The
epidemic can not stop the expansion of tea brands.
On average, 600+ stores are opened every month. In 2022, the tea drinking track will be red and purple.
According to incomplete statistics of Yilan business, from January to may 2022, a total of 3210 new stores were opened by 15 major chain tea brands in China, and the store stock reached 60437.
Previously, according to the data in the article “hard work volume, 1000+ new tea stores opened in two months” of Yilan commerce, the number of new stores opened by these 15 chain tea brands from January to February 2022 was 1061, with an average of 530 stores per month. From March to may, these chain tea brands opened 2114 new stores, with an average of 716 stores per month, significantly exceeding the average number of stores per month in the first two months of this year. Obviously, the development momentum of the tea drinking track has become more and more rapid and rolling.
Since 2022, many enterprises have announced the cross-border layout of the tea market. At the end of February this year, the time-honored Tongrentang opened its first tea shop named “tea making department” in Binjiang District, Hangzhou. In early May, China railway opened the country’s first tea shop called “Daodao tea” on the first floor of Zhengyangmen Hall of China Railway Museum. At the end of May, Wanda film said at the 2021 annual online performance presentation that the company launched the tea brand “wancha” in 2019, which has been sold in about 140 subordinate cinemas of the company.
In addition, from the development and changes of tea brands, there are obvious changes in some brands compared with January to February. By the end of May, chayan Yuese had 411 stores nationwide, compared with 410 at the end of February, that is to say, chayan Yuese had opened a net 1 store in three months. This is also the case with Lele tea and 7-fen sweet tea. Among them, Lele tea has a net opening of 8 stores and 7-fen sweet has a net opening of 14 stores from March to May.
As for books that also burn fairy grass, there has been a sharp decline in the number of stores. At the end of February, shuyishaoxiancao had 6613 stores nationwide, but by the end of May, it had only 6499 stores, reducing the number of stores by 114. In the same period, the number of coco stores and happy tea stores decreased by 126 and 19 respectively.
King of “roll” king, snow city
According to the business statistics of Yilan, from January to may 2022, snow ice city topped the list with 844 new stores. By the end of May, the total number of stores of snow ice city in China had reached 16231, mainly distributed in Henan and Shandong.
Tea Baidao ranked second, with 479 new stores opened in the same period. Up to now, chabaidao has 5538 stores nationwide, mainly distributed in Zhejiang and Jiangsu. In addition, in terms of the total number of stores, shuyishaoxiancao ranks behind the snow ice city with 6499 stores. Obviously, both in terms of the number of new stores and the total number of stores, at present, honeysnow ice city has safely ranked first among the chain tea brands.
In fact, in terms of store expansion, Michelle ice city is no longer limited to the domestic market. It opened overseas stores in Vietnam as early as 2018. In the next few years, it expanded its stores to Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and other countries. Later, latepost reported that on February 26 this year, the first store of snow city in Singapore and Malaysia also officially opened. According to other data, there are about 200 stores in Vietnam.
Moreover, the ambition of Michelle ice city is not only in tea, but also in coffee, fried chicken, ice cream and other fields in recent years.
“Lucky coffee”, established in 2017, is the main measure taken by Michelle ice city to lay out the coffee track. According to public information, lucky coffee is a national chain coffee brand focusing on freshly ground coffee, which is wholly operated by Michelle ice city. In terms of pricing, lucky coffee follows the pricing strategy of Michelle ice city, and the price of freshly ground coffee is less than 10 yuan. Yilan business data show that by the end of April, the number of lucky coffee stores had exceeded 570.
As for ice cream and fried chicken, the information of enterprise investigation shows that at the end of April 2022, “xuewang investment”, an affiliated company of snow ice city, took a stake in Henan chicken packing Catering Enterprise Management Co., Ltd; In addition, in the equity structure of the ice cream brand polar chart, at present, Michelle ice city accounts for about 85%.
From the perspective of other brands, the number of stores is second only to that of snow city, and the number of stores reached 6499 at the end of May this year. It is worth mentioning that in February this year, shuyishaoxiancao opened the door of capital for the first time, and obtained more than 600million yuan of indirect investment from Juewei food, qiacha food and other companies. It is reported that the post investment valuation reached 10billion yuan, and it was promoted to the new tea unicorn.
