Quality Cafe: 12 chain stores have been opened to graft O2O platform to reduce costs

"the first generation drinks instant coffee, the second generation drinks espresso, and now let's enter the third generation to drink hand-made boutique coffee." As the slogan says, coffee has evolved all the way to now, and niche boutique coffee has begun to enter people's field of vision.

Founded in 2011, the quality Hall Coffee is positioned at the cutting edge of the trend. "A cup of boutique coffee comes from 60% of the highest quality coffee raw beans, 30% of the best roasting methods and 10% of the coffee making methods, and we intend to take the coffee to the extreme according to this standard." Zheng Songmao, founder of quality Coffee, stressed to the reporter of "China chain".

Make coffee with points

Boutique Coffee Godmother Erna Knustsen creatively used the word "Specialty Coffee" in the 1974 monthly magazine "Tea & Coffee Trade Journal" to show that only in the most favorable altitude, soil and climate can fine coffee with unique flavor be cultivated. At the same time, it is also compared with large quantities of commercial low-cost coffee with beans. Later, she and five others founded SCAA (American Fine Coffee Association) in 1982. The word "boutique coffee" is known all over the world.

Quality restaurant coffee is known as the country's first boutique coffee chain brand, for those who do not know its content, there is bound to be some disapproval.

Zheng Songmao told reporters that fine coffee is not an adjective abused by the public, but an academic term. Only coffee made from beans with a SCAA score of more than 80 points can be called fine coffee after being tested by an international cup tester. Including strict selection of suitable varieties, growing and mature in a specific growth environment; rigorous harvesting, selection, classification, classification and scientific treatment procedures to ensure fresh and pollution-free transportation; and finally, through the excellent skills of roasters and baristas, to lead to the richest regional flavor of coffee beans.

During the annual coffee season, the quality store coffee director will go to the global coffee boutique farm to directly select coffee beans that meet the requirements. "in the quality Hall, each boutique coffee has its own certificate issued by the Coffee quality Research Institute (Coffee Quality Institute). Consumers can clearly know which estate they are drinking coffee from, what kind of tree they are drinking coffee from, and even in which way they are refined." Zheng Songmao said.

Grafting O2O platform to reduce cost

Since its establishment four years ago, the quality Museum has opened 12 chain stores, including 5 direct stores and 7 franchise stores, and is expected to open about 20 by the end of this year. For the quality restaurant coffee which is determined to pursue high-quality products, the early expansion speed of the store will not be too fast, which is beyond reproach. After everything was ready, it began to rise abruptly based on its accumulated strength. In 2015, the quality Library decided to open the authorization and for the first time to join the business model of "0 yuan" to join the quality Library with a limit of 200 partners to recruit partners.

At present, the rapidly rising rents of the traditional retail industry not only erode the profits of the retail industry, but also make the retail industry gradually eliminate high-quality and cheap goods. Generally speaking, the price of a cup of coffee is 20 or 30 yuan, excluding the cost of raw materials such as coffee beans, and amortized into store rent and labor costs. in fact, the profit of a single cup of coffee is not high. Not only to pursue quality but also to reduce costs and not to sell too high, the quality library in front of how to take into account at the same time, and Zheng Songmao found that there is no lack of ways to find a way out.

It is understood that in addition to the relatively large area of the flagship store, the area of other chain stores will be recommended to be controlled at 30 to 60 square meters, so that the rent pressure will be greatly reduced and the corresponding price will not be too high. For a cafe, put the main energy and financial resources on the environment, atmosphere creation, in the final analysis is to sell the environment, the quality store seems to mean more than this, but the quality of coffee as the core competitiveness.

In 2015, in the field of O2O takeout, the competition among Meituan takeout, ele.me and Baidu takeout was fierce, but it was also pervasive, which made Zheng Songmao somewhat delighted.

As the world's largest coffee chain, Starbucks Coffee takeout has taken the lead in testing the waters in the United States. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said on a quarterly earnings call in October that Starbucks would start taking out coffee and food in some markets as part of its push into e-commerce.

At present, foreign consumers can order coffee online in Washington, Alaska, Idaho and other places through Starbucks APP. Of course, Starbucks in China does not have this service, and for the time being, it still provides coffee takeout service through even coffee, love fresh bee and other platforms.

Quality restaurant coffee also said to keep up with the trend at any time, Zheng Songmao told reporters, the next step, takeout O2O platform will be the main partner of the quality library. This is undoubtedly one of the best ways to save costs and reduce prices.

In addition, adopting direct trade to enable coffee farmers to get the highest income and consumers to pay the lowest price is also a measure to reduce the price of quality restaurant coffee while taking into account the quality.

Fine works should be owned by the public.

The reporter found that the distribution of cafes around the flagship store is very dense. "We usually choose places with many cafes for our stores, because we believe that these places should be the best locations for setting up stores after the mature consideration of others." Zheng Songmao said. At the same time, he believes that the current density is not enough and will continue to increase. He's supposed to be talking based on the data.

Coffee has become the second most traded commodity in the world. A set of data shows that: first, China's coffee demand has entered a period of rapid growth, with an average annual growth rate of 15% to 20%, while the world average growth level is 2%. There are more than 200 million potential coffee consumers in China. At present, China's coffee consumption is an average of 4 cups per person per year, while the world average is 240 cups per person per year.

Second, the annual per capita consumption of coffee is 5.4kg in Western Europe, 1.9kg in Singapore and 1.4kg in Taiwan, and less than 50g in Chinese mainland. Although the data gap can not fully explain the absolute future growth space, it is obvious to all that the growth rate of the number of street teahouses in China, which has a long history of tea drinking culture, has lagged far behind that of cafes.

From the history of the development of coffee abroad, boutique coffee is indeed a trend, and the market is gradually opening up. And from the continuous decline in the performance of several large coffee chains in Europe and the United States in recent years, we can also see that people pay more and more attention to the quality of coffee. There has also been a consumer reaction that drinking Starbucks coffee is largely because its price is close to the people, but now there are many coffee shops with the same price and much higher quality. High quality does not mean high price. "on average, our coffee is 3 to 4 yuan cheaper than Starbucks." Zheng Songmao said.

It is worth mentioning that for an ordinary person who only wants to drink a cup of coffee, it is a bit complicated to refer to the flavor spectrum of the coffee flavor wheel, and of course it is difficult to understand what the number of Iger means to bake. Therefore, there is no doubt that more efforts need to be made to promote and popularize the concept of fine coffee and the improvement of coffee quality, for example, how the part of "people who really care about coffee quality" that the quality Museum believes will further grow into a mass consumer group.

Of course, boutique coffee is fascinating to coffee fans at any time. After all, coffee drinkers vote with their mouths.

From: Ren Huiyuan, a reporter from China chain magazine.