New tea drinks attack bottled drinks, a taste game that is difficult to have both

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Wen 丨 Wu Qi, author 丨 salted fish fish

The infiltration continues.

After being tightly embedded in the city's new consumption formats, the new tea brands have not stopped expanding. Nowadays, in addition to the ready-made tea drinks in stores, new tea brands have jumped in and begun to sell bottled beverages, and their business scenarios have gradually spread from city stores to convenience stores, supermarkets and various online channels.

Among them, Since the launch of Xixiao Tea Bottle Factory in June 2020 and the launch of NFC Juice, Xicha has successively launched a number of bottled beverages, from sparkling water that emphasizes natural fruit flavor to juice tea, lime tea and light milk tea derived from popular single products.

At the same time, Naisher's Tea, which is regarded as another giant in the new tea drinking track, has also included bottled beverages in the business list. At present, in the official flagship store of Naixue Taobao, a number of bottled beverages have been launched, namely: sugar-free oolong tea, fruity oolong tea, and Naixue sparkling water.

It is not difficult to see that with the increasing spread of brand power, new tea brands, ambitions are even greater, however, they can stand at the top of the wave of ready-made tea, but it does not mean that they can also compete in the bottled beverage market.

01, the new tea drink also wants to "turn the flow of customers into purchasing power"

In September 2021, Nesher's Tea mentioned in its semi-annual report that it will start to launch retail products to channels such as offline chain shopping malls in the second half of 2021, and in the report, imagined the future - "We expect that the retail business will gradually become an important part of the Group's revenue."

By February 2022, Nesher's tea was still far from the imaginary landing of many supermarket shelves, but on the same timeline, more and more consumers found the figure of Xicha bottled drinks on the shelves of convenience stores and large supermarkets.

In the Sam's Club, a 500ml*24 bottle of Sam's specialises in hicha rose melon flavored sparkling water. Open the Hema APP, enter the hi tea, jump out of the bottled drink, the mobile phone screen can not finish. Coincidentally, in urban convenience stores like 7-11 and Lawson, Heytea's bottled drinks are also crowded on display cases.

In addition, according to media reports, local new tea drinks represented by tea color are also involved in this cross-border. According to the news, at the end of 2021, Chayan Yuese registered a new wholly-owned company in Zhuzhou, Zhuzhou Panxue Beverage Co., Ltd., Zhuzhou Zhuli Beverage Co., Ltd., and its business scope includes other beverages and cold drink services, catering services, food Internet sales, etc.

Prior to this, Cha Yan Yue Xie had tested the water brewed milk tea at the Tmall flagship store, and at that time, its 20,000 gift box form "hand-cranked foam milk tea" was sold out online. Today, the registration and establishment of the new company of Tea Beauty Beverage is also regarded as a momentum to impact the bottled beverage track.

There are also new tea brands Lele Tea and Michelle Ice City. According to the Tianyancha APP, in 2021, Michelle Ice City Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of the "Snow King Loves to Drink Water" trademark, which is internationally classified as beer beverages, while earlier information showed that Michelle Ice City had obtained a new bottle appearance patent authorization, according to the patent abstract, the design product was used for beverage packaging.

As for Lele Tea, according to interface reports, its parent company, Shanghai Tea Field Catering Management Co., Ltd., applied for the trademark related to "Happy Tea, Bottle tea" in 2020, and the registration related classifications include beer and beverages, convenience foods, etc.

Under this dense exposure, some people use "menacing" to describe the attack of new tea brands on the category of bottled beverages, and directly benchmark the Yuanqi Forest.

In fact, the head-on competition of brands has been staged in convenience stores in some cities, and only the category of sparkling water has poured into many brands. Among them, the new tea brands represented by Xicha and Naixue's tea, the new generation of internet red brands represented by Yuanqi Forest, and the beverage giants such as Nongfu Spring and Wahaha are all entrenched on the shelves of convenience stores.

New tea brands are full of confidence, most of them walk the idea of bottled single products with explosive ready-made tea drinks, and Internet red brands focus on popular tastes, constantly trying and making mistakes in beverage products, to the old beverage giants, taste research and development is one of them, channel laying and offline distribution is the barrier.

After a list, the prospects seem to be good, everyone is using their respective advantages, in this huge capacity, but there is no oligopoly in the market sneaking, especially for new tea brands, in the tea industry, the volume intensified, the category dividend is becoming more and more elaborate at the moment, the imagination brought by the new circuit of bottles is full of temptation, even if it can not become the next yuanqi forest, you can also brush a profit by the face.

It's just, is this profit really so good to brush?

02, a taste game that is difficult to have both

For new tea brands entering the bottled beverage market, there are two views that are more prominent.

One view is that "the bottled beverage track selected by the new tea brand belongs to the same category as tea drinking, and there are natural commonalities in genes, so it will naturally become the number one position for many tea brands to test the water."

In another view, this is exploration, an attempt, and a double-edged sword.

"Although tea brands can use brand influence to open up new markets, when product tastes deviate from consumer expectations, it may in turn drag down the original product business and even affect the brand image."

For new tea brands, the launch of bottled beverages seems to be able to obtain a new diversity dividend, but in fact, there is inevitably the risk of "defocusing" brand power after the category extension.

Taking Xicha as an example, most of its bottled drinks are derived from the explosive ready-made tea drinks in the store, and in the bottled category that has been launched, there is a lemon tea drink, which is considered by consumers to be the equal replacement of the store's fresh tea drink - of course, Heytea itself is also positioned in this way.

The store's 20+ ready-made tea drinks, after being made into a bottled beverage of the same name, are priced at one-third of the former, and the taste is also one-third of the former.

As a result, there is a kind of taste debate that is difficult to reconcile, and under the Taobao product link page, someone asks "Is it the same as the taste in the store?" Nearly half of the 9 answers were different, and some people even thought that "it is far worse" and "not the same thing at all".

Essentially, one of the incentives for consumers to place orders for bottled beverages launched by new tea brands is the expectation of taste, and when this expectation is broken, do you feel that you are cultivating or harvesting your brand?

To a large extent, while the packaging and marketing of bottled beverages are associated with ready-made tea drinks, they cannot achieve the unity of taste, and at the same time, they are unwilling to cut with the stores, which in the long run will inevitably confuse consumers' existing brand cognition.

For example, Yuanqi Forest launched a juice tea, consumers will only evaluate its delicious and unpalatable, but in the face of the new tea brand launched juice tea, consumer evaluation standards are much more complex, while comparing with fresh tea drinks, while comparing with traditional bottled beverages, if the taste is enough to restore the ready-made tea, then the brand is getting more, or losing more?

And this is just a part of the reaction of new tea into the bottled beverage market, in addition to brand recognition, new tea brands also have to face a roll of the channel war.

03, do business, or make drinks

Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of the convenience store chain 7-11, believes that when the consumer market is saturated, only consumers can detect their potential needs if they see the figurative products with their own eyes.

New tea brands obviously think the same way, so in this battle of bottled drinks, it is necessary and urgent to seize the shelves of related scenes. Most of them follow the traditional way of playing, laying online e-commerce on the one hand, and card space traditional supermarket convenience channels.

Regarded as the vanguard of new tea drinks, XiCha has achieved a score of 30,000+ in the offline sales outlets of bottled beverages in the past year, which has been used by many media to support the potential of new tea in the bottled beverage market.

But the question is, is the number of outlets of 30,000+ really as potential as the public imagines?

A previous report by The Red Restaurant Network pointed out that "it is difficult for general products to make money in supermarkets, because supermarkets have high requirements for food safety, logistics and supply chain, so the input costs are high and the cost of channel opening is high, and these two situations are not affordable by catering companies."

Further, offline channels such as convenience store supermarkets are not so good to enter, you know, goods stationed in convenience stores not only have to pay the entrance fee, but also the SKU bar code fee and display fee. In some parts of South China, some convenience store brands, a bar code of a single store into the store cost of 50 yuan per month, if a convenience store brand in the area has 20,000 stores, the brand only lays this one convenience store channel, it may have a million store entrance fee.

Moreover, compared with the channel capabilities of new tea brands and beverage giants, the gap cannot be bridged by hard work. Previously, Nongfu Spring and Yuanqi Forest had conducted street battles on channel terminals, and this also made the outside world realize for the first time that the traditional beverage giants had crushing potential energy in terms of channels.

Taking the category of sparkling water as an example, Nongfu Spring can lay millions of offline terminals in a month, and this number is almost the sum of the terminal sales points accumulated by Yuanqi Forest for many years, compared with the number of stores added up by all new tea brands on the market, which is more than 500,000 stores, and the number of outlets that can be laid is indeed slightly thin compared with the predecessors.

At this time, someone may want to move out of the online channel.

At the end of 2021, the bottled juice tea launched by Xicha in the Tmall flagship store was listed third in the Tmall tea beverage hot list and fifth in the hot list of hot tea, and the two products that ranked first and second in the list were Yuanqi Forest (forest fiber tea, milk tea milk tea).

In some previous reports, the information of 60W+ in hey tea bottles per day has also been frequently taken out of the mirror, but what few people know is that most industries can make a profit through online e-commerce channels, but the beverage industry is difficult.

One of the reasons is the cost of express delivery in the bottled beverage industry. At some point, the e-commerce price of a bottled beverage may be higher than the price of a convenience store supermarket.

In fact, even the sparkling water that new tea brands are making is not as easy to earn as imagined, you may see the valuation of 100 billion yuan in the Yuanqi Forest, but you did not see many explosive items in the history of bottled drinks have also been beautiful for a while, but in the end, two or three years passed in a flash, and it was quietly submerged.

04, competition is not in the same dimension

Although the entire new tea industry has shown a trend of cross-border operation, this does not mean that bottled beverages have become the next battlefield for ready-made tea drinks.

For new tea brands, it is important to understand that retailing is one of the trends, not the whole future.

In the view of a new-style tea worker, the cross-border production of bottled beverages by new tea drinks "is itself counter-trending." Value is multi-layered, bottled drinks solve convenience, but on top of convenience there are emotional, sensual benefits, and this is where bottled drinks cannot be compared in experience with brands that are ready to sell, especially in space models."

Therefore, from this level, the perspective that new tea brands should refer to when launching bottled beverages, perhaps like Starbucks's coffee ready-to-drink, it is a supplement to its own business, rather than competing in the same dimension with the entire beverage market from the beginning.