Stranded in Shanghai Cafe, oatmeal milk is in an emergency?!

Oatmeal milk seems to have become the standard in the coffee circle, whether at home or abroad, any coffee shop, we are not difficult to see the figure of oatmeal milk. After decades of obscurity, the plant milk, originally designed to give lactose intolerant people a taste of milk but no milk ingredients, attracted the attention of a new generation of consumers when it was labeled "environmentally friendly" and "healthy" by OATLY's new CEO in 2012.

At that time, the new CEO of OATLY seized on the two most active topics in the United States at that time: environmental protection & vegetarianism, and people's ability to eat melons, and promoted environmental protection through hearing and dyeing. On the other hand, through environmental journals, oatmeal milk is more environmentally friendly than milk, because it reduces environmental pollution, reduces carbon dioxide emissions caused by cattle breathing, and reduces water use.

At the same time as a coffee lover to recommend to the coffee shop, so keep walking around the major high-end cafes in the United States, find different baristas to blow water, promote oatmeal milk how healthy, how to protect the environment. Then when the barista chatted with his peers, he also talked about how oatmeal milk was, so it spread ten times, and slowly it became popular among cafes. Starting in 2013. Cafes in the United States and other European and American countries have begun to provide consumers with the choice of oatmeal milk, and Starbucks is the first chain of coffee shops to provide oatmeal milk.

The sudden popularity of oatmeal milk drinks in Chinese coffee circles is also driven by Starbucks. Before oatmeal milk became popular in China, a small number of domestic cafes began to offer oatmeal milk options, but at that time there was not much demand for oatmeal milk, so it was not widely used. Until 2020, when Starbucks China introduced oatmeal lattes with the theme of "star dieteticism", oat milk became synonymous with a healthy new diet overnight.

Subsequently, many independent coffee shops and coffee chains in China began to use oatmeal milk. If you walk into a coffee shop casually, you can find products containing oatmeal milk. Also because of the widespread use of the coffee industry, sales of OATLY oatmeal milk rose as fast as a rocket, and other brands subsequently launched oatmeal milk, which also set up a free ride.

However, the oatmeal milk market, which seems to have a good trip, has recently entered a state of emergency because of the "suspension" of coffee shops in Shanghai and Beijing.

According to OATLY's latest financial report, the oatmeal milk star company is experiencing "Chinese troubles" due to the epidemic. At the earnings conference, Toni Petersson, chief executive of OATLY, said: "in China, our team is going through a very difficult environment. We have a large part of our business in Shanghai. Among the Chinese retail and catering service stores that OATLY has entered, more than 17000 stores need to be closed in the first quarter of this year due to closure.

OATLY has been leading the oatmeal milk market, and its "brake" also means that other brands of oatmeal milk also follow the "brake", because oatmeal milk is not a necessary consumer demand, but only superimposed high-end, health and other marketing concepts, so there is enough marketing space for B-end to play, while C-end is relatively weak. Although there are oatmeal milk products for C-end customers, but the price is also relatively high, so sales are far less than the B-end market.

Also because "too much" focus on the B-end market, so that the cafe's sudden "shutdown", so that the oatmeal milk market came unprepared … The "shutdown" of the cafe is still a shallow blow, because the oatmeal milk market will face more challenges, and if we start to pay attention to the C-end market, the positioning of oatmeal milk will become an embarrassment.

There are not too many lactose intolerant groups in China. Consumers have been drinking milk for decades, and their consumption habits are difficult to change in a short period of time. In addition, the price of oatmeal milk is much higher than that of milk, so if you want to position instead of milk, there are still more difficulties to overcome.

If it is to be positioned as a beverage, it needs to be further improved in terms of taste, and the iteration of product upgrade is also very important. in addition, oatmeal milk has not achieved large-scale coverage in the C-end market and marketing. A new category to quickly capture consumer awareness requires a short period of bombardment exposure, but brands for oatmeal milk in the C-end market is still relatively small.

Is oatmeal milk really healthy? We can take a look at this table first: (the following data do not refer to which brand of milk and plant milk)

Per 240ml fat protein cellulose sugar whole milk 8g8gNA11g soy milk 4.5g8g2g6g oat milk 7g3g3g7g almond milk 2.5g1g < 1g7g

(the data does not refer to which brand of milk and plant milk.) according to this composition table, the fat of oatmeal milk is not the highest of the four, but it is not the lowest of the four. Everyone thinks that as long as the fat intake is lower, the more beneficial it is to lose weight. In fact, more and more studies have shown that fat is also divided into high quality and poor quality, and eating the right amount of fat has a positive effect on weight loss. The second is protein. It can be seen from the table that the protein of milk and soy milk is 2 to 3 times that of oat milk. Protein is an important part of human bones and muscles, and in terms of content, oatmeal milk alone is not enough. So assuming there is no lactose intolerance, the nutrition of milk is the best. If there is lactose intolerance, soy milk is the best choice.

Before the coffee workshop also tested many kinds of oatmeal milk on the market (transporter), some products added vegetable oil to make plant milk taste better, and some oatmeal milk can also drink obvious sweetness, but the formula list does not show any sugar, and some oatmeal milk will be more greasy than fresh milk. The healthy and unhealthy code clerk did not study it further, but only made a description of his personal senses. But one thing is certain: not all oatmeal milk makes good coffee, and not all coffee is suitable for oatmeal milk. Photo source: online professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style) more boutique coffee beans please add private Wechat Qianjie coffee, WeChat: kaixinguoguo0925