Recommended by the world boutique coffee brand-does the hand brewing of blue bottle coffee belong to boutique coffee?

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Blue bottle Coffee (Blue Bottle Coffee), known as boutique coffee and coffee shop Apple Store, will be acquired by food giant Nestl é with a market capitalization of about US $500 million (about NT $15 billion). In addition to once again verifying the huge interests of the coffee market, we can also see that with Nestl é 's blessed Blue bottle, it will be able to compete with Starbucks and Keurig Green Mountain, two major American chain coffee brands in the future. Whether the unique brand style of Blue bottle Coffee will be changed will also be the focus of external concern in the future.

Blue Bottle Coffeeshutterstock

Silicon Valley Love Blue bottle, the founders of Twitter and Instagram have invested

Nestl é already owns two major coffee brands, Nespresso Coffee capsule and Nescafe instant coffee. According to Reuters, Nestl é announced the acquisition of a 68% stake in Blue bottle Coffee at a price of US $425 million and a valuation of nearly US $700 million (about NT $21 billion). In the future, Nestl é and Blue bottle will continue to operate independently, and the current management and employees will remain unchanged.

"my goal as CEO is to ensure that Blue bottle Coffee continues to operate and maintain this prosperity in the future," Blue bottle CEO Bryan Meehan said in a statement. "I look forward to working with Nestl é to become a global leader in professional coffee."

Blue bottle caffeine focuses on "boutique coffee, attaches importance to customer experience, and each cup of coffee is hand-brewed by baristas. Different from the style of general coffee chains, it is called" Apple Store of the coffee industry ". It even brings up the" third wave of coffee revolution "like tasting red wine in the United States, from the San Francisco Bay area where technology companies gather to Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo. Blue bottle is expected to expand its store to 55 locations this year.

Blue Bottle Coffee

Blue bottle caffeine attaches importance to customer experience, and each cup of coffee is brewed by the barista himself.

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According to statistics, the retail sales of coffee drinks in the United States have reached US $2.9 billion (about NT $87.1 billion), and this figure is expected to reach US $4.4 billion (NT $132.2 billion) by 2021. "Coffee" has also become a favorite investment project for many people in Silicon Valley. Blue bottle Coffee has been loved by many celebrities and tech circles in the past and has raised more than $121 million from Morgan Stanley, Twitter founder Ivan Williams (Ev Williams), Google Venture Capital Fund (GV) and Instagram founders in the past 15 years.

Will change the monopoly position of Starbucks, can the brand style be maintained?

"Blue bottle coffee is the largest professional coffee brand in the United States and Japan." Mike Volpi, a partner at European venture capital firm Index Ventures, said: "they have successfully proved that James and Bryan' (founder and CEO of Blue bottle Coffee) have many talents, and turn their unique taste and value into a large number of loyal followers. It is Blue bottle Coffee's huge brand influence that attracts us to invest, and we are very happy to see them start such a company."

Blue bottle Coffee not only runs brick-and-mortar coffee shops, but also hired Google designer Jake Knapp and Google venture capital (GV) to develop online stores to sell coffee beans to actively expand sales channels outside the brick-and-mortar stores.

Blue Bottle CoffeeBlue Bottle Coffee

Reuters believes that Nestl é's acquisition is consolidating the third wave of coffee revolution in the United States, a market dominated by young consumers who grew up in the Starbucks era and are exposed to more exotic coffee drinks than in the past, such as manual Italian Epresso machines and individual hand-made coffee cultures.

"Starbucks has dominated the coffee program for a long time, and that will change." Said Matthew Barry, an analyst at Euromonitor International.

As soon as the news of Nestl é's equity acquisition comes out, many people are also worried about the future development and brand style of blue bottle coffee, which is independent, insists on details, focuses on boutique coffee, and does not want to be joined. Will become the focus of observation in the future.