How to run a coffee shop Coffee 3.0 era

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.

The third trunk road

Unlike the general profit of ManCoffee, a large number of coffee shops in the Chinese market are in a diametrically opposite situation. In Xiamen, the city with the highest coffee shop density in China, there are more than 2000 coffee shops, of which less than 30% are truly profitable, while the coffee shop market in Hangzhou has a "343" model: 30% profit, 40% flat, and 30% loss.

Qin Gang, founder of Banpo Coffee, said that the emergence of this situation has something to do with the high rental costs in first-and second-tier cities. In general, coffee shops are concentrated in busy areas with high passenger flow, and the cost of opening a shop in these areas can be imagined. Nowadays, a coffee shop in a second-tier city costs an average of 1.5 million yuan per shop.

Zhao Kedong, CEO of carving time Group, has a deep understanding of the trouble caused by high rents to coffee shops. He said bluntly: "Today, the biggest cost pressure for coffee shops is rent, which generally accounts for 20% to 30% of the total cost."

However, unlike other coffee shops that chase to open stores in luxury areas at the cost of high rent, Man Coffee takes a different approach and chooses the store to be located in a cold area.

On PPT, the location of a shop for internal reference, the last page reads: "it is not necessary to choose the shop on the first main road. Considering the rent, we can open it on the second and third trunk roads. If some institutions of higher learning have suitable locations and reasonable prices, it is also preferable."

Take the shops where Man Coffee is opening in Beijing as an example. Unlike a large number of American coffee shops that choose to open among supermarkets, Man Cafe Lido is located next to Side Park, and the north door of Mancaf Park is next to Jiangfu Park on the edge of the Fifth Ring Road. Renmin University store is opened in the teaching building.

Lin Yijie, a coffee brand researcher, believes that most American cafes such as Starbucks are located in prosperous areas in order to gain high popularity. Under the pressure of high rents, these cafes attach great importance to the mobility of their guests, so standing up to drink coffee has become a style of these cafes. In contrast, coffee shops opened in non-prime areas will have different products and styles, because the expectations of customers are different. These coffee shops, which do not rely on the large flow of passengers in the super area, attach more importance to the fact that customers can complete multiple purchases in the store rather than buying a cup of coffee and leaving.

"the rent for those prime locations may be 30 yuan per square meter per day, or even 40 yuan per square meter per day. The opening area of Man Coffee is generally between 500m2 and 800m2. If we choose such a prime location, the cost of rent alone will reach 15000 to 24000 yuan per day. " Xin Zi phase analysis said.

Take the Man Coffee Industry Shop as an example, its total area reaches 1000 square meters. As a result of avoiding the prime location where Shangchao is located, the rental price of the coffee shop is only 6 yuan per square meter per day. "Today, industrial sports stores are the most profitable stores for coffee, with a daily turnover of 50,000 yuan."

However, the location strategy is not the whole secret of the profit of coffee. In fact, if you look at the menu, you will find that the prices of drinks in diffuse coffee are not much different from those in American cafes such as Starbucks, but meals with waffles and toast are much more expensive than similar products in American cafes.

"Coffee is actually a very low-margin product. Waffles and toast cost very low, but the added value is much greater than coffee. The smart thing about diffuse coffee is that you don't know how to survive without cafes and selling coffee. " Said Chen Wei, a marketing scholar.

"the best-selling item in diffuse coffee is not actually coffee." Xin Zi-hsiang believes that the geographical location of his store has determined that Man Coffee will never make a profit by selling "standing Coffee."We hope that customers can stay in Man Coffee for a day, so he will naturally have something to eat and drink. And maybe invite friends over for dinner."

In the diffuse coffee shop, there have been activities that consume more than 9 cups of coffee and get one free for a long time, while foods such as waffles never take part in the event. "We give our guests discount cards to increase popularity through nine-for-one free activities, and waffles and toast can really increase guest order consumption." Xin Zixiang said.

In addition to rent and food consumption, the joining strategy of Man Coffee also relieves the financial pressure and indirectly enhances profitability for Xin Zi Xiang.

As a giant in China's coffee chain market, Starbucks adopts a model of cooperation with three major regions to help develop food and beverage products that suit local market tastes. In the store control, Starbucks has maintained a pure blood state, has not yet adopted to join the way to expand the territory.

Unlike Starbucks, Man Coffee adopts a direct operation + cooperation model when adding stores-in addition to first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, Man Coffee will open stores with local partners in second-and third-tier cities. In these partner stores, the proportion of investment in diffuse coffee will remain between 25% and 35%.

"We generally only cooperate with strong partners, and generally require each other to have the strength to undertake at least ten stores." Xin Zixiang said that this is also the reason why Starbucks has been operating in China for more than a decade, while the number of stores has been overtaken by Korean coffee shops in two or three years.

