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The "Uniqlo" of the coffee industry is not good
Written by / Lai Hyun-chi
Editor/Chen Dengxin
As the "inner volume" of coffee brands in China intensifies, nowwa, a less powerful coffee chain on the Internet, is changing – from focusing on store expansion to starting intensive promotion and marketing, and developing communities.
A more subtle phenomenon is that unlike most other coffee brands, which tend to quickly become popular on major social platforms and attract young people to plant grass and punch cards, Nova has been on the market for more than two years but has not been prominent on social platforms. In contrast, the feedback in the capital market is not lacking in heat, and its most recent financing news occurred in December 2021, when it announced the completion of two rounds of financing in successive B and B+ rounds, with a cumulative amount of 200 million yuan. Prior to this, Nova had received Series A financing from 37 Interactive Entertainment, Yuanxing Capital and Perron Venture Capital in February and November 2020, and Series A financing from GSR Ventures and GurryShark.
Positioned as a cost-effective brand, launched a variety of milk tea-style coffees, crazy expansion of stores... These seemingly good labels never seem to have come up with a formula that has successfully attracted young consumers. The current community has become an important channel for Nova to try to improve the repurchase rate, but can it work?
Set cup for gifts, gifts with cups, learn Luckin to play community?
At the end of January 2022, when coffee lover Tang Tang was searching for takeaway, he stumbled upon a new nova coffee near the company and decided to give it a try, "the taste is average but the price is cheap." "Although there is a high probability that it will not be repurchased again, Tang Tang still conveniently joined the welfare group sent by the store," first joined the store group on the takeaway platform, and then came to see the store and said that there will be some preferential activities in the city WeChat group, which was also added. ”
Until then, Tang Tang hadn't heard of the new brand of Nova, even though it was born as early as 2019.
After diving in the group for a period of time, Tang Tang was attracted by a set cup activity, according to the group's Nova customer service "Welfare Officer Xiao Brown" introduction, in the activity time (mostly for one month), the next episode is enough to correspond to the cup book, fill in the registration form, you can redeem the corresponding prizes, and you can also participate in the lottery prizes. This episode gradually became a monthly practice, initiated by the "Welfare Officer Xiao Brown" at the beginning of the month, and counted at the end of the month, and the number of people in the group gradually increased from double digits to three digits with this activity.
Taking the recent April event as an example, 3 cups of redeemable prizes include a soothing sleep scent, portable fan and small white goose doll; 5 cups of redeemable prizes include a simple wind umbrella, sunflower cushion cushion, net red coffee cup and astronaut mood light; and 30 cups of redeemable prizes include an SKG massager, a 150 yuan JD card and a cub cub multifunctional household electric steamer. As for the raffle prizes, it is the third generation of Apple AirPods.
Nova Coffee's CupPing Event
Judging from the group where The Soup is located, the popularity of this cup-for-cup gift exchange activity was not bad at first. "From time to time, there will be people in the group to discuss the progress, or what kind of gift they want to exchange, after all, for some people who have coffee needs, they have to buy coffee anyway, and it is really good to exchange gifts if the price of Nova is not high." But Tang Tang didn't want to participate in the event, "because Nova's coffee is not very suitable for my taste, I would rather spend more money to buy higher quality." 」 In addition, Tang Tang is also not optimistic about the overall operation of the Nova community, "Although the activity is tempting, the official customer service of the operation community is very crotchy, and there are often group friends who ask about the redemption of the prize, but the response of the customer service is either very slow or 'missing'." ”
In addition, because the cup exchange activity is manually counted, there are often some errors at the beginning of the activity. "I participated in the March event and bought more than 3 cups, but I went to redeem 3 cups of gifts, but it turned out that I did not meet the redemption conditions, the number of cups was not enough, I looked for customer service in the group, and customer service has not been able to solve the problem." Lin Shan felt a little disappointed after communicating with customer service many times in the group, "Usually I drink coffee and do not fix the brand, but I think the gift is very cute, that week I ordered 7 cups in a row, and the result was that the activity rules and the review process and the attitude of the customer service made me very dissatisfied." ”
In fact, in addition to the recent monthly cup exchange activities, Nova Coffee has frequently launched welfare activities and joint activities since the end of 2021 - on November 29, it was announced in the official public account that Peng Yuchang, an artist who has been successfully signed, has been successfully signed as its "selection spokesperson". On the same day, its WeChat Mini Program simultaneously launched activities such as "omni-channel omni-store limited time two weeks buy one get one free", limited time gift Peng Yuchang peripheral products and other activities. Later, it intensively launched a series of activities such as drinking coffee accumulation points and sending Xiaolan peripherals; buy one free one free of charge during the cherry blossom season; Wuhan Chengdu brings its own cup of free coffee, etc., and actively publishes relevant information on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, trying to use activities to drain the community and improve the repurchase rate and brand recognition.
