Image source @ Visual China
Text | Finance Small Hoe (chutou0325)
In 1987, a boring business meeting was held at a dessert shop called Chun Shui Tang in Taiwan Province.
Among them, there was an employee named Lin Xiuhui, who inadvertently rolled a snack called "powder circle" into a milk teacup, and accidentally found that the taste was actually quite good.
In the 80s, most students and office workers would use the opportunity to drink to meet, chat, and date, go to cafes and Western restaurants and too expensive, and general snack bars were not fashionable and stylish, so the streets and alleys, popular a kind of "bubble black tea shop", is a good place for young people to meet and meet, especially concentrated near schools and office buildings.
Coincidentally, the owner of Chunshuitang felt that it was not interesting to always drink bubble black tea, and was encouraging employees to brainstorm how to develop more new drinks.
Lin Xiuhui immediately realized that this was a rare opportunity.
Therefore, she rode an electric car to the market every day to buy some flour balls, returned to the store to cook, and then added to the iced milk tea, secretly tried to sell for a week, did not expect the customer response is very enthusiastic, many people specially detoured, just to buy a cup of such milk tea in her shop.
Soon, the boss Liu Hanjie knew, take the meaning of "big pearls and small pearls falling jade plate", the beautiful name of "bubble tea" was called open, and quickly became popular all over Taichung City, and various foam black tea shops had samples, all of them sold bubble milk tea, and people from other places played in Taichung, and they must first have a cup.
After 3 months, bubble tea has become a phenomenon-level product, regarded as the Starbucks in milk tea, and almost all of Taiwan has its presence. In order to learn the "orthodox" bubble tea, the Japanese restaurant industry also made a special trip to Taichung City to learn the scriptures.
<h2>01</h2>
Driven by bubble tea, taro balls, coconut fruits, pudding, fairy grass, red beans, purple rice and other small ingredients, as well as cassia seeds, chrysanthemums, peaches, lemons and other traditional Chinese medicines and fruits, have also been added to milk tea, the style has suddenly become more.
At this time, milk tea has still not yet formed an independent system, it is still with chicken claws, edamame, kelp, radish cake, Hong Kong-style roasted wheat these simple meals or refreshments.
However, in the continental region, it grew barbarically.
In 1996, bubble tea began to land in the Pearl River Delta region, as well as major Western restaurants and cafes in coastal developed cities such as Shanghai, and became a daily drink for many people.
In 1997, a Taiwanese bubble tea chain called "Kuaikeli" entered the mainland; in 1998, a typhoon shelter was born in Shanghai, and Fan Shengjie, the founder of Blue Mountain Coffee, also got a "Boba milk tea takeaway truck" from Taiwan, and the milk tea fashion gradually spread on the streets across the country.
It is this trend that has emerged many brands that we are familiar with, such as Taiwan's 85 degree c, great Taipei, big card division, Coco are all available; the mainland-based happy lemon, thumb, streeter, subway, gollum; Hong Kong-based lemon workshop.
They sped up and tried to dominate the Milk Tea River, forming the Shanghai Gang and the Guangxi Gang.
Among the Shanghai gangs, the dominant brand is streeters.
In 2004, the first streeter on Changli Road in Shanghai opened, in order to grab the market, the streeter took a ready-made approach, as many as dozens of types, both hot and cold, and the outer packaging is very personalized, the price is preferential, catering to those fast-paced and fashion-seeking young people.
In addition, streeters also play a good hand in marketing strategies.
In the first step, the streeters joined the typhoon shelter, positioning themselves as the milk tea takeaway window of the typhoon shelter, and with the huge aura of the typhoon shelter in more than 2,000 stores in the mainland, the streeters quickly gained popularity and occupied the market.
What is more interesting is that it pioneered a new way of selling, customers can add pearls or coconut nuts according to their own preferences when buying milk tea, this way of selling makes street customers become younger, get rid of the previous "I give you" model, and merchants begin to think about improvement from the perspective of consumers, which has continued to this day.
The rise of the Guangxi gang is because there are many milk tea franchisees in the Pingnan area of Guangxi, a bit like today's Shaxian snacks, they quickly opened stores to the whole country, the main representative is the subway.
