-- On the crisis and opportunity of the new tea drinks, there may be no better way to see it clearly than to review it from the perspective of this cup of inspired tea.
Store growth is the most intuitive dimension of a tea brand's growth. Xi-cha has performed brilliantly in this regard over the past year. As of December 31, 2020, Xi-cha has opened 695 stores in 61 cities, of which 202 are new anchor stores and 102 are new GO stores.
This rate of expansion has cemented Xi Cha's position as the leader in the new tea beverage industry. It also includes the opening of 18 new cities. From the point of view of the TOP cities with new stores, the density of stores in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities has increased the most significantly, while in new first-tier and second-tier cities such as Chengdu, Hangzhou, Dongguan, Chongqing, Kunming and Foshan, Xi Cha also has a higher sense of "presence".
Xi tea 2020 national store coverage, according to the annual report
For any new tea drinker, it is not difficult to find a cup of good tea, but it is not easy to find a successful card in any big city in the country, which is the essence of the difference between the national scale of the new tea drink brand and the regional net red brand. Hi-tea is clearly the existence of the most outstanding in this regard.
The "Xicha Index" is a more accurate measure of the density of Xicha's coverage in a single city, i.e., the number of people in a city divided by the number of Xicha's stores there. In the past 2020, the top 13 cities in the Hi-Tea Index were Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Zhuhai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Zhongshan, Foshan, Xiamen, Dongguan, Chengdu and Xi'an. Among them, in Shenzhen, every 130,000 people have a Xi Cha store. In Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, the figures are 240,000, 250,000 and 360,000 respectively.
From this data, even at the end of last year, the number of stores in Shenzhen, Shanghai and two major cities both broke the hundred, whether it is in the first-tier cities, or in the new first-tier, second-tier and third-tier cities, there is still a huge space for development, the so-called "ceiling" is far from arriving.
And from the store coverage breadth point of view, for this new tea drink brand from Guangdong, hi tea in the past 2020, has been established in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other southern China as the center, Beijing, Shanghai for the North China and East China checkpoints, to complete a comprehensive coverage of the country's major cities.
It is especially worth mentioning that, among the various types of stores of Xi Cha, the theme store is one of the very eye-catching store types, incorporating more creative elements. In the past 2020, Xi Cha has continued to polish its theme stores with better quality, opening five theme stores including Shanghai New World Daimaru Department Store Black Gold Store, Guangzhou Yongqingfang Store, Nanshan Coastal City Environmental Protection Theme Store, Shenzhen Jingji KKMALL Store, and Chengdu KuanNarrow Alley Store, etc., which have experimented with modern, classical, environmental protection, and other styles of very different experiential elements.
The expansion of store scale has continued over the past year, but this has not hindered their pace of innovation in stores in different cities.
The epidemic has had a general impact on the restaurant industry, and after a brief freeze, the topic of focus for each company quickly focused on how to save themselves. In retrospect, the digital infrastructure capability is strongly correlated with the effectiveness of self-help.
Xicha is well-prepared in this regard, and has invested in building its digital capabilities since a long time ago, launching the "Xicha GO" WeChat mini-program in 2018, providing pickup and takeout delivery services, and building a digital membership system. As of December 31, 2020, there were more than 35 million members of the Xicha GO WeChat mini-program, and more than 13 million new members were added throughout the year.
Behind the high speed growth of digital membership is the formation of the habit of consumers consuming new tea drinks online. Initially, the impact of the epidemic on the consumption habits of users, the increase in home office and living time has a direct contribution to the takeaway business, according to the data disclosed by Xi tea, from February after the resumption of production and work to the end of April 2020, the number of Xi tea takeaway orders increased by 266% year-on-year, and the proportion of takeaway orders increased by 254% year-on-year.
It is worth noting that even after the epidemic has passed, consumers' habit of ordering tea through takeout has been retained. Similar to the February-April situation, for the whole of 2020, among all consumers of Xi Cha, about 81% chose to order online, with 24.8% choosing takeaway delivery and 75.2% choosing to pick up in store.
Embodied in a single consumer, Xi tea GO small program can bring the most intuitive improvement in ordering efficiency. According to the data statistics of Xi tea, the per capita waiting time of consumers using the Xi tea GO small program to order in 2020 was shortened by nearly one third compared to 2018 when the Xi tea GO small program was first launched.
