How to quickly succeed in running Coffee in a Cafe

Unlike American coffee chains such as Starbucks and COSTA, the Korean-founded coffee brand is looking for another way to survive.

"Maan Coffee is more than just a place to drink coffee."

Xin Zixiang lit his cigar in the glass-walled private room on the second floor of the Beijing Jiangfu Park store, telling the Weekly of Finance and Economics.

The businessman from South Korea is the chairman of Beijing Man Creative Restaurant Management Co., Ltd., and the founder of Man Coffee. Since the first coffee trial opened on December 25, 2010, Xin Zi Xiang, who has known his destiny, has become a veritable star in the Chinese coffee market. As of the beginning of this year, all of the 36 coffee stores he had opened in China were profitable. Xinzi said that the current cost recovery cycle of the coffee shop is only one year, and the slowest one can recover the cost within two years.

As for the success of diffuse coffee, Xin Zixiang concluded: "people remember that diffuse coffee is not because of coffee." This is similar to the famous saying written by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz in his autobiography "inject the Heart" eight years ago: Starbucks brand is better than coffee.

"Coffee is not a simple place to drink coffee. It is a place for parties, activities, leisure, conversation and even meetings. I hope it will become the fourth place for daily activities for Chinese consumers besides homes, units and restaurants." Xin Zixiang said.

"the most relaxing coffee shop."

Unlike many businessmen, Xin Zixiang's biggest idol is not a familiar business tycoon, but an architect who made Xin Zixiang infatuated with architecture from a young age and began to pursue the art and design of his shop.

"one of my biggest hobbies is to see all kinds of beautiful buildings." Xin Zixiang said.

The architect who had a great influence on Xin Zi is Kengo Kuma, a master who is famous for blending the sense of nature into modern architecture. This comes from the preference of youth, which in a sense determines the style trend of diffuse coffee. In the coffee, you can't see the over-decorated furniture or the beautifully painted walls. What you can feel is a sense of nature and classicality.

Persimmon trees planted in the house, classical Turkish chandeliers, uncarved log furniture. One regular coffee customer said that Man Coffee is not like a coffee shop, but like the existence of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter story.

"this sense of nature will make customers feel relaxed. Relaxation is the most fundamental pursuit of diffuse coffee, and it is also the root cause of its success." Xin Zixiang said that this relaxed and natural style was set at the beginning of the establishment of Man Coffee.

In 2010, Xin Zixiang was on a business trip to Shanghai and accidentally entered a non-American coffee shop. "I was shocked by this coffee shop, where there is a lot of space for customers to play cards and games."

"I've been to almost all American coffee shops in China before, and American coffee shops tend to give people a sense of formality." Xin Zixiang has always been unimpressed by such a "formal" style of coffee shops, especially the way some American cafes offer to drink coffee standing up. The experience in Shanghai gave Xin Zixiang the idea of creating a coffee shop brand.

"the American coffee shop is so serious that it is not a relaxing space at all." As a result, Xin Zi Xiang began to outline his coffee business from the perspective of "the most relaxed coffee shop".

As early as in South Korea, Xin Zixiang had eight years of coffee shop management experience, which made him very familiar with how a coffee shop should be run. Before he founded Man Coffee, Xin Zixiang opened the Aijiangshan Barbecue Restaurant in China in 2006, which made him very familiar with the consumption habits and thinking patterns of Chinese consumers.

In Xin Zixiang's plan, Man Coffee should become a place where multi-age and multi-professional consumers can come to relax. "in the Chinese coffee market, there is no shortage of good coffee beans, but there is a lack of good coffee shops." A good coffee shop must have a unique atmosphere, which comes from the design.

After deciding to enter the coffee shop business, Xin Zixiang hired through his own channels some people who were knowledgeable about the combination of natural style and modern architecture, who formed a design team inside Man Coffee. "from the overall design to the choice of one table and one chair, diffuse coffee is pursuing a unified style." Xin Zixiang said.

Guo Zhong, founder of Beijing Coastal Design Company, who participated in the construction of the Beijing Dayue City store, believes that the design style of Man Coffee is different from that of most cafes in China. "this is an embodiment of naturalism, which is more natural and simpler, and such an environment can make consumers feel very comfortable and close to nature."

The design style of Man Coffee is not only reflected in the architectural structure. In the coffee shop, you can see a large wooden table for more than a dozen people, as well as chairs of various colors and shapes, and maybe even four completely different chairs beside a coffee table. "We hope that customers can bring the whole family to the coffee to relax, so we have a lot of big tables, while different chairs and a lot of differentiated small furniture and small decorations are to ensure that our consumers do not have visual fatigue."

Xin Zi Xiang's idea is far more than visual. In the diffuse coffee, the waiter only provides the service of delivering and serving the meal, and the order needs the consumer to order at the table. At the ordering table, special staff will introduce the characteristics of various kinds of food and beverages to consumers. "We need to make sure that consumers eat and drink what is really right for them, rather than blindly locating it."

In order to improve the overall interest of the coffee, Xin Zixiang also came up with the idea of using the bear as a meal plate. "I hope consumers will find it new and interesting as soon as they enter the coffee."

At present, Xin Zixiang's "relax" card, "close to nature" card, and "interesting" card are all very successful, and the average number of customers per shop in the country can be maintained at the standard of 1000 people per day. At present, almost all of the coffee shops are profitable.