The subway to "high quality and low price" as a gimmick, a cup of milk tea price of only 1.5 yuan ~ 2 yuan, in the launch of "signature milk tea" "stocking milk tea" and other special categories at the same time, but also from Hong Kong such as Chinese tea, ghost tea, raw fruit tea and other nearly 200 international brand tea bags, sold in the form of bags.
Until October 2007, the "subway" successfully landed in all prefecture-level cities in Guangxi, and advanced to nearly 40 cities in more than 10 provinces such as Guangdong, Guizhou, Sichuan, Chongqing, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Shanxi and Shaanxi, with an astonishing growth rate of opening 1-2 new stores every day.
The unique creativity made the subway once a model, attracting peers to imitate, and the milk tea of the Guangxi Gang also quickly conquered the country.
<h2>02</h2>
Of course, neither the Shanghai Gang nor the Guangxi Gang expected that they would soon be dispersed by the tactics of the sea of people in second- and third-tier cities.
After 2004, milk tea with little investment, low cost, low threshold and fast return is considered to be a big cake to be nibbled, and many vendors smell business opportunities and begin to open stores madly, and the first battlefield is the school.
As a result, we can often see a kind of pomp and circumstance: in front of a small and dilapidated door, there are often seven or eight students around, and the sweet aroma of the shop wafts from time to time.
The door number of the small shop without exception reads: Taiwan bubble tea.
Most of these small shops are only 5 or 6 square meters or even smaller, simple environment, there is no seat, generally only window outside.
There is also a worse environment, the street will often have a variety of small carts, a few bottles and cans, plus a sealing machine, small stall milk tea shop opened. Even many stationery shops and snack bars sell milk tea part-time.
But these do not affect the enthusiasm of the students, a cup of two or three pieces of milk tea, has become a pastime for many students after class. As for why it is so popular, the secret lies in the word "threshold".
At that time, almost all the milk tea around the school was brewed with boiled water, a spoonful of powder was thrown into the cup, added some boiled water, put it on the sealing machine and shaken, a cup of freshly baked milk tea was brewed, almost no difficulty.
They don't contain milk, but they bear the name of milk tea, and they also offer a variety of flavor options, such as strawberries, apples, chocolates are just an entry, and the high-end rose-flavored milk tea, jasmine-flavored milk tea, and even pearls can be replaced with fancy coconut fruits and jams.
Although the small ingredients at that time mainly relied on flavors and pigments to flavor and color, in the era when the Hero Card of the Three Kingdoms could make people crazy, this kind of cheap and delicious, colorful and fashionable milk tea, primary school students could not hold it at all.
Since 1996, milk tea has only taken 15 years, and the consumption has reached 5 times that of coffee, and coffee has been in China for 130 years, and the growth rate of the two is not an order of magnitude at all.
<h2>03</h2>
Someone has calculated that the wholesale price of a pack of 950 grams of "pearls" is 4.5 yuan, calculated by a 320 ml cup, 40 cups of milk tea can be mixed, and according to the market price, a cup of bubble milk tea is priced at 4 yuan to 6 yuan.
At the same time, the magic weapon of milk tea - fruit powder and creamer are also extremely cheap. A bag of 1,000 grams of fruit powder wholesale price of 12 yuan to 25 yuan, can brew 50 cups. The wholesale price of 1000 grams of creamer is about 15 yuan, which can brew 70 cups.
In other words, the gross profit of a cup of bubble tea reaches about 40 to 60 times that of raw materials.
In this way, the Shanghai gang, the Guangxi gang, the local stall gang, invariably used the "price war" play, the price of milk tea from 7 yuan a cup, fell to 1 yuan, the taste also deviated from the original authentic Taiwanese bubble tea flavor, mainly to high-power fruit pulp, domestic creamer, flavor syrup, two granulated sugar, fructose mainly.
In order to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency, small materials are often added a large number of flavors, pigments, preservatives, uneven quality, and even many merchants directly use granulated sugar instead of brown sugar to make huge profits.
Bad money expelled good money, and various media in China began to collectively attack the milk tea industry, and words such as "no milk", "creamer", "rubber pearls", "additives", "chemical raw materials" and other words filled the newspaper pages.
In 2008, the financial crisis broke out, the milk tea industry, which was already facing the pressure of transformation, suffered an impact, a large number of small milk tea shops went bankrupt and closed, and even the originally popular brands such as street customers, subways, and big trucks were also seriously injured.