At present, because of the outstanding profitability, diffuse coffee has become a hot cake in the eyes of partners. "We do have a choice. If the partner says that he is willing to accept only one store, we can immediately find a stronger partner. In the next two years, of the more than 200 stores in China, ManCoffee will maintain about 30% of the direct stores. The rest are joint ventures."

The financial strength, the ability to expand, and the agreement with the business philosophy of coffee are the three major criteria for Xin Zixiang to select partners. "We will check the location, products, services and other key links of the cooperative store."

Coffee 3.0

Xin Zixiang, who is full of confidence in the coffee business, says he will open more than 3000 stores in China in the next 10 years. At the same time, his competitors are also aggressive.

Data from the China Enterprise Brand Research Center show that Finland, with a population of 5 million, sold 500000 packets of coffee for the year, compared with less than 400000 packets in China. Data from BCG also confirm the great potential of China's coffee market, which they believe will become the world's second-largest coffee consumer in 2015 and the world's largest coffee consumer in 2020.

Seduced by the big cake of the Chinese market, there has been fierce competition among coffee giants. Starbucks announced as early as 2012 that it plans to open 1500 stores in China by 2015; Coffee, founded in South Korea in 2008, has opened 1500 stores in China since it entered China in 2012, and they plan to open more than 1000 stores in China by 2015.

At the same time, more and more Korean coffee brands, such as coffee accompany you, zoo coffee and so on, are accelerating to enter the Chinese market. An one-on-one battle between Chinese local coffee brands and American coffee brands has gradually become a tripartite competition among Chinese, Korean and American styles.

In the fierce competition, although not interested in the American model of Starbucks, Xin Zixiang's coffee is still far from the influence of brands such as Starbucks. At least in the latest Chinese brand power index ranking, the top several are firmly occupied by Shangdao, Starbucks, Costa coffee. Xin Zixiang still has a long way to go to achieve the goal of 3000 stores.

"but I don't think any coffee shop is our natural rival at the moment, because the market positioning is different, the Chinese coffee market is so large, we have a different division of labor, and there will be no life-and-death struggle." In Xin Zixiang's view, despite the fierce competition, there is a lack of products that are really suitable for Chinese consumers in the Chinese coffee market, and this is the advantage of Man Coffee.

"maybe you go to an American coffee shop and say get a cup of coffee, but you don't say coffee, you just say coffee." Xin Zixiang's ultimate goal is to make the coffee the third space outside the home and the unit.

In fact, this idea first came from Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. At that time, Schultz hoped to attract consumers to regard Starbucks as the third space through Starbucks products and interior decoration atmosphere. Now, compared with the relaxation of coffee, Starbucks has become the preferred place for many people to go for business talks.

"Korean, American and Chinese cafes have different origins and styles." Chao Kedong believes that the current development trend of Chinese-style local coffee shops is to subdivide, that is, to emphasize a certain theme; American coffee shops are derived from American fast food culture, and they emphasize the style of drinking while walking; and Korean coffee shops are the product of the development of South Korea's economic take-off. From the very beginning, Korean coffee shops were not simply a place to drink coffee. "in South Korea, the coffee shop serves breakfast and plays more of a multi-functional meeting place than a simple coffee place."

In fact, some people in the industry have questioned that coffee and coffee accompany you in many details, such as decoration. "Man Coffee does not have any stores in South Korea, and it is entirely a product made in accordance with the habits of Chinese consumers." In this regard, Xin Zixiang responded that coffee accompanies you with more emphasis on the star element of Hallyu than coffee. For example, in the coffee company, you will see the poster of Korean star Jang Genshuo as soon as you enter the door, and you can also get souvenirs marked by Korean stars through consumption.

"I think the biggest rival of Man Coffee is Man Coffee itself." Now, Xin Zixiang visits stores every week, and he even flies into a rage because of mistakes in details such as the brightness of lights and the volume of music.

"Man Coffee has never been advertised, but it can get a good response, relying on word-of-mouth, so I am very cautious about the brand image of Man Coffee, and we will constantly adjust and change."

The latest news is that ManCoffee will launch some fan feedback activities at the end of this year. "We will soon set up a 2000-square-meter coffee museum near Jiangfu Park to provide free coffee tasting courses for our loyal fans."

In Xin Zixiang's strategy, China's coffee market will soon enter the 3.0 era. "the first era is to drink coffee, the second era is to choose some brands to drink, and the third era will be to choose coffee beans and taste to drink." In Xin Zixiang's judgment, in a few years, China's coffee market will enter the 3.0 era, that is, customers will begin to choose the origin of coffee beans, coffee grinding technology, etc., "just like the current Chinese red wine market." The reason why Man Coffee will launch a coffee tasting course for loyal customers in the second half of this year is also to cultivate its own consumer groups in the 3.0 era.

"ManCoffee will create a whole new market for itself." Xin Zixiang said.