New tea drinks are now being sold for breakfast. What are the chances of success?

Breakfast is a necessary meal every day, but many people cannot make breakfast due to time or other reasons, so choosing to buy breakfast outside is becoming more and more common. Now new tea drinks are involved in the breakfast field. This article describes the relevant content and I hope it will be helpful to you.

Following baking, wine, bottled drinks, etc., new tea beverage brands have collectively flocked to the "8 am prime time" of urban white-collar workers!

Can new tea brands easily seize the trillion-dollar gold mine of breakfast?

Passing by Luckin Coffee every morning and picking up a cup of iced American coffee and an original croissant was once the normal way for post-95 white-collar worker Xiaomai to start his work day.

Later, a Nayuki Tea Pro store opened downstairs of the office building where the Wheat Company was located, and started selling breakfast.

“Although Nayuki’s breakfast selection is not as rich as Luckin’s, it is still relatively cost-effective. It can be said to be a blessing for the ‘poor’!”

Wheat compared and found that buying a cup of coffee and a piece of bread at Luckin Coffee would cost at least 15 yuan, even with various coupons.

But at Nayuki, a drink plus a baked staple food starts at as low as 9.9 yuan, and it is very convenient. You can place an order on the mini program ten minutes in advance and pick it up at the store.

This is not the only Naixue store that has launched a series of breakfast products. There are many new tea brands gearing up for the breakfast market.

1. Some brands have been launched in thousands of stores! New tea brands open the "Early 8 Golden Time"

In early July, a Gu Ming restaurant in Hangzhou launched a "super value coffee breakfast" with a unit price of 13-15 yuan, which includes a cup of coffee and a baked product. The coffee includes American, latte, etc., and the staple food is croissant or beef roll.

According to relevant media reports, the set meal is only available between 7:30 and 11:00 in the morning and is currently only available in some stores in Hangzhou.

In recent years, more and more new tea brands have taken a fancy to the market prospects of breakfast and focused on the "8 am prime time" of white-collar workers.

Judging from the timeline, the first new tea brand to bet on the breakfast product line may be Heytea.

According to HEYTEA's official Weibo account, as early as mid-October 2019, HEYTEA launched the "Inspiration Breakfast" series of products, introducing a combination breakfast product of pure tea/coffee + croissant, which consumers can purchase in relevant stores before 11 a.m. every day.

Judging from the per capita price, Heytea's inspirational breakfast is not cheap. Consumers who purchase a set meal during the breakfast period can get a 3 yuan discount, but even so, the price of a croissant + a drink is 28-32 yuan.

At the beginning of the official blog, Heytea's inspirational breakfast was only launched in Heytea hot wheat stores. After that, Heytea tried it out in some tea shops in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangdong. At the end of 2019, a netizen asked Heytea customer service when the inspirational breakfast would be popularized in major stores across the country. Heytea officially replied that "it will be accelerated next year." In 2020, Heytea further launched staple food products such as croissants, sandwiches, and toast based on its original products.

However, after nearly a year of exploring the breakfast market, Heytea gradually withdrew from the breakfast market as hot wheat stores in major cities withdrew their counters. At present, Heytea stores still sell baked staple products such as scones, toasts, and puffs, but they are all available 24 hours a day and are no longer divided into sales periods. It is worth mentioning Nayuki. Unlike Heytea, Mixue Ice City, and Guming, which are cautiously testing the waters, Nayuki seems to be planning and strategically competing for the trillion-dollar breakfast cake.

Nayuki started selling breakfast as early as April 2020. At the beginning, Nayuki's breakfast products were relatively simple and the prices were relatively high.

The store only sells pure tea/coffee drinks paired with three types of sandwiches, with drinks priced between 12 and 19 yuan, and sandwiches priced between 12 and 16 yuan per serving, with an average price of more than 24 yuan per person. Later, after determining the all-time consumption scenario, Nayuki increased its efforts in the breakfast scenario, and the number of baked staple food products sold during the breakfast period once expanded to more than 30.

Later, perhaps realizing that breakfast is a business that is in urgent need of the general public and that consumers are highly price sensitive, Naixue streamlined its breakfast product line and launched a combination meal at the end of 2021. During breakfast time, there are only three types of coffee + four types of baked goods to choose from, and the price of the meal is more than 16 yuan.

By March 2022, its coffee + baked breakfast combination will be further discounted to 13 yuan. At present, Nayuki's latest menu shows that the drinks in its breakfast combination are still 3 classic pure tea/coffee, and there are 7 baked products to choose from, which can be combined into more than 20 sets. A set meal can be purchased for as low as 9.9 yuan.

According to Nayuki, as of now, about 1,000 of its more than 1,200 stores across the country have launched breakfast products, accounting for more than 80%, and the sales of breakfast packages in the first half of this year have increased by about 620% compared with last year.

2. Can new tea drinks easily seize the trillion-dollar gold mine of breakfast?

According to Mintel data, the size of my country's breakfast market will reach 2.57 trillion yuan in 2025. The breakfast market has a promising future, and some new tea brands have also tasted the sweetness. Does this mean that selling new tea drinks for breakfast is a good business?