<h2>04</h2>
The roof leak coincided with overnight rain, and a "Taiwan plasticizer incident" that shocked the two sides of the strait and three places gave a fatal blow to brewing milk tea.
On May 23, 2011, the Taiwan media reported a news report that a supplier of "cloud lifting agents" called Yushen Company had added a large number of harmful plasticizers to its products, involving at least 45 beverage and dairy manufacturers, covering a time span of up to 30 years, and a number of well-known sports drinks, juices and enzyme drinks were contaminated. The scale of the pollution incident is rare in previous years, causing an uproar in Taiwan and is known as the Taiwanese version of the "melamine incident".
For the milk tea industry, this is tantamount to a catastrophe, because the cloud lifter is an indispensable raw material in milk tea. Among them, 50 Lan, Yongkang 15 and other well-known milk tea brands in Taiwan have been detected to contain plasticizers.
An unprecedented crisis of trust has come to the fore, and even the performance of milk tea practitioners in the United Kingdom and the United States has dropped by 10%, and even half of the serious ones have fallen.
In Chinese mainland, it happened that in a hospital in Qingdao, a young man who had finished drinking milk tea went to the hospital to take a CT, and in the CT image, there were many grainy shadows in his stomach.
As a result, under the rendering of some media, such appalling articles as "pearls contain plasticizers and can eat dead people" have been widely disseminated. "Talking about pearl discoloration" suddenly became a fact, many customers no longer ordered, and even asked for returns, at least half of the milk tea shops removed pearls.
Bubble tea has also been "banned" since then, and parents who still have a lot of lingering feelings about "melamine milk powder" in that year have also included milk tea in the ranks of junk food.
Milk tea, overnight into the cold winter, almost all milk tea brands are shrinking the front, bankruptcy and bankruptcy of countless countless.
<h2>05</h2>
However, it is also this opportunity that interrupts the vicious circle of bad money expelling good money, so that a small number of conscientious brands that seriously make milk tea see hope.
In 2011, Gongcha launched milk cover tea, in addition to following the tradition, based on the three major tribute teas of ancient times (black tea, green tea, oolong tea), but also bold innovation, the Italian coffee cappuccino milk brewing technology, into the application of milk tea, revolutionary creation of secret signature milk cover tea.
Unexpectedly, in a period of mourning and "worse than rotten", tribute tea was praised. Gongcha quickly seized the opportunity to attract franchisees, lay out the layout of East China and South China, and opened more than 1,500 stores. Among them, the more famous franchise brands are Siyun Milk Cover (Yang YangHao), Xi Yu Gong Tea, Yu Ke Gong Tea, Xi Nian Gong Tea and so on.
It was also this year that 1 o'clock landed in Shanghai, pushed the bubble fresh boiled tea, and drew a clear line with the past powder milk tea, which was widely popular among young people.
This warm scene has made the industry see the light of day. Just like after the original bubble tea burst, many brands have also begun to add real tea to milk tea and carefully polish the quality.
After tearing off the "inferior" label, China's milk tea industry was jubilant, believing that a big era belonging to milk tea was coming.
However, they soon met another opponent – the cottage.
To what extent are they rampant? Take Deer Horn Lane, for example, when it was at its peak, it was said that there were more than 3,000 stores throughout China. However, Buckhorn Lane said that their mainland trademark was only registered in 2019, and there were only 50 stores. As you can imagine, the original more than 3,000 Deer Horn Lanes are almost all counterfeits.
Wang Zhengyang, chief operating officer of Antlers Lane, said that of the 70 Antlers Lanes on the street in 2018, basically only one was real, and It took Two years and tens of millions of dollars to finally get back its trademark.
Also poisoned by the cottage is the answer tea, its original "tea drink + divination" play, in a short period of time to attract a large wave of young people, as long as careful care, may not be able to make a strong brand, but soon the streets and alleys will emerge a variety of claims to be franchisees of the answer tea, the quality is uneven, even the street carts are resurgent, hanging up signs to say that they are the answer tea. As a result, the brand has cooled down in just a few months.
There are even more tragic brands, such as the tea color yue color established in 2013, after becoming an internet celebrity, in May 2019, a milk tea shop called "tea face color" quietly opened, and the decoration style and sign design are almost exactly the same as the genuine product.
