On March 12th, Interface News exclusively discovered that on the shelves of a Yonghui supermarket in Beijing, Luckin Coffee's ear hanging coffee, cold extracted coffee liquid, coconut milk, blended coffee beans and other products were quietly placed for sale on the coffee shelves. These products were previously only available for purchase through Luckin Coffee's app or its official online store.
This also means that Luckin Coffee is entering larger offline supermarkets.
In terms of sales price, some products are priced lower than the Luckin Coffee app, such as the 6-pack Luckin Coffee product in the Cat suction series, which is priced at 29.9 yuan in Yonghui Supermarket and 39.9 yuan in Luckin APP. The 9-pack Luckin Coffee liquid product is priced at 45 yuan in Yonghui Supermarket, and the price of the Luckin APP is equivalent to it, with 2 pieces priced at 89 yuan.
Interface News learned from the supermarket staff that Luckin's series of products was launched in early 2024. In addition to existing prices, consumers can also participate in full reduction or deduction activities by receiving points and coupons from Yonghui members. Currently, there are 10 SKUs for Luckin related products on Yonghui's offline and online platforms.
In addition to Yonghui Supermarket, Wal Mart Supermarket has also launched the above related products of Ruixing, and can also participate in Wal Mart's "79 minus 8" promotional activities. Orders placed online can also be delivered home by hour.
Regarding this, Interface News sought confirmation from Luckin Coffee regarding this related product action, but did not receive a response.
Yonghui Supermarket previously confirmed to Interface News that in the past two years, it has actively introduced some dynamic and topical new brands to increase product initiative after eliminating some redundant products through product optimization strategies.
In fact, on the coffee product shelves of Yonghui Supermarket, in addition to traditional brands such as Nestle, UCC, and Monaco, brands such as Nova Coffee and Tim Coffee, which have offline coffee chains, have also attempted to distribute instant products to offline retail channels such as supermarkets and Haotemai for sale.
This is similar to the tea practices of Heytea and Nayuki three years ago. In July 2020, HEYTEA officially entered the offline market of pre packaged beverages, launching HEYTEA soda in convenience stores and supermarkets. Subsequently, HEYTEA also launched products such as bubble water and concentrated fruit tea under the same name brand. In May 2022, it was rumored that Nayuki's tea had invested 1 billion yuan to enter the bottled tea market and launched seven tea beverage products that year.
In December 2022, Snow City launched its bottled water brand "Snow King loves drinking water" through the official official account, officially opening the layout of bottled business. A few months later, Honey Snow Ice City also launched the bottled bubble water "Snow King Dominance".
In fact, new tea beverage brands like Xicha and Naixue are expanding their bottled business, leveraging the summer beverage peak season to launch new fast-moving consumer goods products. Through channels such as convenience stores and supermarkets, they can also collaborate with large supermarkets such as Sam's and Hema to form a second exposure of their products, achieving a "second growth curve" for brands.
Ready made drinks and packaged drinks correspond to different consumption scenarios, such as packaged drinks that can be taken for travel or daily household use. Entering diverse consumer scenarios will broaden the customer base.
The relatively successful one is Naixue's tea. In the first half of 2023, the revenue of Naixue's tea and beverage stores was 2.354 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.35, accounting for 90.8% of the total revenue; The revenue of bottled beverages was 157 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 83.75%, accounting for 6% of the total revenue, but the growth rate was faster than that of tea beverage stores.
Luckin Coffee's thinking has been opened up this time, or based on the fact that the proportion of sales of non ready made drinks has declined. According to the 2023 Q4 financial report data, the net revenue of ready made drinks in the Q4 product sales was 4.84 billion yuan, accounting for 68% of the total net revenue, while the net revenue of other products was 326 million yuan, accounting for 4.6%. In the same period of 2022, this figure was 6.3%.
Luckin Coffee is a new revenue generating channel by expanding its sales channels.
Wang Zhendong, Chairman of Shanghai Feiyue Investment Management Co., Ltd., analyzed to Interface News that Luckin's 9.9 yuan event in the early stage attracted a lot of customers and traffic. In fact, Luckin also needs to convert these traffic into more product demand, such as related products outside of Luckin's freshly made drinks, including coffee beans, ear hanging products, water cups, etc. From a brand perspective, this is a product strategy based on enhancing brand stickiness.
However, in reality, from the subsequent impact and financial data of the 9.9 yuan reduction in Luckin Coffee, it can be seen that the brand's stickiness is not enough, and consumers do not have a high enough sense of identification with Luckin Coffee to purchase a large number of related products. In addition, most of Luckin Coffee's stores are fast delivery stores, and offline customers are not likely to have the opportunity to stay in the store, which in turn generates impulse buying demand through physical products, And a large portion of consumers who order online are "pulling wool", ultimately resulting in the reality that the traffic brought by 9.9 yuan is difficult to convert.
Moreover, compared to fast-moving consumer goods, the necessity of hanging ear coffee is not as strong as the adaptability of tea drinks to traditional offline channels, and not every brand can succeed in other channels outside of the store.
In January of this year, Honey Snow Ice City quietly removed bottled water products from its official website and some offline stores. The main reason is that in the initial stage, Mixuebingcheng was only open to franchisees in terms of agent selection, unable to mobilize the enthusiasm of channel sales. In addition, the competition in the bottled water and bubble water tracks was extremely fierce. After a year of trial water, Mixuebingcheng ultimately gave up exploring this business.
The competition for coffee products in supermarket stores is fierce. The employees of Yonghui Supermarket mentioned above said that products with discount promotions and price advantages are easier to sell. For newly entered products, if they do not borrow from the supermarket, it is easy to give up.