01, "insomnia" milk tea soared last year
"Pinboya is a must-have, enjoy an insomniac life", every late night, there are always people who have drunk Boya String with eyes like copper bells, and appear in the comment area of social platforms energetically, looking for the same "Boya String Victim".
Because it contains a high concentration of tea polyphenols, it will cause insomnia in some people, so it is jokingly called "Boya Sleepless" by many netizens.
Regarding the insomnia effect of Boya Juexian, some people say, "Milk tea is drunk in the afternoon, and people go to bed at four o'clock." Bawang Chaji once posted an interaction on Xiaohongshu, asking netizens to pick up the next sentence of "Drinking Boya", and the top comment was, "Drinking Boya, enjoy sleepless nights." ”
Even so, there are still more and more people drinking, and the official data of Bawang Tea Ji shows that the signature product Boya Juexian has changed from being able to sell 80 million+ cups a year to selling 100 million+ cups a year, and the direct income is 1.6 billion yuan based on a conservative calculation of a minimum of 16 yuan per cup.
Founded at the end of 2017, Bawang Chaji is a company from Yunnan Province that has a history of 6 years, but most people will not drink Boya Juexian until 2023, because most of its stores were opened in this year.
According to the data of Narrow Door Dining Eye, in 2023, Bawang Chaji will open more than 2,300 stores across the country. As of October 2022, the total number of Bawang Chaji stores is only 760.
In other words, in 2023, the number of stores opened by Bawang Chaji in one year is more than three times that of the previous five years combined, which is not a small step. According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, there are currently 3,189 stores in the country, and the total number of stores is more than 6 times that of Chayan Yuese, and there are thousands more than Naixue's tea, which is the same as Heytea, which was opened to join in the first year, ranking tenth in the industry.
▲ (Screenshot of narrow door dining eye and WeChat index)
Although the total number of stores of Bawang Chaji is less than that of Mixue Bingcheng, Gu Ming, Tea Baidao, etc., its popularity is not low, and its WeChat index is second only to Mixue Bingcheng, Nai Xue's tea and Hey Tea, ranking fourth in the industry.
There are many netizens calling for Bawang Chaji to hurry up and open a store. A netizen said on Xiaohongshu that he didn't drink it when he went to Fujian, and he went to Guangdong on a business trip to buy two cups. Someone deliberately took the high-speed train to the field for a drink because there was no local one.
"Where is there no Bawang Chaji? Let's drive over!" At the beginning of last year, Bawang Chaji asked questions, and netizens replied: Come to Wuhan, Shandong Zaozhuang has not yet, can Xiamen be arranged, Changsha and Changsha......
This year, Bawang Chaji did open its first store in many cities, and Beijing, Changsha and other places called by netizens were arranged.
Recalling the queue when Bawang Tea Ji entered Beijing in 2023, Lin Qiao still remembers it vividly, "That was the first time I saw milk tea with more than 1,000 numbers in the past few years." In August 2023, Bawang Chaji landed its first store in Beijing Hopson Hui, and as soon as it officially opened, there was a sea of people at the door. Lin Qiao remembered that she once placed an order at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and waited until 9 o'clock in the evening to get the milk tea, she ordered two cups of Bo Ya Juexian, and she lost sleep until 2 o'clock in the morning.
Yunnan people may never have imagined that the overlord tea that can be seen everywhere in the local area has become a hot commodity in other places. Just some time ago, the opening of Bawang Tea Ji in the third store in Changsha also caused a hard-to-find effect.
In Changsha's famous business district Guojin Street, the arrival of Bawang Chaji has surrounded the whole street, "a Domino's, a Bawang Chaji, two brands will crowd this street", if a person carries a Domino's bag in his left hand and a bag of Bawang Chaji in his right hand, it is definitely the existence of the top level of the food chain, "at least queue for four hours to start", someone joked.
Queuing more than 1,000 has become the norm, and the waiting time is even longer than that of the "king of queuing", until six more stores were opened in Changsha in January this year, which slightly alleviated such a hot situation.
