Text | Hong Kong Stock Research Agency
It is worth noting that in the official announcement, Naixue's tea specifically mentioned the two major "associated" unfavorable factors of operation and labor costs and rapid expansion. Issues such as the setbacks in automation and digital advancement may be easier to understand in combination with practical observations.
The joys and sorrows of the "Third Space"
As the first store in Changsha, Naixue's tea is located in the meixi lake BBK Xintiandi store mall entrance to the first storefront on the left hand, so it directly left a first impression on the flow of customers. Among them, the Nesher standard store relies on large stores to create a "third space" model, which is very popular with consumers.
According to the observation of the Hong Kong Stock Research Agency, whether it is compared with the ready-made tea stores such as Xicha, Tea Beauty, and Tea Baidao in the same shopping mall, or other product stores such as Starbucks Coffee, Naixue's tea popularity is relatively more popular. This may also be due to the impact of the increase in families traveling with children because it is a weekend. "I feel like this (fruit tea and bag) is a little healthier, and kids love to eat it." A mother told the editor.
However, compared with the popularity of European bags and tea drinks, the new Chinese dim sum has not gained too much favor. A young consumer told the Hong Kong Stock Research Agency that she believes that these categories "do not have the characteristics of Nesher", which may lead to their less popularity than the main products.
In fact, combined with the clerk's statement and the observation of the editor at the scene, the fruit compound European bag products such as strawberry magic wands and the traditional explosive products such as domineering cheese strawberries are the fastest sales in the Nesher store. However, simple European bags with a single taste are rarely queued for them, even on the peak of passenger flow on rest days. The average unit price of the former is higher.
Manpower is actually the basis for the operation of The Third Space of Nesher. According to the on-site observation of the Hong Kong Stock Research Agency, there are 11 clerks busy at the front desk and back kitchen in the Meixi Xintiandi store alone, among which the repetitive work of sorting and packing of the European bag requires three employees, and there are still long queues in the store. In addition, at least four staff members responsible for tea are stationed at the front desk.
In this way, the beautiful vision of the "Third Place" is not a thornless rose. In addition, the Hong Kong Stock Research Agency found that from time to time, consumers mentioned that there were too many children in the store, which was noisier, and there were more young users who worked and chatted in the tail space of the store, which was relatively quiet. It can be said that there are gains and losses, which is also the reason why Nesher's tea continues to promote the "PROization" of the store.
Compared with Starbucks and Xicha, Naixue's steps to open a store are more "small"?
However, this attempt of community + office building may reflect Nesher's steady sense of exploration, that is, not to completely directly open a new model, but to learn Starbucks's method of detecting the potential size of the regional market through ready-to-drink products, step by step.
Although the locations of the two first stores are the core of the business circle, they do not directly fall in the city center. In contrast, heytea Changsha's first store was directly selected at Huinong Building, which is surrounded by several major customer flow centers such as IFS, Wangfujing Department Store, You'a Spring, and Pinghetang, and is still the most popular store in Changsha, surpassing the later Guojin Street store. The local net red shop in Changsha, the tea face is pleasant, is from the Changsha Simen gate pedestrian bridge under the bridge mouth such a "street shop". Behind the layout is not only the positioning difference, but also points to the relationship between the cloth store strategy and cost.
Heytea first store is the highest specification flagship store LAB store, the tea color mode is lighter, the traffic factor is higher than the space, only the Nesher standard store attaches importance to the sense of space, even if the area of the SMALLer PRO store, it is not completely out of this logic. But at the beginning, the problem was not the space, but the product, and Nesher's initial problem was in baking.
The Hong Kong stock research agency found that most of the space in the back kitchen of the Nasher standard store was reserved for a large baking facility. In addition, according to the real-time recruitment announcement, the basic treatment of the staff of Naixue's tea baking products is also higher than that of the tea drinking staff.
Even so, even if the back kitchen is constantly busy, the hot European bags at the front desk are still being bought out every minute, while other products are rarely asked. That is to say, high input does not really achieve sufficient output, and the balance of this model is broken by the uneven demand. The clerk told us, "The magic wands are selling well, and there are some children who like them, and the others that are average." But it's because the magic wand is more complicated to make that the waiting time is longer, she added.
Due to the complexity of raw materials and collocations, the natural level of manpower consumption in coffee stores such as Luckin and Starbucks is natural, so the product is actually a projection of human factors. It is based on these considerations that in Nesher's tea PRO store, the storefront is more compact, the tables and chairs are more neatly arranged, and in addition, more peripheral products in the store have become a major way of open source.
If it is said that the opening of a shop is to occupy the center of consumers' eyes, luckin stores are more focused on product channels, and Nexue's strategy is to run fast, but the steps are small and stable, starting from the core business circle of the region rather than the core business circle of the city as a whole. Including the final control of costs, the PRO store actually reflects how Nai Xue's tea from the opening of the store to the management of the thinking, how to operate the way of efficiency.
However, the existing tea brands do not have the dual ability to compete with the bargaining and premium of brands such as Starbucks, and they must look for opportunities to control costs in addition to external expenditures, and trying to rely on rent control cannot be long-lasting, because rents are often positively correlated with regional consumption levels. In terms of automation and digital savings, Nesher's tea is still promising. Perhaps, it can be called the "industrialization" of freshly made tea drinks.
Can the embrace of "industrialization" of fresh tea drinks solve the cost problem?
In the process of communicating with NaiXue's tea employees, a detail caught the attention of the Hong Kong stock research agency, the clerk said that some popular fruits are generally "sold out", and this part of the supplement is "arranged by the company", and the clerk also mentioned that the management of raw materials is becoming more and more refined. According to the model of tea shops, the utilization and depletion of raw materials that were previously summarized on a monthly basis may gradually transition to a weekly or even daily basis.
Supply chain optimization is to reduce the loss rate of fruits in planting, picking, transportation, and storage, and the loss rate is also part of the cost. Interestingly, according to the sales of Nesher's tea hot products, fruits such as strawberries, which are not easy to preserve, can reduce the potential loss rate through high-week transformation phases, and to achieve this, a digital supply chain management system that includes raw material origins, stores, and warehouses is essential.
As various raw materials and processes continue to be standardized, this model is also more industrialized. At that time, the importance of raw material selection will be magnified, and the influence of the process will be reduced. According to Naixue's tea announcement, the automated tea making equipment developed by the company has begun to select manufacturers at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, do trial production, and successively put into use in some store operations, and is expected to be officially applied in stores nationwide before the third quarter of 2022.
But the more difficult pain points may have to return to the store. At present, the process of making a cup of fruit tea is probably mixed with strawberries, beaten, added sugar, added fresh fruit, added tea soup, smoothie machine, if one or more links can be automated, employees can be released from repetitive work - although not all processes can be simplified in this way.
One consumer said: "The employees who packed Naisher look busier than the back kitchen. "Because bread products cannot be bagged and left, and packaging is not good enough to affect the appearance." Perhaps in order to solve the packaging problem, in NaiXue's tea PRO shop, in addition to removing the field equipment and uniformly pre-baking by the central kitchen, the European bag also has more "mini" versions, and the packaging process is simpler.
The efficiency improvement brought by industrialization and refinement exceeds the labor and fixed cost expenditure, which is likely to be an important reference for The final profit of Nesher, and the traffic long tail effect promotes the sales of peripheral products. In terms of open source and throttling, tea brands will not stop. As the "first share of tea drinking", Nesher's tea has at least more motivation and capital to promote optimization.