Is convenience store coffee "worth drinking"?

Photo / Lin Qingqing

Since the beginning of this year, freshly ground coffee, which has appeared in prominent positions in major convenience store chains in first-tier cities, has attracted people's attention. Is this convenience store coffee worth drinking at about the price of chain coffee 1amp 3? How to quickly and professionally choose "worth drinking" convenience store coffee? As the product of automatic coffee machine and unified distribution of coffee beans, Yangcheng Evening News reporter invited people in the industry to teach you how to look at the door and choose coffee.

Market scanning

Convenience store coffee fight begins

Holding a cup of coffee has become standard on the street, but urban hipsters have chosen more than just chain coffee brands. The major foreign convenience stores have also actively joined the war, one after another in a prominent position to launch their own brand ground coffee, with only the price advantage of chain coffee 1x3 to enter the coffee market. This convenience store coffee style blowing from Japan and Taiwan has gradually spread to convenience stores in first-tier cities in China.

Almost every foreign convenience store brand in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou has actively launched its own freshly ground coffee brand, occupying a prominent position at the entrance or counter after the store has been modified. The main selling points of each brand are different, but the mainstream prices are about 10 yuan, or even discounts, often as low as 5-40% discount. Among the promotional posters posted outside convenience stores, advertisements for freshly ground coffee often occupy a prominent position. It can be seen that all convenience store brands focus on freshly ground coffee as a new profit growth point.

A reporter's visit

Convenience store coffee intuitive competition

For a cup of about 10 yuan of fully automatic coffee machine, most consumers will not have much expectation for its flavor and taste. But even if this seemingly standard product, in fact, different convenience stores will have different characteristics, different products. Therefore, Yangcheng Evening News reporter personally tested several mainstream foreign convenience stores in Guangzhou with their own brand coffee.

Xishido's coffee machine is made by Swiss coffee maker Yuri. The coffee beans were not specified, but stressed that the milk used was imported from Germany. The whole process is operated by the shop assistant, occasionally manual fine-tuning of water output and so on. Take latte as an example, hot latte is 12 yuan (12 oz), iced latte is 14 yuan (16 oz), it is half price in early August, now it is half price for specified varieties every Monday and Friday. Customers generally think that the style of coffee is balanced and the taste of milk is rich.

7-11 was a great success in Taiwan's City Cafe. In Guangzhou's 7-11, the coffee machine has a wide console, and the sign of Daily Cafe also occupies a prominent position at the entrance of the store. The Rax-Royal coffee machine is made by the clerk's button, and customers can pick up sugar milk and cup lid straws on the buffet. 12 oz latte is 12 yuan, and participating in in-store discount is only 6 yuan at half price. The coffee style is light, whether it is the aroma of coffee oil, milk or impurity coke.

The coffee of the whole family in Taiwan is Brown coffee, which has a strong taste and is well received. In Guangzhou, it is the guest coffee, the coffee machine is placed inside the cabinet, and the customer can't see the machine brand clearly. Coffee beans are said to be a well-known brand in Taiwan, Arabica and Bruta mixed beans. The whole process is operated by the shop assistant and cannot help himself. However, the shop assistant is friendly and can change the vanilla latte in the special price into a simple latte at the request of customers. A cup of 12 oz latte is 12 yuan, hot and cold at the same price, holding a family card to develop varieties such as vanilla lattes, only 8 yuan, about 40% discount. Take the latte as an example, the coffee flavor is the lightest of the three, but the sweetness is high.

Experts teach the way

How to choose the "worth drinking" convenience store coffee at a glance?

As the saying goes, people are difficult to tune, and when it comes to coffee flavor, everyone has a preference. But about 10 yuan for a cup of convenience store coffee, compared with the price of 30 yuan for mainstream coffee chains and 40-50 yuan for hand-brewed coffee, perhaps you should judge whether it is "worth drinking".

How to choose the "worth drinking" convenience store coffee at a glance? Liang Chaoxiong, once vice president of the Guangzhou Coffee Industry Association, is now the general agent of Jamaica Blue Mountain Coffee in Guangzhou. As an industry insider, he told Yangcheng Evening News that how to distinguish the quality and sincerity of coffee from a convenience store from a cost perspective will tell whether it is "worth drinking."

The freshness of coffee beans depends on the passenger flow.

Coffee beans are of course a key part of the product. But for convenience stores with unified distribution, in addition to asking the clerk about the source of coffee beans, a more important judgment basis is to observe the passenger flow first.

