Can milk tea be the next blockbuster?
Text | New Consumption of Alcohol and Food (ID: JSXXF521)
What drinks are the hottest in 2020? There is no doubt about it - Yuanqi Forest!
With a bottle of sparkling water featuring "0 fat 0 sugar 0 calories", it has brought great influence to the Chinese beverage market, "health", "zero sugar", "high value" has become the most widely known label of Yuanqi Forest, and has also become the direction of many large, medium, and small beverage companies to develop new products.
New consumption of wine and food learned that in addition to sparkling water, Yuanqi Forest has also applied "0 fat 0 sugar 0 card" to fruit tea, functional drinks, milk tea and other subdivisions, one of which is "Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea" has attracted widespread attention in the industry.
It is understood that this product developed in November 2019, on the day of "March 8th Women's Day" in 2020, sold 150,000 boxes in just one minute, and the sales once chased after its main product - Yuanqi Forest Sparkling Water, triggering a wave of "milk tea tide". In September of the same year, Hankou No. 2 Factory launched a new oat milk tea; in November, Dali Group's new soydo first bean milk tea was listed; in December, Luckin Coffee launched a new product light milk tea series...
01
What is the origin of milk tea that falls from the sky?
Milk tea is defined in Baidu Encyclopedia as: it refers to a special tea made of appropriate amounts of milk, butter, salt, Yuquan landscape and high-quality yellow tea produced in Zhejiang, which is the main drink in the imperial palaces of Chinese dynasties, and is also the daily drink of the northern nomadic people in winter, which has a history of 1,000 years.
Today, milk tea is actually equivalent to milk tea, to be strict, milk tea can be regarded as a subdivision of milk tea. According to data, as of the end of 2019, the number of milk tea stores in the country has exceeded 40,000, although the new crown pneumonia in 2020 has led to the closure of many milk tea shops one after another, but the milk tea market is still in a state of continuous expansion. As the competition of major brands becomes more and more diversified, the market of subdivided categories has become a piece of "fragrant food", and milk tea has come into being.
This highly differentiated product once listed on the market has made many milk tea lovers shine, its main "0 fat", "low sugar", "health" characteristics, by a number of female consumers love, fashion and exquisite packaging also let many young people flock to it.
02
The new darling of major brands
Based on the broad market space of milk tea, especially the strong demand for new milk tea from young consumer groups, coupled with the distinct category characteristics of milk tea, it stands out from a large number of milk tea categories and has won the favor of many big brands.
With the development of the market in the past two years, in addition to focusing on the soda products of the old Wuhan flavor, the second factory in Hankou has also actively developed new products and expanded the market. On September 22, 2020, Hankou No. 2 Factory officially launched a new product - 0 sucrose low-fat oat milk tea. This oat milk tea uses the popular plant-based raw material oat milk, and mixes pure tea tea base, while continuing the consistent national tide style of Hankou Second Factory in packaging, each bottle is priced at about 6.5 yuan, which brings a certain threat to the Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea that costs 10 yuan + per bottle.
In November of the same year, Dali Group, a leading local food and beverage company, combined its own advantages to launch a very distinctive Soydo Chu Bean Milk Tea. This new product with "milk tea meets soy milk, refreshing and not greasy" as the core selling point, innovatively integrates pure soy milk into milk tea, departing from the traditional milk tea based on milk, while 0 trans fat, 0 vegetable fat powder also makes many consumers no longer worry about fat problems.
As the largest chain coffee brand in China, Luckin Coffee has frequently laid out new tea markets in recent years. In December 2020, Luckin Coffee's newly created "Light Milk Tea" series was launched, featuring the personalized design of "0 vegetable fat powder" and the national tide style, making it quickly become a "red person" in the tea industry, brushing the screen of Xiaohongshu, Dianping and other software. In addition, it is worth mentioning that this time Luckin Light Milk Tea invited the artist WenNa to jointly create, represented by Lu Yu, six ancient tea families "Xia Fan" for light milk tea "endorsement", very national trend poster and product name in the grasp of young people's consumption preferences at the same time, but also to them to promote the traditional tea culture.
With the increased layout of each enterprise, the track of the milk tea market is broadened, which will inevitably attract more brands to enter the game, but the prospects of the milk tea market must be good? In 2020, Yuanqi Forest blew a hurricane of sparkling water in the beverage market, and then brands large and small rushed into the market. Later, only on the supermarket beverage shelves, there were no less than a dozen sparkling water brands, but few successfully survived and won the recognition of consumers. In such a cruel beverage market, how long can this milk tea wind that has just emerged blow?
03
How long can the wind of milk tea blow?
In an era of explosive product explosion, there are both opportunities and challenges for various beverage brands. Fame is fast, disappearing fast, and milk tea faces the same problem. Yuanqi Forest, Dali, Luckin and other large enterprises intend to make milk tea into a different from milk tea, sustainable development of the explosive drink, but the current research and development is still limited to "0 sugar", "0 vegetable fat powder" and "health" these directions, how to make differentiation and sustainability will be the first problem encountered by various brands entering the milk tea market, but also the most important one.
When fruit vinegar drinks were popular in the first two years, giants as strong as Pepsi Cola did not stand firm, and the new fruit vinegar drinks launched by them disappeared in only two months; giants such as Nestle and Wahaha, which followed the wave of sparkling water into the market, did not get much market share; in 19 years, sleep-aiding drinks were on fire in Japan, and many domestic companies looked at this blue ocean and plunged into it, only splashing a few waves...
In general, in the current market environment, the future of milk tea beverages lies in innovation and continuation, and imitators have only temporary benefits and no long-term wealth. After the outbreak of the milk tea war, opportunities and challenges will also follow, whether the market of this subdivision category can become bigger and stronger in the hands of major entrants, we wait and see.