A great shock! Taiwan media exposed the inside story of Unification Group selling Shanghai Starbucks! It all comes from ambition.

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

When the golden rooster mother who helps others grow up, she will eventually return it to her original owner. Before that, what preparations will you make?.

In late July, Unification Group announced a "stock swap" deal with Starbucks of the United States, in which it sold a total of 50 per cent of Starbucks in Shanghai and bought a 50 per cent stake in Starbucks in Taiwan. Since then, Starbucks in the United States has 100% control over the management of Shanghai. Uni-President has a 100% stake in Starbucks in Taiwan.

Going back and forth, although the two deals have allowed the Unification Group to make a net profit of nearly NT $30 billion (NT $), "this is tantamount to the fastest-growing dream of selling China's re-investment business," commented a local securities executive. In particular, among the reinvestments of Uni-President Super, Shanghai Starbucks is the most profitable. Once it is lost, it can only barely break even between profit and loss, so on the first trading day after the news was released, the share price completely collapsed, and the explosion volume fell by about 7 or 8% on that day.

Sell the golden rooster mother, but he can laugh.

In exchange for complete equity in Taiwan, it turned out to be a strategic layout.

In China, a market with an annual growth rate of 15% and the fastest growing market in the world, Starbucks was lost, but Luo Zhixian, chairman of Uni-President Group, laughed at the press conference. "at this stage, I feel fair and very satisfied with the cooperation between the two sides," he said in a relaxed response to the media. "if you lose this business in the short term, you have to make up for it from other opportunities. "

After all, how does the head of Taiwan's largest food group plan this game? It turned out that what he called "other opportunities" was a dream of a long-term "coffee bean king".

First of all, with regard to the handover of Starbucks in Shanghai, shortly after Luo Zhixian formally took over as chairman of the Group in 2013, there were rumors that the US headquarters intended to take back the agency of Starbucks in Taiwan. At that time, the media reported that Uni-President, in order to preserve the right to operate Starbucks in Taiwan, was considering following the Hong Kong Meixin Group model and exchanging Starbucks in Shanghai for Taiwan.

Unified aides revealed that two years ago, the trading model of giving up Shanghai and taking all over Taiwan had been decided, and only the price had not yet been agreed.

Why did Luo Zhi first hand over the big market and ensure the small market?

His style: be big, not small.

If you can't hold real power as an agent, it's better to build your own supply chain.

Originally, acting as a brand business is the "wife's life". No matter whether it is good or bad, the power of life and death is always in the hands of the parent company, so for Luo Zhixian, this withdrawal battle of Shanghai Starbucks is a strategy for small losses to win. Keeping Starbucks in Taiwan is of more strategic significance to Luo Chih-hsien's dream of being the "king of coffee beans."

According to the analysis of unified aides, Luo Chih-hsien's business style is "big but not small." by selling his stake in Taiwan's MUJI for more than NT $1 billion to brands such as Muji in Japan and stopping representing Afternoon Tea, he is letting go of the idea of small business. As a result, Luo Zhixian also wants to make up for the loss of Shanghai Starbucks, which has an annual revenue of 28 billion yuan.

Luo Chih-hsien often talks about "focusing on his own industry," while the unified industry is to import raw materials, process and produce, and then sell arbitrage through channels such as supercommerce. Therefore, the business of coffee has to be bigger, and compared with the agent brands that help people marry, the one-stop mode of importing coffee beans, roasting and processing, and then sending them to Taiwan and overseas channels for sale can generate the greatest profit.

"Uni-President has invested heavily in the establishment of a coffee supply chain, from equipment, coffee raw material plants, coffee formula and process research and development. In June this year, the public statement made by Liang Wenyuan, the minister of unified super fresh food, confirmed Luo Chih-hsien's strategy, and this time the unified "stock swap" deal with Starbucks will give Luo Chih-hsien nearly NT $30 billion to build armaments for the coffee bean wholesale business.

Unification has long stumbled along the road of the king of coffee beans.

