A tea shop is hard to open, but what about that.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ Retail boss internal reference ” (ID: lslb168), author Yang Yafei.
It’s hard to open a tea shop, but what about that?
If you choose the TOP 10 hot words of the milk tea industry in 2019, “9 dead and one life” will undoubtedly appear at the top of the list.
This is based on certain facts. If you search Baidu index “milk tea”, “milk tea shop” and other search related search terms. It is not difficult to find that “9 milk tea shops have 9 losses”, and they have almost steadily ranked in the TOP 5 list of most popular words in the past year. Like “Milk Tea Practice”, “Milk Tea Join”, “Pearl Milk Tea”, etc., it has become one of the representative symbols of tea.
During June 2019, the most popular words related to “Milk Tea” search (according to Baidu index)
9 deaths and one life, reflects a widespread bearish sentiment in the market, and reflects concerns about the prospects of traditional tea shops, especially today, with the rapid rise of new tea drinks. For practitioners in the traditional tea industry, this sentence is obviously not friendly. This also seems to remind those prospective franchisees who have spare money and are still waiting: once you have the idea of opening a tea shop, it is almost not far from losing money.
There is no doubt that today’s traditional milk tea industry does need to pour cold water. Because the people who are swarming now do not even realize that the wealth-making myth that the industry advocated in the past “open a milk tea shop and earn 100,000 a month” is only in the PPT of the franchising brand.
Even so, 9 deaths and 1 life are more of a wake-up call, and the era of extensive development is gone. However, it is not advisable to sing the development prospects of the milk tea industry accordingly.
In fact, in any consumer field, success is a small probability event.Exaggerated. But small probability events and values are not worth entering, they are two different things.
Furthermore, according to the “shoe polisher theory” often cited in the investment field, if the market sentiment is collectively bullish, you should choose to exit; if the market sentiment is collectively bearish, it may be a good time to enter.
Should the new tea drink be cooked?
Voices about milk tea shops are not good. However, the severity of the situation is “9 deaths and 1 life”, something that has only happened in recent years.
According to a statistic from Meituan Review, starting in the second half of 2015, the number of beverage stores nationwide has exploded. At the same time, the number of closed stores has also increased substantially. From the second half of 2016 to the first half of 2017, the number of closed beverage stores even exceeded the number of newly opened stores, and the overall number of stores is in a negative growth state.
There is a more interesting phenomenon. From the perspective of the national store growth rate in April 2017, the overall growth of Beishangguangshen and the new first-tier cities was sluggish, and the growth rate of the store numbers was only 6% and 1% respectively. In contrast, the number of tea and beverage stores in second-tier cities increased by 29%. This shows that the tea shop market in first-tier cities tended to be saturated earlier than second-tier cities.
2016 is also a watershed moment for the tea beverage market: Hi Tea, which will become one of the representative brands of new tea beverages in the future, received an investment of 100 million yuan from IDG Capital and angel investor He Boquan in August of this year; Nai Xuecha’s tea received a round A investment from Tiantu Investment at the end of 2016; Yinwei Tea received a 500 million yuan A round investment from Liu Qiangdong … Brands and entrepreneurs of new tea drinks have started tea drinking from this year The market is emerging.
But for those tea shop franchisees who have just renovated, it is a little embarrassing. The franchise brand describes to the franchisees, and it is still a bright prospect that has been told countless times in the past, leaving the latter to imagine and explore . But on the other side of the consumer side, topics such as the newly opened online black tea drink shop, burst milk capped tea, and even whether to hire someone to line up have occupied consumers’ minds one after another.
A key direction of the new tea drink is to greatly increase the threshold of competition in the tea drink market by leveraging strong capital. By using high-quality products such as fresh milk and fresh fruits, as well as emphasizing the properties of freshly cooked. Embed healthy, fresh and personalized tea culture concepts into branded products.
The consumption of new tea beverages on traditional milk tea is escalating, the brand transformation of the tea beverage market has begun, and the pattern of the tea beverage industry has been fundamentally changed.
Clearly direct sales, heavy store scene experience, and heavy investment in upstream R & D, brand building of new tea drinks has achieved remarkable results. On the one hand, we have grasped the pricing power of the tea beverage market and brought the price of tea beverages to a new level, avoiding the vicious circle of low-end price wars like the past franchised milk tea shops; on the other hand, strong brand operation The high-consumption crowd attracted also allowed them to obtain chips for entering high-quality commercial real estate, and took tea from the past pedestrian street, B1 floor, F5 + stallsThe entrance location brought the 1F golden entrance of the city’s core business district.
In contrast, traditional milk tea shops can’t help but look overshadowed, but it is not necessary to generate pessimism about traditional milk tea shops accordingly.
The new tea drink is now more of a supplement to the traditional milk tea market, and is an article in the incremental market, rather than an absolute replacement. An intuitive manifestation is that the two are not in the same price band, and the consumption scenarios also have different focuses. In addition, the business strategy of new tea branding, omni-channel access and rapid product iterations can also serve as a reference and inspiration for traditional milk tea shop owners.
In addition, the current expansion strategies of new tea-head brands are mostly density in first-tier cities and breadth in second-tier cities. It is foreseeable that new tea brands starting from first-tier cities are consolidating their first-mover advantage in first-tier cities. Traditional milk tea shops have few opportunities, coupled with high store rents and high labor input, the market opportunities are very small, and may even be more cruel than 9 deaths and 1 life. Market opportunities for mining.