Will “breaking the circle” make Shanghai’s coffee market better?
Last month, the first Starbucks shared space concept store in Mainland China opened in an old store in the Raffles Office Building on Middle Tibet Road. The new format of coffee + office has attracted many office workers. Previously, according to the “Shanghai Coffee Consumption Index” released by China Business News, as of January this year, there were 6913 coffee shops in Shanghai, nearly twice the number of the second-ranked Tokyo area. Among them, Shanghai’s coffee + business format is showing a trend of blooming, so that many people’s day starts with an experience other than coffee. So, one year has passed, how did the Shanghai coffee+ format “involve”? Is it the coffee itself or the coffee+ concept that consumers pay for it?
Six semi-open workstations, three cubicles and an eight-person meeting room, equipped with office facilities such as sockets, whiteboards, projectors, frosted glass, etc., are in the first Starbucks shared space concept store in mainland China. It is not here at ten in the morning. By now, there are no empty seats.
The shared space adopts an appointment system, semi-open workstations are free, and private rooms are charged from 50 yuan to 180 yuan per hour depending on the size. The transformation and upgrading of this Starbucks is based on the precise positioning of the consumer groups of specific stores. Starbucks Raffles Office Store Manager Lu Jiawen said: “The customer crowd here is mainly the customers near the Raffles Office and People’s Square. Now it’s a bit more flexible to do a flexible office.”
It’s not accidental that the coffee breaks the circle. Data shows that Shanghai has the highest density of cafes along the street, with 5.2 cafes per 100 meters, and fierce competition has also prompted businesses to actively seek transformation. Compared with chain coffee shops, independent coffee brands are under greater pressure, and their cross-border experience is more fashionable.
Taking advantage of the camping trend, this coffee shop transformed from a roast meat shop into a coffee + camping coffee shop is located on the Golden City Road in Gubei Community. In order to create a realistic camping experience, the cost of green plant maintenance alone is more than 10,000 yuan per month, and camping equipment such as tents and stoves are all available. Therefore, despite the autumn wind, there are still a constant stream of customers who pay for the experience.
Since its opening one month, the average price of coffee at the camping-themed coffee shop is 30 yuan, which has stabilized at an average daily output of 350 cups. It can reach an average of more than 500 cups during the weekend peak period. However, even so popular, it still makes a small profit. The owner of Camp781 coffee shop Jiang Bin said frankly that although he wanted to focus on coffee itself, he still made some changes due to the pressure of reality: “The matter of coffee + is a helpless move for us. After all, my frequency effect has changed. Generally the longest time is 120 minutes, but a cup of coffee may be one afternoon, so from the point of view of net profit, it should not be profitable.”
The plight of independent cafes is closely related to the Shanghai coffee market. According to the “2020 International Cultural Metropolis Evaluation Report” released by Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai has the largest total number of coffee shops in the world, with a per capita coffee consumption of about 20 cups per year, ranking No. 1 in the country. 1. It is much lower than the annual per capita consumption of 150-200 cups in South Korea and Japan. Xu Jian, deputy dean of the China Institute of Urban Governance at Shanghai Jiaotong University, analyzed and pointed out that China is not a country where coffee consumption is relatively strong at present: “Although the entire coffee market has a lot of room for the future, there is still a long way to go. Going.”
In response to the objective market situation, some people choose to break the circle across borders, while others choose to focus on the original state. This coffee, which was born on Nanchang Road, has maintained a small stall of 35 square meters in the past three years since it opened. There are no seats. It maintains the activity of bringing a cup of 5 yuan off all the year round, opening the branch from the Nanjing West Road business district all the way. There are already 20 commercial buildings.
This cafe on Changle Road does not have a fancy business format. Instead, it uses home-baked beans, opens an online Taobao store, and innovates and develops some alcohol-based coffee drinks. Coffee has also achieved price reductions.
In the eyes of customers, coffee has changed from an embellishment of life to daily life; in the eyes of coffee shop owners, the pressure and opportunities of Shanghai’s coffee culture coexist. Changed and unchanged, Shanghai’s coffee market has flourished in an open and inclusive complex business format.
