Is the development prospect of diffuse coffee good? introduction to the coffee industry

According to statistics, there are 13600 cafes in China, and this number is growing every day, and the growth rate of the Beijing market is as high as 18%. In Hangzhou, more than 10 new coffee shops opened in May, while the average number of new coffee shops in Hangzhou was only 20,30 in previous years, according to statistics from the Hangzhou Coffee Western Food Association.

The cafe industry in China is really hot. But is this a demand explosion that has been accumulated for years, or is it a market bubble?

The surviving pathfinder

Turning the clock back 15 years, cafes were not even a business in Beijing at that time, because for most Chinese, cafes were a place far away from their lives.

It was at that time that Zhuang opened the first carving time Cafe on Chengfu Street at the east gate of Peking University, selling freshly ground coffee. At that time, like most Chinese, Zhuang didn't know much about making coffee, and sometimes he had to rely on foreigners who came to the store to guide him from time to time. This is Beijing in 1997.

Big Cat, a barista at fisheye Cafe, came into contact with freshly ground coffee as early as the 1990s, thanks to his work experience in a foreign company. "at that time, coffee powder could only be bought at the Friendship Mall and was packed in the same jar as milk powder, each costing one or two hundred yuan. Coffee pots are even more difficult to buy. They are all imported. A smallest American coffee pot costs 300 to 400 yuan, which is equivalent to a month's salary. " Big Cat recalled, "to talk with friends, either to the teahouse or to the bar in Sanlitun, there is really no coffee shop to go to."

Shangdao Coffee, which originated from Taiwan, also entered Hainan in 1997 and expanded rapidly in the form of a chain franchise. so far, there are more than 1300 stores all over the country. Before Starbucks entered, it accounted for 90% of the Chinese coffee shop market. But strictly speaking, Shangdao Coffee is not a real cafe. Shangdao Coffee not only sells coffee, but also sells a variety of tea drinks in pots. There are all kinds of Chinese rice in the food, rather than desserts and sandwiches in ordinary cafes. The layout is mainly private rooms, not the open space of ordinary cafes.

The coffee shop really entered the life of the Chinese people from the time Starbucks entered the Chinese market in 1999. In addition to selling coffee, Starbucks has spared no effort to convey the "coffee culture" to the Chinese people and to cultivate the habit of drinking coffee among Chinese young people.

"Starbucks brand is better than coffee," founder Schultz wrote in his autobiography, "putting your Heart into it." It aims to provide consumers with a sense of romance. This romantic feeling is reflected in the romantic color Starbucks gives to coffee beans and makes everything in the store romantic and pleasant: jazz, art photos posted on the wall, the style of chairs. This kind of "romance" was labeled as "petty bourgeoisie" by the Chinese in the early days, and it has a fatal attraction to Chinese young people in the new era.

"in China, in the past 10 years, because of the painstaking efforts of pathfinders such as Starbucks and Costa, a wave of people have developed the habit of drinking coffee and the habit of labeling themselves with coffee, and their spiritual and material enjoyment has become labelled." Wang Jiang, an investor in "Lian Coffee", a delivery coffee service, summarizes. He is also known as dynamic Tianhui CEO, a mobile Internet app developer whose app flight butler was recently bought by Ctrip with a rumored investment of no less than Rmb100m.

An interesting phenomenon is that carving time, Shangdao Coffee and Starbucks, the pathfinders of the Chinese cafe industry, have all survived, which is rare in other industries.

Mobile Internet promotes the third Space

Cafes are becoming less and less of a place to drink coffee.

"there is no place in China to sit down and chat with friends," Xin Zixiang believes. Even if there is no coffee, there will be other cafes to provide such a place known as the "third space."

"there are teahouses in China, but the prices of tea in teahouses vary greatly, ranging from a few hundred yuan to dozens of yuan per cup, so which one would you like to invite someone to drink tea to? This is a very complicated problem. " Xin Zixiang said that coffee is different, a cup of coffee is dozens of yuan, everyone knows this price before going in, there is no burden.

Chuang Shih-li has summed up the secrets of cafes. He believes that "openness and communication are the basic rules in cafes."

On this point, Douban company CEO Abei has an analogy. "I always think Douban is like an online 'carving time,'" he said. People like cafes not because the coffee is the best in the world, or because the food is the best in the world, just because it creates a space where you can sit down and talk.

Over the years, social networks such as Douban and Weibo have been working to create a social space on the Internet in which people have relationships that need a physical space to host, and cafes are the most similar form. With the emergence of Wechat, this kind of migration becomes more convenient and faster.

Wang Jiang now has a new way to organize the game, that is, send a message on Wechat, "Tonight at XX, let's talk about the cafe. If you want to come, leave a message below." after a while, several people signed up. In addition, Wechat can also be very convenient to set up groups, which is very suitable for organizing multi-person parties.

