What's a cup of Internet coffee mixed with a social delivery service? Future Development trend of Coffee

What can a cup of coffee look like, coupled with Internet scenes and social networking?

When people have not yet found that coffee shops can be used as occasions for making friends and chatting, boutique coffee was once just a refreshing drink. The social value of coffee shops was not discovered until Ray Odenberg, an American professor of urban sociology, proposed a third space for people to get together and chat in addition to family and workplace.

When marketing guru Harry Roberts was thinking hard to improve Starbucks' public appeal, the concept of the third space gave him a lot of inspiration. Therefore, from its establishment in 1971 to the beginning of the 21st century, how to create a "third space" for people's leisure from details has become an important strategic core of Starbucks. Over the past few decades, Starbucks stores have expanded rapidly from 1000 to 16000. As a result, Starbucks turned coffee into a way of life.

Now, new changes are taking place in this trend.

When you travel around the city's office buildings, you may find that most of the passers-by who pass you are hurrying to their destination with a cup of coffee in hand, while there are very few people in the coffee shop. Today, the take-out rate of coffee has risen from 20-30% a few years ago to even higher.

The rising take-out rate has brought about new changes in time, space and relationships in the matter of drinking coffee, as well as different opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Before Coffee Box was founded, co-founder Wang Jiang spent several afternoons at Starbucks.

"first of all, let's look at the people who buy Starbucks, whether they will spend in the store or pack up and take away. I watched it for three afternoons. Then go to the bottom of the office building to see if these white-collar workers in the office building will buy coffee and whether it is frequent or not. Through observation, it was found that the demand for take-away coffee was very high, so I wondered whether the delivery of coffee could be used as an idea, a business, a business model. "

After focusing on this market, Lian Coffee (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Coffee Box) came into being. In the early days, Lian Coffee did not immediately launch its own brand-Coffee Box, but chose to provide distribution services to Starbucks and other coffee chain brands. however, Wang Jiang knew very well that what he wanted to do was not just a coffee distribution company.

Start with Starbucks delivery service and turn cold start into hot start

The delivery service of coffee does not sound particularly sexy. When ele.me, Meituan and Baidu takeout have educated the delivery market mature enough, the vertical category of coffee has not been paid enough attention.

In fact, according to a survey by Euromonitor International, a market research firm, China's coffee consumption market is growing at 25 per cent a year, with annual coffee consumption of 70 billion yuan, which is still a long way from the 2-3 trillion share of the mature market. "We want to be a coffee brand that we can produce and take away, and to be a closed loop of coffee. "

It's not easy to start a new brand from scratch, and you need to pay attention to a lot of things:

"first of all, whether there is an adequate production supply chain, and second, whether there is sufficient marketing and communication capacity. "

In Wang Jiang's view, if user accumulation, offline operation and supply chain building all start from scratch, it will be very difficult. Cold start is difficult, and you need to find a way to turn cold start into hot start.

In the case of nothing, Coffee Box can only use Starbucks' mature supply chain, start with helping Starbucks deliver, build online marketing capabilities and user base, and then start to build an offline supply chain when it is mature.

At that time, the official Wechat account had not yet been launched, and the founding team started sending Starbucks through Weibo in Shanghai. Within a year, the team only delivered two to three hundred cups of coffee a day to verify users' needs.

It was not until the demand was fully verified that the capital side was formally introduced-"Star Venture Capital" and Zhong Ding Venture Capital initiated by Li Jing. With financial support, Coffee Box will not be officially launched until August 2015.

Online, the platform will develop different ways of playing, including buying people coffee, giving red envelopes and so on. Offline, the platform will hire delivery staff to guard the Starbucks store, and when the order is successful, the delivery staff will deliver the coffee to the door.

In this way, within a year, the distribution of Lian coffee has grown from one to two hundred cups a day to more than 20,000 cups, making it the largest Starbucks distributor in China.

Let the coffee shop close enough to take care of you.

After accumulating some operational capacity, Coffee Box began to dabble in offline stores.

When Starbucks, Man Coffee and so on blossomed everywhere, competing for prime locations, Coffee Box opened its stores closer to users, but less conspicuously.

For example, Coffee Box's store in Wangjing SOHO is hidden in the bustling business district. This site, which is only more than 20 square meters, is not a real coffee shop. On a street not near the main street, it has only two baristas and a few delivery staff, more like a station.

According to the person in charge of Coffee Box, a coffee shop can sell more than 300 cups of coffee at its peak, which is the size of a medium-sized Starbucks.

"unlike Starbucks, we have the opposite experience, not where the coffee shop is or where the user goes, but where the user is and where the coffee shop is located."

There are more than 30 such cafes in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Coffee Box's goal is to "close to the user, there is a point 1-2 kilometers away." "

Coffee Box offline site location will be considered from the user needs and cost structure, to find the most user-intensive, relatively low-cost location.

Coffee Box once made a cost calculation: "in a city like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, as long as there are 145 cups of coffee a day, it will basically be the same." But traditional coffee shops usually take two to three years to recoup their costs before they are flat. "

The rest of the cost, Coffee Box will be used to improve delivery and other services, as well as brand building, they recently submitted a patented design-double cup lid, to ensure that hot coffee will not spill during the distribution process. In Coffee Box's view, coffee is not only a drink, but also a medium for people to communicate and socialize.

"the competition of brands is the competition of upgrading. We have two more dimensions than Starbucks, one is to deliver coffee to you, the other is to make coffee a medium of emotion, and the core is one more scene than Starbucks. All our innovations are based on the understanding of the scene, combining the three elements of the scene: time, space and interpersonal relationship. "

In Wang Jiang's view, the development process of Coffee Box is "very much the same" as it was imagined three years ago.

Wang Jiang, who has been starting a mobile Internet business for many years, has found that in the case of coffee, even when it comes offline, the logic of the scene has not changed. From its establishment in 2012 to the establishment of its own brand in 2015, things are coming true step by step in the direction he planned.

NOTICE: the Coffee Box project has been logged on to the geek acceleration platform since January 8 and is open to certified investors for pre-subscription. Coffee Box will open its share subscription at a valuation of RMB 200 million in August 2015.

Source: geek Park