The first Costa "Delaisi" store in China is opened in Shanghai!

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With the continuous expansion of China's coffee market in recent years, coffee brands such as Starbucks, Lucky, Costa, KFC, Pacific and other coffee brands are all competing for coffee market share through the layout of various consumption scenarios.

Coffee chain Costa Coffee has opened China's first Drive-Thru store on Tainan West Road in Shanghai's Pudong New area, according to Coffee Finance. The Costa brand is called "Ka Shijia" in Chinese and was founded by Italian Costa brothers in London in 1978. In 2006, Costa Coffee officially entered the Chinese market and opened its first store in Nanjing East Road pedestrian Street in Shanghai.

According to public data, Costa's "Delaisi" stores have been opened abroad for a long time. In mid-2019, Costa opened a total of more than 40 "Delaisi" stores in the UK, and then with the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the number soared to more than 300 stores with "Delaisi" or similar delivery services within a few months.

"Drive-Thru" may be unfamiliar to Chinese consumers, a model pioneered in the United States in 1921, which means that meals or drinks can be packed and taken away without getting out of the car. This model reminds most people of fast food restaurants, and with the rapid development of fast food throughout the 21st century, the market is also growing.

In 1975, McDonald's opened its first Delais restaurant in the United States, and now there are thousands of such restaurants around the world. Coffee chain Starbucks, as well as Tim Hortons and Peet's, have some stores that are similar to "speed up" or provide customers with "speed up" service, which has gradually become an important part of the vast coffee industry for decades.

It is understood that in addition to the traditional coffee business, Costa's "Dolai Suisu" store can also rent conference rooms, with a total of 4 conference rooms available for rent, with shared offices equipped with projectors, conference tables and other traditional office equipment for 12-18 people to hold meetings. Conference room rental? Starbucks seems to offer such a service, right?

Yes, that's right! Starbucks China launched a "shared space" concept store in November last year, which can also meet the needs of mobile office, group collaboration, business meetings and multi-person meetings. The concept store is divided into four functional areas, including a private fee-paying conference room, a semi-open single-person office area, a sofa area for multi-person discussion, and a short rest area. In order to ensure privacy, the conference room is designed to reduce noise, and the large conference room is also equipped with equipment such as screen projection.

At the beginning of its entry into the Chinese market, Costa regarded Starbucks as its biggest competitor, not only pricing coffee close to Starbucks, but also adopting a more aggressive expansion strategy, with almost two or three new stores opening every week and adopting a "close" strategy to Starbucks. Almost every Costa store is close to Starbucks, but its development seems to have slowed down in recent years.

It seems that Costa has been far away from its target rival Starbucks, which reported 6021 domestic stores in the latest quarter of 2022 and plans to increase the number of stores to 9000 by the 2025 fiscal year. The narrow-door dining eye shows that Costa currently has only 424 stores in China, which is significantly slower than Starbucks, which is constantly developing the Chinese market, in terms of store number and market share.

But now that Costa's "Delaisse" store pilot is successful, whether it will accelerate the brand's store opening in China remains to be further verified by the market.

The head of Costa said: "We are committed to providing quality service and experience to our customers when they visit our stores. We are very pleased to open the first Delaisse store in China, where demonstrating great innovation is the focus of our competitive advantage in the market."

Photo Source: Internet