It's not easy to drink a cup of fruit tea at Bawang Chaji, not because it's "hot", but because it's "not on sale".
Open the Bawang Tea Ji ordering applet and select the Beijing Chang'an Shopping Mall store, although there are fruit teas such as Fusheng Mengti, which focuses on grapes, Yunhai Mango which focuses on mango, and Guanyin fragrant coconut that focuses on coconut, but only lemon tea such as "Qilixiang" and "Qianfeng Cui" can be purchased, and the rest are gray and sold out.
The same is true for Bawang Tea Ji in Beijing's Huayu Fashion Mall, where there are only three lemon teas, "Qilixiang", "Qianfeng Cui" and "Amber Light", and the rest of the fruit teas are not displayed on the menu at all. And Bawang Tea Ji, located in Heshenghui in Changping, Beijing, does not even have a single fruit tea on sale.
Among the fruit tea products, only "lemon tea" is available for sale
Screenshot of the Overlord Tea Ji applet
Overlord Chaji's fruit tea, where did it go?
"Hot" fruit tea
Overlord Tea Ji is indeed not coveted for fruit tea.
In the brand introduction on the official website of Bawang Tea Queen, "Original Leaf Fresh Milk Tea" and its fresh milk tea signature "Boya Juexian" are mentioned several times, but there is no mention of fruit tea.
Screenshot of the official website of Overlord Chaji
When explaining the brand positioning in March 2021, it wrote: "Bawang Tea Ji focuses on raw leaf fresh milk tea, covering pure tea, fresh fruit tea and related derivative products in the vicinity."
In fact, as early as 2019, Bawang Tea Ji launched fruit tea products sporadically, but then they all disappeared from the menu one after another. Especially since it got financing in 2021 and began to take the large-scale route, fruit tea is not the focus.
Bawang Tea Ji was born in 2017, when fruit tea began to rise, and even became a battleground for soldiers for a time. For almost every brand, consumers can get a signature fruit tea at their fingertips.
For example, Heytea's "Zhizhi series" such as Zhizhi Berry and Zhizhi Peach launched in 2017, and the fruit tea "Succulent Grape" launched in 2018 are still the star products of its sales list to this day. In 2017, Nayuki's tea launched the fruit tea "Domineering Bayberry", which has returned eight seasonally limited times so far. Correspondingly, Cha Baidao also has the enduring "Super Cup Fruit Tea" and "Purple Grape" series, and Gu Ming has sold more than 130 million cups of grape series, etc.
Even the big brother Michelle Bingcheng, who is out of the way to involution innovation, has long welded fruit teas such as "Stick Fresh Orange" and "Peach Four Seasons Spring" on the menu.
In 2021, "Mandarin Orange" and "Yellow Peel" once became the signature fruits of freshly made tea, followed by 2022, "Prickly Pear" and "Bala" are menacing.
In addition to the increasingly rare fruits, in specific seasons, brands have also anchored fruit tea to the seasonal limit, peach, plum, watermelon in summer, persimmon, orange, cherry, have become a new source.
However, just when the freshly made tea drinks are rolling up to fruit tea, Bawang Tea Ji is unmoved, and its focus is still on "original leaf fresh milk tea", that is, a simple combination of tea base, milk and base milk.
"Everyone knows that the fruit tea track is good, but I am a person who is particularly knowledgeable about current affairs, and I can't afford to beat it on this track. This is what Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Tea Ji, said in an exclusive interview with 36 Krypton.
Mu Yichen, a senior practitioner in the ready-made tea industry and the manager of the tea vertical media "Mu Liao", believes that there are two consensuses in the ready-made tea industry, the first is the consensus in the supply chain - almost all ready-made tea brands are driven by franchises, franchises bring scale, scale brings more profits, and the raw materials, packaging, and equipment used in each franchised store are the sources of continuous profits for the brand.
The simpler the raw materials and the more refined the SKU product matrix, the easier it is to achieve convenient transportation and fast cup dispensing, and the easier it is for stores to copy and expand.
However, fruits, especially fresh fruits, can be described as the "enemy" of the supply chain, which is not easy to store, transport, or even difficult to make.
For "new brands" with unstable supply chains and deep roots, fruit tea may be a hot potato. Therefore, whether forced or active, Bawang Tea Ji is far away from the "hot" fruit tea.
Two "Wealth Passwords"
After anchoring the simpler "original leaf fresh milk tea", Bawang Tea Ji thoroughly discovered the wealth code. According to Dr. Ling Yan, deputy director of the Shanghai Brand Development Research Center of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the wealth code lies in the "large single product strategy" and "new Chinese marketing".
The large-scale single product strategy refers not only to a single category of raw leaf fresh milk tea, but also to one of the star products, such as the signature Boya Juexian. According to the official data of Bawang Chaji, its annual sales volume exceeds 100 million cups. Luckin Raw Coconut Latte has just crossed the threshold of 100 million cups on its first anniversary, and Orange C American has just reached 100 million cups of annual sales in March this year after three years of its launch.
Focusing on the big pieces leads to greater efficiency. The data shows that the average cup efficiency of Bawang Tea Ji is less than 20 seconds for a cup, and Boya Juexian can even achieve a cup in 10 seconds. During the Spring Festival this year, the Bawang Tea Ji Poyang store set a record of 2,400 cups a day.
Another wealth code of Bawang Chaji is "new Chinese marketing".
Bawang Tea, which was born in 2017, undoubtedly "borrowed" the light of the national style freshly made tea brand tea that was launched in 2013.
For example, the top three of the overlord tea are "Boya Juexian", "Spring Peach Peach" and "Gui Fu Lanxiang", and the top three tea and pleasant colors are "Youlan Latte", "Shengsheng Oolong" and "Osmanthus Lane".
Behind this undoubtedly points to the "national tide style" that has emerged since 2018 (the name has gradually evolved into a new Chinese style). According to the "2023 China Brand Development Trend Report" released by the Jingdong Consumer and Industry Development Research Institute, from 2019 to 2022, from the industrial side, the product categories with the design concept of Guochao have expanded by 231%, and the number of brands producing Guochao products has increased by 223%, and from the consumer side, the number of consumers who purchase Guochao-related goods has increased by 74%, and the transaction value has increased by 355%.
In Ling Yan's view, compared with the pleasant appearance of tea, the "new Chinese" marketing of Bawang Tea Ji is more simple and straightforward - bothering on packaging and working IP co-branding.
Screenshot of the official website of Overlord Chaji
For example, the packaging displayed on the official website of Bawang Tea Lady when it was opened uses elements of the ancient tea horse road and blue and white porcelain, which not only reflects the new Chinese aesthetics to the fullest, but also once hit the design of the international luxury brand Dior.
Simple and popular large items are ready, and the new Chinese marketing with cultural outlets is also step-by-step, under the dual role of "subtraction" and "addition", the next thing to get is the franchisees who are eager to enter the game, which has become the way to success for Bawang Chaji.
From the point of view of store volume, the number of stores of Bawang Tea Ji is only 3969 (real-time data of Narrow Door Restaurant on April 23), ranking 9th among all ready-made tea brands, far less than the volume of nearly 30,000 stores in Mixue Bingcheng, as well as the 7000+ volume of ancient tea, tea Baidao, and Shanghai Auntie, but this "small transparent in the freshly made tea industry" is a veritable "king of growth".
Since its birth in November 2017 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, it has been "growing slowly" for almost 5 years, and until April 2022, the number of stores has just exceeded 500.
Then, it took 9 months to break 1,000 stores, then 3,000 stores in less than a year, and in 2023, the number of stores opened in a single year will exceed 2,000, even exceeding the volume of Nai Xue's tea.
Recently, according to a report by Reuters' IFR, Bawang Chaji plans to go public in the United States in the middle of this year, and is expected to raise 200 million to 300 million US dollars (about 1.45 billion to 2.17 billion yuan). This is also the second time that Bawang Chaji has been rumored to be listed in a year.
In front of a group of "old seniority" who have been listed and are to be listed, Bawang Chaji is a "dark horse" born at the end of 2017.
Where is the consumption outlet blowing?
There is never a shortage of dark horses in freshly made tea, and the key is whether it can run for a long time.
In the view of Tang Xin, president of the Red Meal Industry Research Institute, focusing on raw leaf fresh milk tea, while simplifying the supply chain, improving the degree of standardization and operational efficiency, also improves market recognition, which is very suitable for Bawang tea in the period of rapid expansion.
Therefore, for Bawang Tea Ji, the question becomes - how long can raw leaf fresh milk tea, a product that is simpler than fruit tea, be popular?
Fosun led the investment in Bawang Tea in 2021, and Cong Yonggang, Fosun's global partner and Fosun Fortune Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer, is also optimistic about the track of raw leaf fresh milk tea. In an interview with Interesting Report, he said that from the perspective of product logic in business history, Starbucks' best-selling products are still lattes and Frappuccinos, and McDonald's McSpicy Chicken Leg Burger has endured. Therefore, "new" is not necessarily the best way, and focusing on the big items may be the way to win.
In Cong Yonggang's view, the original leaf fresh milk tea needs to be viewed with the logic of "tea". Throughout history, China's tea has undergone several product form upgrades, from boiling tea, ordering tea, to brewing tea, and the original leaf fresh milk tea is an upgrade of tea, rather than a short-lived innovation.
However, in the world of freshly made milk tea, the tuyere has always been changeable:
Before 2016, the mainstream brands in the tea industry often favored "additives", for example, in the early days, almost only pearls were added, and in the later period, with COCO Duke tea and a little bit of branching leaves, cereals seemed to be able to enter tea one after another.
After 2016, with the birth of Hey Tea and Nai Xue's tea, freshly made tea drinks ushered in the second wave of outlets, and mainstream products began to reduce the use of traditional ingredients, but began to put fresh fruits into tea, and "Eight Treasure Porridge" quickly became "fruit tea".
After 2018, with the expansion of the scale of ready-made tea drinks and the wider audience, tea brands have also begun to find a new outlet - health. For example, Hey Tea took the lead in abandoning sucrose in 2018 and switched to using natural sugar substitute stevia as a replacement option, trying to make tea drink lower in calories. Subsequently, Nayuki's tea took the lead in using monk fruit sugar to replace other sugar substitutes in 2022.
In 2022, the tuyere will blow to the use of "milk" again. For example, Heytea and China Consumer Daily jointly released the first "Initiative on the Use of Quality Milk Raw Materials for Ready-made Milk Tea", which calls on the industry to comprehensively upgrade the quality of milk raw materials. Later, a number of brands, including Bawang Tea Ji, disclosed calories or ingredient lists.
In the field of freshly made tea, is there really a "logic" in the outlet? Young people do not have so much loyalty, liking the new and hating the old may be the logic of consumption.
More importantly, compared to the pursuit of "health", people drink milk tea more concerned about "emotional value", whether to drink bubble milk tea, fruit tea or raw leaf fresh milk tea, happiness determines everything.
For Mixue Bingcheng, it may not be so important where the tuyere is, after all, "ultimate cost performance" is their core competitiveness. But not for Overlord Chahime.
According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, among the top ten ready-made tea brands in store size, although Bawang Tea Ji ranks ninth, its customer unit price is the highest, reaching 18.47 yuan, which is 1 yuan higher than Hey Tea.
In the opinion of independent analyst Liu Ge, discussing whether the original leaf fresh milk tea can be popular in the future is more like a "false proposition", just like discussing who can be popular in fashion style and traffic stars, it is more like "metaphysics". "Milk tea is a popular product in the final analysis, belonging to fashion consumption, and the fashion style is the most unpredictable. ”