02. Franchisees line up with money to join
Bawang Tea Ji can soar in 2023 with an almost stable pattern of the head brand of new tea drinks, focusing on a dislocation competition.
Do not roll the fruit tea category, do not build its own raw material supply chain, and first lay out in Yunnan, where the competition in milk tea is not fierce, revealing the "war avoidance" mentality of Bawang Tea Ji everywhere. Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Tea Queen, once said, "Everyone knows that the fruit tea track is good, but I am a person who is particularly knowledgeable about current affairs. ”
In 2017, Bawang Tea opened its first store in Yunnan, at that time, the market at that time, the fruit tea track was prosperous, Hey Tea, Nai Xue's tea scenery was infinite, and there was only one famous original leaf tea brand, but Tea Yan Yuese had not yet gone out of Changsha at that time.
In the following years, when Hey Tea, Gu Ming, Mixue Bingcheng, etc. were busy in their own supply chains, central factories, and logistics cold chains, Bawang Chaji still insisted on a simple three-piece set of "tea + fresh milk + packaging materials".
According to the city, Bawang Chaji usually cooperates with local fresh milk brands to reduce costs. In addition, unlike the perishability of fruits, tea does not have high requirements for shelf life, which makes Bawang Tea Ji not have to worry about the problem of preservation like other brands.
In terms of store layout, Bawang Tea started from the southwest region, where milk tea culture is not prevalent, and gradually opened stores to the east, based in Yunnan, and then radiated to Guangxi, Guizhou and other places, opening 360 stores in less than three years, and the capital also attracted the favor at this time.
In 2021, Bawang Chaji began to receive capital assistance, and completed more than 300 million yuan in Series A and Series B financing this year. With the blessing of capital, Bawang Chaji has entered a period of rapid expansion.
Some franchisees told the "City Boundary" that when Bawang Chaji was just opened to join in its province, there were thousands of people who came for interviews alone, and they were all "old birds" who had fought in other brands.
From the point of view of franchise costs, Bawang Chaji is in the first echelon. With the signboard of "Oriental Starbucks", Bawang Chaji pursues the same principle of large stores as Starbucks, with a single store area of 60-80 square meters, and the input cost of store rent, manpower, and equipment will be higher.
It is understood that the basic cost of joining an overlord tea is about 600,000 yuan, which is higher than the cost of tea brands such as Mixue Bingcheng, Tea Baidao, and Gu Ming, and the total investment of the latter is only hundreds of thousands.
Still, franchisees are lining up to join. Search for Bawang Chaji on Baidu, and the associated words immediately pop up how much the franchise fee, joining conditions, joining phone, etc., and on social media, there are also a bunch of people asking how to join.
According to Li Meng from Shenyang, he applied to join Bawang Chaji, and passed the first trial, but did not pass the second trial. "In the first trial, they asked me about my experience, education, funds, store opening plans, etc., and later informed me of the second trial, and I was very happy, because I knew that many people failed the first trial, but I didn't expect that I still failed the second trial. ”
The reason why Overlord Chaji rejected Li Meng was that he did not have a ready-made management team, and others had more advantages than him.
Compared with Li Meng, Gao Jiao is much luckier, she successfully applied for joining, and opened a Bawang tea in a second-tier city, with a landing cost of almost 1 million yuan, including a franchise fee of 69,800 yuan, a brand usage fee of 15,000 yuan, a performance bond of 20,000 yuan, an equipment fee of 160,000 yuan, a decoration fee of 150,000 yuan, and a material cost of 100,000 yuan.
"After deducting 2% of the operation and management fee, 1% of the marketing fee, 50,000 yuan of store rent, and 80,000 yuan of labor cost every month, I calculated that the next cycle is 19 months. Gao Jiao revealed that her monthly turnover is almost 380,000 yuan, and she makes a net profit of more than 50,000 yuan.
A franchisee of Bawang Chaji, who has been open for a few months, told "City Boundary" that based on the current operating conditions of the store, the return on investment is faster than he expected.
03、靠“碰瓷”营销火出圈
One reason why franchisees have confidence in Bawang Chaji is that it is indeed the popular fried chicken in the current milk tea industry.
