When drinking milk tea and coffee has become a daily routine, the needs of young people have gradually changed from "better tasting" to "healthier".
This article was originally published by Red Meal Network (ID: hongcan18), author: He Peiling, editor: Wang Xiuqing.
Since the beginning of this year, more and more tea and coffee brands have begun to pay attention to the health, freshness and burden of their products. Under this trend, how can brands upgrade?
Lowering sugar, changing milk, and becoming "lighter"
Tea and coffee collectively "roll" health
Since the beginning of this year, tea and coffee players who have "involuted" to the extreme have collectively "rolled" to health: transparency of calories and ingredient lists, reduction of sugar content, upgrading of base milk, and "reducing burden" of products......
The labels such as "calories", "sugar content" and "trans fatty acids" that consumers smell and change are "opened" one by one.
How many calories is in a cup of milk tea? No one could tell before, but now it is becoming more transparent.
In August this year, Bawang Chaji announced the disclosure of the calorie tables of the first batch of 6 products, and simultaneously launched the "Low Burden Sugar Control Zone" on the purchase channel, and consumers can also check the "Product ID Card" to understand the calories, nutrients, flavor and other information of each product.
△ Image source: Overlord Chahime
In terms of reducing the sugar content of milk tea, this year's Tea Baidao announced "sugar reduction", which is different from the lack of standard sugar reduction methods in the past.
In terms of base milk, tea brands are also brewing new changes. For example, Heytea has launched the first special real milk in the new tea beverage industry independently developed - "3.8 Yuanmu Zhen Milk", with a raw milk protein of up to 3.8g/100ml.
In addition to tea, the coffee track is also "reducing the burden" and "becoming lighter". For example, Tims Tianhao Coffee launched low-decaffeinated coffee, and Nova Coffee shouted "refuse high calories".
Looking back on the changes in the tea and coffee tracks in the past one or two years, it is not difficult to find that the direction of involution such as healthy raw materials, light taste, low sugar and low fat, and reduced additives has converged into a general trend of healthy upgrading.
△ Image source: Picture Worm Creative
Why is this happening?
From the perspective of consumption, many consumers are attracted by the deliciousness of milk tea and coffee, but on the other hand, they are worried that "drinking milk tea will make you fat" and "drinking coffee and can't sleep", resulting in strong health anxiety, thus limiting the frequency of consumption.
In order to eliminate consumers' concerns, taking the new tea drink as an example, it has continued to promote product iteration and upgrading in the past ten years, replacing industrial preparations with healthier and more natural raw materials such as real tea and real fruit, and continuously optimizing the ingredient list to reduce sugar, fat, and non-dairy creamer, so that consumers can drink more assured and healthier.
From the perspective of the industry, tea and coffee have basically passed the stage of volume prices, and the competition has gradually entered the second half, compared with the past, brands need to be more based on long-term strategies, with better quality products, more stable supply chain to win the favor of consumers.
Therefore, whether it is tea or coffee, focusing on the needs of consumers to "drink healthy", accelerating the polishing of products, research and development, supply chain capabilities, and enhancing brand competitiveness will be the top priority in the next stage of competition.
Health-oriented,
How do brands create popular drinks?
For brands, how to adapt to this healthy trend? Returning to the product level is to uphold the healthy research and development idea to create explosive products.
Taking Nai Xue's tea (hereinafter referred to as "Nai Xue" and Cudi Coffee (hereinafter referred to as "Cudi") as examples, these two brands have recently launched products with Ejiao as raw materials.
On December 27, Naixue launched 2 new products co-branded with Dong'e Ejiao, which are divided into Dong'e Ejiao milk tea and Dong'e Ejiao jujube tea. In the "Legend of Zhen Huan" joint event in December, Cudi launched 3 new Ejiao latte series, namely longan red date Ejiao rice milk latte, longan red date Ejiao oatmeal latte, and longan red date Ejiao small iron.
△ Image source: Screenshot of Sina Weibo
Based on consumer feedback from Dianping, Xiaohongshu and other platforms, the new Ejiao products launched by Nai Xue and Cudi have received a lot of praise: "Winter Girl's Natal Milk Tea" and "This is milk tea, this is my autumn and winter health bloodline". In addition, health, health, nutrition, etc. are all high-frequency words in consumers' evaluation of the two new Ejiao products.
Specifically, what is the idea of Nai Xue and Cudi to create a new Ejiao product?
1. Focusing on Chinese natural ingredients and real materials
Judging from the ingredient list released by the brand, both Nai Xue and Cudi use Ejiao, a Chinese ingredient that is often regarded as a high-end ingredient for nourishing food therapy, and is used in tea and coffee to not only meet the needs of warm up hot drinks in winter, but also enhance the value of the drink.
In addition to Ejiao, other ingredients are also clear at a glance, taking Naixue Dong'e Ejiao milk tea as an example, this time's co-branded upgrade is based on Dong'e Ejiao, red dates, white fungus, honey-flavored black tea, and fresh milk, and peach gum is also newly added, which makes the nourishing feeling to a higher level.