The development of mobile Internet not only makes the communication between people more frequent, but also changes people's office habits.

"rice book" is a mobile Internet start-up company, they rent a more than 100 square meters office in Jianwai SOHO, which is very comfortable. A large open room with several desks in the middle, all of which bring their own computers to work. The most conspicuous is a group of green sofas by the floor-to-ceiling window, where they often rest and have meetings. Even so, they often go to the zoo downstairs for coffee and work overtime in a cafe every Sunday afternoon.

In recent years, young people no longer like the traditional "partitioned" office environment because it is very depressing and not conducive to communication. They prefer an open office environment such as a coffee shop.

In 2011, Cisco conducted a survey on the current situation of mobile office. The report shows that mobile office work has become a common phenomenon in most enterprises. 32% of employees rely on at least one mobile device during the day. The increasingly smooth 3G and WiFi wireless networks and ubiquitous cloud services make it convenient and efficient for them to work at home, in hotels and even on trains and cars, with no geographical restrictions, no time for themselves, and no restrictions on not being able to work without the office before.

According to IDC, 800m employees in the Asia-Pacific region will be mobile by 2015. The latest Gartner report predicts that about half of the world's enterprises will launch the BYOD (bring your own device) program by 2017 and will no longer provide computing devices to employees.

"We have sockets under each desk and provide multiple WiFi networks." Xin Zixiang told "Commercial value". In order to meet this mobile office demand, the tables of the coffee (special topic reading) are very large, and the chairs are soft and comfortable. "the Starbucks table is too small. If you put a glass of water and a computer, you will find that it is very cramped and worried that it will spill over."

Is it a good business?

Although cafes are hot, not every cafe is a good business.

"60%-70% of stores that sell coffee alone close down in the first year," says Big Cat, citing the data he got from coffee maker suppliers. Independent coffee shops need to buy coffee machines from domestic coffee machine suppliers, but according to the suppliers, in the year after the coffee machines were sold, many people came to ask for help selling second-hand machines.

"the survival of fisheye is actually a very special thing, and there is an element of luck, because Sanlitun Village offered a relatively favorable rental price at that time." However, the rent has risen to the point where fisheye cannot afford it this year, so I had to move to Sanlitun SOHO, which has a lower rent, not long ago. Even so, according to Big Cat, fisheye has not made any money in recent years, so it can only be guaranteed to break even.

The situation of start-up cafes that focus on market segments is not optimistic either. Mobile Technology has reported on nearly 20 start-up cafes in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou, most of which opened at the end of 2011 or early 2012, but with the exception of Guangzhou Beta, none of the other cafes are profitable.

There have also been frequent reports of cafes closing down in various places. At present, Xiamen has far more than 2000 cafes, large and small, making it one of the cities with the highest coffee shop density in China. But at the same time, the vast majority of Xiamen cafes are in a state of loss, and no more than 30% of them are really profitable.

In Qingdao, statistics show that there were 300 cafes in 2012, but eight of the 10 cafes were losing money and 10% closed down every year.

Xin Zixiang believes that the reason for this is because of the consumption habits of the Chinese people. "in the United States, I go to Starbucks to order a sandwich and a cup of coffee for breakfast, and then I want to drink it again in the office a few hours later, just like Chinese hot pot. South Korea or China are not so addicted as in the United States that they can't do without coffee for a day. "

Starbucks' business model is to open stores in densely populated places and win by volume every day. It is reported that Starbucks' first store in Jinan once set a record of selling 3000 cups of coffee a day, which is unthinkable and unattainable for any other cafe.

For most cafes, it is not enough to sell coffee.

The expansion rate of diffuse coffee is so amazing that it is even called a "phenomenon" by some people. According to Xinzi, a store with an investment of 2 million can recoup its cost within two years, while its profit margin is as high as 30% to 40%, which is much higher than Starbucks' 9.5%. All this is actually very simple, in diffuse coffee, the best selling product is not coffee, but Chocolate Muffins. A muffin costs 38 yuan, the price is higher than coffee, but the cost is much lower than coffee.

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"in fact, Man Coffee is more like a restaurant, where three meals a day, including afternoon tea, can be served. Why do you still call it a cafe? why not just call it a restaurant? Because coffee is a pricing tag, thanks to Starbucks, the price of 30 yuan for a cup of coffee is accepted by the Chinese. In that case, if I open a coffee shop and sell coffee for 30 yuan, the food can be sold for 50 or 60 yuan, and the Arpu value is very high. " Wang Jiang made a point. As an investor in Lian Coffee, a coffee delivery service, he has a lot of research on the coffee industry.