Can new imaginations emerge on the milk tea track?
On the first floor of Changsha Backgammon Meixi Lake Xintiandi, the second store of Tea Grandma's Handmade Tea Shop opened here.
The store has only been open for a month, and the dining area on the left has been completely occupied by a long queue. From two o'clock in the afternoon to the end of the visit at ten o'clock, the long queue has not been broken. Some customers commented: "After drinking it once, the only difference between milk tea in my mind is Chagrandma and other brands."
A year ago, Wen Guoqiang, the founder of Tea Grandma, brought back a supply chain of buffalo milk from Guangxi, and only provided the most suitable raw materials for the process they developed. "Craftsmanship is our value point, and product power is our foundation, so we must maximize product power."
From 2022 to July 2023, in Changsha, a new consumption capital, under the competition of many well-known new tea brands, Wen Guoqiang and his team have successively created astonishing results. They have a plan: open 30 stores in Changsha, and then replicate the Changsha model to the whole country.
Handmade, the next value point in the 100 billion market
Why is the new tea industry still changing?
Cups of brewed milk tea can be found in any supermarket, but fresh milk tea shops will still be developed on the street; Taiwanese milk tea was the first to develop, and it was the only choice on the market at that time, but the market share continued to flow to honey that appeared later. Xuebingcheng, a little bit and Heytea.
From brewing with milk tea powder to blending with the original liquid; from using canned fruit to freshly cut fresh fruit. In Wen Guoqiang's view, the development history of the milk tea industry is actually the evolution history of milk tea technology and raw materials.
The consumer market continues to have higher expectations for milk tea products. Therefore, with higher standards, new products that can subvert the perception of milk tea consumers in the past can continue to seize new market shares from other competitors.
At present, the number of new tea drinkers in China has reached 600 million, and the scale has reached 200 billion. Based on a conservative estimate based on the data of the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, the track will still maintain a compound growth rate of about 12% in the future from 2023 to 2028.
In such a 100-billion-level market, what is the next trend-setting product model? Wen Guoqiang drew out a key word "handmade" - in an era when the perception of beverages has generally fallen into industrial production, using handmade To reflect the value of new tea drinks in the production process, this is based on three considerations:
First, the excavation of the value of handmade products is based on the old long-term problems in the industry. Entering the second half of the new tea competition, the pain points of the two major industries have become dominant: product homogeneity is serious, and food safety cannot be guaranteed.
According to the "2023 China Beverage Industry Industry Report" data from Kamen, the top three brands with the fastest new launch rate in 2022 will launch about 100 new products a year. With such a frequency, niche fruits or teas such as "yellow skin", "orange mandarin" and "duck feces fragrance" are also continuously dug out to try to combine raw materials. With no way forward for innovation, the product lists of various companies show a large area of similarity in a seasonal cycle.
In terms of food safety, the new-style tea industry has always been a frequent visitor on the hot search. It has various frequent problems in food safety, food safety, and production processes, and it is always challenging the tight trust line of the market.
Excavating the technological value in drinks at this time can not only bring another standard line of judging besides the material combination to the new tea drinks. The resulting publicity of craftsmanship and the transparent display of craft production will allow the market to trust the brand's food safety.
Second, compared with similar catering forms, the craftsmanship of beverages has always been in a state of mismatched value. Wen Guoqiang believes, "Craftsmanship is an attribute that has been neglected in the new tea industry. Just like evaluating a restaurant, culinary skills are an important indicator. So why should the value of craftsmanship be ignored when it is replaced by freshly made drinks?"
Referring to the past history of product iterations in the new tea drinking industry, we truly create a brand of the next era, similar to Heytea’s cheese milk cap and tea-colored Chinese tea Western-made. The products are all based on such technological breakthroughs. As the most frequent coffee track in the new tea industry, its technological value has long been a part of evaluating drinks, and even precipitated a culture.
Around this broadened idea, Wen Guoqiang reorganized and thought about the raw materials and store models of the new tea drinks. He required that this kind of craftsmanship be clearly perceived by users, thus forming a larger beverage production area of Tea Grandma - like ordering food, customers order one by one, and the employees inside use the technique of "steaming, boiling, frying and beating" to prepare . Use face-to-face production to impact consumers' inherent cognition on beverage production.
Third, the change in the main consumption force of new tea drinks will also bring new opportunities for high-end tea drinks brands. According to Meituan data, the post-90s generation is the main force in consumption in the new tea drink market, accounting for 50.96% of consumers in 2022. The post-00s will grow even more rapidly, with the proportion of consumption increasing from 9.6% in 2020 to 13.42% in 2022, making them the only age group that has grown for three consecutive years.
Due to the help of their parents and the change of concept of buying a house, the new generation has relatively less pressure in life. But at the same time, they have a higher pursuit of their own quality of life, and under the guidance of the concept of health, they are willing to pay for better products.
