The coffee track ushered in the most unexpected player——China Post. On February 14, the country’s first post office coffee shop, Post Office Coffee, was officially opened in Xiamen. This is a direct-operated store by China Post. From the store’s point of view, the familiar retro green set and the iconic postbox have a strong color of China Post. From the product point of view, American, latte, cappuccino are available,The most convenient cup is 22 yuan.
The Post was selling coffee, and the imagination seemed amazing. Previous data shows that China Post, relying on its advantages in urban and rural areas and covering the whole country, has nearly 9,000 investment departments, 54,000 business branches and 420,000 cooperative mail and Tesco site resources with complete information systems. While Starbucks has more than 5,000 stores in China, Luckin has nearly 6,000. At this scale,The post office coffee is the first in the country as soon as it is rolled out.China Post officially entered, which is another epitome of the popularity of the coffee track. Looking back on 2021, the coffee track is still crowded with investors—manner, the main coffee shop with a few square meters, is rumored to be valued at more than $15 million (nearly RMB 100 million) for a single store; the valuation of M Stand has also reached RMB 4 billion after financing ; There are still three and a half meals, and the valuation is also easily 4.5 billion yuan. Behind the madness, almost everyone believes that,China will definitely give birth to its own Starbucks.In this day and age, you never know who your next opponent will be.
Post’s first directly-operated coffee shop
Unexpectedly, China Post started selling coffee again.
On February 14, China Post’s first post office coffee landed in Xiamen International Trade Building, officially entering the coffee market. The postal coffee shop is still familiar with the retro green set and the iconic postbox. The products sold include coffee, tea, desserts and the surrounding of the post office.
in,The price of coffee and tea is between 20-40 yuan, the store can provide both pick-up and home delivery services. Through Dianping, we can see that the cheapest is the classic American, which costs 22 yuan a cup, while the most expensive one costs 38 yuan.
The investment community learned from Xiamen Post’s WeChat public account that Post Office Coffee willInternational Trade Post OfficeRenovation and upgrading were carried out, and coffee drinks and postal cultural and creative services were superimposed on the basis of retaining general postal services.After the renovation, the store not only remainedPostal traditional business service areaalso added tables and chairs for drinking coffee and chatting, and sold peripheral products such as coffee cups and cultural and creative bags.
Overnight, the humble little post office was transformed into aInternet celebrity check-in point。
“Have a cup of coffee and write a letter to a loved one. “The Post has caught the latest traffic code, and even Slogan is targeting young people.
Netizens who work nearby revealed that after only a few days of business, there was a long queue at the entrance of the postal coffee shop, and the store was already full of orders.
Some users on Dianping also said, “You have to wait for more than an hour to buy coffee at noon on weekdays, and there are still 180 cups waiting.” Overall, although most consumers are not too concerned about the price of post office coffee Satisfied, but the coffee taste is still passable.
When it comes to making coffee across borders, China Post is well-versed. Long before this post office coffee self-operated store opened, Xiamen Shapowei had already opened a joint coffee shop. The same dark green retro style once attracted tourists to check in. Even more interesting, before dabbling in coffee,China Post also sells milk tea.
In June 2021, a China Post Pharmacy in Fujian Province opened a milk tea shop-youxing tea. The store decoration is smaller and fresher than the post office coffee. The categories provided include pure tea, milk tea, fruit tea and fruit milk and other 14 different teas, with prices ranging from 7-23 yuan. Like the post office coffee, Post oxygen’s tea business quickly became a hot search.Become a new online celebrity punch card shop.
The investment community can see from the industry distribution map of China Post’s foreign investment that in addition to transportation accounting for 56.25% of its main business, China Post has also deployed various industries such as leasing business, wholesale and retail, finance, culture and sports, accommodation and catering. The current express delivery industry is highly competitive.Postal Cross-border SurvivalThe drama has also been staged repeatedly.
In fact, cross-border coffee sales are not the first of China Post. Two years ago,Sinopec Yijie Convenience Store released a new brand Yijie Coffee, sold coffee at the gas station.And another time-honored traditional Chinese medicine brand Tongrentang with a history of more than 350 years also opened apunk health coffee shop,Tong Ren Tang is ingenious, combining wolfberry, honey and coffee with coffee, and the small pharmacy on the second floor also provides a pulse consultation service.
After Sinopec and Tongrentang entered the coffee market, “gasoline-flavored coffee” and “Chinese medicine-flavored coffee” became the object of ridicule by many netizens. As for the post office coffee, netizens also sent out soul torture: “Is there a system for selling coffee?” “Is it considered a civil servant to work at the post office coffee?” “Anything else, if I can work here, is it considered a state-owned enterprise? ?”
Sitting on more than 50,000 business points, it is several times more than Starbucks Ruixing, and it is the first in the country.
China Post has grabbed the coffee business, and everyone has been commenting on @Starbucks below.
As a coffee giant, Starbucks has been subject to controversy recently. Not long ago, some netizens boycotted a Starbucks store in Chongqing for allegedly driving away the police who were eating box lunches at the door. This matter is not completely over yet, and another news comes——Starbucks has raised prices。
For a long time, Starbucks became synonymous with coffee. In 1999, Starbucks opened its first store in the China International Trade Center in Beijing. This imported brand has spent nearly 20 years breaking the stereotype of domestic consumers that coffee is instant Nestle, and brought the “third space” model to the market. into China. In its fiscal 2021 annual report, Starbucks’ revenue in China reached $3.67 billion, accounting for 12.6% of its total revenue.China has become Starbucks’ second largest market in the world.
