New tea has always been a key area of concern in the venture capital market. The huge user base and the upgrading wave of food and drink consumption have supported hundreds of billions of yuan of market imagination space, ranging from township street shops to urban landmark shopping malls. innovative stories about products, scenes and content continue to emerge, and capital has further intensified market competition in recent years.

As the track leader, like tea belongs to the existence of "applause and popularity". The past 2020 has been extraordinary for the entire tea industry, and embracing change has become a compulsory course for the catering industry. From the 2020 annual report disclosed to the public a few days ago, we can see that retail, takeout and innovative products have achieved rapid development at the same time.

The danger and opportunity of new tea may not be seen more clearly than from the perspective of this cup of inspiration.

Review the report card of Xi Cha in 2020: stores and innovation are the constant theme.

Store growth is the most intuitive dimension to measure the growth of a tea brand. Xicha has performed well in this respect in the past year. As of December 31, 2020, Xicha has opened 695 stores in 61 cities, including 202 new major stores and 102 new GO stores.

This expansion rate has consolidated Xicha's leading position in the new tea industry. It also includes the development of 18 new cities. From the point of view of the number of new stores in TOP cities, the store density in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen has increased most significantly, while in new first-and second-tier cities such as Chengdu, Hangzhou, Dongguan, Chongqing, Kunming and Foshan, Xi Cha also has a higher "sense of existence".

For any new tea expert, it is not difficult to find a good cup of tea, but it is not easy to clock in in any big city in the country, which is also the essential difference between new tea brands on a national scale and regional online celebrity brands. Happy tea is obviously the most prominent existence in this respect.

The "Tea-like Index" can more accurately measure the coverage density of tea in a single city, that is, dividing the number of people in the city by the number of local stores. In the past 2020, the cities of TOP13 are Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Zhuhai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Zhongshan, Foshan, Xiamen, Dongguan, Chengdu and Xi'an. Among them, in Shenzhen, there is a happy tea shop for every 130000 people. In Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, the figure is 240000, 250000 and 360000 respectively.

Judging from this data, even if the number of stores in Shenzhen and Shanghai both exceeded 100 at the end of last year, whether in first-tier cities or in new first-tier and second-and third-tier cities, there is still huge room for development, and the so-called "ceiling" is far from coming.

In terms of the breadth of store coverage, for this new tea brand starting from Guangdong, Xi Tea has been established in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other South China as the center in the past 2020, while Beijing and Shanghai are the commanding heights of North and East China. Complete the full coverage of the country's major cities.

In particular, it is worth mentioning that in all kinds of tea-loving stores, the theme store is one of the most eye-catching stores, incorporating more creative elements. In the past 2020, Xi Tea continued to polish out more high-quality theme stores, including Shanghai New World Maru Black Gold Store, Guangzhou Yongqing Square Store, Nanshan Coastal City Environmental Protection theme Store, Shenzhen Jingji KKMALL Store and Chengdu Kuanxiaoxiangzi Store. Try modern, classical, environmental protection and other very different style of experience elements.

The expansion of store size has continued over the past year, but this has not hindered their pace of store innovation in different cities.

Danger and opportunity: digital take advantage of the wind, e-commerce business "off to a good start"

The epidemic has a widespread impact on the catering industry, and after a brief freeze, companies quickly focused on how to save themselves. In retrospect, the basic digital ability is strongly related to the effectiveness of self-rescue.

Xi Cha is well prepared in this respect. It invested in building digital capacity very early, and launched "Xi Cha GO" WeChat Mini Programs in 2018 to provide pick-up and delivery services to the store and set up a digital membership system. As of December 31, 2020, the membership of Xicha GO WeChat Mini Programs has exceeded 35 million, with more than 13 million new members for the whole year.

Behind the rapid growth of digital members is the formation of consumers' online consumption of new tea habits. At first, it was the impact of the epidemic on users' consumption habits. The increase in home work and living time directly promoted the takeout business. According to the data disclosed by Xi Tea, from the resumption of production in February to the end of April 2020, the number of takeout orders for Xi Tea increased by 266% compared with the same period last year, and the proportion of takeout orders increased by 254%.

It is worth noting that even after the epidemic, consumers' habit of taking out some tea has been preserved. Similar to the situation from February to April, in 2020, about 81% of all consumers of Xi tea chose to place an order online, 24.8% chose takeout delivery, and 75.2% chose to pick it up at the store.

Reflected in individual consumers, tea-loving GO Mini Program can bring the most intuitive improvement in order efficiency. According to statistics from Camellia, the per capita waiting time for consumers to order with GO Mini Program in 2020 was nearly 1/3 shorter than when GO Mini Program was first launched in 2018.

