The relationship between coffee brand COSTA and Starbucks the crazy store closure of COSTA ushered in a new turn for the better?

On April 2, COSTA Coffee announced on its official account that it would launch a new series of cold-flavored ready-to-drink coffee in China-cold-flavored latte and cold-flavored black coffee.

From the picture, these two ready-to-drink products use the packaging design of metal aluminum bottles that are easy to carry and easy to store.

In particular, in terms of taste and flavor, COSTA also specially customized the formula of cold extraction flavor latte, low sugar and low fat, cold extraction flavor black coffee 0 sugar 0 fat, in which cold extraction flavor black coffee with 0 sugar 0 fat formula as the main selling point.

According to the news released by the COSTA brand, the series will be sold online and offline from April, and will be launched successively in Coca-Cola's Tmall flagship store, JD.com flagship store, major cooperative e-commerce channels and offline merchants and other channels.

In response, the head of COSTA China said: this series of ready-to-drink coffee is specially designed for Chinese consumers and aims to further develop the market territory of high-quality ready-to-drink coffee. In the future, COSTA will continue to launch more ready-to-drink coffee products tailored to Chinese consumers with new flavors.

In fact, as the leading international coffee brand COSTA, the launch of the new flavor cold extract series of ready-to-drink coffee is an upgrade after the first launch of the British classic series of ready-to-drink coffee in China last year.

At the end of March last year, COSTA ready-to-drink coffee was officially launched in China. COSTA said that the new ready-to-drink coffee series was specially tailor-made for the Chinese market, including "Pure American" and "mellow latte". These two new COSTA ready-to-drink coffee products adopt the same iconic mocha Italian mixed coffee beans of COSTA Coffee stores, with low-sugar and low-fat formula, "strive to restore the classic flavor of store-brewed coffee." To provide consumers with convenient and diversified consumption choices.

In June of the same year, COSTA also announced a strategic partnership with OneCup, a capsule beverage machine brand owned by Jiuyang, to launch capsule coffee, which will be sold in OneCup Tmall, JD.com flagship stores and COSTA30 retail stores.

So, does the entry of COSTA instant coffee into the Chinese market mean that the crazy store closure of COSTA ushered in a new turning point?

Due to the impact of last year's epidemic, COSTA Coffee stores across the country, founded in 1971, were shut down and laid off, including many stores in Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Nanjing and other places. At the same time, COSTA also announced large-scale layoffs.

In 2006, COSTA Coffee officially entered the Chinese market and regarded China as one of the major international growth markets. shortly after entering the Chinese coffee market, COSTA showed its ambition for the coffee market, and set a goal to open 2500 stores by 2018, taking 1/3 of the market share of China's retail coffee market. Later, COSTA also said: by 2020, the total number of stores in China will grow to about 900. 1200 stores will be opened by 2022.

But the fact is that the number of COSTA stores in China was 449 in 2017 and only about 400 in 2020. Embarrassingly, hit by the epidemic, COSTA was mired in a wave of shop closures, which undoubtedly meant a massive contraction in the number of stores for COSTA. According to statistics at that time, the number of stores closed by COSTA Coffee exceeded 10% of the total number of stores in the Chinese market. It is also the first time that COSTA has experienced a large-scale store contraction since it entered China in 2006.

It is worth mentioning that COSTA, as Starbucks' iron CP, Starbucks and COSTA are both foreign coffee chains, both founded in 1971. Starbucks was born in the United States and entered the Chinese market in 1999. COSTA was born in the UK and only entered the Chinese market in 2006. However, when it first entered the Chinese market, COSTA was relatively aggressive in grabbing market share and expanding store scope. It soon became one of the leading coffee brands in the ranks of foreign brands in the domestic coffee market, but later, COSTA may not be aware of the great changes in market demand so that the development came to a small standstill.

While Starbucks is still growing rapidly, COSTA fell into a wave of store closures in 2020. For the better, COSTA began to shift its direction last year, and coffee chain COSTA Kashijia shifted the focus of the Chinese market to multi-channel development, while not slowing down the pace of opening retail stores in China.

In addition, Coca-Cola's $5.1 billion acquisition of COSTA,COSTA in 2018 allows Coca-Cola to expand retail possibilities with the help of Coca-Cola's channels and platforms.

At present, COSTA is seizing new market opportunities for transformation and innovation, so as to expand and cover different consumption scenarios, and accelerate to seize the market share of ready-to-drink coffee.

According to Euromonitor International, China's ready-to-drink coffee market share is expected to reach 14.9 billion yuan in 2021, and the global ready-to-drink coffee market will grow faster than bottled water and soft drinks in 2022. The information released from these figures can be seen: the ready-to-drink coffee market has become a dividend for many new coffee brands.

If COSTA can get a piece of the ready-to-drink market, it may usher in new opportunities for COSTA, which is frantically closing stores in 2020.

* Image source: Internet