Another coffee giant, Ruixing, has been swept away since its birth in 2017, and it is still strong even after the fraud storm.At the beginning of this year, the number of Luckin stores was close to 6,000, about the same period as Starbucks’ stores in China.More than 5500。
However, if you compete with the number of stores, you will not dare to underestimate China Post, which is the most secretive giant. From the point of view of delivery logistics business alone, China Post has more than 54,000 domestic business outlets and 350,000 convenient service stations. , There are 100,000 village postal stations, and the coverage rate of service outlets in towns and villages has reached 100%.
In addition, China Post also covers 54,000 post offices, more than 600,000 convenience service franchise points, and more than 600 themed post offices. This means that China Post has at least 50,000 stores that can be used to sell coffee.
“As long as it is within China, there is no place that postal express cannot reach. “Compared with Starbucks and Ruixing’s difficult expansion, China Post’s previous business network all over the country can open a coffee shop next to it at any time, and this cup of coffee can even go to the most remote areas. It is the first in the country. The imagination of Post Office Coffee’s expansion is astonishingly large.
In this regard, the relevant person in charge of the post office coffee revealed that in 2022, in addition to Xiamen, a number of specialty post office coffee shops will be opened in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other first- and second-tier cities. Of course, if you want to use part-time jobs to challenge the main business that the giants have been cultivating for many years, post office coffee is obviously immature. After all, apart from the wide distribution of stores, the competitive advantage of post office coffee is not obvious.
In this day and age, it’s not necessarily your peers who kill you. Not long after Starbucks quietly raised prices, Luckin and Tims Coffee also announced the price increase of some products. The post office coffee was born at this time, which can be regarded as giving consumers a new choice.Perhaps in another 10 years, everyone’s impression of China Post will no longer be just express delivery.
The coffee track killed a store with a valuation of 100 million, and unicorns were born in batches
China Post sells coffee and just stepped on a tuyere.
Coffee is the hottest consumption track in the venture capital circle in recent years.Data shows that the number of coffee-related companies registered is increasing year by year, exceeding 20,000 in 2015. Since 2018, the calm of the coffee world has been broken. The scale of China’s coffee market has exceeded 200 billion yuan, and the per capita coffee consumption is 6.2 cups. In the market, different subdivisions such as freshly ground coffee, hanging ear coffee, and cold brew coffee emerge in an endless stream, and VC/PE comes to smell the aroma of coffee.
A small cup of coffee, drink a unicorn. There is no need to say Ruixing’s madness. After Ruixing’s fake and silent, it is unimaginable that the coffee track is more lively.
Looking back on 2021, the most popular unicorn in the venture capital circle will have this name——Manner。In 2015, founder Han Yulong opened Manner, a coffee shop with only 2 square meters in Shanghai. Focusing on small stores and high cost performance, Manner only opened 3 stores in the first three years of its establishment. In 2020, Manner continued its rapid expansion, and successively entered Suzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen and other cities, becoming one of the main forces in the siege of Starbucks.
In December 2020, Manner announced the completion of a $100 million financing from H Capital and Coatue Management, with a post-investment valuation of at least $1 billion. In the following year, Manner completed 3 rounds of financing. Investors include Temasek Temasek, Meituan Dragon Ball and ByteDance. The valuation has continued to rise. It is rumored that it has exceeded 3 billion US dollars, and even a single store valuation has exceeded 15 million US dollars.
In addition, another brandM Standalso became popular. In 2017, after traveling to 50 countries, M Stand founder Ge Dong opened a coffee shop called M Stand next to Huashan Road in Shanghai. Four years later, M Stand completed a series A financing of over 100 million yuan from Challenger Ventures and CMC Capital. In less than half a year, M Stand again won a series B financing of over 500 million yuan. Investors include Black Ant Capital, Gaorong Capital, and Challenger. Venture Capital, CMC Capital, Qicheng Capital, etc., the post-investment valuation is about 4 billion yuan.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. In the line of offline boutique coffee alone, Yingji Coffee, Seesaw, Nova Coffee, Tims, Yika, ZooCoffee, etc. have successively completed multiple rounds of financing. There are many suitors, and the opening of stores is one after another, which is spectacular.
In the online channel, many coffee brands, such as Sumida River’s hanging ear bag, three and a half of freeze-dried powder, Yongpu and Shicui’s cold brewed concentrate, and room temperature concentrate, have been active on the consumption list of e-commerce platforms all the year round. A star startup company has also emerged.
Why do investors go one after another into the coffee track?Every investment institution will talk about this logic – although coffee is an overseas thing, China will definitely have its own coffee brand. At the same time, the coffee track is very large, and the benchmark company Starbucks is 130 billion US dollars. This market has been proven.
From the perspective of the track, players in the coffee industry who can achieve large-scale chains will be more scarce than those in the tea drinking track.After a VC partner who invested in consumption led a team to investigate the coffee market, he made a judgment: in today’s growing national self-confidence, China will definitely be bornown Starbucks。
The author of this article: Yang Wenjing, source:investment community (ID:pedaily2012), Wall Street News columnist, source: “China Post officially sells coffee, a cup of 22 yuan”
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