Is the coffee in the convenience store going up? The whole family's guest coffee will open an independent cafe in Shanghai next year

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With more and more participants, the competition in the coffee market in 2019 will only become more fierce. Guke Coffee, owned by the family convenience store, also joined the war.

On December 14, in Huashi Square on Huaihai Road in Shanghai, Guke Coffee opened a three-day pop-up coffee shop called "surging customer Dream Cafe". The pop-up store covers an area of 120 square meters and is designed as a lying coffee cup with interior decoration from consumers' opinions. Earlier this month, Guke Coffee launched the online H5 game "DIY Cafe", inviting netizens to design the bar, walls and other elements of the cafe online, and then select the entrance area, rest area, bar, wall and floor interior design of the game, and restore these designs in the "surging customer Dream Cafe".

The pop-up store offers free trials of three new products, black sugar lattes, strawberry lattes and Irish lattes, with a daily limit of 400 cups of each flavor. After a trial drink, consumers can vote for their favorite taste on the voting wall. In addition, there are also games such as on-the-spot shooting contest and hunting koi.

The shape of the pop-up shop is a lying coffee cup.

Consumers take selfies in the pop-up store.

The main purpose of the pop-up shop is to preheat the independent cafe next year. According to Interface News, the first cafe will open in Shanghai in the first half of 2019 and is currently in the stage of site selection, including shopping malls with younger and fashionable features such as Xintiandi and Jing'an Kerry Center.

In 2014, the whole family convenience store launched its own coffee brand, Guke Coffee, which was initially launched in the form of take-away coffee. By 2017, Coffee Coffee had its own "coffee corner" in the family convenience store, usually located next to the cashier, and in the same year, Taiwanese actress Chen Yihan became the spokesperson for the brand. In 2018, Guke Coffee began to cooperate with ele.me, Meituan and other third-party platforms to start the delivery business.

Wang Yiwen, spokesman for the family convenience store, told Interface News that the coffee has covered most of the family convenience stores. At present, the whole family convenience store has 2500 stores in nine cities in China, of which 2000 have been stationed as of November. In Shanghai, where the family's convenience stores are densest, there are more than 1000 stores selling coffee, accounting for half of the total number of stores. Shanghai is also the most mature market for family and guest coffee. When brands try new moves such as flash stores and independent cafes, they will naturally choose to start in Shanghai.

The coffee corner in the family convenience store.

Sales of poker coffee have doubled in each of the past four years, selling 40 million cups in 2018, according to Wang Yiwen. The company's target for 2019 is to sell more than 100 million cups. To achieve this goal, we need to promote both consumption scenarios and channels at the same time.

In the consumption scene, the sales of guest coffee is the highest in the breakfast period, accounting for about half of the total sales. The brand hopes to expand the afternoon tea market on this basis. In order to make it easier for consumers to access their own products during the afternoon tea, next year, Gaoke Coffee will launch its own delivery platform, and WeChat Mini Programs and Independent App are also in the internal testing stage. "by doing so, there is one more channel to push coffee in front of consumers and see clearer user portraits through more data. If you do promotions on your own delivery platform, you will have more freedom to control. " Wang Yiwen said.

Another consumer-oriented channel is independent cafes. After the opening of the first store in Shanghai next year, Guoke Coffee plans to continue to open up regional markets such as Beijing and Guangzhou. The function of independent cafes in 2019 is mainly to display the brand image of customers, rather than to increase sales. Compared with the current price range of 10-14 yuan for guest coffee, the price of coffee in independent cafes is expected to increase. Independent cafes are also developing new coffee drinks and surrounding products.

The opening of pop-up shops and independent cafes is a high-profile move by the whole family to launch guest coffee as an independent brand. "China's coffee market is developing, and now is a good time to invest heavily and cover the channels." Wang Yiwen said, "our direct competitors may not be just Starbucks, these people who mess up the coffee market will be the direct competitors of guest coffee, and they are all the objects we pay attention to." We are all working together to make a market bigger and bigger, but only if we all make this cup of coffee well. "