Why not be afraid of Starbucks, the first brand of Japanese coffee?

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doutor coffee has been established for 60 years and has more than 1300 stores. It is not afraid of Starbucks and has become the first brand of coffee in Japan.

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In the new consumer market, the coffee industry is a huge cake.

According to AI media consulting data, the scale of China’s coffee market in 2021 was about 381.7 billion yuan, with more than 300million consumers; It is expected that China’s domestic coffee market will maintain a growth rate of 27.2%, much higher than the global average growth rate of 2%. In 2025, the size of China’s market will reach 1trillion yuan.

In addition to the huge market, the coffee industry has attracted large and small companies and even young entrepreneurs to sip because of its consumption label of “quality life”.

According to Deloitte China data, as early as the end of 2020, China had about 108000 cafes, and the number of cafes located in second tier and above cities accounted for 75%.

Such a huge consumer market has attracted Chinese enterprises one after another, especially in the face of the “Conquest” of international giant Starbucks, domestic brands urgently need to compete with it. However, over the years, Ruixing coffee has only developed a nationally renowned brand, and it has followed a take away mode, avoiding a head-on confrontation with Starbucks.

Facing the brand offensive of Starbucks, how can domestic cafes develop? Doutor coffee, known as Japan’s first coffee brand, may give some enlightenment to domestic coffee practitioners.

Doutor coffee was born in 1962 and has a history of 60 years in Japan. It is spread all over the streets of Japan and is called Japanese national coffee. So far, Rodolfo has more than 1300 stores in Japan. The Japanese jcsi index (Japanese customer satisfaction index) shows that doutor has surpassed Starbucks to win the first place for three consecutive years.

How did rodoron become the first coffee brand in Japan?

Niaoyu Bodo was born in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, in 1937. At the age of 16, he left his hometown and wandered alone in Tokyo. At the age of 19, he became the manager of a coffee shop and a coffee enthusiast.

In order to pursue his dream of coffee, he went to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where there are coffee trees everywhere. People skillfully plant, pick, and then bake them. Niaoyudo learned all kinds of coffee knowledge here.

Niaoyabodao, the founder of lodorum coffee in Japan, led by him, the company became the first coffee listed company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

The experience of studying abroad has given Niaoyu Bodao an international perspective on the coffee market

In this context, rodolen fully implemented the low price strategy. A cup of coffee only needed 150 to 200 yen, less than half of the average market price at that time. With bread, sausage and other snacks, it was 300 yen. While ensuring the price advantage of coffee, in order to further improve the customer unit price, Rodolfo is committed to developing desserts and meals. For example, rodolen’s main product is sausage hot dogs, which is just about 400 yen with coffee. Cost-effective coffee with food or desserts has also become the standard method of most coffee shop chain channels in Japan.

Due to the low price strategy, even in the economic recession of Japan in the 1990s, rodolen still maintained an average annual sales growth of 13%, with sales rising from 35000 million yen in 1999 to 55000 million yen in 2003.

The second is quality.

In order to maintain the quality of low-priced coffee, Luo Duolun insisted on importing coffee beans from South America, and niaoyubo road loaded them into the bottom of the ship for transportation. “If you don’t do this, the coffee beans will easily deteriorate.” After being transported to Japan, coffee beans will be stored in a constant temperature warehouse with a certain temperature.

On the other hand, in order to ensure the stability of coffee quality when opening stores on a large scale, rodolen optimized store operations and worked hard to promote automation, standardization and scale. Under the mode of high cost performance and high turnover, each store consumes up to 2 tons of coffee beans per month, far exceeding the industry average of 20-50 kg.

After the scale up, in order to control the cost of the supply chain, the company established its own coffee bean farm in Hawaii when there were nearly 750 lodorum stores. Not to mention their own coffee beans, they will also send their employees to various places of origin, according to the principle of “sweet, aromatic, mellow”, one by one tasting and cup testing, in order to find out the most suitable coffee beans for Rodolfo.