Some industry insiders bluntly stated that in theory, testing the breakfast scene is indeed a way for new tea beverage companies to increase revenue, but if it really comes to practice it is likely to be a thankless task.

During the interview, Hongcan.com learned that although some tea brands have expressed their continued optimism about the breakfast scene, many more brands are still cautious and wait-and-see. One brand founder even said, "It is highly likely that we will not wade into this muddy water." What are the concerns of new tea brands selling breakfast?

1. First of all, if most tea beverage brands want to do well in the breakfast business, they will probably have to reshape the supply chain.

Judging from the product portfolio, the breakfast of new tea brands has almost all broken away from the business scope of milk tea/fruit tea and chosen a combination of coffee/pure tea + baked goods.

Zhai Bin, a columnist for Hongcan.com, analyzed that for a tea beverage brand that already has two product lines, coffee and baking, and a stable supply, opening breakfast is equivalent to extending the business hours. It will not cause additional pressure on the store and is a relatively good consumption scenario for finding new growth.

However, some brands that originally only sold tea drinks and did not have coffee or baked goods, if they want to make such a breakfast combination, they have to add product lines such as coffee and staple foods. Not only do they need to add manpower and equipment, but the supply chain also needs to be reorganized and polished.

"If a tea shop develops two more product lines just to cope with the morning period, the overall operation of the store may be affected, and it will be difficult to stock up. If they stock too much, they may not be able to sell them, and they will have to report losses in the end; if they stock too little, it may not be 'enough to deal with,'" Zhai Bin emphasized.

2. Secondly, not all tea shops are suitable for opening breakfast scenes.

"Tea shops with breakfast consumption traffic may be more inclined to do this business." Wang Lulu, a columnist for Hongcan.com, commented on the new tea shop selling breakfast.

What Wang Lulu meant was that not all milk tea shops are suitable for doing breakfast business.

According to the data published in the "Survey Report on Breakfast Eating Status of Chinese Residents", 81% of the respondents said that they spend less than 15 minutes on breakfast. Convenience is an important factor for workers to consider when buying breakfast. Many people tend to take a few buns, fried dough sticks or soy milk from street stalls on the way to work or from the convenience store downstairs of the company. It is not only cost-effective, but also convenient and fast.

Therefore, if new tea drinks want to develop the breakfast market, the location of the store is also an important factor. For tea drink stores that are located near subway entrances or on the ground floor of office buildings and that can be booked online in advance and picked up at the store, launching breakfast products may have certain advantages.

Many tea brands have stores mainly located in shopping malls and pedestrian streets, which are often deserted before 10 a.m. For office workers racing against time, it is obviously not realistic to go out of their way to get breakfast.

In addition to store location, many tea shops are limited in size and it is difficult to add breakfast product lines.

Zhai Bin observed and analyzed that most of the milk tea shops are stalls with small business areas. If they want to add staple food to the store, the products cannot be too single, and if they want to satisfy the Chinese stomach, the food must be hot.

"As a result, the placement of equipment and the storage of staple food and beverages are a big problem. Some baked products are still made on the spot, and the frozen dough is baked in the oven when it arrives at the store. This requires additional manpower and equipment, and the entire SOP process has to change."

"Self-operated tea shops may be able to try to make adjustments regardless of cost, but it will be difficult to implement if franchisees or franchise stores are asked to take on the responsibility," Zhai Bin emphasized.

3. From the perspective of market competition, there are many players trying to tap into the breakfast gold mine.

The ubiquitous mom-and-pop shops and convenience stores are the main competitors that new tea brands cannot ignore when selling breakfast.

Take the example of a mom-and-pop shop. According to statistics, there are nearly 5 million mom-and-pop shops that specialize in breakfast. These mom-and-pop shops specialize in traditional Chinese breakfasts such as steamed buns, fried dough sticks, and fried noodles, and the prices are often more affordable. In addition, some chain restaurant brands have also entered the breakfast market.

Xiaomai told Hongcan.com that in addition to the Naixue Pro store, on the basement floor of the office building where his company is located, in addition to brands such as Luckin Coffee, McDonald's, and FamilyMart that have already laid out breakfast scenes, nearly ten fast food chain brands such as 72 Street, Big Brother, Yu Jian Xiaomian, and Shiqijia have also launched breakfast sets.

The breakfast products in these stores include coffee, hamburgers, Western-style baked goods (sandwiches, croissants), porridge, rice noodles, dumplings, Chinese buns, fried dough sticks, soy milk and other categories. The products are rich and the flavors are diverse. You can eat at one store every day without repeating yourself for most of the month.

This also gives us a glimpse into how fierce the competition is in the breakfast consumption scene of the new tea beverage layout.

Overall, although the breakfast market seems to be a big business with unlimited prospects, it is not easy for new tea brands to easily control the trillion-dollar breakfast market.

As Zhai Bin said, selling new tea drinks for breakfast seems to have the meaning of "following the path of coffee and leaving coffee with no way to go", but whether from the perspective of product portfolio, consumption habits, model building, or even franchise investment, the advantage of milk tea shops selling breakfast is not obvious.

Author: Red Can Editorial Department

WeChat public account: Hongcan.com (ID: hongcan18)