Reporter | Liu Yujing
Nestlé's instant coffee product line has recently added a new product that is quite summer: fruit and coffee fruit extract series instant coffee, which comes in three flavors: peach, coconut pineapple and green apple.
This instant coffee breaks some of the characteristics of traditional instant coffee – such as having to be brewed in hot water and the taste mostly revolving around milk. The new Fruit Extract Series Instant Coffee can be brewed directly in cold water, green apple flavors can be directly prepared with ice water or sparkling water, and peach flavors can be mixed with ice after a small amount of hot water.
This is also Nestlé's localization innovation in the Chinese market, and its co-developer is the Tmall Innovation Center. The target customer base of this product is relatively young - according to the preliminary market research data released by Nestlé, the annual sales of multi-flavor coffee products on the e-commerce platform increased rapidly in 2018, with an increase of nearly 70%, and young Chinese consumers are most likely to try fresh and unique flavors.
Previously, Ge Wen, senior vice president of Nestlé's coffee business in Greater China, also introduced to Interface News that the special fruit extract series products are mainly aimed at young consumers who like fresh taste, pouring sparkling water or adding ice after brewing with hot water, the taste will be richer. This series of products is mainly launched for summer, and Nestlé will follow this series again after entering winter.
Instant coffee has always been an important product line for Nestlé in the Chinese market, and this category is also facing innovation. In fact, the growth of China's instant coffee market has not slowed down, in fact, all coffee categories in the Chinese market are growing, including instant coffee.
Not long ago, at the FBIF 2019 Food and Beverage Innovation Forum, Nestlé's chief marketing officer in Greater China, Jiang Nini, also mentioned that the company's problem in the first two years was that "product updates were too slow to catch up with the needs of Chinese consumers", and this year Nestlé plans to launch 170 new products and shorten the process of products from concept to market - the goal is six to eight months. This fruit-brewing range of coffees is one of the results of its new innovation strategy.
The trend of fruity water mixing with coffee has long been popular in the coffee catering chain channel, which is also a new product development trend in the coffee catering industry in recent years.
This year, Starbucks launched 8 new "play ice tone" products in China, many of which are fruity, sparkling water, cold brew coffee collocation, such as sour lemon float cold extract is cold brew coffee with lemon juice and maple whiskey flavor; gas iceberg American style has espresso, soda, and lemon, drinking is very summer. Costa Coffee also recently launched this year's new products - pineapple bubble cold brew ice coffee and strawberry Dai Geely cold ice coffee, which are also a combination of fruit and iced coffee.
At the end of last year, Nestlé listed ready-to-drink cold brew coffee in the Chinese market, which was misaligned with non-cold brew coffee of about 5 yuan, focusing on high-end consumer groups and selling for about 14 yuan. The new fruit extract series instant coffee is priced at 20 yuan per box, and the average price of each instant coffee (15 grams) is 2.5 yuan, which can be aimed at more young and price-sensitive groups.