In the report on “Analysis of User Portraits and Consumption Preferences in the New Tea Drink Industry”, consumers not only pay more and more attention to the taste of tea drinks, but also pay more and more attention to their health. 60.25% of people expressed their rejection of new tea products that use tea powder, and raw leaf tea is more expected by consumers. The market faintly shows a tendency to prefer the handmade mode of on-site processing and reject industrialized semi-finished products.
This part of the consumer group contributed more market share. For example, Naixue has 1,100 stores, with the number of stores accounting for 0.2% of the industry, creating a sales volume of 6.9 billion yuan, accounting for 3.4% of the entire market. The continuous migration of the main consumption force of the new tea drinking track and the change of consumption habits will open up a new pattern for the entire industry.
Make a good product and ask consumers to take a sip
How can a cup of milk tea make consumers feel that it is worth the money?
The first store of Tea Grandma opened in BBK Xingcheng Tiandi Shopping Mall. During the preparations for the opening, a lot of bad news came one after another: accidents at the mall operator, and the recurrence of the epidemic. "I felt cold at the time, and the team also lost confidence, and asked me if I wanted to change places." Wen Guoqiang recalled the situation at that time.
But after the actual business operation, the team quickly returned to stability. The turnover in the first month and the second month was around 100,000 yuan. In the third month, the food delivery platform was opened, and the turnover soared to more than 300,000 yuan. The new tea drinks that compete on the same stage in the mall include well-known brands such as Cha Yan Yue Se, Ning Ji, and Guo Ya Ya. Today, this founding store has become the number one in both the hot list and the popular check-in list of the Dianping beverage store list, and it is also the number one in the milk tea return rate list in Yuhua District on Meituan Waimai.
"The foundation of any form of catering, including drinks, lies in the product." Wen Guoqiang chose to work outside the store to deepen product strength: on the one hand, he improved the handicraft technology, and made a significant difference in taste by using the ancient techniques of steaming, boiling and frying. ; On the other hand, the breakthrough is placed on the upgrading of raw materials.
Wen Guoqiang made a metaphor that the existing new tea drinks are of standard quality in terms of materials, and they guarantee freshness. But the standard of tea grandma is Michelin level. The milk used by the store to make milk tea and ice cream is cold, fresh and short-term water-retaining milk introduced by Wen Guoqiang after researching and finding a way to open a special line. "Their feed is passion fruit peel and sugarcane stalks, and there is a significant difference in taste from milk. And according to market feedback, we negotiated with suppliers many times to lower the fat content of milk, and developed a special supply that is more suitable for new tea drinks Milk."
Another characteristic raw material is Xiaobozi liqueur. "In the beginning, we found Grandma Guo liqueur, a time-honored brand in Changsha, to cooperate with, but later we found out that there was a liqueur with better taste, from a family of intangible cultural heritage in Yiyang, so we transported it in the cold chain to preserve freshness and quality."
For new brands, compared to making good products, it is more difficult to let consumers take a sip of our tea in person. The tea grandma team put the breakthrough in "experience" and "price". "Consumers are not stingy, they are just rational, and hope that the products and services they get are worth the money, which is what everyone often says is cost-effective."
At present, all tea grandma's stores are self-operated, and all of them are large stores with an area of 90 to 110 square meters. Different from the "third space" concept held by traditional large beverage stores, Tea Grandma's investment in space is mainly to improve the user's consumption experience. Half of the store is dedicated to making milk tea, but for customers, it is more like an experience area, and everything displayed inside is novel: mochi starts from pouring milk in the pot, taro puree directly in or The taro cubes start to be steamed, and a glass of milk is poured into it to be beaten into ice cream— here, you can see with your own eyes how all the ingredients you eat are made.
According to the plan, Tea Grandma's current large stores are all located in popular business districts with more people flow, and will also open stores with relatively smaller areas in the future, which will be concentrated in the area to form a dense effect. Take the big with the small, thus forming a complete service model that takes both "experience" and "convenience" into account.
In order to ensure that the experience of this kind of service is not destroyed, Grandma Cha does not plan to develop franchises. And in the face of investment, Wen Guoqiang also maintained a cautious attitude, "If the employer has relevant industry experience, or can empower the existing model, then we can talk about how to make the product better."
The above-mentioned high-quality services and raw materials are not equated with high prices. Tea Grandma did not ignore the pursuit of cost performance. From the perspective of its R&D team, the price and quality of characteristic primary agricultural products in many places are not equal, and some traditional food crafts are also being reshaped in new formats. possibility. Taking Hunan as an example, Anhua's dark tea and Yiyang's Leicha craft, these rare but not expensive raw materials and crafts, have all been included in the research plan of new tea products.
