A total of 474 Pacific Coffee shops open fancy stores to play cross-border cooperation.

Pacific Coffee has always had the courage to be the first person to eat crabs and try all kinds of fancy games. Not only did I try coffee takeout this time, but I was the first to cooperate with banks and hospitals to play cross-border games.

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Coffee shops enter the Chinese market as imported products. With the gradual recognition and acceptance of coffee culture by Chinese people, there are more and more coffee shops in the streets. At the same time, all kinds of coffee shops play in a variety of ways. Provided by CNSPHOTO

A bold attempt to reap the benefits of Pacific Coffee in 2015, with a total of 474 Pacific Coffee stores as of January 15 and 75 new stores opened in 2015, maintaining a 15% increase in total and 12% same-store growth, according to Pacific Coffee's official reply. It is understood that costa parent company whitbread announced in May last year, costa has 344 stores in China, Pacific Coffee in the number of stores more than costa seems to be indisputable, but there is still a big gap from Starbucks' strength of 1700 stores in 90 cities in mainland China.

After coffee shops entered the Chinese market as imported products, with the gradual recognition and acceptance of coffee culture by Chinese people, there are more and more coffee shops in the streets. At the same time, all kinds of coffee shops play in a variety of ways. Can Pacific Coffee, which has just surpassed costa to become the "second" in the Chinese market, gain a firm foothold and become a "Chollima"?

The strength of the troika needs to be tested.

Pacific Coffee claims to have a "troika". The first driver is the Pacific Coffee retail business, the Pacific Coffee outlet, the second is the corporate coffee service business, and the third is the franchise business. Pacific Coffee CEO Lanyi told China Business Daily that the business development of Pacific Coffee is neck and neck, all of which are very important.

In fact, franchising has always been an effective way for the catering industry to expand its scale and spread its brand influence, but in recent years, many coffee shops have ruined their business because they have smashed signboards.

In mid-January, the media revealed that the zoo coffee SOHO Hyundai City store joined the owner "run away", and the stored value cards that consumers had dealt with had become "scrapped cards". Zoo coffee immediately held a press conference and said that together it decided to abandon the eight-year-old franchise model in 2016, announcing that it would no longer open new entrances, but maintain cooperation with existing franchisees. As early as the middle of last year, the same Korean coffee brand as zoo coffee accompanied you because of the large-scale closure of shops and owed 127 franchisees nearly 200 million yuan refunds, causing controversy from all walks of life.

"franchising is not only in the field of coffee, but it has become a tool to circle money in many fields, but there is nothing wrong with franchising itself. More than 80 to 90 percent of the big foreign brands are franchisees." Tian Guangli, founder of Food and Beverage State, told China Business Daily that franchising can not only rapidly expand the network, but also make use of the resources of franchisees, such as funds, store locations, and employees, to rapidly develop teams. Few major brands in the coffee field are mainly in direct marketing, and most of the stores are mainly franchisees.

Of the 1700 stores owned by Starbucks, the coffee shop's boss, in mainland China, 723 are operated by Uni-President Group. It is understood that Uni-President Group currently owns the management right of Starbucks in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai in mainland China, and it is also the only partner in China with this kind of management right.

"Pacific Coffee adopts the mode of city joining rather than single-store joining, which ensures the strength of partners and makes it easier to manage franchisees." Lan Yi told China Business Daily that Pacific Coffee maintains brand consistency through central support and supervision. Joining stores is just a different investor, while others are the same as those in direct stores. According to the official reply of Pacific Coffee, of the 474 stores, 42 are franchised stores, accounting for 8.86%, which is not too large at present.

In addition, Pacific Coffee's characteristic business Coffee Solutions ("Enterprise Coffee solution") has also attracted a lot of attention. According to Lan Yi, the focus of Coffee Solutions is that Pacific Coffee uses all the equipment, raw materials, training, information systems and other resources related to the coffee industry to help enterprises or individuals who want to open coffee shops to do this in one stop.

"at first, Coffee Solutions focuses on B2B business, but in fact it will also extend to B2C business. At the same time, Coffee Solutions is very malleable and is actually a platform business that serves our own direct stores and franchises as well as external customers. " Lan Yi told China Business Daily that Coffee Solutions currently has three channels, the first is Coffee Solutions for Shops, such as transforming China Resources Wanjia convenience stores to customize a coffee brand for supermarkets, and the second is Coffee Solutions for Office, which transforms the enterprise's pantry to provide consumable materials such as customized food, sugar bags and milk. The third is Coffee Solutions for Home. If individuals want to make a coffee bar in their own kitchen, Pacific Coffee can also provide functional services.

Coffee Solutions's idea sounds good, but it's hard to figure out how big the market is. Industry insiders told China Business Daily that there is a market for B2B, but it is not too big. This can only be an exploratory attempt, not mainstream. It is difficult to say how big the market will be in the future. After all, many supermarkets and large enterprises have coffee shops.

But at the same time, the above people also believe that any form of innovation is possible in places where coffee drinking culture is strong, but it is difficult to do without specific regions and people.

The prospect of community marketing is bullish.

As a typical social product, coffee shop itself has social motivation at the beginning of its establishment. It is not for eating or drinking, but mainly for business or non-business social activities, while social interaction means circles and many people. Community marketing has long been the topic of coffee shops.

The preview of members' rights and interests released by Pacific Coffee on January 21 shows that Pacific Coffee continues to organize themed coffee workshops, with masters explaining coffee knowledge professionally and brewing coffee under the guidance of professionals. In addition, Pacific Coffee will also be linked with movies, plays, concerts and other performance activities to attract targeted customers.

With the rapid development of the Internet, many coffee shops have also increased their investment in social platforms. Lan Yi said that Pacific Coffee has always invested heavily in the Internet, both with Wechat and launching APP at the end of December. Pacific Coffee APP not only has the functions of e-card and query of nearby stores, but also launched an e-book reading platform, which opens more than 10 e-books for free to Taika members. Lanyi told reporters that Pacific Coffee takes APP as its opening and hopes to cooperate with more enterprises to increase additional business.

In fact, in December last year, Tmall's official flagship store officially opened, mainly selling star gift cards, star enjoy cards and beverage coupons, of which 1999 of the metal black enjoy cards were sold out on the first day of business. Starbucks achieves online and store experience through Tmall's flagship store.

"Weibo is very good at social marketing. It is the most successful of all restaurants in the Starbucks era, so it has a strong community around which to sell a lot of things, card coupons and a lot of related products." Tian Guangli told China Business Daily that not opening outlets means that companies cannot benefit from the Internet or from operating fans. Both WeChat and Taobao platforms can turn their fans into revenue at any time.