Even the "careful machine" of coffee-want to harvest consumers with a good cup of coffee?

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In the increasingly noisy and lively Chinese coffee market in the past year, we have heard too much about "play", "play" or "business model"....

Whether Ruixing, the newly emerging unicorn in the Chinese market, or Starbucks, the American coffee giant, which is severely challenged by domestic emerging brands for the first time this year, have begun to pick up new retail "weapons" or expand rapidly on a large scale, or form alliances with Internet giants to carry out takeout.

I have noticed that an Internet coffee brand founded a few years ago is quietly changing and is trying to build its own differentiation advantages and barriers through products and tastes.

It is even Coffee Box.

Can good coffee talk?

A few days ago, on a business trip in Chengdu, I came across a newly opened Lian Coffee in the lobby of Magnolia Hotel, the preferred service hotel of Jinjiang Star, near Shudu Avenue in Taiguri. It is said that this is the first shop of Lian Coffee in the western market, and there are similar lobby stores in Wuhan at the same time.

The store is located in a corner of the hotel lobby, there is no cashier, there is only a white menu with a conspicuous QR code on the bar, prompting to scan the code to place an order, 1 cup minus 9 yuan, 2 cups from half price. With a price of 22 yuan to 35 yuan per cup of coffee, the discounted price can be called "performance-to-price ratio".

Lian Coffee was founded in Shanghai in 2014 as a purchasing agent for Starbucks and COSTA, and announced the establishment of its own coffee brand Coffee Box in 2015. In March 2018, after Lian Coffee received 158 million yuan in B+ round financing, it began a series of transformation.

Previously, Lian Coffee stores were similar to "pre-warehouse", taking on the role of making coffee and distribution stations. since 2018, Lian Coffee has quietly opened its self-service function, and the role of offline stores has been further broadened. It is said that at present, Lian Coffee has opened more than 300 offline stores in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and has made an overall profit.

In a recent interview with Zhang Hongji, CMO of Lian Coffee, Tencent's Deep net, he mentioned that even a series of display stores for coffee are about to appear on the market. Obviously, Lian Coffee is striving to achieve further convergence between online and offline, coupled with the price advantage, when Lian Coffee stands on the same track as the popular "Little Blue Cup" Luckin Coffee and even "Star Dad", where is Lian Coffee's advantage?

After studying the menu, I found that Lian Coffee is "careful", that is, trying to establish its own differentiation advantage through products and tastes.

Even coffee should be harvested with a cup of delicious coffee?

Most coffee shops in China offer very classic coffee flavors, but the menu of even coffee is significantly different. In its coffee drinks, in addition to classic coffee, there are boutique coffee, bulletproof coffee and other product series, and even alcoholic slightly tipsy tavern series.

In addition, at the top of its Wechat menu, there is a series of gold award recommendations that use the gold cup icon to highlight the quality of the International Italian Coffee Taste Association (Golden Coffee beans).

As a new generation of domestic coffee brands, even the product innovation ability of coffee is still very strong. According to public data, Lian Coffee released 30 kinds of coffee drinks in 2017. For example, bulletproof coffee for ketogenic people; new drinks without caffeine, such as pink coconut water and avocado, which are popular among fashionable urban young people.

Obviously, in order to compete with the powerful competitors in the Chinese coffee market, we can see that Lian Coffee has taken two moves: on the one hand, the above-mentioned offline stores have been vigorously expanded to make up for their shortcomings. On the other hand, strengthen to satisfy the freshness of Chinese consumers by creating new products, emphasizing the grade of raw materials such as coffee beans and milk sources, to a variety of dazzling new products, and then covering more audience groups of different ages and hobbies.

Consumers will eventually vote with their tongues.

In the retail industry, product and service-oriented is always the same nature of business. For even coffee, using coffee taste and different new products to play the difference card is one way, but also to consolidate the foundation of their own business.

The Golden Award series is one of the biggest upgrades of Lian Coffee recently. The most intuitive feeling from the menu is that Lian Coffee has made a comprehensive upgrade of the raw materials of standard American style and latte. The coffee beans have been replaced by the International Italian Taste Gold Award coffee beans "Espresso Ann ONE Duxiu", and the milk source of the latte has also been replaced by ecological farm fresh milk, which is obviously different from the taste.

Before the Golden Award series, even coffee has a separate boutique series, sun Yega Xuefei, people who are familiar with coffee must be no stranger, which is rare in Internet coffee brands.

If you insist on taking the product as a unique label, create your own unique experience, and continue to invest resources and market education, it is indeed a market card strategy. In the rapid speed race in the market, adhere to meet a large wave of consumers'"appetite", then, this itself will indeed become a barrier to brand competition.

At the beginning, Starbucks used coffee as a stepping stone to enter the Japanese market. Although Japan leads the way in tea and beverage sales, the market is still a big cake of great opportunities. But the difficulty of the Japanese market is how to raise customers' awareness of coffee products and quality. To gain a foothold, Starbucks must bridge the gap between its own coffee and the coffee that Japanese consumers are used to drinking.

As a result, Starbucks leaders have made great efforts to popularize coffee knowledge and teach consumers to distinguish between instant coffee, ordinary coffee and mellow freshly ground high-end coffee. After some efforts, the coffee chain from the United States has successfully explored the densely populated, high-demand and untapped market in Asia.

Coffee is a special category, its life cycle is obviously longer than milk tea, the Chinese coffee market has just been opened. If you put aside the "mode", "subsidy" and other games, for a cup of coffee, taste can be regarded as an important brand label. Lian Coffee, which entered the market a few years ago, now seems to have found this way.

Survey data show that at present, the average annual consumption of coffee in Chinese mainland is 5-6 cups, compared with 20 cups in first-tier cities. Compared with the United States, which consumes 400 cups per capita per year, and South Korea, which consumes 200 cups per capita, the foundation of China's coffee market is still very weak, or, in other words, Chinese consumers do not regard coffee as a daily drink, which is an advantage. But more market education is also needed.

The market will really be developed when more Chinese consumers use coffee as a daily drink, and more coffee shops spread all over the streets, allowing people to have a cup of coffee without thinking at any time. Among them, the brand that creates its own unique product taste can grow up with this market.

What will consumers choose in the end? Tasty may be an important criterion.

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