The problem of long queues in the new tea drink market had been quite criticized, and there is no lack of exposure to the phenomenon of hiring scalpers to create momentum. Rapid expansion remains the most direct and effective way to improve queuing, and Xi Cha has been remarkably effective in this regard, with a digital ordering system to further improve this accessibility.
However, takeout, as well as in-store pickup, is still store-centric and limited by the physical space constraints of regional stores.
This is a landmark moment for Xicha, before the Xicha department store is more of a retail business extension based on the Xicha GO small program, and stationed in Tmall, Jingdong self-supporting, outside the store, opened up the Xicha omni-channel imaginative space.
The actual development is quite colorful, in 2020, Xi tea Tmall flagship store added about 620,000 new fans, the newly launched Xi small bottle of sparkling water sold about 1.4 million bottles, a week tea gift box of more than 250,000 boxes, popsicles nearly 80,000 and nearly 40,000 straw cups. Xi tea Jingdong own flagship store Xi small bottle of sparkling water since October on the shelves, *** sold more than 500,000 bottles, Xi tea ice lollipop sold nearly 100,000.
Thanks to the accumulation of the second and third quarters, 2020 Xi tea double eleven achieved "open door red", during the activities of Xi tea Tmall flagship store GMV exceeded ten million yuan, Xi vials of sparkling water category sales of more than 40,000 cases *** counting 500,000 bottles in the net red sparkling water ranked TOP3. Nearly 130,000 boxes, ranked No. 1 in the list of heart-selected combination type of flower tea.
Another obvious shift brought about by the epidemic is that the concept of healthy tea drinking has become increasingly popular. The new tea drink represented by Xicha is essentially a quality upgrade of traditional tea drinks, which has had ample value in the past year.
According to the data disclosed by Xi Cha, in 2020, about 56.6% of consumers choose less sweet. Among them, "less sweet" users accounted for 34.4%, an increase of 6.1% year-on-year, while the proportion of users who chose "less sweet" accounted for 22.2%, an increase of 3.0% year-on-year.
It is interesting to note that in terms of sweetness, consumers in Shanghai, which has the largest number of orders with less sugar in the country, prefer less sugar, while the city with the largest number of orders with more sugar is Shenzhen. Additionally, in 2020, 1.5 times more men than women will choose "more sugar" and 1.3 times more women than men will choose less sugar.
We note that in addition to the commercial dimension, Xicha is also taking on more social responsibility. For example, the environmental concept of promoting paper straws in June 2019 to encourage consumers to bring their own cups to drink tea continues to flourish in 2020 as well.
By the end of 2020, Xi Cha's Bring Your Own Cup campaign had cumulatively reduced the use of more than 30,000 single-use plastic cups, and the Green Paper Straws campaign had cumulatively reduced the use of 12 million non-biodegradable plastic straws, an action that was echoed by a large number of consumers, with the number of those who chose to use paper straws increasing by 22% for the year compared to the whole of 2019. Single-use non-biodegradable plastic straws are now history. It is reported that before December 31, 2020, Xi Cha has fully replaced the straws in stores across the country with paper straws and PLA biodegradable environmental straws.
In addition, over the past year, Xi Cha has also supplied lunch to the Shanghai medical team and the Henan medical team involved in assisting Wuhan, and sent over 50,000 cups of hot beverages to grassroots frontline anti-epidemic workers in 29 cities, including Wuhan, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Xiamen, Hefei, and so on. On September 1, 2020, Xi-Tea signed an industrial poverty alleviation plan with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation for the next three years, and will donate 3 million yuan for industrial poverty alleviation projects in different regions of the country, and it is reported that the first 1 million yuan of the donation has been used to support the development of the tea industry in Leishan County, Guizhou Province in 2020.
In this extraordinary year, the tea has successfully "broken the circle" in the store as the core of the digital omni-channel based on the epidemic on the change of this channel to play a key role in promoting. At the same time, the habit of drinking tea is also changing. The rich digital precipitation of Xi tea in the early stage provides us with a rich perspective on the user portrait of tea drinking consumption.
Combined with the data, Xijia's average order peak time throughout the day is 14:00-16:00. Xijia's weekly order peak time is on weekends, and in addition, Thursday and Friday are two weekdays when many people drink tea. As the user base grows, Xicha is becoming more and more a part of people's daily lives.
