No coffee, no "convenience"?

It is said that coffee may become a new blue ocean for convenience stores to increase profits after the lunch box and bento business.

Convenience stores are moving into the coffee market, and the fourth-generation store model of the whole family has "loaded" coffee bars into convenience stores, which may have a great impact on coffee stores such as Starbucks and Costa. Coffee is likely to become a new competitive blue ocean for convenience stores to improve their efficiency and profits after lunch box and lunch business.

On the one hand, convenience stores can compete with most retail formats, convenience stores can not only carry out catering business, but also sell fresh, but also do value-added services. In theory, convenience stores closest to consumers can "cut down" most of consumers' demand for goods and services; on the other hand, rising rent and labor costs have led to joining convenience stores, which need to continuously improve the flat efficiency of single stores to support the chain system.

Put the coffee shop in the convenience store

The first store of the fourth generation of the whole family is located at 63 Chifeng Road, Shanghai. The store site is a typical university campus site, located opposite the gate of Tongji University, and the main customer groups are students. The shop is the new outfit of the family's three generations of old stores. The area of the visual store is 120 Murray 200 square meters.

Compared with the expansion of the dining area of the third-generation store of the whole family, the fourth-generation store of the whole family not only further expands the area of the dining area, but also directly upgrades the dining area into a miniature version of the cafe, but also appears to be younger. To upgrade the dining area to a coffee shop, first, the coffee market is growing rapidly and is becoming a social, leisure and lifestyle for young people. Second, it strengthens the value of the store community. It can produce stickiness to young users. Third, the gross margin is good. The gross margin of coffee and fresh food is very good, which can drive the performance of the store.

After the upgrading of the price and taste of coffee products, the fourth-generation store model upgraded is to create a place for one party to make emotional contact with consumers through a high-pressure coffee break bar in addition to giving convenient coffee sales.

A new way to improve the brand height

At present, the market perception of the whole family is still a convenience store. But the whole family is doing two things at the moment. First, the whole family is vigorously promoting its subordinate brand of guest coffee. At present, the price of coffee is mainly about 10 yuan per cup, obviously, the low price is to create "cognition". If the strategy continues to move forward, it will lead to consumer perception, such as the whole family also selling high-quality coffee. At this time, the trouble for Starbucks, Costa and other professional coffee shops may come.

Some market participants believe that with the layout of more than 1000 stores in the Shanghai market, it is actually a very simple thing for the whole family to lead a fashion and change a perception in the regional market. Just like convenience stores used to sell lunches and box lunches, at first, the market did not think that convenience stores were the place to eat, but now, when consumers look at convenience stores in first-and second-tier cities, they will take it for granted that convenience stores provide bento and lunch boxes.

Secondly, the whole family brand is improving, and when the brand is promoted to a new height, the market effect may come. Convenience store coffee is more and more coincident with Starbucks and Costa, and more of this kind of coffee is mainly a cup of take-out coffee.

Judging from the past market performance, convenience stores can make high-quality goods. For example, fried chicken, which has been launched by convenience stores in overseas markets, has reached the "same grade" taste as KFC.

Try some water for the elasticity of the market

The fourth-generation coffee market of the whole family also faces some challenges and uncertainties. First of all, in the high maturity of the market in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, rent and other costs are too high. Starbucks is able to scale in first-tier cities because Starbucks has a very high profit point per cup of coffee, with a gross profit margin of about 300% per cup of coffee.

Therefore, if the fourth-generation stores of the whole family want to set up coffee lounge areas, such as opening a 200-square-meter store in the middle-and high-end business district, the cost is very high. The current price of coffee offered by the whole family is about half to 1/3 of that of Starbucks, so the bill is not easy to calculate.

However, some market participants believe that the price of coffee supplied by the whole family may be "temporary". "the whole family should first break the market's traditional perception of convenience stores, once consumers' perception changes. The whole family can also develop new varieties of coffee, such as cherry blossom-flavored coffee, or switch to another kind of coffee beans and push up the price at once, for example, up to 15 Murray and 20 yuan per cup.

The information from the whole family store is that the coffee area of the fourth generation store of the whole family will not be as big as the first store on Chifeng Road in Shanghai. The whole family is going to gradually extend the coffee bar style to the whole of Shanghai. The area can be large or small, and the style should be retained.

Finally, consumer research by some convenience store companies shows that about 10% of consumers do not enter the store because they do not have seats and leisure areas. Because there is no delicious food, and do not enter the store accounted for about 60%. Therefore, the improvement of the entry rate of the whole family coffee bar experiment also requires continuous observation of its future operation.