Internet + Coffee is sold in a car. Wheelys Coffee says that he is actually a technology company.

The sales volume of China's coffee market reached 70 billion yuan in 2015, is expected to reach 300 billion in 2020, and is expected to exceed 1 trillion in 2025. According to the London International Coffee Organization, China's coffee market is growing at an annual rate of 15%, while the global market is growing at an average rate of 2%. European and American countries consume about 500 cups of coffee per person per year, while the figure in China is only 4%. There is still a lot of room for growth in China's coffee market.

36 Krypton once reported on Wheelys Coffee, a Silicon Valley coffee brand. Unlike the traditional coffee shop chain, Wheelys coffee is carried by modified, fully functional tricycles. Coffee carts are mobile and sell as you go. Founded more than two years ago, Wheelys Coffee has covered more than 70 countries and regions around the world.

Wheelys Coffee also entered China in April 2016. Unlike the role of "mobile coffee stations" in other countries, Wheelys coffee cars are mostly located in indoor fixed areas such as office buildings, schools and shopping malls. Wheelys China CEO Bai Xiaofan told 36 krypton that morning peak demand for coffee is strong, accounting for 1/3 of total sales; demand weakens after 5 p.m. Coffee trucks arranged in shopping malls are limited to the business hours from 10:00 to 10:00, so they are less efficient. In contrast, not only the rent of the office building is low (the mall rent is 3-5 times that of the office space), the business hours are more flexible, and for a fixed group of white-collar workers, the demand is more direct, and the habit is easy to develop.

One of the problems facing the catering industry in the past few years is the rise in operating costs, one is rent, the other is manpower. The biggest advantage of Wheelys Coffee lies in its coffee car operation mode, each point only needs 10-15 square meters of space, 2-3 employees, saving a considerable fixed cost. The reduced operating costs can be used to subsidize the raw material costs of coffee, reflected in the end consumers, can enjoy both quality and price advantages of coffee.

The main category of Wheelys coffee is Italian coffee, and there are also three types of hand-brewed coffee from different places. The platform is priced uniformly, with an average of 25 yuan per cup, and each operator has the promotion right. The speed of espresso can be controlled at 45 seconds to 1 minute, and hand coffee can be brewed for about 2.5-3 minutes. Wheelys Coffee adopts cashless transaction, and order payment is completed through the system.

Intelligent system is another advantage of Wheelys coffee. According to Bai Xiaofan, the integrated system connects consumers, operators, supply chains and platforms, including client, merchant and backstage. Clients include Wechat and Android platforms, and the IOS version will also be officially launched in the near future. Consumers can use their mobile phones to find the nearest Wheelys smart mobile coffee car, make an online reservation and pick it up on their own. For example, consumers can order in advance on the way to work, and after the cup time is set to 13 minutes, the system will automatically prompt the barista to make it 11 minutes later. Consumers can take them directly to the downstairs of the company to avoid waiting in line. After many orders are placed, the system will become smarter and smarter. It is familiar with each consumer's spending habits, what to drink on Monday, what to drink on Friday, with sugar or less ice, and consumers can choose to place an order with one click.

On the merchant side, the system mainly has four functions: the first is to take orders, the second is intelligent sorting (telling the barista which cup to make first), the third is customer management, and the fourth is inventory management. The coffee raw materials of all operators are imported from abroad and delivered uniformly by the platform. According to the previous sales situation, the system automatically judges that the inventory has reached the warning value, and reminds the replenishment and recommends how much to replenish. Bai Xiaofan said that in the follow-up, there will be more intelligent calculations, seasonal impact, user preferences, the system can help operators make better business decisions.

In addition, there is a backstage system that can connect suppliers, who can prepare and deliver goods in time after receiving orders from operators; they can also connect to third-party takeout platforms, where operators do not need to do e-commerce management, as long as they take orders and make coffee. the sales channel is managed by the platform.

In the quality control of coffee, Bai Xiaofan believes that there are several points to be grasped in the process. The first is the raw materials, which are unified by the platform, and the second is the production, including the coffee machine and the barista. since the coffee machine itself is unified, the focus is on the training of baristas. Wheelys has its own training system and SOP, both online and offline, and provides continuous training to operators for a long time to ensure the taste of coffee.

Bai Xiaofan said that the next step is to develop non-coffee products with cars as carriers, such as tea drinks and cakes, so that operators can have other hands to cut into the light food industry. Wheelys hopes to provide these operators with product, technology, market and supply chain support, help them get customers, optimize the supply chain, payment system, membership system, operation strategy, and achieve light entrepreneurship.

Wheelys Coffee operates independently in China, but will cooperate with the headquarters to carry out some of new business type's research and development, such as unmanned stores, mobile unmanned buses and so on. Prior to this, Wheelys has already conducted a system test, but the technology still needs to be polished and the launch date is uncertain.

According to the information provided by the team, there are currently 18 coffee trucks operating regularly in China, covering seven cities, including Shanghai, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Suzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu and Qingdao, as well as five or six in Taiwan. Next, the company will strengthen its layout in various cities, mainly in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, as well as mainstream second-tier cities, and plans to add 20 new coffee trucks by the end of June this year. Operating for more than half a year, the total order volume of the platform is about 100000, and the gross profit of the operator is 75%. At present, there are nearly 50 members of the Chinese team, of which more than half are technicians.

In recent years, foreign brands such as Starbucks and costa have slowly cultivated Chinese interest in coffee, but traditional cafes have many problems, such as overweight asset structure, large upfront investment, high operating costs, long profit cycle and so on. People began to pay attention to lighter operating models, such as 36 krypton, which specifically discussed coffee vending machines that are convenient, efficient, low-cost and profitable. Whether it is vending machines or coffee cars, the extent to which low prices and convenience can replace other functions (brand or social) of cafes in terms of the needs of Chinese consumers has yet to be tested.