△ Image source: Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
2. The taste is improved, which is both healthy and delicious
Cudi and Nai Xue's new Ejiao products are not simply mixed with nutritious ingredients such as Ejiao and red dates with tea soup or coffee, but also improve the taste and flavor of the drink while using healthy and nutritious ingredients, making the taste lighter and more universal.
This kind of flavor integration and improvement tests the brand's R&D and quality control capabilities on the one hand, and puts forward higher requirements for the R&D capabilities of the upstream supply chain on the other hand.
supply chain innovation,
Drive the healthy upgrading of tea and coffee
In fact, the wave of healthy upgrading of tea and coffee is inseparable from the innovation support of the upstream supply chain.
Whether it is Heytea's launch of "special milk for new tea drinks", the "hypoglycemic reduction" of Chabaidao, or the research and development of Ejiao health tea by Naixue and Cudi, they are essentially based on the technological iteration and upgrading of the supply chain.
The upstream supply chain needs to have certain forward-looking layout capabilities. As a dairy supplier for the tea and coffee industries, Chenfei Food supplies more than 60,000 large-scale catering stores across the country, and has achieved strategic partnerships with a number of leading and well-known catering brands. For the "health war" of tea and coffee that is in full swing, Chenfei has formed a set of high-efficiency and high-quality solutions.
What is Chenfei's solution and what are its characteristics?
1. Take healthy dairy-based products as the core to reduce the burden of health anxiety
Insight into the trend of consumers paying more and more attention to the dual balance of health and taste, Chenfei Food's milk products, such as the "Shengcui Series", have achieved a healthy milk base with 0 flavor, 0 hydrogenation, 0 non-dairy creamer, 0 trans fatty acids and 0 vegetable oil through Chenfei's characteristic milk flavor escort process system.
In this way, at the source, tea and coffee can be made healthier by improving the base milk.
In addition, Chenfei's improvement of base milk is based on the premise of retaining nutrients to the greatest extent, such as "raw milk extract" is made of 100% raw milk, only sterilization without additives, through nano-scale multi-membrane deep extraction technology, and then superimposed INFUSION ultra-instantaneous steam immersion sterilization, so that the natural active nutrients of milk can be fully retained, while retaining the fresh flavor of milk.
2. Supplemented by flavor compound products, it reduces the burden on the store operation process
Taking Ejiao milk tea and Ejiao latte on the market as examples, "If you want to present a complex flavor like longan and ejiao red dates in your drink, in the past, the brand was achieved through multiple manual compounding operations by store staff, and the SOP steps were cumbersome, it took a lot of time, and the stability of the product could not be guaranteed." Xie Wenjuan, director of application research and development of Chenfei food, told Red Meal.com.
Xie Wenjuan said, for example, in the past, when a store made a Ejiao latex drink product, it was necessary to add at least 2-3 types of corresponding flavor seasoning ingredients to produce the flavor, resulting in an increase in the cost of raw materials.
However, if you start from the upstream supply side, it is much easier to solve the problem of slow dispensing of compound flavor drinks.
"Chenfei's latest Ejiao thick milk series is to compound Ejiao into thick milk, which truly presents the traditional Ejiao flavor with thousands of years, which is healthy and highlights the sense of value. As long as the store carries out basic blending, it can make ejiao drinks with balanced taste and unique flavor, which greatly reduces the operation steps of the store and increases the memory point and quality of the product. Xie Wenjuan said.
It is reported that in order to express the most authentic flavor feeling, Chenfei has truly achieved real materials in the materials, such as "Ejiao Thick Milk" using pure Dong'e Ejiao, red date powder, black sesame powder, etc. In terms of flavor, according to the new trend of tea brands and consumer needs, the classic flavor (restoring the taste of peach blossom Ji Ejiao cake) and longan red date flavor has been launched, focusing on its integration and balance with tea soup and coffee.
Based on the R&D experience of Ejiao thick milk products, in the future, Chenfei will develop more innovative flavor compound products to meet more diversified market demand.
3. Featuring flexible customization, it reduces the burden on customer product research and development
The customization capability of upstream suppliers is also crucial, as it directly affects their responsiveness and adaptability to downstream market demands.
As a dairy supplier founded in 2014, Chenfei has extensive experience in flexible customized dairy products. Taking Shengcui series products as an example, the dual milk flavor escort system developed by Chenfei can easily and flexibly adjust the basic protein, fat and other key index parameters of raw milk, and flexibly customize exclusive products for customers, thereby reducing customers' worries in product research and development.
Conclusion
Whether it is the brand to develop new products with the idea of health and health, or the comprehensive rollout of healthy raw materials in the industry, health has become an inevitable trend in the upgrading of tea and coffee.
As more and more brands grasp this trend, accelerate their own health upgrades, and continue to create product health attributes, the competition of efficiency and quality around health is becoming the focus of the second half of the breakthrough competition for tea and coffee.
Those brands that insist on high quality, use good raw materials, and continuously improve quality and efficiency can add a few points to their own chances of winning from the fierce competition.
The pictures in this article are provided by Chenfei Food, and Red Meal Network is authorized to use;