What is more disturbing is that the counterfeit goods "Tea Face Color" also openly sued the genuine "Tea Face Pleasant Color" in court, and thus appeared on weibo hot search, until 2021 Tea Face was successful in defending its rights, crying with joy, in order to thank the user for its solidarity, each user was issued a 2 yuan voucher.
Under the big tumor of "shanzhai", even if an Internet celebrity brand emerges, most of them can only barely maintain a life cycle of 6-12 months, and then in the endless rights protection model, they come to the end of the brand's life.
It is also in this way, leaving some living space for powder blended milk tea, canned self-shaking brands such as Gao Lego, Yorome, Xiangyue, Xiangpiaopiao, etc., can still enjoy the dividends of the previous era, such as Xiangpiaopiao, which is said to sell more than a billion cups a year at the best time of sales, and the cups can be connected to circle the earth three times.
<h2>06</h2>
It is precisely aware of the value of the brand that a milk tea brand called "Imperial Tea" simply cut off an arm, changed the trademark to "XiCha" in 2015, and insisted on self-operation and refused to join.
It is also at this time that as a tea drinking country, China's consumption upgrade wheel rolls forward. From 2013 to 2016, New tea brands such as NaiXue's tea, deer horn lane, Lele tea, tea beauty and boiled leaves have risen in a muddy water.
They grew up on the mainland, with more professional equipment and fresher ingredients, and began to enter the market through taste, health and fashion, attracting young consumers.
For example, Xi Tea, which is said to insist on using 100 ° C high temperature water, 60 seconds of high-pressure extraction, each tea bag is only used once; Nai Xue's tea main business "tea drink + soft European bag", the soft European bag that is not sold out on the same day will be directly destroyed; the tea color is with a strong Chinese Jiangnan style; Coco milk tea will increase the tea making process of the first tea soup to 12.
The entire industry has ushered in a round of real quality upgrades, and the Red Food Network announced the "2020 China Tea Top Ten Brands List" in August 2020, and the new tea brands accounted for 6 seats.
According to the search results of public reviews, Xi Tea, Nai Xue's Tea, and Lele Tea ranked in the top three in many places. Naixue's tea prospectus shows that its number of stores has reached 507, with more than 14,000 employees; Heytea has 695 stores, and more than 35 million WeChat Mini Program members; and Chayan Yuese has laid out more than 200 stores in Changsha alone. Among the waist brands, the number of stores such as Chabaidao, Guming, and Yihetang has also exceeded 3,000.
According to the data of the "2020 New Tea White Paper", the size of the new tea market exceeded 100 billion yuan, and most young people are "addicted" to milk tea, and can drink an average of 3 cups a week. Post-90s and post-00s consumers are the mainstream consumers of new-style tea drinks, accounting for nearly 70% of the overall number of consumers, of which nearly 30% of post-90s and post-00s spend more than 400 yuan on new tea drinks every month.
In early March, Alipay disclosed a set of data showing that the overall consumption of milk tea for middle-aged and elderly people rose by 10%, of which the number of middle-aged and elderly people who received coupons to order drinks online in Alipay Mini Programs increased by 25%.
Capital, even more, is accelerating the staking of land, ripening these brands.
A vast era of milk tea is rolling forward, and the primary and secondary school students who queued up at the door of the small shop to buy cheap milk tea have finally become the strongest cornerstone of the industry when they grow up.
<h2>07</h2>
In 2020, the number of milk tea shops in the country reached 480,000, but only 18.8% of the milk tea shops that lived for a year, focusing on cheap but very well-known, only one Mi xue ice city. It can be seen that with the upgrading of the brand effect of new tea drinks, low-end brands and cottage milk tea are dying.
Looking back thirty years, from bubble tea, powdered milk tea, to fruit tea and new Chinese milk tea, a group of warriors have entered each period and then evolved in fierce blood. Batches of milk tea craftsmen have been upgraded iteratively again and again, offering the best taste buds of this era to a generation of consumers.
Its rise and fall, its death is also sudden.
In 2021, Xicha came out of the listing news, Nai Xue also submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, 30 years of Hedong and 30 years of Hexi, whether they can finally grasp the pulse of the industry, whether it will become the next "centennial Starbucks", or even catch up, we do not know.
However, those of us who are bumping milk tea are doomed to have no chance to "get back on the right path" in this life.