For the follow-up development, "Improving product strength is what we have always done. This is our foundation. Whether it is to optimize the supply chain by contracting orchards, or continue to find better processes." Wen Guoqiang said, but In terms of long-term development, Tea Granny has a vision: through the integration and development of crafts, it hopes to attract the market's attention to intangible cultural heritage culture and new tea drinking crafts based on Chinese tea art.
"We plan to open a museum in the central area, so that children can go in and experience and learn about these crafts and technologies that contain the wisdom of the sages. The concept of milk tea may be an imported product, but the skills and culture we inherit are not."
Wen Guoqiang, life is in sync with the milk tea industry
In the process of founding Tea Grandma, the person Wen Guoqiang learned the most from was his past self.
Wen Guoqiang, born in Yiyang, Hunan in 1981, is the youngest of five siblings in his family. His family environment is not good, and he has to share the labor at home since he was a child, but even so, his grades have always been among the best.
At the age of 15, after finishing his second year of junior high school, Wen Guoqiang decided to drop out of school and follow the tide of migrant workers in the village to go south. "Before I left, all I remembered was the poverty at home, and my mother's waist was bent parallel to the ground at that time."
In 1991, milk tea made with powder and coconut fruit became popular in schools and night markets in Taiwan. By 1999, milk tea had become a rather novel drink in the Pearl River Delta in the Mainland and western restaurants in developed coastal cities. But because the production process is not complicated, milk tea also appears in the streets and alleys - a kind of milk tea cart without a seat, which is sold in the form of take-out, which is high in quality and low in price.
Wen Guoqiang was working two jobs at the time, working as a bartender at a steakhouse during the day and at another coffee shop at night. At that time, there was a milk tea shop nearby that was selling milk tea, and the queue was very busy. Wen Guoqiang was curious and bought a cup, and tried to imitate it according to the taste.
The first day was 570 yuan, the second day was 1170 yuan, and the third day was 1734 yuan. More than 20 years later, Wen Guoqiang could still blurt out the turnover of those three days. At that time, his monthly salary in the coffee shop was only 700 yuan. .
Relying on this wave of milk tea, Wen Guoqiang collected the surgery fee for his mother. The follow-up development is logical, "If a person is too busy, he will recruit people to do it, and if he takes apprentices, it will evolve into a franchise. When you have more franchisees, you will want to find better products. , so that I have also included the upstream supply chain links.”
When Wen Guoqiang returned to Hunan after 2000, he had already become the general agent of Taiwanese milk tea in the local area. At that time, he provided the raw materials for almost all brands of milk tea on the market. In addition, he also built an ice-making factory by himself. Controlled the Changsha milk tea market at that time from the upstream.
Wen Guoqiang commented on himself at the time, with strong execution ability and good business intuition. He moved his franchise model of renting snack trucks in Hainan to Changsha, and it has done quite well. Since milk tea has an obvious off-peak season in Changsha, many innovations have been made in sales methods and products, such as "selling glutinous corn with rice cookers" and "opening Shangwei small stations at the entrance of large supermarkets". These have almost become the methods that later people are vying to imitate. In the large supermarkets in Changsha, there is almost a gourmet shop at the door; there are vendors everywhere in the streets and alleys with rice cookers and covered with a piece of white cloth to sell glutinous corn. These peculiar landscapes have become the exclusive memories of Changsha locals.
From 2012 to 2018, Wen Guoqiang entered a period of high-speed charging. "It's always a pity for me that I haven't finished my studies. Maybe I have succeeded in a certain standard, and I have been doing well. But I always have a sense of crisis, that is, the more you do it, the more profound you will be. Be aware of the gaps created by your own inadequacies."
At the same time, Wen Guoqiang's management in the hotel has also achieved success. Coincidentally, this time is also the golden five years of rapid growth of the new tea industry. "My ability is in sync with the development of this industry."
But in growing up, Wen Guoqiang also lost something. The new milk tea industry that has grown up is no longer facing customers of the same age as Wen Guoqiang, but the post-90s and even post-00s.
Wen Guoqiang is not afraid to deal with this group of younger people, "I was young too, but have they been old?" But he also has to admit that young people understand young users better, and he thinks of his young self. So a young professional team was built, the leader of which, either has experience in independent brand management, or is a young manager from McDonald's, they are full of ideas like Wen Guoqiang in his youth, dare to Dare to fight, want to create a new thing that can bring some shocks to the industry.
This is a young team, and Wen Guoqiang is willing to let the best of them take on more important responsibilities. And he was on the side, using the experience of those who have experienced it, as well as his thinking about the industry as a whole, to control the direction.
"I'm still learning from my past self, but at the same time I know exactly what kind of help my past self needs - they are responsible for finding the users of the product, and I am responsible for finding the root of the product."
Source: Songuo Finance