The problem of long queues in the new tea market has been criticized, including the phenomenon of hiring scalpers to create momentum. Rapid expansion is still the most direct and effective way to improve the queuing problem, Xicha has achieved remarkable results in this respect, and the digital ordering system makes this easy to further improve.

But,Takeout and pick-up service are still store-centered and subject to the physical space constraints of regional stores. With the addition of e-commerce retail business, the service scope of Xi Cha has been extended more widely.. In March 2020, Tmall flagship store of Xi Tea was launched, and in July of the same year, JD.com launched its own flagship store. On the basis of the original Happy Tea Department Store, retail took a big step forward.

This is a landmark moment for Xi Cha. Previously, it was more based on the retail business extension of GO Mini Program, while the entry into Tmall and JD.com opened the imagination space of all channels of Xi Tea outside the stores.

The actual development is quite outstanding. In 2020, Tmall's flagship store added about 620000 fans, and the newly launched Xi small bottles of sparkling water sold about 1.4 million bottles, more than 250000 tea gift boxes a week, nearly 80, 000 popsicles and nearly 40, 000 straw cups. JD.com 's own flagship store Xi small bottles of sparkling water has sold more than 500000 bottles and nearly 100000 popsicles since it went on sale in October.

Thanks to the accumulation in the second and third quarters, Xi Cha got off to a good start in 2020. During the event, Tmall's flagship store GMV exceeded 10 million yuan, sold more than 40, 000 cases of sparkling water, totaling 500000 bottles, and ranked TOP3 among online celebrities. One-week tea gift boxes sold nearly 130000 boxes during the Singles Day holiday, ranking first in the list of heart-selected scented tea.

Another obvious change brought about by the epidemic is that the concept of healthy tea drinking is becoming more and more popular. The new tea represented by Xi tea is essentially the upgrading of the quality of traditional tea, which has sufficient value in the past year.

According to data disclosed by Xi Cha, about 56.6% of consumers chose lower sweetness in 2020. Among them, "less sweet" users accounted for 34.4%, an increase of 6.1% over the same period last year; users who chose "a little sweet" accounted for 22.2%, an increase of 3.0% over the same period last year.

The trend of reducing sugar is that consumers are concerned about their own health, but it is not without other alternatives. In addition to sweetness, Xi Tea also offers more options for healthy sugar, and became the first brand in the new tea industry to use zero-carb sugar in 2018. In 2020, consumers who chose zero-carb sugar accounted for 6.3%, an increase of 2.2% compared with the same period last year.

Interestingly, in terms of sweetness, sweeter Shanghai consumers prefer less sugar, which has the largest number of low-sugar orders in the country, while Shenzhen has the largest number of sugar-added orders. In addition, the number of male consumers who chose "added sugar" was 1.5 times higher than that of women in 2020, and the number of female consumers who chose less sugar was 1.3 times higher than that of men.

We have noticed that outside of the commercial dimension, Xicha is also taking on more social responsibility. For example, the environmental concept of promoting paper straws and encouraging consumers to bring their own cups of tea in June 2019 will continue to be carried forward in 2020.

By the end of 2020, the use of disposable plastic cups and green paper straws has been reduced by more than 30,000 and 12 million non-degradable plastic straws, respectively. The number of consumers who choose to use paper straws for the whole year has increased by 22% compared with 2019. Disposable nondegradable plastic straws are a thing of the past. It is reported that before December 31, 2020, Xi Tea has completely replaced the straws in stores across the country with paper straws and PLA biodegradable environmental straws.

In addition, in the past year, Xi Cha also provided love lunches for Shanghai Medical team and Henan Medical team that participated in assisting Wuhan, and delivered more than 50,000 cups of hot drinks to grass-roots anti-epidemic workers in 29 cities, including Wuhan, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Xiamen, and Hefei. On September 1, 2020, Xi Tea and the China Poverty Alleviation Foundation signed an industrial poverty alleviation plan for the next three years, donating 3 million yuan to industrial poverty alleviation projects in different parts of the country. It is reported that the first donation of 1 million yuan has been used to support the development of tea industry in Leishan County, Guizhou Province in 2020.

Where is a good place to drink tea?

In this extraordinary year, Xicha succeeded in breaking the circle.Move towards digital omni-channel on the basis of the store as the core.The epidemic has played a key role in promoting the change of this channel. At the same time, tea drinking habits are also changing. The rich digital precipitation in the early stage of Xi tea provides us with a rich perspective on the portraits of tea consumers.

Combined with the data, the daily average order peak period of Xi tea is from 14:00 to 16:00. The peak time for ordering tea in a week is on the weekend. in addition, Thursday and Friday are also tea time for many people. With the growth of the number of users, tea preference has increasingly become a part of people's daily life.