Finally, culture.

As a coffee shop, the quality of coffee is the cornerstone, and the culture of coffee shop is the key to its charm.

Rodolen has incorporated its coffee culture into all the details related to coffee. For example, the coffee cup, rodolen’s original tea cup and plate are very exquisite in shape, thickness and handle – the edge of the tea cup in contact with the lips is designed into a curve that is not easy to spill liquid; In order to make the handle easier to grasp, the cup handle is designed into the shape that the index finger extends into the handle and the thumb and middle finger clamp the cup; According to the size of the cup, the shape of the handle also changes; Even the coffee tray is designed to prevent the spoon from slipping.

These attentive designs may be difficult to detect, but many customers say that they will feel inexplicably comfortable sitting in rodoron coffee shop. For niaoyudao, the store experience praised by customers is the best feedback to Rodolfo.

“I kept asking myself, why do I open a coffee shop? What is the effect of a cup of coffee? Finally, I understood my mission: people need a place to communicate, and their hearts need to be adjusted. I need to serve people

With the promotion of the Gender Equality Movement, women entering the workplace also need their own space. Starbucks sees the dividends brought by the change of social structure.

In order to meet the needs of female white-collar workers, Starbucks has implemented a series of localization adjustments: in terms of space, Starbucks is the first coffee shop in Japan to implement smoking ban; In terms of products, beverage products such as Matcha xingbingle and season limited products have been strengthened; In retail, it has expanded a series of surrounding areas and sold coffee beans.

These combo punches let Starbucks firmly grasp the female consumers with female white-collar workers as the core.

In addition to the differences in customer groups, Starbucks has also made differences in store models. Let’s take a look at the comparison of prices and stores between Starbucks and Toronto:

First, the price. Starbucks’ average price of a cup of coffee is about 300 yen, 50% higher than Rodolfo; Per capita consumption is more than 500 yen, which is also 60% higher than rodoron.

The second is the store, which covers an area of 30-50 square meters. Starbucks has 20-30 seats and Rodolfo has 40-60 seats, twice the difference between the two. In terms of furnishings, the tables and chairs of rodolen are crowded, and there is only a small space gap between seats, which is relatively noisy. Customers generally leave after using up; But in Starbucks, customers can sit and enjoy coffee and spend their leisure time leisurely.

Rodolfo is more like a fast-food coffee shop that provides just in need, similar to KFC and McDonald’s. As a “gadget” of the city, Starbucks is a benchmark of youth, fashion and high quality. A Japanese retail expert said, “white-collar workers walked down the street with cups in their hands, which had a great impact on us. Coffee used to be drunk like this.”

Starbucks, which “adapts measures to local conditions”, not only has its sales revenue increased significantly, but also the number of stores is expanding rapidly. In 2003 alone, it opened 100 stores. By 2005, the total number of stores reached 551. Although there is a certain gap with the 1424 stores in rodoron, Starbucks, relying on its own efforts, overturned the industry trend that coffee must be sold at a low price, and cut a big cake by itself.

Why can Rodolfo and Starbucks succeed in the Japanese market in different ways?

Looking at the development history of Japanese coffee, it is not difficult to explain.

According to the analysis of CITIC Securities Coffee Industry Research Report, after decades of development, the Japanese coffee market can be roughly divided into four stages: luxury goods – Popularization – chain – aesthetics.

After World War II, Japan resumed importing coffee. At that time, the salary of college graduates was about 3000 yen / month, while the price of a cup of coffee was about 30 yen, which was a luxury.

Around the 1960s, the Japanese economy continued to grow at a high speed. Instant coffee and canned coffee entered Japanese families, and the national diet structure was also rapidly westernized. Under the dual effects of economy and culture, the import of coffee beans increased rapidly, and the coffee shop industry also saw a trend of opening shops. In the initial stage, it was mainly self-employed. Around 1970, coffee specialty stores and chain brands began to appear.