 46 people, and China has only one for every 7277 people.

The outbreak of unmanned commerce in China has just begun, and unmanned commerce, including unmanned coffee machines, is about to become a tuyere in the retail field!

Starbucks, who have been resting in peace, should really panic!