Although the coffee beans in convenience stores are freshly ground and brewed, the flavor of coffee changes from roasting. And the coffee beans to the store are already roasted, so the coffee beans can be consumed in the fastest time and replaced with new ones, which means that the coffee beans are relatively fresh, and the quality of the products will certainly be better. If there are not many customers, the beans have been kept for 3 months, and even the best beans have lost their fragrance. Liang Chaoxiong told Yangcheng Evening News. In China, the acceptable standard for keeping coffee beans fresh is a rough estimate that a store can sell 50 to 100 cups a day.

The control of coffee machine requires the quality of shop assistants.

Because of attaching importance to the passenger flow and sales of freshly ground coffee to convenience stores, and considering that convenience stores need fast and reliable products, convenience stores usually use better fully automatic coffee machines on the market. But even if it is a fully automatic coffee machine, a few thousand yuan cheaper and more than 100,000 yuan or even 300000 yuan expensive, the product is naturally different.

For example, the coffee machine used in Hiroshi Coffee is Yuri. When making each cup of coffee, customers can see the steps displayed on the display screen at the same time, the proportion of coffee, water and milk, and so on. Liang Chaoxiong thinks this is a good fully automatic coffee machine. But even so, you will need to adapt to different situations. For example, the quality of a commercial coffee machine that some experts think is passable is good when it produces 20 cups of coffee an hour, but if it takes 10 minutes to produce 10 cups of coffee, it will affect the quality of coffee because of its unstable power. Therefore, the coffee literacy of the shop assistant will become important. He needs to know enough about the coffee machine, he loves coffee, and if he understands the nuances, he will know how to fine-tune the machine manually at this time.

Coffee cups are about sincerity and safety.

Many people may ignore the quality of paper cups, in fact, the cost of paper cups is an important factor to reflect the "sincerity" of merchants. "A paper cup varies from a few cents to 2 or 3 yuan, and the quality varies greatly with different materials. Take-out paper cups at Starbucks, for example, are actually very expensive. " Leung Chao-hsiung particularly cautioned that apart from the smell of glue, paper cup lids also need to be paid attention to.

In the Yangcheng Evening News reporter's visit, several chain convenience stores for the selection of paper cups are careful, basically no glue smell. Among them, the whole family uses wavy corrugated paper, and the color cup body makes people feel at ease. 7-11 uses a thickened paper cup to hold a cup of hot coffee without adding a thermal insulation ring. Black cup lid with triangle symbol internal standard No. 6 PS plastic, thick. Xishido adopts corrugated paper heat-proof cup ring and white cup lid marked with No. 6 PS plastic.

Need to pay special attention to the cup lid, triangle symbol internal standard 6 plastic, is the code name of plastic polystyrene, is used for the manufacture of bowl instant noodle box, foaming fast food box material, itself non-toxic, but above 90 ℃ can release the decomposition of styrene, eye and upper respiratory tract mucosa irritation and anaesthesia.

Coffee fans know that high temperatures can make coffee taste more mellow: coffee oil is most mellow at 90-95 degrees Celsius and tastes best between 82 and 86 degrees Celsius. However, in order to avoid too hot coffee through the plastic cup lid into the mouth, it is appropriate to keep it at about 60-70 degrees Celsius.

Shop assistant quality

How to affect a cup

"fully automatic coffee"

When you can't see the coffee machine brand or ask about the variety of coffee beans, the simplest and straightforward secret is to look at the clerk's coffee literacy, and the scope of observation is even specific to whether the clerk's gesture when covering the cup lid will avoid such details as the mouth.

Many people will ask, for the automatic coffee machine to distribute coffee beans, what kind of coffee literacy does the shop assistant need? Liang Chaoxiong said that if the quality of the staff is not enough, the standard of coffee will be greatly tarnished, and it generally takes 3-5 months of training to improve the coffee literacy of convenience store staff.

For the automatic coffee machine, the significance of the shop assistant lies first of all in the registration, management and cleaning of the coffee machine. If the cleaning is not in place, the scale of the filtration system, coffee scale and other cleaning is not clean, it will affect the follow-up coffee production.

Secondly, the understanding and control of the coffee machine is also very important. In addition to the manual fine-tuning mentioned earlier, a more common situation is that in 24-hour convenience stores, coffee machines tend to be turned off late at night when no one is there. The time for the machine to warm up after starting up in the morning needs to be managed and controlled. In these cases, will the clerk explain the problem to you, please wait a moment before making coffee, or hastily press the coffee maker button to finish the job? This is a criterion for judgment.

Some shop assistants will even know the coffee taste preferences of some regular customers, and after the coffee is finished, they will replenish the fresh milk instead of giving you fat and light milk. Although the cost has increased, it is undoubtedly a popular move for customers, which is similar to the experience of handmade coffee.

Source: Yangcheng Evening News