In addition, in terms of cross-border layout, shuyishaoxiancao strategically invested in Changsha chain coffee brand doc coffee in April, accounting for 23.5% of the shares, but did not disclose the transaction amount. In May, the book also upgraded its brand by burning Xiancao. At the same time, it also launched plant-based products and entered the “plant-based new tea” track.
the number of Naixue’s tea and Xi tea stores ranks outside the top 10
By the end of May, there were more than 4000 stores under 7 brands, including miyue ice city, shuyishaoxiancao, Guming, chabaidao, coco Duke, yihetang and aunt Hu, and 1000-4000 stores under 4 brands, namely Yidian, tianlala, heilongtang and 7 Fen Tian.
It is worth noting that compared with these second-line tea brands, the number of stores of the top brands of tea is only a thousand. Naixue has only 908 stores of tea and 865 stores of Xi tea.
According to the data, Xicha has opened 13 new stores in the first five months of 2022, mainly in Shanghai and Wuhan. Naixue’s tea opened 91 new stores in the same period, mainly in Guangdong and Zhejiang.
At present, Xi tea and Naixue’s tea are equal in both volume and number of stores. Moreover, from the development of the past two years, the dynamics of the two are almost the same.
In the second half of 2020, Xicha launched the bottled beverage brand for the first time and started the bottled beverage business. In 2021, Naixue tea also established Naixue beverage technology company to vigorously develop the bottled beverage business. In addition, at the end of April this year, according to sina finance and economics, Naixue’s tea is in urgent need of acquiring RTD production line due to the large increase in the sales of ready to drink products, and the investment scale is expected to be 500 to 1billion yuan.
In addition, while Ruixing, Starbucks and tea Yan Yuese gathered together to raise prices, the tea sword of Xi tea and Naixue went wrong and announced the price reduction of their products one after another.
Since January this year, Xi tea has started a round of price reduction. At the end of February, Xicha officially announced that it had completed the comprehensive product price adjustment launched in January, and said that it would no longer launch new beverage products with a price of 29 yuan or more in 2022, and would not increase the price. Since then, in mid March, Naixue’s tea official account issued a document saying that Naixue would sharply reduce prices and launch a new tea drinking relaxed series of 9-19 yuan. Moreover, Naixue tea related personnel told Yilan business that Naixue will continue to increase the “relaxed” series. At present, 14-25 yuan has become the mainstream price band of Naixue drinks, and nearly 60% of the products are in this range.
In this regard, Zhu danpeng, an analyst of China’s food industry, believes that the successive price cuts of Naixue and Xi tea should be regarded as a more powerful oppression for the middle-grade new Chinese milk tea. On the whole, the dimensionality reduction attack of the leading enterprises will bring a new wave of reshuffle period.
In fact, at the same time of “dimension reduction and strike”, Naixue’s tea and Xi tea are also facing greater business pressure. From Naixue’s tea, although the revenue has been growing in recent years, the profitability is worrying. At the end of March this year, Naixue’s tea released its financial report for the whole year of 2021. According to the data, the adjusted net loss of Naixue’s tea in 2021 (not measured by international financial reporting standards) was 145million, and the net profit margin was -3.40%. In the last four years, only 2020 achieved a meager net profit.
In terms of store expansion, the data show that in 2021, the total number of tea stores in Naixue reached 817, an increase of 66.40% year-on-year. However, Yilan business found that the year-on-year growth of 66.40% in the total number of stores in 2021 was significantly different from the year-on-year growth of 40.54% in revenue, which showed that the efficiency of Naixue’s tea stores was declining, and the expansion of stores could not lead to the growth of revenue.
As for happy tea, it was exposed at the beginning of this year that there were large-scale layoffs, involving 30% of employees. Among them, there were serious layoffs in functional departments, 50% in store expansion departments, and full layoffs in some departments. In addition, in terms of store operation, Xicha has been frequently exposed to food safety problems in recent years. In September, 2021, due to improper operation of the tea loving clerk, the “sample” beverage used for display was mistakenly given to the consumer, causing the consumer to be hospitalized for gastric lavage; In August of the same year, the Guangzhou Municipal Market Supervision Bureau found during inspection that some tea brands had problems such as improper preservation of pre packaged food after unsealing, and inadequate labeling of pools, refrigerators, ice granulators, etc., including tea loving.
