Reporter | Lu Yibei
Edit | Ya Han Xiang
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On February 8, tianyancha app showed that Guangzhou Biaoding Catering Management Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Suge Fresh Tea, underwent industrial and commercial changes, and a new shareholder, Zhuhai Suge Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership). The equity penetration chart shows that Nie Yunchen, the founder of Xicha, is the executive partner of the above-mentioned partnership.
Suge Fresh Tea was founded in 2011, initially only in The form of small yellow cars in Xintang, Guangzhou, and later determined the brand concept of "100% natural fruit tea" and expanded in a chain franchise model. According to the information on the official website, the number of its stores is currently more than 100, most of which are laid out in South China.
Image source: Su Ge fresh tea public number
From the product point of view, Suge fresh tea mainly uses various types of fresh-cut fruits to make fruit tea, and the signature products are mangman poplar branch manna, Jufeng grape fruit tea and so on. Overall, Su ge fresh tea emphasizes the cost performance, its slogan is "half a pound of pulp to make a cup", and the public reviews show that the unit price of the guest is 21 yuan.
Image source: Weibo @ Su Ge Fresh Tea
Before Su ge fresh tea, Xi Tea has made at least 6 investments since 2021.
Among them, specialty coffee Seesaw, oat milk supplier YePlant, pre-mixed wine WAT and other projects that are significantly different from Heytea's own business, as well as lemon tea brands Such as Wang Lemon, Peach Tea and Peach Peach, Molecular Juice Wild Juice Mountain, which are on the same track as Heytea but have different positioning. Nie Yunchen, the founder of Xicha, also personally invested in KUDDO COFFEE, The Raven Crow Coffee and so on.
Heytea told Interface News that the investment in Suge fresh tea is the active layout of Heytea on market opportunities, and hopes to support the better development of excellent start-up brands with its own years of accumulation, experience and resources. The brand also said that Heytea is not a VC-style investment.
Heytea's ambition may lie in the fact that by absorbing excellent consumer brands from different segments in the beverage field, it complements the market areas and business gaps that Heytea itself cannot reach, and finally build a super beverage company.
Nie Yunchen said in an interview with Interface News in 2019: "There are only two barriers in our consumer industry - either eventually becoming a wheel that keeps turning, constantly affecting the upstream and downstream, thereby further expanding its own scale, and finally realizing the super platform of the strong Hengqiang, such as Meituan, Tmall, JD.com, and Amazon; or becoming a super brand that is a brand itself a barrier, like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's, or those luxury brands." "Now it seems that Xicha is moving closer to this plan."
On the other hand, the slowdown in the growth rate of the new tea market has also forced Xi Tea to carry out a layout outside the main business.
According to the "2021 New Tea Beverage Research Report" released by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, from 2017 to 2020, the size of China's new tea market revenue increased from 42.2 billion yuan to 83.1 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 142.8 billion yuan in 2023. However, in the next 2-3 years, the growth rate of new tea drinks will slow down in stages and adjust to 10%-15%.
The development speed of Heytea itself is also slowing down. According to the information of the catering industry data service provider narrow door restaurant eye, compared with the store growth rate of 139% and 78% in 2019 and 2020, the store growth rate of Heytea in 2021 dropped to 26.3%, and the total number of stores was 878.
In addition, it faces pressures on cost control, supply chain management, and store operations. More critically, if the sinking market cannot be opened smoothly, then Heytea needs to gain growth in the stock market, which is a big challenge for any brand. Therefore, the income from investment in other businesses may be an effective way to maintain the company's profits.
In fact, the development of the new tea market to the present, the pattern has gradually stabilized, in the differentiation space reduction, innovation of the current volume, not only Xi tea, head brands since 2021 have been pondering the expansion possibilities outside the main business.
On July 31, 2021, Cha Yan Yue Se announced that it had invested in a tea brand "Guo Ya Ya", which is also a local Internet celebrity in Changsha; in October 2021, Mi Xue Bingcheng invested in a milk tea shop called "Hui Cha" in Guangdong. Nowadays, it seems that "chuang and excellent investment" will become more and more common in the tea industry in the future.