Zinc Scale also noted that at present, the E-commerce Department of Nova Coffee released recruitment news in March, recruiting new media operation interns who are mainly responsible for the relevant public of the Douyin platform, including maintaining the quality of Douyin short video works and increasing the number of fans.
From the above, it is not difficult to see that Nova Coffee's current urgent need for social platforms and private domain traffic, although Nova officially revealed that "at present, we have precipitated hundreds of thousands of private domain users, in the WeChat groups of various cities, we can share our new products, activities and other information with them in the community for the first time." "But the actual effect doesn't seem obvious.
On the one hand, from the perspective of urban communities, a WeChat group that includes Wuhan Changsha and Chongqing had only 193 users as of early April after the intensive new users joined in February, while Luckin's single store in Chongqing had 115 users. As for the Little Red Book of Nova Coffee, there are currently less than 6,000 fans, and the number of likes for daily notes often does not exceed double digits, and the related Little Red Book and Weibo Grass Sticker seem to be less popular than coffee brands such as Manner and BlueBottle.
Nova Coffee aspires to benchmark Luckin Coffee
"Comparatively speaking, Nova Coffee's previous energy may be on the expansion of stores, the intensity of publicity is not large, although the industry ecology of over-marketing is not too healthy now, but consumers still eat this set, and it can be seen that Nova Coffee still has to do marketing promotion after all, but now the competition has been so fierce, it is difficult to say whether Nova has missed the best publicity opportunity." An industry insider who has long followed the new coffee drink brand said.
I want to do "coffee industry Uniqlo", "door renovation" so that it is not suitable for a long time
Although the degree of "showing face" on the Internet needs to be improved, Nova Coffee is quite popular in the capital market and the expansion speed is also very rapid.
Let's look at the response of the capital market. According to the public information of Aiqicha, Nova has completed the B+ round of financing from 2020 to the end of 2021.
Source: Aiqicha
As for the speed of opening stores, according to the data of Nova Coffee's official website, as of February 2022, the number of its stores has exceeded 1500, mainly distributed in 20 first- and second-tier cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Ningbo. Among them, Shanghai, as the "origin" of Nova, currently accounts for about 30% of the number of stores, about 300-400; the second-ranked first-tier city is Chengdu. At present, there are no stores in Beijing. The latest news is that on March 20, 2022, Nova Coffee announced that it will increase market investment, of which 100 coffee stores will be invested in the Chengdu market alone.
The report of "First Finance" mentioned that the trick of Nova Coffee is "door renovation", which can also be called the cooperation model to be precise - looking for qualified Western restaurants, light restaurants, roasteries, bars and other offline physical stores, adding a NOWWA coffee bar in the store, providing machines, materials, and training staff, and then producing coffee.
Zinc Scale also found on the official website of Nova Coffee that Nova's franchise process includes nine steps such as deposit certificate, headquarters audit, interview signing, store location, etc., mainly for catering, convenience stores and express hotels for business cooperation.
At the same time, Zinc Scale noted that this batch of stores, which Nova called "version 1.0", can provide both pick-up and take-out services, mostly in the form of take-away.
"Version 1.0" this flexible location, superimposed takeaway operation capabilities of the small store will inevitably open up the situation for the expansion of Nova rapidly, Nova founder Guo Xingjun also said in an interview with the media: "Meituan, Hungry Mo built out, open online and offline takeaway shelves have served hundreds of millions of young people, the consumption frequency is also high, this is our opportunity." As a result, Nova has branded the "Uniqlo of the coffee industry", strengthening the repurchase rate and cost performance, while also providing standardized services and rapid replication.
A door refurbished nova coffee
But in fact, the "door renovation" strategy will also make many young people accustomed to punching card coffee shops difficult to understand, and even have doubts, in the Small Red Book and Weibo and other social platforms, Zinc Scale noticed that because the "door renovation" store is in cooperation with Nova Coffee, the door head may not be "Nova Coffee", so some consumers mistakenly think that Nova is a "leather bag company", there are also roasters that cooperate with Nova Coffee to explain, "Can't completely say what a leather bag company is, the previous shop to find another store cooperation, I am a dessert shop, and I also cooperate with Nova, I have my own products on the Meituan, and I have Nova coffee on Hungry Mo. ”
In the view of the above-mentioned industry insiders, "today's young people pay great attention to punching cards to plant grass shops, and the way of door renovation can of course quickly shop shop, but these stores include some small pastry shops, other independent coffee shops, etc., on the one hand, it is easy to blur the brand recognition of Nova, on the other hand, it is actually not conducive to the promotion of grass stickers in the shop." ”
Nova is obviously also aware of these problems, starting from September 2021, Nova has also begun to launch some offline direct stores and "version 3.0" brand image stores that are internally called "version 2.0", in addition to placing advertisements for "recruiting city partners" in the circle of friends, saying that "no experience is required, the headquarters is copied throughout the store, and the whole store is fully managed." Zinc Scale also found that at present, the notes and posts about Nova on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo are mostly "version 2.0" and "version 3.0".
