Text | Dedication Edit | Zhao Jin Typography | Sawa
Chinese is becoming more and more "self-help" about drinking coffee.
Cafes are still those cafes - concentrated in Shanghai Wukang Road, Huaihai Middle Road, Beijing Drum Tower and other leisurely areas, importing the most flavorful raw beans, baking, grinding, fancy punching on the spot to create a fresh olfactory experience. Starbucks is also the same Starbucks - people here enjoy the relaxation of a third space outside of work and daily life.
But more people are starting to drink coffee in their own space and time. Luckin used the phrase "Are you drinking coffee, or a café?" The declaration dispels the charm of "sitting in a café".
The data shows that more than half of today's brick-and-mortar coffee consumers buy by picking up and taking them out. There are also more coffee customers who are no longer stuck in fresh grinding, and start to diy at home: the popularity of capsule coffee machines such as Nespresso, as well as the popularity of online raw coffees such as three and a half meals and Yongpu, with fire instant, capsules, ear hangings, coffee liquid and other specialty coffees that do not require complex grinding- hand-punching - filtration equipment.
The concept of coffee has expanded in the minds of more and more consumers to "have a drink at home, in the office, and on the go"; the occasional consumption of going to a café has become a frequent "home travel essential".
Fancy is also less elaborate. Lattes, cappuccinos — words that once represented petty bourgeoisie — began to be tied to calories, and as the frequency of consumption increased, coffee customers turned to unsweetened and milky, healthy, suitable for daily drinking black coffee.
According to the "2019 China Coffee Consumption Trend" report released by CBNData and Tmall, the consumption growth rate of sugar-free black coffee is higher than that of the overall coffee category.
The coffee market has undoubtedly "sunk" - the price of drinking coffee has dropped from 20 or 30 to 2-7 yuan per cup, and consumers have begun not to pay for space and flowers.
At the same time, the taste of coffee has "risen" - within each coffee category, consumers have higher requirements for flavor and taste. Consumers learn to choose from a wide range of options: which one is better? Which one does you prefer? Specialty coffee – a few types of coffee beans with local flavors cultivated under specific natural conditions, a cup of black coffee made of roasting and extraction methods suitable for this bean – have become the final destination of many coffee customers, and even Luckin, who is good at playing low-priced cards, has begun to sell SCA boutique Yega Shefi black coffee.
On December 10, MILAN GOLD Golden Milan Coffee released the brand vision designed by Japanese design master Kenya Hara, and the 25-year-old domestic coffee brand officially entered the coffee retail.
Today's coffee users, drinking freshly ground in cafes, begin to study the types of beans, roasting, and brewing methods.
The figure is convenient for drinking instant, upgraded to a capsule, hanging ear, cold extract and other black coffee options that can better restore the flavor of the coffee beans themselves.
Like to explore the flavor, start grinding coffee beans at home, research "180 ways to make coffee by hand"...
Between sinking and rising, it exposes a wider space for consumer psychological needs - each cup of coffee has a different flavor, and each form of coffee drinking has a different meaning, and coffee customers choose from each other according to their unique preferences.
China, who is drinking black coffee? What kind of black coffee can make them addictive?
Young people (post-85-95), especially women.
This is a generation that has been swept into an unprecedented fast-paced life, with a trapped word written on the door of the brain every day; this is also a generation of extremely demanding self-esteem, who want to face life spiritually and delicately.
Coffee can be a functional drink that refreshes the mind, reduces swelling and loses weight, or it can be a rich aromatic, seductive and addictive sensory enjoyment, and it can represent a "leisure time coffee" quality life.
Few commodities are as readily available as coffee that meet the functional, sensory, and cultural needs of this generation.
The "2020 Online Coffee Market Consumer Insight Report" released by CBNData and Tmall combines the information of other online commodity consumption to conclude that senior middle-class, cutting-edge white-collar workers, and exquisite mothers are the backbone of coffee consumption.
These groups skillfully dissolve stress and fatigue in experiential consumption, and use caffeine and coffee aromas to bring small blessings back to life.
The post-90s and post-95 markets have the fastest growth rate, stemming from the enthusiasm of young people for exploring fresh tastes and their enthusiasm for the trend marketing of coffee brands in recent years.
What black coffee to drink?