Not long ago, Zhang Mei wanted to invite her friends to drink milk tea, but she didn't choose Hey Tea or Nai Xue's tea as before, and directly ordered more than 20 cups of Overlord Tea. "Because it's the hottest now, although it's more expensive, it tastes good. ”
Nowadays, on the street, it can be seen with the naked eye that there are more and more people carrying overlord tea bags, and it has also quietly invaded the afternoon tea of working people.
A white-collar worker who works in a large factory in Xierqi, Beijing, told "City Boundary" that the afternoon tea ordered by the leaders for his colleagues has been changed from the previous Hey Tea to Bawang Tea. The leader also joked that Bawang Chaji solved her choice difficulty, and the afternoon tea was difficult to reconcile, compared to scratching her head in the Hey Tea applet to pick milk tea or fruit tea, she only needed to order a kind of Boya Absolute String on Bawang Chaji.
Even abroad, international students who are greedy for the overlord tea girl and rush to due (referring to completing tasks or jobs at the specified time) late at night have begun to reproduce the boya masterpiece by themselves. Some international students in Australia made a cup of homemade Bo Ya Jue with jasmine tea-flavored oriental leaves, milk and whipped cream, which caused many international students to follow suit.
More and more people drink Bawang tea, which is not unrelated to its good marketing.
"City Boundary" searched on Xiaohongshu and found that there are 720,000 notes related to Bawang Chaji, more than the 490,000 articles of Mixue Bingcheng and the 220,000 articles of Nai Xue's tea, and only less than the 910,000 articles of Hey Tea.
The cups and bags of Bawang Chaji are indeed very distinctive, and the design of its "face-bumping" Dior bag has caused controversy, and big brands such as LV, Chanel, and Gucci have also been rubbed by it. It can be said that whatever is hot, it will "touch the porcelain", but every controversy can bring it huge attention.
▲ (Screenshot of Xiaohongshu)
Many netizens posted on Xiaohongshu, "I bought two cups of milk tea, and won Dior and LV in full at one time, thank you for Bawang Chaji." "Bawang Chaji is a good student who understands 'Chinese design', how can it be called plagiarism...... "The bag bought for 20,000 yuan is the same as the milk tea that my cousin bought for 16 yuan, and it is just right to hold milk tea." "I went to Dior with the bag of Overlord Tea Ji today, and I don't know if it's me embarrassed or embarrassed by Sister Cabinet for a while. ”
In addition to "touching porcelain", Bawang Chaji is also accused of being an imitator, its core category is composed of tea and fresh milk, which is exactly the same as the predecessor tea and beauty, and the product name can be combined with the tea and the color to form a couplet, even the LOGO is also learned to be a tea face and a pleasant color, all of which are mainly red tones, plus a classical beauty.
At the end of 2023, Bawang Chaji officially opened its store in Changsha, Hunan, and broke her wrists head-on with the local "Bawang" Chayan Yuese.
However, unlike the pleasant color of the tea, the Bawang tea queen still adopts the core product strategy, and the sales of a Boya Juexian can account for more than 30% of the total sales.
There are pros and cons to the strategy of large single products, which has always been a double-edged sword, not to mention that it is difficult to be truly unique in the new tea beverage industry with no technical barriers. Recently, brands such as Nai Xue's tea, Hey Tea, Gu Ming, and Shanghai Auntie have launched new products such as light milk tea and original leaf tea, all of which are based on "fresh milk + original tea".
Although some consumers have fallen in love with raw leaf tea through Bawang Tea Queen, they have now switched to other new tea brands because the price is cheaper.
It can be said that after experiencing the soaring Bawang Tea Ji in 2023, there are not many challenges in the future, after all, the market competition is becoming more and more fierce, and the new tea drink brand has rolled up to a new height, and since the beginning of the year, there has been news of the closure of a number of milk tea shops in the industry.
(Lin Qiao, Li Meng, Gao Jiao, and Zhang Mei are pseudonyms in the article)
Author | Zhang Jikang
Edit | Chen Fang
Operations | Liu Shan