"Coffee Wing" buys "Lai Cup Coffee"! Self-service coffee machine is really a good business?

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According to 36 Krypton news on June 10, coffee brand Coffee Wing has recently reached an agreement with Lai Cup Coffee, an intelligent coffee machine operator, involving business, team, software and hardware, point, operation, management and other aspects. the specific amount will not be disclosed for the time being.

According to reports, after the completion of this acquisition, the "Lai Cup Coffee" brand will only retain some of the channels that have been put in place, and the main business will be merged into the original intelligent coffee machine brand "Free Wing" of Coffee Wing.

According to public information, Coffee Wing was established in 2000 and owns coffee wings and mini wings, a chain of coffee restaurants. At the end of 2017, the smart coffee machine business "Free Wing" was officially launched. Lai Cup Coffee was founded in 2015, mainly self-service coffee unmanned retail, and has received three rounds of financing since its establishment: in September 2016, it received millions of seed round financing from easy access vehicles; in March 2017, it was led by Castle Peak Capital and dangerous Peak Evergreen, and 10 million yuan in angel financing with plum blossom venture capital; in June 2017, it was led by ZhenFund and plum blossom venture capital with tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing.

Up to now, Lai Cup Coffee has launched more than 800 sets of equipment across the country, and after the completion of this acquisition, the number of smart coffee machines under Coffee Wing will rise to nearly 4000. According to incomplete statistics in the industry, this number is now the largest in this segment.

Transformation of Coffee Wing into Intelligent Coffee Machine

Since its establishment 19 years ago, Coffee Wing, which locates China's "coffee brand", has mainly engaged in coffee shops, opening more than 300 Coffee Wing chains in more than 130 cities. According to official data, Coffee Wing had more than 200 stores across the country at the end of 2016. most of them are franchisees. At that time, Coffee Wing's curry business suffered a loss, with public data showing a loss of more than 5 million yuan. As a result, Coffee Wing has been transformed into a new retail field since 2017, with the launch of the city intelligent retail coffee machine "Free Wing" brand and the mini store "Xiaoyi" brand.

Yin Feng, founder of Coffee Wing, believes that the self-service coffee machine mainly targets a market space of 8-15 yuan and locates the relatively blank market between instant coffee and freshly ground coffee, which exists as a supplement to coffee shops. In Yin Feng's view, the self-service coffee machine will only meet the needs of some scenarios, such as special situations such as high-speed railway stations while on the way or waiting, which accounts for about 20% of the entire coffee market. And the characteristic of self-service coffee machine is that it can be put in high density, and it will form a huge advertising effect after laying, which is helpful to stores, products and other derivative businesses, making coffee brands more imaginative.

In the next stage, the main action of Coffee Wing will be two-line parallel-continue to expand the store + continue to expand the terminal to achieve higher-density coffee service coverage across the country. Revenue growth is expected to be more than 50% by 2019.

The awkward situation of self-service coffee machine

Self-service coffee machine, as a new consumption scene, is a new subdivision field in the coffee industry. It has the advantages of low cost, fast placement and good coffee quality. It has been very popular in the capital field in the past two years.

Self-service coffee machine operators often compare the domestic market with the Japanese market, where the food culture is relatively similar. Japan is a country where self-service coffee machines are well developed. according to 2015 statistics, Japan has more than 170000 self-coffee machines, an average of 729 people, while China has less than 3000 self-coffee machines in the same period. According to foresight Network, the sales scale of China's coffee market will reach 300 billion yuan in 2020 and is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan in 2025. Compared with countries with relatively similar food culture such as Japan, the per capita annual drinking cup gap is about 40 times. China's coffee market demand is far from saturated and has great potential. In this way, it seems that the future of self-service coffee machines is bright.

However, the reason why Coffee Wing uses the self-service coffee machine as a supplement to the coffee shop is that "the self-service coffee machine will only meet the needs of some scenarios." Whether it is Europe and the United States, which has tens of millions of Taiwan-level stock markets, or Japan, where self-service business is more developed, the main body to meet consumers' demand for coffee is still coffee in various cafes or convenience stores. Self-service coffee machines only exist as a supplementary format.

The small investment of the self-service coffee machine is the advantage, but the launch scene is more limited, in the most potential office buildings, universities, supermarkets, scenic spots, hospitals and other scenes, often faced with convenience store coffee, instant coffee and even take-out coffee is the most fierce competition. In addition to serving as a three-dimensional billboard, the profitability of the self-service coffee machine is not great. Because Chinese self-service coffee machine brands are too small to bargain with suppliers of front-end coffee beans, milk powder and chocolate powder, they do not have any advantage in the supply chain.

Data show that in 2017, only 16% of China's coffee consumption market is freshly ground coffee, and the remaining 84% is instant coffee, while in the field of freshly ground coffee, Starbucks, Lucky, 7-11 and other companies occupy a large market share, even though the domestic market has grown rapidly in recent years. But the market share left to self-service coffee machines is still very small. At present, most of the self-service coffee machines that seem to be booming can only live awkwardly in the gap.

Finally, have you guys ever had coffee from a self-service coffee machine? You might as well share your views.

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