Edit | Qiao Qian

Ruixing also participated in the fruit cheese tea business initiated by Xicha.

Although CoCo, a tea brand, began to try coffee as early as 20 17, this mixed style set off a small trend on 20 19: In June of 5438+0, Naixue Tea launched a new coffee drink; In March, Xicha entered the coffee field; Just recently, Luckin Coffee also launched tea.

The tea products launched by Ruixing this time are called "Little Deer Tea", with four types, namely: guava cheese ruby tea, raspberry cheese jasmine tea, grapefruit cheese jasmine tea and peach cheese ruby tea. Among them, only grapefruit cheese Moxiang tea is a cold drink, and the other three products are all cold drinks. The prices of four kinds of tea products are all in 27 yuan, which is equivalent to the price of coffee. There is no special promotion. Just like coffee, it enjoys the benefits of "two fees and one free". After calculation, the price of each cup of tea is converted into 18 yuan.

Previously, "Lu Xiaocha" has been testing water in Beijing Lenovo Bridge Store for one month, and has been sold in Beijing and Guangzhou, and will soon be listed nationwide.

The cross-border between tea and coffee is not difficult to understand. After all, there are many similarities between the two industries. For example, the consumption scene overlaps with the main population, and the established retail outlets and distribution networks can be reused. However, it is not easy to re-establish a supply chain system and compete with competitors who are better at it.

Why did Rui Xing do this?

According to the official statement of Ruixing, this move is to meet the diversified product needs of users and further enrich the product categories. It is not difficult to see that Ruixing's market capture ability is stronger. In summer, more consumers choose tea and juice instead of coffee. Deer tea can attract non-coffee lovers and expand Ruixing's user base.

Another consideration for launching tea is to cooperate with Ruixing's store sinking strategy.

In the month of 65438+ 10 this year, Qian, the founder of Luckin Coffee, announced the strategic goal of 20 19-the company will build 2,500 new stores this year and make the total number of stores exceed 4,500 by the end of 20 19, thus surpassing Starbucks in terms of the number of stores and the number of cups.

This layout is indeed in progress and has not been slowed down by huge losses. While announcing the launch of Lu Xiaocha, Ruixing announced its entry into new cities such as Hefu, Foshan, Shenyang, Kunming and Zhenjiang 14. The total number of cities in China has reached 36, and the total number of stores has been further expanded on the basis of 2,300+.

Then you need to consider a problem. If you simply sell coffee, the core is still "self-raising+takeaway". Is the demand in second-and third-tier cities so strong? Luckin Coffee is dominated by white-collar workers and students, and more concentrated in first-tier cities. Facing the second-and third-tier cities with different people, different consumption habits and different incomes, how to meet their needs is something Luckin Coffee needs to ponder.

The per capita annual coffee consumption in China is only 3 or 4 cups, and the coffee consumption base in second-and third-tier cities is weak. Ruixing will probably continue to cultivate users' habits with the mode of burning money subsidies. Before completing this education, selling tea can naturally bring more income in advance. According to the Consumption Report of Meituan Takeaway Milk Tea, the order volume of Meituan Takeaway Milk Tea last year exceeded 265,438+billion, far exceeding the order volume of coffee. "Milk tea" has become a hot word on the take-away platform, and it is expected to replace Coke as a new white-collar lunch partner.

From the point of view of competition, there are two brands of new tea, Xi Tea and Naixue Tea, but both of them are based on regular retail stores (the number of stores in both countries does not exceed 150), and their coverage radius is limited. Xicha is still complaining about the long queues in many places. For Ruixing, whose store density is already considerable, being closer to users has become an advantage.

From the profit point of view, tea drinks are high-margin products, generally around 60%, which can bring considerable cash flow to enterprises. For example, the gross profit of Xicha is about 50%. If it is well controlled, the industry average of net profit is 15%. This is also an important reason why Ruixing takes a fancy to tea. According to Ruixing's previous financing plan, during the period from 2065438 to the first nine months of 2008, the accumulated sales reached 375 million yuan, while the net loss was as high as 857 million yuan and the gross profit was-433 million yuan (gross profit margin was-1 15.5%).

Ruixing has been reporting the listing news this year. If we can adjust the product structure and enhance the profit expectation, it will also give investors more confidence.

Looking at the entire consumer market, it is difficult to find a second case that can be compared with Ruixing-starting from online coffee sales, in just one year, the number of store chains ranked second in the country; Constantly expand the categories, from the initial coffee, Rena ice series, juice drinks, to the light food and snack series added last year, and then to the bento and deer tea added this year.

The introduction of new products has continuously reduced the proportion of coffee categories in the whole. Looking at SKUs from Luckin Coffee APP, the total number is about 63, which does not include four new deer teas. It is not difficult to guess that Ruixing's list of goods will become more and more abundant.

At present, the general view of Ruixing in the industry is that coffee is obviously not its ultimate goal, and its competitor is actually not Starbucks. From the perspective of price anchoring and product line expansion, Luckin Coffee targets convenience stores such as 7- 1 1, Familymart and convenience bees.

Take convenience bees as an example to compare prices. A cup of instant bee coffee 10 yuan (buy one for free at present), the price of light salad is about 6- 12 yuan, and the price of snacks is about 5- 14 yuan. The discount price of Luckin coffee is about 10 yuan, the discount price of boss lunch series is between 23-25 yuan, the discount price of light food products such as sandwiches and ham rolls is around 8- 17 yuan, and the discount price of lucky snacks such as biscuits and chocolates is between 8-22 yuan.

The overall price of Luckin Coffee is slightly higher than that of convenience bees, but they still compete in roughly the same price range.

At the same time, Luckin Coffee and convenience stores have many similarities in scene, location, scale and density. Both of them focus on densely populated areas such as office buildings, business districts and residential areas, and their main selling points are "convenience".

In fact, Ruixing's convenience store-like gameplay can be understood as a platform strategy.

Luckin Coffee's current advantage is that it has formed a high brand awareness in a short period of time, and has grasped the user's mind with "cheap+fast" in the field of takeaway coffee, and at the same time mastered considerable user data. Once a brand occupies the user's mind, it has extensibility. At this time, what to sell is no longer the focus, and brand value has become the core. Xiaomi is a typical example, which is also a typical "platform thinking" of Internet companies.

Of course, non-internet companies are also using this kind of thinking transformation, and Eslite Bookstore is a good example.

When Eslite Bookstore is facing the tide of closing down, it uses its superior geographical location and the reputation of retail bookstores to attract customers, and then introduces food streets, art design shops, boutique stores and so on. It can be said that Eslite attracts many high-quality shops, which in turn attracts more customers. At present, book sales account for about 30% of Eslite's profits, and the rest comes from diversified operations.

Judging from the current logic, what Ruixing wants to do is a platform to gradually "decaffeinate". Seize the online passenger flow, develop the distribution ability and user's mind, constantly upgrade new categories and increase profit points. At this time, Ruixing's scale advantage is prominent, and its bargaining power for the upstream supply chain becomes stronger. Later, you can rely on the characteristics of "cheap+fast" to attract people and continue to buy again.

The problem is that Ruixing is too young after all, and its brand awareness is open, but users' evaluation of coffee taste is still mixed, brand image is still uncertain, and user loyalty has not been cultivated.

Although the platform strategy is a visible trend, whether it can achieve profitability in the end is another matter.