It's all about coffee. Colombian coffee beans. Gold of Aceh.

Anyone familiar with Starbucks knows that Starbucks founder and board chairman Howard Schultz wrote a book called "it has nothing to do with coffee." But in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, China, which is famous for its Pu'er tea, it can be reversed that everything that is happening "has something to do with coffee".

In recent years, Pu'er has become the most important coffee producer in China, driven by two well-known multinational giants-Starbucks from the United States and Nestl é from Switzerland. The latest news is that Nestl é has invested 100 million to build a coffee center in Pu'er, another major investment after years of deep cultivation in Yunnan. Most importantly, Nestl é will promote Pu'er Coffee, a new coffee product named after Pu'er as its origin. In other words, when people talk about Pu'er, they will think of not only tea, but also coffee.

Correspondingly, it is no longer news for local tea farmers to cut down tea trees and grow coffee. In the plan of the Yunnan local government, the tea planting area will also become a stock market, which will not increase at about 6 million mu by 2017, while the coffee planting area will begin to double.

With the expansion of multinational giants in China and the popularity of coffee culture, the demand for coffee beans is still on the rise in the coming years. According to public information, Starbucks plans to open 1500 stores in China by 2015, and Starbucks is not willing to lag behind when Nestl é is frequently laid out in Yunnan. In early 2012, Starbucks signed a joint venture with Yunnan Aiyi Group, its first Chinese coffee grower support center was also located in Pu'er City, and Starbucks signed a memorandum of cooperation on coffee with the local government.

Is this a cause for concern? From the local government's point of view, this is normal, because coffee cultivation is easier to help farmers get rich. Pu'er City has also set up a special organization called the Coffee Industry Development Office of Pu'er City, Yunnan Province. The local government believes that the tea economy is a pillar industry and coffee is a characteristic industry, and the two go hand in hand. Most of the existing media reports focus on how the emerging coffee industry can help farmers increase their income, which is positive and positive.

It is some foreigners who are "cheap and well-behaved" who exclaim at this phenomenon and remind Chinese farmers to be on their guard. The Los Angeles Times of the United States, one of the first foreign media to pay attention to this phenomenon, pointed out that "the key test is whether Chinese farmers can withstand fluctuations in coffee prices." This year, coffee growers only get about $1.20 a pound, half of what they were two years ago. "

People who have been to Pu'er will see the immediate purchase price of coffee beans hanging in front of the local branches of multinational companies, the benchmark of which actually comes from the futures market in New York. When Starbucks set up a local joint venture, it also said that the purchase price would "follow the market".

The Financial Times bluntly pointed out that under the impact of Western-style coffee culture, China's proud tea culture is facing an impact. Obviously, no matter from the perspective of realistic economic interests, or from the perspective of more long-term consumer culture, there are certain risks and hidden worries in the hometown of Pu'er tea.

The question is, what is the root of this phenomenon? Why can't tea varieties with unique quality and charm like Pu'er tea get a stable sense of market identity from the source to the end in the fierce market competition?

At present, farmers are still cutting down tea trees to grow coffee, and it may be unfair to attribute this phenomenon only to the promotion of the government and multinational corporations.

Tea farmers will tell you that this "movement" began with a round of speculation on the price of Pu'er tea in 2007. When the price of high-end Pu'er tea returned to reason, some hoarders lost all their money. The disillusionment of Pu'er myth also affected the enthusiasm of tea farmers. The rise of growing coffee beans first stems from the chaos of the Pu'er tea industry.

People engaged in the tea processing industry will tell you that, unlike coffee, which has become a mass consumer product, even today, Pu'er tea is seen by many as an investment product rather than an instant consumer product. Most of the people who go to tea farmers to collect tea are not tea factories, but investors. These people pursue only some high-end varieties, driving up prices, which leads tea farmers to pursue not economies of scale, but the supply of some high-end varieties. However, without the scale effect, tea growers will face a huge risk of input-output ratio, and once a natural disaster occurs, they may lose all their money. This is the second reason.

Tea experts will tell you, from the figures, although Yunnan Province is the main producing area of tea in China, but the production capacity of tea per mu is not high, from the perspective of land use efficiency, coffee seems to be better. For example, in 2012, the province's tea planting area of 5.8 million mu, of which Pu'er City 1.44 million mu. However, the output of Pu'er tea in the province is only 84000 tons. In terms of coffee cultivation, the province's coffee planting area in 2012 is only 430000 mu (the latest figure has been updated to 650000 mu), but the output is more than 70, 000 tons. The gap between growing coffee beans and tea in terms of land use efficiency is almost double and ten times. This is the third reason.