Tea color is pleasant, and LeLe tea “stops”
According to the business statistics of Yilan, the average number of stores of these 15 chain tea brands was 530 from January to February, and increased to 716 from March to May. Obviously, since the beginning of 2022, the domestic tea market has been developing well.
However, while the overall market is improving, some tea brands are also facing some problems and hesitating. For example, in 2021, the development of tea is unfavorable. It seems that there is still some confusion in 2022. Only one store has been opened from March to May.
At the beginning of 2021, tea Yan Yuese was suspected of insulting women due to the copywriting on the product packaging, which caused netizens’ controversy. In terms of store operation, chayan Yuese temporarily closed its stores for three consecutive times in the next 11 months. However, in December of the same year, when the “foreign invasion” had not been resolved, chayan Yuese broke out internal strife in the company due to the “salary cut”, and in the dispute, chayan Yuese also exposed the operating dilemma of losing 20million yuan per month during the epidemic period.
In 2022, tea Yan Yuese began to make adjustments in price and market layout. At the beginning of January, tea Yan Yuese announced on its wechat official account that most milk tea products under the brand increased by 1 to 2 yuan. However, what surprised him was that in the following 2 and 3 months, the leading brands in the tea market, Xi tea and Naixue tea, announced their product price cuts one after another, and the already competitive tea circuit became more “inside roll”.
In terms of store expansion, chayan Yuese opened four stores in Chongqing at the same time in early June. It is worth mentioning that this is the third city that tea Yan Yuese has entered. The multi location layout is good news, but on the day of opening, tea Yan Yuese was exposed to the event of “live broadcasting of black netizens”.
As for Lele tea, in addition to the small number of stores opened this year, there has also been a sharp increase in business pressure and a contraction of stores.
Since Xi tea and Naixue’s tea announced price reductions, Lele tea also announced price reductions on the official wechat official account in early March this year. At that time, some media asked whether Lele tea’s move was a low-cost strategy against the other two brands, but Lele tea denied this claim.
In fact, from the perspective of brand positioning and products, Lele tea is indeed similar to Naixue’s tea and happy tea, and there is also a certain overlap in the target customer group. Therefore, after the head brand announced the price reduction, the operating pressure of Lele tea increased sharply. Moreover, Lele tea itself is not in a better position. As early as the end of February, Lele tea sent a message on the official wechat that it would close its last store in Guangzhou and even the South China market.
In general, Lele tea has no advantage in price, low market share and few stores. Despite the announcement of price reduction, it still faces the problem of rising raw material prices and consolidating the retention of users.
Jiangsu and Zhejiang are tea stores
According to incomplete statistics of Yilan business, the stores of 15 chain tea brands are mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Guangdong, with 6, 4, 4 and 4 brands respectively. Secondly, there are two major brands in Henan, Shandong and Hunan respectively. In addition, the stores of other brands are mainly concentrated in Sichuan, Fujian, Guangxi, Hubei and other places.
From the regional distribution of stores, there are 8 chain tea brands with stores distributed in more than 30 cities. Among them, coco is the most widely distributed in 33 provinces and 225 cities, mainly in East and South China, and its stores are mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Guangdong Province. Next in the list are Michelle ice city and tianlala. The stores of the two brands are distributed in 31 provinces, covering more than 300 cities. Miyue ice city is mainly in the third and fourth tier cities, and its stores account for more than 46% in the third and fourth tier cities. Chabaidao is dominated by new first tier and second tier cities, accounting for more than 50%.
There are 5 chain tea brands with stores between 10 and 30, including Guming, yihetang, yidiandian, heilongtang and Xicha. Among them, yihetang covers the most cities and has stores in 254 cities nationwide. In addition, chayan Yuese and LeLe tea have only expanded in some regions. By the end of May this year, chayan Yuese has only opened stores in Hunan and Hubei provinces, while Lele tea has stores in seven provinces.
Author: fanyining; Source: yilanshangye (id:yilanshangye), reprint has been authorized. Reprint authorization and media business cooperation: Amy (wechat: 13701559246);
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