Zinc Scale learned from the investment staff responsible for the southwest region of Nova Coffee, "The store that was renovated before was a test store, and now the franchise that is open can only do our products." ”
According to the relevant franchise information provided by the above staff, if it is a franchise single store project, it needs "brand concession fee of 59,800 yuan / store / 3 years, equipment fee of about 124,000 yuan, low-value consumables 12,000 yuan, raw materials 15,000 yuan, operating costs of 20,000 yuan, brand deposit of 10,000 yuan, store decoration costs of 100,000 yuan - 180,000 yuan, etc.", the above staff told Zinc Scale, "The overall landing may be 350,000-400,000 yuan." ”
However, the "standardized service" and high repurchase rate that Nova Coffee hopes to achieve does not seem to be as easy to achieve as imagined, whether it is the community or platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, it can be found that many users say, "There are differences in the taste of the same products produced by different stores." There are also many users who say "stepping on the thunder". On the black cat complaint, there are also consumer complaints that "there is a problem with the safety of the nouva coffee video, there is hair on the coffee", "I ordered two cups of coffee in nova coffee, and one of the lattes was drunk when it was almost drunk, I don't know what it was, like it fell on the machine, there are many glue marks on it ..."
"In fact, we all have to train uniformly, and there are supervisors to conduct quality control inspections every month." Milly, the owner of a nova coffee shop in Chongqing, also cooperated with Nova in the form of "door renovation", she told Zinc Scale, "In general, the stores under the company are unified raw materials and machines, and the activities are also uniformly stipulated by the company, but there are indeed customers who will feedback that the tastes of different stores will be different, including takeaway services, after all, each store is an independent owner, and I do not evaluate other people's stores." ”
In Milly's view, the degree of quality control of each store is different may be a common problem of chain stores, and this multi-store to achieve complete standardization also has some dilemmas, "for example, some customers hope that American can add some milk, but the company's unified choice is only whether to add sugar, I can only recommend customers to order lattes containing milk, customers will feel that other coffee shops can be added like this, why can't you?" ”
"Milk tea coffee" will become a new competition point for Chinese coffee?
It is worth mentioning that in addition to the expansion tactics, another idea of Nova's choice is to cater to the hot spot of the current Chinese coffee war - making coffee like milk tea.
Judging from the various categories launched by Nova, as Interface News previously concluded, the idea of making coffee like milk tea has appeared in early 2020. In the summer of that year, Nova Coffee launched a series of fruit coffee products represented by cucumber flavor, which were refreshing and special, visually colorful, and good to make the fruit coffee series products quickly open up the market. Later launched thick milk black pearl series, strawberry out of the horse, pumpkin Okinawa brown sugar milk and other new products, also belong to the first glance can not distinguish whether it is coffee or milk tea products.
According to the data previously released by Nova to the "financial graffiti", as of the end of 2021, the top 5 products with the best brand sales are lattes, American, raw coconut lattes, osmanthus lattes, and strawberry lattes. The new product of the season launched at the same time as Peng Yuchang, the strawberry out of the horse thick milk latte, as a new explosive product, sales are still growing.
In fact, the chain coffee brands that have emerged in recent years are intensively launching special flavor coffees that are closer to the popular taste and more like milk tea. For example, according to the first financial report, in seesaw's current revenue structure, the contribution rate of half coffee and half drink "new coffee drinks" to revenue is as high as 50%. Most of these products are added seasonal flower and fruit flavors to the coffee base, and the proportion of coffee is heavy and light.
And zinc scale found that Double Win also continues to launch lemon leaf ice latte, strawberry colorful latte, black sesame mellow latte and pepper special latte, etc., Manner also set up a selection of special adjustment options, the introduction of flower tea special and alcohol special, at present, an ordinary Manner store, for all kinds of special drinks prepared syrup up to about 10 bottles. Even tims in North America have consciously adjusted the number of products and new rhythms of the fruity special "TianleXue".
Manner's special syrup
The feedback from the consumer side also confirms that this choice is in line with market demand. After all, most of the punch card grass products on major social platforms are mainly special. In an interview, even Zhang Hongji, the founder of Coffee, also mentioned an industry survey data - 95% of Chinese consumers cannot actually accept black coffee with no milk and no sugar.
However, when milk tea-style coffee became the mainstream, the special coincidence of major brands became higher and higher.
"Because the flavors that the public can accept are nothing more than fruit, alcohol and flower tea, of course, there are some more special flavors, but after all, they are a minority, otherwise it is easy to become dark dishes." Tian Ming is a barista in a coffee shop, in her opinion, "the current coffee special is a bit like going in the direction of flavored craft beer, trying to do various collocations, when the flavor gradually homogenizes, and finally has to return to the ratio and taste." ”
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