Apart from the above three reasons, perhaps the most fundamental reason is that in the terminal market, tea and its derivatives have never been like coffee, according to the changes in the needs of ordinary consumers, according to the market laws of fast-moving consumer goods, repositioning packaging and marketing themselves into real mass consumer goods. Its culture has never been separated from the shadow of Chinese classical aristocratic culture, adding more popular and fashion elements.

In other words, the war between tea and coffee beans is a competition between agricultural products (6.39, 0.09, 1.43%) and consumer goods in a highly industrialized era. In the face of the latter's mature brand marketing strategy and channel strategy, it is difficult for small and scattered agricultural products to resist. It is also difficult for tea processing companies to become consumer and retail giants with huge brand appeal like Nestl é and Starbucks.

Therefore, if we want to solve the mystery of Pu'er coffee, we must leave the fields of Pu'er and go to first-and second-tier cities to see how consumers of tea and coffee come into contact with these products.

From the perspective of channels, the cultures of coffee and tea actually have similarities in source. Chinese people pay attention to making friends with tea, while Schultz believes that Starbucks is the third space for people to live, so it has nothing to do with coffee. In essence, both think of themselves as the medium of communication between people. Perhaps the difference is that Chinese tea culture is more aristocratic and hierarchical, with different tea products corresponding to different social strata, while Starbucks from the West places more emphasis on equal and free exchanges. Obviously, the latter is more likely to be favored by young people.

Whether you drink tea or coffee, you need a separate place. According to the China Teahouse & Cafe Consumer and Industry Comprehensive report released by Mintel, the number of cafes in China nearly doubled from 15898 in 2007 to 31783 in 2012, but the increase in teahouses over the same period was only 4 per cent.

In particular, when the market environment changes, coffee companies can quickly keep up with the change. More and more people like to take coffee home or drink it at home. Starbucks began to offer take-away coffee cups. Nestl é sells small bottles of coffee that look like Coca-Cola in supermarkets, and no one rejects the large sale of instant coffee. Today, tea stores are still the main channel of tea sales. Because they can not provide the third-party testing needed by large supermarkets like Wal-Mart, many tea companies are unable to push their products to the modern business super system. In addition, due to the existence of the knowledge threshold, many people will worry about being cheated or buying fake tea even if they enter the tea store. But there is no such problem in the coffee industry.

As a matter of fact, in the face of the Chinese people's long history of drinking tea and huge market opportunities, it is not that no one has made improvements and attempts. Some people in China have lamented that "70,000 tea enterprises are no match for one Lipton milk tea." Due to its convenient brewing, fashionable packaging and strong channel distribution capacity, Unilever's Lipton milk tea can make a performance of 23 billion yuan a year, while the total output value of China's tea industry in that year was only more than 30 billion yuan.

A product wants to face ordinary consumers, in addition to product quality, product brand connotation, packaging, marketing means, channels and other factors also have a far-reaching impact on consumers' purchasing behavior. The comprehensive use of these factors to affect consumers is the way of thinking of consumer goods in the era of industrialization.

There is no doubt that continuous investment in these links requires a lot of financial support, regardless of brand packaging, channel delivery, or third-party testing. Another disadvantage that agricultural products face when competing with industrial consumer goods is that the driving force of capital is relatively weak. Most of the foreign consumer goods giants are listed companies. Although there are many Chinese tea enterprises, few of them can successfully connect with the capital market. Fujian Anxi Tieguanyin Tea, the "first A-share tea share" that was once expected by the market, finally broke IPO. So far, only a few enterprises, such as Bishengyuan and Longrun Tea (backdoor), have successfully listed in H-shares, but they are far from forming a climate in the capital market.

At the end of writing, the author is also a little tired. I hope this article does not bring too much pessimism to those who grow tea or like to drink tea. In order to relieve fatigue, I decided to go to a coffee shop to have a cup of tea. In fact, now many coffee shops are also starting to sell tea, so what matters is not that there are no tea drinkers, but how you find these people and how you understand the way they drink and share.