Consumers' tea drinking time preferences, according to the annual report
Product R&D is still an important part of the equation, and over the past year, Xijia has maintained the pace of launching a new product every 1.2 weeks on average, and has made some interesting innovations, such as taking the lead in applying the "black technology of milk" of freezing buttermilk to tea drinks, and introducing raw coconut milk to tea drinks, as well as the use of "milk black technology" to make tea drinks from coconut. Tea drinks, as well as raw coconut water and coconut pulp into "raw coconut milk", to create a "raw coconut" process.
From the actual market response, it seems that Xicha has found a balance between maintaining classic flavors and pushing the envelope.
In the 2020 Xi tea all products, there are like succulent grapes, the champion of the product appeared to "dominate" the phenomenon of up to 72 weeks, in addition to the hot products also include succulent mango manna, ZhiZhi berry berry, roasted brown sugar bobo buttermilk, ZhiZhi Peach Peach, there are also like the raw beat coconut coconut milk jelly, succulent Melon melon, raw beat coconut coconut mango, Snowy Mountain Berry Cinnamon Jelly, Wine Cinnamon Jelly, Thick Roasted Cake Bobo Milk Tea, Extra Thick Buttermilk Bobo, Mango Ganache Coconut Coconut Jelly, and other new products that are popular.
Whether it's the taste, sweetness or tea drinking scene, it reflects the increasingly obvious trend of personalized tea drinking.
As a sub-brand with the complete gene of "Xicha", WeChat mini program is also the main channel to purchase Xicha vials. As of December 31, 2020, the total number of users of the "Xixiaocha" WeChat mini-program has exceeded 430,000 people. Of all the consumers who placed orders, those who chose to pick up at the store accounted for about 87.4%, and those who chose takeaway delivery accounted for about 12.6%.
Xi Xiaocha is the embodiment of Xi Cha's ability to navigate differentiated tea products and scenarios. There is a core reason behind this is that Xi tea has a deeper and deeper influence on the upstream supply chain of tea drinks.
Since the development of the new tea beverage industry nearly 10 years ago, the industry supply chain is a process of development from scratch, from small to large, the establishment of industry standards and norms is also in the state of groping forward. The concept of healthy tea drinking is the main line of development of the industry, but also a key factor in the rapid rise of new tea drinks.
Take strawberries as an example, Xi Cha has customized and purchased high-quality strawberries in the past, but also began to research strawberry varieties in 2020, on the one hand, research, cultivation and development of new strawberry varieties, while choosing the most suitable area, self-built strawberry base, and through the development of seedlings, cultivation, maintenance of experimental bases, to ensure the quality of strawberry planting. It is reported that the new varieties of strawberries planted in Xi Cha's own base are expected to be listed in 2021.
Xi-tea also selected 17 high-quality teas from Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, Taiwan and other tea-producing destinations, while inviting professional tea masters to blend different teas according to their attributes, and in the process using roasting, frying and other processes, after hundreds of flavor optimization, and finally produced classic teas such as LvYan, JinFeng, and Four Seasons Spring.
Hi-Tea also built its own organic tea plantation in Fanjingshan, Guizhou Province, to control the quality of tea from the source, in-depth environmental assessment of the tea plantation, soil cultivation, tea tree cultivation, the natural growth of tea, artificial picking to tea blending and so on, to ensure that the tea is purely natural and non-polluting.
It is reported that in the past year, in terms of fresh fruits, for example, the annual Xi Cha consumed more than 5,800 tons of grapes, nearly 2,000 tons of strawberries, more than 4,700 tons of mangoes, more than 3,200 tons of coconuts, and nearly 3,000 tons of peaches, and the large-scale purchasing has also brought more than 750 million yuan of income generation to the upstream farmers.
Even ordinary consumers can clearly see that the new tea drink has emerged in recent years a large number of new brands, but many brands are just a flash in the pan, and more are at a standstill, a big reason for this is the inability to find the right rhythm in product innovation, quality assurance and standardized replication.
The successful rise of Xicha is an important reference for the entire tea beverage industry, which can at least be seen that the quality of tea drinks still have a strong vitality, but today's new tea beverage market has jumped out of a single product innovation context, since 2021, the new tea beverage market formally stepped into the new cycle of omni-channel development.
The full version of the Xi Cha 2020 Inspired Living Report is attached below: