Author | Restaurant owner internal reference Zhang Duo
The price of instant is as fresh as it is ground
Blue Bottle Coffee overturned
Born in 2002, Blue Bottle Coffee, the originator of specialty coffee, Wenqing, Silicon Valley and the darling of the media, collapsed.
It is said that a few days ago, Blue Bottle Coffee opened a two-day pop-up store in Beijing's new Internet celebrity shopping mall THEBOX, a "boutique instant coffee station" jointly created with a ski brand.
There are no coffee machines in the store, and instead of freshly ground coffee, they sell coffee made with instant brewing. There are only two products, the American style and the 38 yuan latte, and the price is at the same level as the freshly ground one.
This move was questioned by the feekeepers as "insincere", "who do you look down on", and "lose your reputation". Some netizens jokingly said, "Resolutely resist the behavior of blue bottles using instant dissolution to Beijing consumers." ”
Although it is the main "skiing" scene, the coffee business in the ski resort is not "instant". manner, Peet's Coffee, and %arabica all set up shop in the snow resort, competing for "the first cup of coffee on the snow for high-net-worth individuals".
In addition to the fact that the product does not enter people's expectations, the dissatisfaction of netizens is still in the "differential treatment".
From June to September this year, Blue Bottle Coffee just opened a pop-up store in the MixC in Shenzhen, although the menu is a little streamlined, but it is indeed freshly ground coffee, and it has also introduced "New Orleans-style coffee snow melt" as a limited new product.
◎Left: Beijing pop-up store, right: Shenzhen pop-up store
The Beijing company of Blue Bottle Coffee was registered in January last year, and there were rumors that the first store in Beijing had landed in Jingshan Scenic Area, but there was no news of the landing so far, and after a long wait, a two-day pop-up store was waited.
Entered China for one and a half years
Blue Bottle Coffee is stuck in Shanghai
Blue Bottle Coffee is one of the promoters of the "third coffee wave" led by specialty coffee, once labeled as the "Apple of coffee", founder James Freeman started from scratch in a garage and received multiple investments from Silicon Valley tech giants, all the way from San Francisco, Los Angeles, to Japan, South Korea and the world.
The opening of the first store in Shanghai has been "spreading" for two years, and the expectations are full. On February 25, 2022, Blue Bottle Coffee's first store in Chinese mainland settled in Jing'an, Shanghai, even though the overall price of the store's products was 35% to 40% higher than the price of stores in other regions, there was still a long queue on the first day of opening, and the highest queue market could reach 6 hours, and some scalpers fried the price to 100-150 yuan / cup.
When Blue Bottle Coffee entered China, a large number of specialty coffee brands had already received financing, and now, a year and a half later, a number of specialty coffee brands are starting to collectively sprint to scale.
The number of Manner coffee stores has exceeded 1,000, M Stand coffee has reached 400+, the number of Seesaw Coffee stores has reached 130+, the number of Peet's Coffee stores has reached 180, %arabica opened nearly 20 stores in Chinese mainland last year under the franchise system, and the number of Lavazza coffee stores exceeded 100, and plans to achieve the goal of 1,000 stores in the next 3 to 5 years.
Not counting pop-up stores, the number of Blue Bottle Coffee stores is only 5 so far, and it has not really "gone out of Shanghai".
The fourth store in Qingpu and the fifth store in Pudong, the first three stores are all in Jing'an.
Hu Jun, general manager of Blue Bottle Coffee Greater China, said in an interview with the media, "This is already the fastest market for Blue Bottle Coffee to open stores in new cities in the world." In fact, in the 20 years since its establishment, Blue Bottle Coffee has only opened about 100 stores around the world.
The slow opening of Blue Bottle Coffee, to a certain extent, is due to the long time spent on design and construction, the profit model does not rely on scale, the store is only one of the positions that carry the coffee brand and product experience, and the sales of coffee beans and brand derivatives account for most of the overall turnover.
From the perspective of price band, the main coffee of about 40 yuan belongs to the middle and high-end, and the price is close to Starbucks Selection and %Arabica Cafe. At the same time, consumers in this price band are usually not price sensitive and pursue the brand effect and taste of coffee.
The competitive situation faced by Blue Bottle Coffee is more complex, and many of the tricks of Blue Bottle Coffee have been learned and used by the new coffee forces in China, and Chinese consumers have also received round after round of education on specialty coffee, especially affordable specialty coffee.
To achieve commercial success, Blue Bottle needs to continue to focus on the style of products, space and experience to maintain brand influence and build brand high potential.
As a result, who would have thought that Blue Bottle Coffee lost its favor because of a two-day "boutique instant coffee station".
Before entering China
Blue bottle coffee has "changed"
The long-term reliance on fresh roasting is one of the selling points of Blue Bottle Coffee, and the main sales volume is "small roast + please see the production date". The founder has said that the coffee in the store is roasted within 48 hours.
To this day, some reports still use "48 hours of fresh baking" as the selling point of the blue bottle.
But in fact, there is a view in the coffee roasting industry that coffee beans need to be left for a period of time after roasting, and the roasted coffee beans will continue to exhaust (bean rearing period), and the quality of coffee beans used too early is not stable.
What's more, Blue Bottle Coffee has long abandoned this "rule" and quietly extended the time to 21 days.
Officials previously said that the packaged coffee beans currently sold are actually roasted and produced within 14 days, and the store must use them up within 21 days, and it is recommended for consumers to drink them within 60 days of the "best" tasting period.
In the past two years, Blue Bottle Coffee has gradually become popular, and its business idea has gradually changed from "providing high-quality coffee" to "allowing people to quickly experience the fun of coffee".
In 2018, Blue Bottle Coffee, which has always paid attention to "slow work and meticulous work", opened a special take-out "take out" store in Kanda Wanshiba, Japan, and in 2020, Blue Bottle Coffee launched cold brew coffee and vending machines in aluminum cans on the streets of Japan...
In 2022, Blue Bottle launched the "Craft Instant Espresso". "The pursuit of retaining the flavor and texture of coffee espresso", but Blue Bottle is no longer the coffee brand that "sells beans but not powder".
In August of this year, the product was launched in China, "because Chinese customers are used to using smaller cups than in the United States, so the grams are localized" - the number of grams in individual packaging has been changed from 4 grams to 3 grams.
It's just that how many scenes can a single instant coffee priced at about 15 yuan be put in? Aren't other specialty coffee shops fragrant?
As Blue Bottle Coffee goes wider out of the store, it adapts to a wider range of consumer groups and market trends. Blue Bottle Coffee's core values and brand positioning may be being challenged.
Embracing "mass business" instead of "one session and one meeting", the identity and high degree of personalization of blue bottle coffee are being sacrificed, the brand halo is dimming, and perhaps in the future, it will no longer be a "pilgrimage brand" for specialty coffee lovers.