Product research and development remains an important part. Over the past year, Xi Tea has maintained the pace of launching a new product on average every 1.2 weeks, and has made some interesting innovations, such as taking the lead in applying "milk cool techs" to tea, and beating raw coconut water and coconut pulp into "raw coconut milk" to create a "raw coconut beating" process.

From the actual market response, in maintaining the classic taste and innovation, like tea seems to find a balance.

Among all the products of Xi Tea in 2020, the champion product such as succulent grape has been on the list for 72 weeks. in addition, the best-selling products include succulent mango manna, Zhi Zhi berry, roasted black sugar bobo milk, Zhi Zhi peach. There are also new products such as raw coconut milk jelly, succulent mei long melon, raw coconut mango, snow raspberry sweet-scented osmanthus jelly, wine-brewed sweet-scented osmanthus jelly, thick-roasted cake Bobo milk tea, super thick cow milk Bobo, mango manna coconut jelly and so on.

Whether it is the taste, sweetness or tea drinking scene, it reflects the increasingly obvious trend of personalized tea drinking.

In addition to the tea products, we can see that Xicha has made innovative attempts in products and scenes with a more positive attitude in the past year. In addition to the Xi vial launched with the layout of the retail channel mentioned above, it has also hatched the small tea with "good milk, real tea and real juice", which has aroused a great deal of attention and discussion in the industry.

Since its debut in April last year, by the end of last year, Xi Xiaocha has opened 18 stores in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Foshan and Huizhou, with a total sales volume of more than 1 million cups of drinks, among which TOP3 cities are Shenzhen, Dongguan and Guangzhou. The annual sales champion product is the tender immortal grass Grand Slam, the second runner-up product is the original bean flower milk tea, and the second runner-up product is the original cake milk tea.

As a sub-brand with a complete gene of "happy tea", WeChat Mini Programs is also the main channel to buy happy vials. As of December 31, 2020, the total number of users of "Xi Xiaocha" WeChat Mini Programs has exceeded 430000. Of all the consumers who placed orders, about 87.4% chose to pick up at the store, and about 12.6% chose takeout distribution.

Xi Xiaocha is the embodiment of Xi Cha's ability to control differentiated tea products and scenes. There is a core reason behind this is that the influence of tea preference on the upstream supply chain of tea is getting deeper and deeper.

In the past 10 years since the development of the new tea industry, the industry supply chain is a process of development from scratch, from small to large, and the establishment of industry standards and norms is also in a state of groping. The healthy concept of drinking tea is not only the main line of the development of the industry, but also the key factor for the rapid rise of new tea.

The original cheese tea that likes tea is the symbol of the great-leap-forward development of the whole tea industry from cream brewing to good tea real milk, and has led the development of the whole industry since then. This is also fully reflected at the end of the supply chain, and there is a strong demand for the supply of high-quality raw materials, significantly promoting and guiding the transformation and upgrading of the upstream agricultural industrial belt.

Taking strawberries as an example, Xi Tea, in addition to customizing and purchasing high-quality strawberries in the past, began to develop its own strawberry varieties in 2020, on the one hand, to investigate, cultivate and develop new strawberry varieties, and to select the most suitable area to build its own strawberry base. and through the development of seedlings, cultivation, maintenance experimental base to ensure the quality of strawberry cultivation. It is reported that a new variety of strawberries grown in Xi Tea's own base is expected to be on the market in 2021.

Xi Tea also selected 17 kinds of high-quality tea from Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, Taiwan and other tea-producing resorts, and invited professional tea evaluation masters to mix them according to different tea attributes, and adopted baking, stir-frying and other processes in this process. After hundreds of flavor optimization, classic teas such as Luyan, Jinfeng and Sijichun were finally produced.

Xi Tea also built an organic tea garden in Fanjing Mountain, Guizhou Province, to control the quality of tea from the source, and go deep into every link of tea garden environmental assessment, soil cultivation, tea cultivation, natural growth of tea, manual picking and tea blending, so as to ensure that tea is pure natural and pollution-free.

It is reported that in the past year, taking fresh fruit as an example, Xi Cha consumed more than 5800 tons of grapes, nearly 2000 tons of strawberries, more than 4700 tons of mangoes, more than 3200 tons of coconuts and nearly 3000 tons of peaches. Large-scale procurement has also generated income of more than 750 million yuan for upstream farmers.

Even ordinary consumers can clearly see the emergence of a large number of new brands of new tea in recent years, but many brands are just a flash in the pan and more are at a standstill. a large reason is the inability to find the right pace in product innovation, quality assurance and standardized replication.

The successful rise of Xi tea has important reference and reference significance for the whole tea industry, among which at least we can see that quality tea still has strong vitality, but today's new tea market has jumped out of the single context of product innovation. Since 2021, the new tea market has officially entered a new cycle of omni-channel development.

The full version of "inspiration Life report 2020" is attached below: