Warm tips: This article is about 4708 words, brain burning time is 18 minutes, chopsticks play thinking reporter Li Sandao sent in Shenzhen.
It is now the end of October, although Guangdong is still short-sleeved, but the north has already entered the winter overnight in the past few days, with snow and silver frost everywhere, and even Harbin issued an ice warning in mid-October.
The arrival of winter means the necessity of energy reserves and the increase in people's demand for heat energy.
Convenience stores are more sensitive to winter, a few days ago most convenience stores opened a warm air, lowered or closed the operation of the freezer, it is worth mentioning that in some chain convenience stores also put out a warm cabinet in the sale of hot drinks.
In the winter, the consumption form of tea shops will also change to a certain extent, such as the orders of street tea shops are gradually dominated by takeaway, and only under the heating of shopping mall stores, we can see some tea drinking customers queuing.
In the north of Guangdong, since October, most tea stores and convenience stores have been on the new hot drink products, but overall, the entire tea beverage category and even the entire beverage category of hot drink products, compared to the cold drink products of a hundred flowers, the stars are shining, hot drinks currently do not have a star product that can be taken. The development of the entire hot drink category (subdivision category) is indeed slightly lagging behind and more traditional, but on the other hand, this may represent that the hot drink category has hidden opportunities to be tapped.
The industry needs hot drinks, but there seem to be few hot drink products and brands that can be taken
From a traditional point of view, the better product for hot drink sales in winter is soy milk, workers buy a cup of hot soy milk from the breakfast shop downstairs, and then bring it to the office as a hot drink, in addition to soy milk, followed by the office / home hot water, in the catering point of view, we can also see the restaurant free hot tea.
The reason why hot drinks have not yet demonstrated their strong economic value is nothing more than the following four points:
One is that people have less mobility in the winter and there are too many alternative conventional products for hot drinks, such as bringing their own tea.
The second is that the human body temperature is at 36.5 degrees (about), more than 50 degrees (up and down), the human body will feel hot, this time is called hot drinks, in order to consider the cooling effect of hot drinks in winter (with reference to the laws of thermodynamics), the temperature of the hot drinks we buy is generally about 60-70 degrees (the highest is McDonald's, its hot coffee temperature is above 80 degrees), and after 50 degrees, the human body can not drink freely, at this time can not find the cold drink at will to drink feeling, the experience of hot drinks is indeed not as good as cold drinks.
The third is the taste and taste problem, the main ingredients of the current drink are fruits, juices, cream, cheese, sugar, etc., but hot drinks will destroy the activity of fruits, make the fruit bitter, sour, astringent and will also accelerate the melting rate of cream cheese and so on (let the product taste, such as becoming sweeter, etc.), plus the temperature rises, the human body taste is more active, the perception of sugar is more sensitive, which leads to cold drinks and hot drinks Product logic, research and development logic is completely different.
Fourth, because the current logistics and supply chain basically belong to the normal temperature and cold chain system, including packaging materials, due to the restriction of circulation, this also leads to the economic value of hot drinks is not as good as cold drinks.
Of course, this does not mean that hot drinks have no economic value, in 2018, Coca-Cola wholly acquired Costa Coffee, Coca-Cola frankly said: "Costa will allow us to have a strong coffee platform to penetrate the hot drink market."
After 2019, Coca-Cola has added hot drink products, through the four sub-brands of Qiaoya, Mei juice source, Chun Tea House and Costa coffee, successively launched hot drink products such as Costa black tea latte, Costa coffee, Mei Juice Source fruit hot drink, Coca-Cola ginger, and fragrant grapefruit (only available in China). In the product innovation process of hot drinks, the Coca-Cola brand of Japan also launched hot drinks containing hyaluronic acid to improve customers' dry skin in winter.
In addition to Coca-Cola, Nongfu Spring's "Oriental Leaves" also launched a 335ml specification of small packages as hot drink products; Arctic Ocean released four hot drinks with the main health concept of "Knocking Core, Orange, Natural Guiqi, and Playing Wheat"; Suntory launched osmanthus flavored Liqu Milk Tea, Honey Fragrant Fruit Tea, Classic Sugar-free Oolong Tea, Black Oolong Tea, Liqu Latte and other hot drink products.
In fact, the products launched by these standard beverage companies are still constant temperature products, and if you want to achieve the hot drink function, you need to complete it by the terminal convenience store, many convenience stores have a small constant temperature cabinet placed at the cash register in the past few years, which is put into milk, milk tea, eight treasure porridge and other products, to provide customers with enough heat to warm their hands.
With the gradual attention of various beverage companies to hot drinks in recent years, the small thermostatic cabinet of convenience stores has now been upgraded to a large thermostatic cabinet more than one meter high, and the brands settled in cover Coca-Cola, Yili, Suntory, Nestle, Vita, Yuanqi Forest, Hankou Second Factory, Liqu and other brands, it can be seen that by 2021, the war of standardized hot drinks has begun.
But thermostatic cabinet hot drink is not the best solution for hot drinks, the packaging of hot drinks is usually PET, although the heat resistance can reach 70 °, but it is not suitable for long-term heating, the current same standard is that the products put into the constant temperature cabinet can only be placed for a maximum of 15 days, which also means that hot drink products will bring higher losses, because of this, in the past, convenience stores used extra small thermostatic cabinets are mainly to avoid loss, and as more brands enter the field of hot drinks, this will also mean that this loss will be out by the beverage merchants.
Thermostatic cabinet hot drink is a solution, in addition, the market also has self-heating standardized drinks, in addition to the conventional self-heating package heating, we can also see that there is self-heating can technology, in 2017, HeatGenie developed self-heating canned beverage technology, and then got $6 million financing in the capital market, in 2019 it was renamed HeatGen, and also upgraded a new heating method, customers can start heating by rotating the lid. Recently, the new wine brand "Drunken Goose Lady" launched a self-heating can of red wine, with self-heating technology, the product can be separated from the constant temperature cabinet.
In the e-commerce channel, Xiangpiaopiao and Nongfu Spring have also launched milk tea and coffee products with self-heating sets, but the sales of such products are mediocre, and the main reason is that the efficiency is low, and self-heating milk tea is indeed not as fast as hot water brewing milk tea. Although the hot drink products of convenience stores have dozens of different styles of products, on the whole, they are still in a relatively backward state, and the main products are still the same as the old three: milk tea, coffee, and pure tea.
According to statistics, "Coca-Cola's cold drink market share in developed and emerging countries is 21% and 11%, respectively, but the hot drink market share is only 1% and 0.3%", which shows that the product development of the hot drink market has not yet had a big look, it has only come out of a beginning.
Regarding the handmade hot drinks in tea stores, they are only in their infancy
Hot drinks were first in the restaurant's business, where customers ordered a cup of hot coffee, hot tea, hot water, and then some hot dishes. In addition to going to restaurants, it was not easy for customers to buy a hot drink in the past (thermostatic cabinets in convenience stores have also been available in recent years).
Tea shops were first mainly engaged in the business of cold drinks, and in the winter, a large number of tea shops began to transfer. This is mainly because the hot drink products of the tea shop in the early days are very scarce and the competitiveness is low, the store is nothing more than to heat some cold products for sale, and the conventional products are also few, basically hot tea, hot milk tea, hot milk and so on.
Since 2017, the entire tea beverage category has been renewed, product profits and sales have increased, the brand side naturally has more thoughts on product research and development, and hot drinks have also risen with cold drinks.
At present, some tea shops have signs of queuing in the winter (although not all of them are hot drinks), and nowadays, most of the beverage stores have a "hot drink recommendation" column on the menu.
From the perspective of specific brands, Heytea's hot drinks have a total of 15 products, covering milk tea, juice, coconut lattes and other products, and the difference in the past is that Heytea has finally started on fruits in the field of hot drinks, and stimulates consumers' continuous consumption in hot drinks by bursting juice oranges, succulent mango manna and other fruit hot drink products.
In terms of specific operation, Heytea's hot drink products are divided into small ingredients such as cream that are easy to melt by default, and in order to reduce the bitterness of fruit juice products, Heytea also allows customers to choose to peel products such as red grapefruit.
In Gaga Xianyu, in addition to fruit tea, there are chrysanthemum black goji berries that focus on the health needs of customers. Nesher's tea launched only about 8 hot drinks, the main product is still the treasure milk tea series, hot fruit tea products are slightly less. CoCo's hot drink products are relatively stable, almost every year is barley milk products, in addition to hot milk tea, hot coffee, barley latte and so on.
Thank you for tea cheese milk cover tea, pure tea has hot and cold options, in winter, its store out of the "winter drink" series, covering soybean flower milk tea, strawberry milk and other products. In the fukumi peach (formerly Fushimi Momoyama), leaf and tea stores, we can also see chestnuts, mochi, taro puree, etc. added to the hot milk tea.
In addition to the addition of fruit products and conventional milk tea coffee products, it is also a new method to diversify the taste of hot drink products, such as the "pot milk tea" launched by Taigai covers 9 kinds of small ingredients, and then such stores as Jacques Yasi, 100% tea, etc. have launched mochi, chestnut as the base, plus thick milk, caramel, jasmine tea, fruits, cream, milk, dried fruit crushes, etc., so that winter products can also have the same diversified levels as summer products.
But in general, compared with summer cold drinks, the number of hot drinks, consumption share, and innovation are far less than those of cold drinks, and hot drink products are still relatively niche in most tea stores.
In the view of chopstick play thinking (www.kwthink.cn), with the gradual focus of the market and the increase in investment in brand R&D resources, the market logic of hot drinks will continue to iterate and optimize to meet the needs of new customers.
To develop and grow, the hot beverage category needs continuous investment of resources + product innovation
Whether it is a tea shop or a convenience store, the reason why the development of hot drink products is slow, mainly because the product logic of the store is cold drinks rather than hot drinks, and the difference in product logic will also lead to insufficient attention to the products that are not amazing enough and too traditional, such as the core product of a restaurant is stir-fried, then the store is difficult to spend too much thought on soup.
We dig a little deeper, the focus of the product logic of tea shops and so on is cold drinks, which is mainly because of the sense of high quality and convenience of cold drinks, in the public perception, hot water is usually the cheapest (or free), such as who has a hot water kettle to boil hot water, and then for example, most places have free hot water, but the acquisition of cold drinks is not easy, first of all, the refrigerator is more expensive than the hot kettle, followed by cooling is slower than heating (referring to the family), and then cold drinks are novelties and high-value products in modern society. This leads to the fact that under the cultural attributes of the series, drinking cold drinks in summer is more pleasant than drinking hot drinks in winter.
In terms of consumption attributes, hot drinks can only be drunk in winter, but cold drinks can be drunk as long as there is a heating room (such as the northeast cold winter heating to eat popsicles, open the heating to drink iced milk tea), outside the northeast, south of Beijing, the current climate cycle is longer in summer than winter, customers' demand for cold drinks is naturally much higher than hot drinks; even if talking about human psychology, hot drinks are only to make people feel at ease and warm their stomachs, but cold drinks can bring more stimulation to people and let the human brain release more dopamine, which is incomparable to hot drinks.
In addition, the low temperature of cold drinks can also preserve the aroma and product activity of fruits, teas, etc., while the fluctuations of hot drinks are larger, and with the balance of temperature, its peace of mind and hand warm value is fleeting. This means that in order to stimulate the initiative of hot drinks, it is also necessary to realize the stimulation and pleasure value brought by cold drinks.
If the convenience store hot drink products and tea shop hot drink products are compared, we can see that visual satisfaction and taste satisfaction are the advantages of tea shops, and the freshly made products and the catering attributes of the store can make the tea shops well realize the value level of hot drink products.
But in the customer experience link, the physiological satisfaction and customer consumption satisfaction of the sense of experience is slightly fluctuating, such as the use of cold drinks to make hot drinks, the product may be too sweet, once the customer is tired, the product's thirst-quenching physiological satisfaction value naturally declined (in the survey found that most people for convenience store hot drinks think that it is sweet, too sweet, which is why sugar-free products are so popular, customers buy sugar-free products may not be for health, but just to be less greasy), and moreover, The customer's consumption satisfaction mainly depends on whether the brand's products are linked to the customer's needs.
Previously, some brands launched a "stay up late water" product, which is just a goji berry plus a pure water that can be heated, this "hot drink" solves the psychological needs of customers' curiosity and consumer satisfaction, and this attribute satisfaction makes the product get a lot of attention on the live broadcast platform.
Some Cantonese hot pot stores have upgraded the free hot tea to the "health water" that young people pay attention to, and the health hot drink is made of horseshoe, carrot, sugar cane, ginseng and other products, which has won the favor of the people who stay up late and the health care crowd for a while.
Chunfeng is from the current demand of diversified value and specific value (specific value refers to differentiated positioning) to cut into, its stores launched the great white pear milk tea, green juice scraping oil water, collagen Three Treasures fresh milk tea (peach gum, white fungus, collagen jelly), red bean barley red date rice milk, ginger juice guiyuan red date tea, royal jelly stay up late water, small hanging pear soup and other hot drinks, through the health of health point of view, in order to complete the landing of new tea research and development logic, and then realize the value of customer consumption satisfaction.
From the takeaway retail end, Tsubaki also has "herbal health tea bags" for sale and covers scraping oil tea, live face tea, and blush tea.
Although Chunfeng is also a tea shop, it jumps out of the product logic of traditional tea drinks and creates its own way, which shows that the slow development of hot drinks is mainly due to the lack of investment of resources by the brand side, rather than the lack of good products for hot drinks.
According to statistics, the entire hot drink market plate has hundreds of billions, it has been limited to coffee, milk tea, pure tea, soy milk, hot water and other traditional solutions, in the chopsticks to play thinking, the breakthrough of hot drink products lies in the tea shop / restaurant, not in the convenience store, this is a category to be revitalized, from the present to the future, product innovation is a must for category development, and this heavy responsibility, the need for tea entrepreneurs to invest resources, effort and wisdom.
At present, the hot drink category has just started, which also means that the potential of the hot drink category is unlimited, once fully developed, perhaps a new batch of hot drink players will be born in the future, which is worth looking forward to.