There are a thousand kinds of coffee in the eyes of a thousand people, and in the rapidly developing coffee market, maybe this thousand kinds can get you. What "black" is most addictive to different people?
Contemporary people sometimes feel really sleepy, and sometimes sleepiness is "feeling trapped", but no matter what, a cup of coffee in your hand can make you feel that you have made an effort to make yourself more energetic and at ease.
Internet coffee chains such as Luckin and Lian Coffee, which mainly attack the white-collar market, emphasize the functional needs of coffee to refresh the brain. To this end, they compete in "convenience" by laying more take-out outlets in order to provide a quick solution to the "dilemma".
Specialty coffee, whether instant or liquid, can be drunk at home and in the office, and the first thing to meet is the need for a quick refreshment. Z, a university teacher who recently drank UCC instant coffee to catch up with the progress of teaching and research, said that the main reason for drinking this coffee is that it saves time compared to hand brewing and is cheaper than takeaway coffee.
And people who rush to drink coffee with a refreshing function do not pick a brand - "mainly depends on what brand is engaged in activities in a certain east." Z said so.
As long as there is caffeine, it is best to give me another reason to choose you - popularity, open screen ads, discounts, eye edges are all possible.
The promotion of KFC's instant coffee on the Little Red Book has found Yang Tianzhen. "It's 12 o'clock in the evening, I'm writing a book, I really have to have a cup of coffee," the girl who dared to fight, dare to say, and was fierce introduced in the video.
Coffee stimulates nerves and becomes addictive, not everyone will pour a cup of thick and bitter instant black coffee at 12 midnight, and people who do this often work under high pressure to get their "strong" nerves and tastes back, like a battle-hardened warrior, with a cup of black coffee on hand is their Browning.
Relying on black coffee to survive - the surface of the "spirit" and the little sour hardship hidden behind it are also the unique social signals that the white-collar workers who drink black coffee want to convey.
Coffee itself is a flavor product, and "good taste" is the basic need of anyone to drink coffee. Coffee customers who pay attention to taste are not so much choosing brands as beans.
People who are addicted to black coffee are fascinated by its charming aroma and rich taste. Scientists have found a thousand fragrant substances in coffee, and different regions and varieties of coffee have different flavors. However, coffee's aromatic substances are easily volatile – and that's where the aroma of coffee we smell comes from. Once the roasted coffee beans are ground, the chemical components contained in them will change in taste, become sour, and even produce a spoiled taste when they come into contact with the air. Therefore, the "freshly ground" drinking method is the benchmark for the complete tasting of coffee flavor.
Perennial coffee drinking exercises the sense of taste, the coffee taste perception is becoming more and more acute senior coffee customers hope to taste the original taste of coffee, according to CBNData "report", "habitual coffee" coffee customers care more: fruity coffee can activate their taste nerves, compared to, sour coffee will make them feel sensitive, mind.
So people who are used to drinking black coffee are slowly moving towards specialty coffee shops and specialty coffee takeaways in first- and second-tier cities like Seesaw – with their taste buds that are "broken". There, they learned that the same coffee bean, different degrees of roasting, thickness and grinding, brewing methods of the coffee flavor are different, of which the variety of meanings is more fascinating.
So some of them began to search for specialty coffee cooked beans such as blue mountains, Yega Shefi, Arabica, Yunnan, etc., freshly ground and hand-brewed at home, and explored the taste map between the coffee belts of the Tropic of Cancer. Lavazza, Uncle Bean, Fisher, MILAN GOLD, and %, which serve these cooked beans, are the brands they frequent.
When there is no time to grind the punch, capsules and hanging ears are also good convenience options.
Both of these can store freshly ground coffee powder anaerobically, completely preserving the original taste of the coffee beans. It is necessary to equip capsules with capsule coffee machines for brewing, and the taste of each cup is very stable and not inferior to that of the café; and the hanging ear coffee with portable filter paper (hanging ear) needs to be brewed by the coffee customer to obtain a better flavor. The capsule coffee market, which costs 5-7 yuan per cup, is led by Nestlé's Nespresso and Dolce Gusto.
Hanging ears are not limited by machinery and equipment, and there are more choices. Most of the above-mentioned brands selling specialty coffee beans also sell hanging ears, and some boutique coffee shops in first- and second-tier cities will also fill the ground coffee beans and make their own ears. There are also instant brands Sumidagawa and Luckin "Uplink" to do ear hanging, introducing specialty coffee to users of fast food coffee.
