BEIJING – First the accusations, in December, of using expired products. And related riot on the Net. Then, last week, the near fight between waiters and policemen broke out in the city of Chongqing with the agents invited to leave because they were drinking and eating in an area outside the club where it was not allowed: with the austere Quotidiano del Popolo, which in an editorial went so far as to call the American chain “arrogant” and some keyboard nationalists to even call for a boycott. Finally, the decision (already taken at a global level due to the Omicron variant and related supply chain crisis) to increase the price of sandwiches and coffee on the menu by 1-2 yuan: a few coins, with a cup of Americano now at the counter he will pay 30 yuan instead of 28, but that was enough to – needless to say – unleash another riot online. After more than 20 years of a very profitable honeymoon, are Starbucks’ fortunes in China coming to an end?
Of course, China still represents the second market for the Seattle-based company (after the United States, in fact) and the figures for 2021, globally, have certainly not been bad: the coffee giant reported a net profit in the first. fiscal quarter of $ 815.9 million, compared with $ 622.2 million a year earlier. But it is in China that the numbers are starting to decline: between October 2021 and January 2022, in-store sales fell here in the land of the Dragon by 14%. A decline due to growing competition from rivals made in China.
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by our correspondent Gianluca Modolo
When Starbucks opened its first store in Beijing in 1999, few believed to tell the truth that the move would turn into a good deal in a country where people far preferred tea to coffee. But in these two decades the Chinese middle class has grown and habits have evolved with it. And the competitors of the American chain.
Today Starbucks has 5,557 stores across the country, about 500 fewer than Luckin Coffee. The company founded in 2007, after the bankruptcy of two years ago due to the irregular adjustments to the accounting books made by the former president Charles Lu with consequent expulsion from Nasdaq, is getting up again. And it is gearing up precisely to return to the American stock market. Thanks to the shops that continue to pop up like mushrooms in the four corners of the Dragon, thanks to the liquidity brought into cash by new investors after the near-bankruptcy and thanks to competitive prices compared to Starbucks, the number one rival. Revenues in 2021 were record-breaking, more than doubling: net revenue of 2.35 billion yuan ($ 364.7 million), an increase of 105.6% from 1.14 billion yuan a year ago. .
To undermine Starbucks there are other chains born in recent years. How Manner Coffee, founded in 2015 in Shanghai (the coffee capital of China) which from a single stall on the street today has 300 shops with very chic design and competitive prices (30-40% compared to Starbucks) in cities such as Beijing, Xiamen, Shenzhen , Chengdu and Suzhou. Last year, thanks to investments by giants like Meituan and ByteDance, Manner Coffee opened 150 stores from June to October: practically more than one a day. Starbucks is advised.