According to a report released by research institute World Coffee Portal at the end of 2023, China has surpassed the United States to become the country with the most branded cafes in the world.
In 2023, the number of cafes in China will increase by 58% to nearly 50,000. At present, there are about 120,000 cafes in the whole of East Asia, and China accounts for more than 40%.
But what is more noteworthy is that the county is becoming an important consumption area for coffee. Today, coffee is no longer a consumer symbol monopolized by elites in first-tier cities, and the streets and alleys of the county, day and night, also have aromas lingering.
Coffee, because of its obvious downward trend and expansion speed, is becoming a star category in the new economic format of the county.
The vast coffee consumption power of the county has finally been seen
In 2023, the county market has become a battleground for chain coffee brands.
Starbucks, a well-established overseas coffee brand, has stepped out of the high-end business district of the past and has begun to appear in the commercial center of the county, while the more down-to-earth cutting-edge local brands Luckin and Cudi are even more crazy to shop stores, and the "10,000-store model" has almost become an industry slogan, with representative red and blue doors and paper cups appearing on every street and alley.
Fast food brands such as McDonald's and KFC, or milk tea brands such as Michelle Bingcheng and CoCo are also using their original supply chain and brand influence to promote their coffee sub-brands in lower-sinking markets...... On the first floor of the county's pedestrian street or shopping mall, you can often see the "scuffle" of multiple coffee brands.
The chain giants "heavy" the county, not only because the coffee consumption market in the first and second-tier cities is becoming increasingly saturated, but also because they see the huge potential of the coffee market in the fourth- and fifth-tier cities. According to GeoQ Data, there are about 5,454 coffee stores in the county market. Of these, 3,700 were born in 2023 alone.
According to Meituan data, from 2021 to January this year, the growth rate of online coffee merchants in the county market has jumped from 27.80% to 69.19%, and officially surpassed the first-tier cities from 2022. Although the growth rate of online orders is slower than that of first-tier cities, it has also maintained a high growth rate for three years.
Behind the strong demand for coffee is the vigorous consumption of county, especially the consumption of life services at the county level, which is becoming an important engine to stimulate domestic demand. According to the 2022 China Top 100 County Economies Study, from 2011 to 2020, the number of registered population at the county level decreased from 952.56 million to 890.76 million. However, the county's GDP increased from 24.1 trillion yuan to 39.2 trillion yuan, and the compound growth rate of county-level GDP in the past ten years was 5.7%.
In other words, the county seat carries about half of China's population and contributes nearly 40 trillion yuan of GDP, and its consumption potential is immeasurable.
The rapidly spreading chain stores and local coffee shops that have sprung up have started a fierce price war on the "battlefield" of the county: who can resist the temptation of 9.9 yuan and not try it?
There are a lot of new ones, and after the low-price bombardment, the county has also precipitated a group of loyal audiences with high stickiness.
The data shows that most of the coffee consumers in the county are young users with a fast pace of life, and the three age groups of 20-25 years old, 26-30 years old, and 31-40 years old are the main consumers, covering college students, rookies in the workplace and backbone of the workplace. In the county, women are the main consumer of coffee, accounting for 64%.
Out of the ocean and into the "soil", the county coffee plays a new trick
In addition to standardized chain stores, more local communities and specialty coffee shops have also grown savagely, injecting more fresh "local energy" and "vitality" into the originally saturated coffee industry. County coffee is quietly competing for the right to speak about coffee, and is even changing the entire business format from the bottom up, redefining "what is a café".
In the county seat, the shopkeepers broke the fundamentalism of coffee, boldly tried and made mistakes with the advantage of small scale, and incorporated more local flavors into the "foreign soybean milk", colliding with new flavors.
Just like Luckin realized that Chinese do not like coffee, but prefer the taste of milk and sugar, it successfully turned over. These coffees from the county area undoubtedly capture the local appetite: the milk skin in the Donghe district of Baotou in Inner Mongolia and the butter tea in Langkazi County in Tibet have achieved a more mellow flavor of latte, while the wolfberry in Shapotou District of Zhongwei in Ningxia and the prickly pear in Leishan County of Guizhou have injected a fresh and fruity aroma into the coffee.
In addition to the seasoning of coffee itself, the staple food that locals are accustomed to eating has also replaced bagel and sandwiches, becoming a new partner of coffee. In Guangdong, a serving of rice noodles with coffee is more refreshing, while the old cousins in Guangxi are inseparable from the fresh and spicy taste of snail noodles.
How to drink coffee also reflects the rhythm and way of life of the residents of a place. The number of "new and peculiar flavor" coffees in Zhejiang counties ranks among the top in the country, the "evil charm" of Wenling preserved egg tofu latte, the moist mulberry leaf coffee of Digang Village in Huzhou, the refreshing taste of Linhai vegetable paste latte, and the long aftertaste of Zhuji rice wine coffee......
Zhejiang's abundant products provide a steady stream of inspiration for coffee tastes, and the beautiful scenery of mountains and rivers has innovated the scene of drinking coffee: in Anji County and Cangnan County, "waterfall coffee" and "cliff coffee" have appeared.
Behind the "landscape coffee" is a more soothing rhythm of life for the people of the county from 9 to 5.
According to the survey data of Black Ant Capital, the average working hours of young and middle-aged people in the county are 7.2 hours, which is lower than the average 9.5 hours (47.5 hours/week) announced by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021, and the average online entertainment time (including short videos, games and online shopping) per person is about 2.5 hours, and the rest of the time can be used for housework, offline socializing, entertainment and other activities.
This kind of leisurely is beyond the reach of the accelerating first- and second-tier cities. From the time distribution of coffee orders, it can be seen that "morning C" ranks second, and the afternoon tea period from 13 to 18 o'clock every day is the peak of coffee drinking by county residents, accounting for 40.37%.
Not only has coffee brought new beverage options to the county, in fact, a variety of coffee shops have also created more public space for the county. In addition to refreshing the mind, a drink and a few tables meet the social needs of young people in small towns and towns. When it's not time for a meal, these coffee shops are like a tidy urban living room, where they have a new scene outside of home to chat, date, check in, build social connections, and build identity — they have a place to go.
County coffee, more understanding of the Internet business
Because of its "youth", the coffee in the county seems to be more knowledgeable about the Internet and has a natural "traffic" thinking.
From the massive online group buying activities, you can get a glimpse of the dependence of county coffee on the Internet.
The county coffee group purchase has soared in the past three years, and the growth rate will even reach 353.55% in 2023. The group purchase packages of various platforms are becoming a powerful tool for coffee to open up the national degree in the county, which not only captures the pursuit of cost-effective coffee by county consumers, but also relies on the Internet to achieve rapid dissemination. Whether it is a chain or a small coffee shop, they have started a "group purchase war" in the county.
The reason why coffee can become a representative category of county-level consumption upgrading is that the initial low price and group purchase play a great role. Coffee is a relatively new thing, and the unit price is not high, which is a kind of "consumption upgrade with the same price" for county residents, catering to their pursuit of benefits and fear of trial and error.
It can also be seen through the popularity of group buying that the opening of the coffee market is also inseparable from the sinking of Internet infrastructure. From the consumption side, from 2019 to the first three quarters of 2023, the proportion of county-level life service consumption orders on the Meituan platform continued to increase, from 23.8% to 30.6%, and the five-year compound growth rate of orders exceeded 40%, higher than the national growth rate.
From the supply side, digital and intelligent infrastructure is becoming the main starting point for entrepreneurs to dig gold in the county. Judging from Meituan's data, in the past three years, in addition to chain stores, the access rate of coffee shops rooted in the county has also continued to increase, and it will be close to half in 2023. Small stores "go online" and add takeaway, instant retail and other formats, which can greatly expand the business radius and effective business hours of stores, so that stores can get more orders.
At the same time, digital means such as Dianping are also helping small stores that can only serve local areas to gain more customer flow. Unlike the previous chain stores, which purely relied on offline drainage and word-of-mouth, the current stores have more online drainage methods. Since then, opening a café in the county town does not necessarily have to be seen by more people in the street shop, as long as there is novelty and good reputation, there is no need to spend a high rent, and "the aroma of wine is not afraid of deep alleys", so that consumers can smell the fragrance.
Today, with the recovery of the domestic tourism economy, coffee full of regional characteristics can always become the traffic password of the Internet. The popularity of a cup of coffee may inadvertently bring a scenic spot to fire, and even bring a county town to people.
Today, a group of young people are returning from the big cities, and this group of young people has long since lost their charm with coffee, and the urban life and white-collar class it once symbolized. Under the influence of the young people who returned to their hometowns, coffee has accelerated its integration into the daily life rhythm and scene of the county, and has become an ordinary drink.
But in the vast and complex "magic land" of the county, as a foreign coffee, it is destined to tell more new stories. The future county trip of "foreign soybean milk" still has unlimited imagination.
Southern Weekly researcher Cheng Yan designed Mark
Editor-in-charge: Dai Chunchen, Zhang Qiuhong