Whether it is coffee beans or capsules, hanging ears, specialty coffee will have a detailed introduction to the variety and flavor of coffee, and consumers will quickly understand their taste preferences. Some people like the "taste of medium and deep baking, caramel nut wine aroma sequence", and some people tend to "bitter, fragrant, sour" heavy baking taste.
As the base of coffee drinkers grows larger, the specialty coffee movement is in full swing in China, and coffee brands invest in product iteration and customer education (think Starbucks Reserve), the once niche group of specialty coffee customers is rapidly expanding, and Chinese consumers are drinking more and more coffee. Instant coffee, which is bitter and bitter and needs to be flavored with milk sugar, once occupied 70% of the market share, but its sales are declining year after year, and the growth rate is prominent, replaced by filter hanging and capsule coffee.
For a long time, drinking coffee has been a symbol of "exquisite life", and in recent years, the low-price competition of Internet coffee brands has not been able to make it "rough".
Ultimately, it is because the psychological need for coffee is inseparable from the "hope" - to be more energetic, to drink better, to taste more different flavors - it is these small wishes that build the pursuit of a "noodle" life.
The aroma of coffee is enough to attract the mind of the moment of sipping, to let people withdraw from life and work for a short time, and this moment of leisure is itself a luxury. "Drinking coffee gives you a very relaxed, lazy feeling." G, a bar owner who likes to grind eight square beans at home, recalls why he first fell in love with coffee.
"It is not drinking coffee and not sleepy, it is normal, but now I still drink a cup a day, and now I feel that there are more psychological factors, and I always feel that drinking a cup of coffee has a feeling that can calm the soul." Y, a new mother who has drunk coffee for more than a decade and once likes to make cafes, said.
As a result, coffee also attracts many people who have a sense of ritual in life. CBNData's "Report" portraits of "petty bourgeois" coffee customers who "like the coffee shop environment": they also like to buy items such as aromatherapy, flowers, refrigerator deodorants, multi-functional blenders and other items to improve the quality of life, and coffee will choose to brew and feel coffee and other appearance and taste are online, focusing on the unique flavor experience of the ear.
Instant coffee three and a half meals is from the lower kitchen APP, accurately benchmarking this customer base.
Boutique instant coffees such as Santo-Han, Yongpu, Sumidagawa, Tastelab, etc., are the most convenient and ready-to-drink options in all coffee categories while using specialty coffee beans to ensure quality. These brands specialize in lyophilized powders or cold brew coffee liquids, which can dissolve in three seconds in liquids at different temperatures, and three and a half meals promote "everything is soluble" - ice water, soda water, coconut water... They have allowed specialty coffees to travel from home to the road and office, have a wider spread scene, and quickly attract a wave of consumers who did not often drink coffee.
Although instant coffee is not the optimal choice in terms of taste, they have found another breakthrough for those who pursue exquisite life - "ritualization" itself:
The Recipes of "Sumidagawa Coffee Ice Cream" and "Yongpu Coffee Golden Tonic Special" are widely circulated on the Little Red Book – the coffee here is the catalyst and companion of young people's ritual of "washing their hands to make soup and then sending it to social media". Three and a half meals also launched the "Homecoming Program" for recycling empty bottles: setting up a return point in a café or art space to encourage consumers to bring empty coffee bottles to recycle to redeem points. "Going to the return point" with a very designed vial is a very ritual in itself, attracting many users to record it – and then post it on social media.
The characteristics of three and a half instant coffees "convenient brewing, all things are soluble" greatly reduce the space and time limits for drinking coffee, so that it is organically integrated into the consumer's creative life and the ritual of sustainable life itself, which also produces a high user interaction rate and stickiness, which is a fresh way of playing coffee.
However, for coffee, which is a fast moving consumer product, the brand is a weak preference: if there is a cross-border joint brand, new product launch and other activities, consumers will be briefly attracted, but after the wind blows, people will still return to the coffee that they prefer the most and drink the most.
It's hard to be an evergreen coffee brand.
Before the brand traffic is exhausted, which one can really capture the hearts of coffee customers for a long time?
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