Since 1985, Uni-President has been selling freshly brewed coffee in super stores, but it has been closed in just four years. Two ○○, the third year after the establishment of Uni-President Starbucks, Uni-President opened a "corner cafe" in the supermarket, selling freshly brewed coffee, but the market did not respond well and was quickly defeated.

His strategy: follow the boss

From origin, machine to taste, all stick Starbucks

Three years later, the affordable coffee craze appeared in Taiwan, and Uni-President supermarket challenged the coffee market for the third time, launching a new "CITY CAF é" brand, but with annual sales of less than 2.7 million cups, its initial performance was still in jeopardy.

The director of Unification revealed that there were two major problems of taste and equipment at that time, and Uni-President Starbucks had come to the fore in Taiwan and become a learning object within the Uni-President Super Coffee team.

The coffee industry points out that in the Asian market, Starbucks is based in Singapore, imports raw materials for baking, and then supplies them to stores around Asia. At the same time, through strict licensing contracts, the upstream technology of coffee is locked in Singapore, which is difficult for agents to imitate.

However, after all, Taiwan's Starbucks and 7-Eleven are owned by Uni-President, and group executives revealed that it is not unusual for people to rotate or recruit ex-employees from each other, so the taste adjustment of CITY caf é is rescued by a team with a unified Starbucks background, with the goal of "getting as close to Starbucks as possible".

In order to implement this strategy, Starbucks machines use the leading Swiss coffee machine factory Thermoplan, unified to Switzerland to find the strength of the coffee machine manufacturer Egro; affects the taste of coffee beans, Starbucks contract outside, unified can also go to the same country and region, find other farmers to buy similar quality coffee beans; at the same time, also learn from Starbucks quality control system, unified super training of their own cup tester team.

After this period of transformation, CITY CAF é, which used to be humble, with a high CP value, which tastes like Starbucks but costs only half of its price, has become a profitable business selling about 320 million cups a year and annual revenue of more than NT $10 billion.

More importantly, last year, CITY caf é imported 5,000 metric tons of coffee beans (raw beans) each year, accounting for about 25% of Taiwan's raw bean imports, making it the largest user in Taiwan's current brewing coffee market.

His plan: to attack China again with coffee beans.

If you hold Starbucks in Taiwan, you will master talent and technology.

In addition to being able to supply its own more than 7,000 supermarket channels, Starbucks helped create a Chinese coffee culture, a growing market that will naturally be included in Luo Zhixian's coffee bean wholesale layout. Although it is still difficult for Unification to break into Starbucks' own supply chain, retaining the right to operate Starbucks in Taiwan is the key to enabling Unification to continue to master talent, learn from coffee bean taste and other technologies, and keep up with the international trend, so it must be retained.

On the other hand, in the eyes of the Uni-President Super team, although Shanghai Starbucks has been at its peak of growth in recent years, it made a net profit of about NT $4.1 billion last year, but the amount of equity subscribed by Uni-President is less than NT $1 billion. moreover, now that the Chinese chain catering market is caught in fierce competition in the Red Sea, even if Unification grabs the right to operate Starbucks in Shanghai for a few more years, it will be very difficult to achieve more eye-catching store results.

Perhaps, as one Uni-President superexecutive said, it is not necessarily a bad thing to get back the money for the next 20 years. "maybe Starbucks is taking advantage now, but five years later, it is hard to say who will lose and who will win. "

Unified to build a coffee bean empire, confidence comes from five sources of help.

320 million cups: last year, CITY caf é sold 320 million cups of coffee and used 5000 tons of beans, accounting for 25% of Taiwan's imports.

7240: global 7-Eleven7240 home supermerchants, Taiwan accounts for 5130, can be recovered to become unified coffee bean shipments

400: the Philippine 7-Eleven has increased by nearly 400 in one year, bringing the total to 2300 this year.

40%: the loss of Shanghai 7-Eleven has been reduced by 40%, and it has even entered the new site of Zhejiang.

15%: China's coffee consumption is growing at an annual rate of 15%, and Uni-President can use the CITY CAF é brand to seize the market.