Sino-Singapore Jingwei, January 27 (Ma Jing and Deng Zhiruo) "Every time I come back, I find a new coffee shop." Ms. Li, who works in Beijing, sighed after returning to Emeishan City, Sichuan Province.
Although it is only a county-level city with a population of about 420,000, between 2020 and 2022, there will be at least 10 new coffee shops, most of which are brands independently designed by young people.
Wan Cheng (pseudonym), an "native" of Mount Emei who returned home, opened a coffee shop in the city.
He told Sino-Singapore Jingwei that compared with the high rents and high labor costs in large cities, the profit margins of opening stores in county towns are more impressive, and it is easy to have stable repeat customers.
As far as it is concerned, with an investment of about 100,000 yuan, it earned more than 200,000 yuan in the first year, and it paid back directly.
In fact, people like Wancheng who are rooted in the sinking market are not alone. It has become a "trend" to open coffee shops in county towns.
But after the coffee shop sinks into the county, can it make money?
Is Wancheng's story the story of most "county coffee shop owners"?
Sino-Singapore Jingwei interviewed three post-90s coffee shop owners in county towns.
Source of Ono’s coffee shop: photo courtesy of the interviewee
Go to the county town to open a coffee shop
"I love coffee very much. I usually drink two cups a day, but when I came back, I found that there was no decent freshly ground coffee shop here, and I didn't have any other favorite jobs at the time, so I opened a coffee shop." Xu Xu, the owner of a coffee shop in Jiangxi Jie (pseudonym) is the epitome of several other interviewed young people: he has worked hard in Shenzhen and other big cities for many years, with the original intention of popularizing coffee culture to his hometown county, and opened a specialty coffee near the gate of the community, dry cleaners, milk tea shops, etc. shop, with ins or retro decoration style blowing ripples in the county.
Xu Jie's store is about 70 square meters and can accommodate 9 tables.
A Chang's (pseudonym) coffee shop is about the same size as it, and it is located in Junan County, Shandong Province.
Xiao Ye (pseudonym) has a relatively large coffee shop, more than 140 square meters, with a small yard surrounded by century-old trees, and it is opened in Xuwen County, Guangdong.
A corner of the courtyard of Ono Coffee Shop Source: Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Although the three post-90s are located in different small counties in southern, eastern and central China, their shops have one thing in common: all coffee shops will open after 2021, and the GDP of the counties where they belong is not prominent among the municipal administrative districts they belong to. .
Before opening the store, Ah Chang considered joining a brand store, but because there is no business district in the county, the bigger brands refused.
"Since the brand does not come, we will do it ourselves." A Chang, who was originally engaged in the securities industry in Linyi, Shandong, hit it off with two high school classmates, and invested a total of about 100,000 yuan in decoration, equipment purchase, and rent.
Ono and Xu Jie originally planned to settle the project with 200,000 yuan, but unknowingly spent about 300,000 yuan, mainly on the decoration.
According to Xu Jie, it cost 100,000 yuan for the hardware and 40,000 yuan for a coffee machine. After everything was done, almost all the savings were used up.
After the novelty is over, can you make money?
Since it is the "first store in the county", in the first few months of opening, the flow of people is the norm for the above-mentioned coffee shops.
Ah Chang’s store sold as many as 400 cups a day during the trial opening period; Ono’s store had a customer flow of about 300 to 400 people a few days before its opening, and the popularity of customers coming to take pictures and punch cards lasted for half a year.
However, after the novelty passed, the situation changed.
"It has been open for nearly two years, and the cost has only been reduced by half." Ono said that the monthly expenses such as water, electricity, and rent are about 5,000 yuan, which is an acceptable cost for a 140-square-meter store,
but the customer flow has not met expectations .
, Usually there are only a dozen or twenty guests a day
.
Due to the small passenger flow, the preparation of materials is relatively limited. The more you prepare, the more the loss will be. However, the small amount of preparation cannot fully meet the needs of customers. Now we have to simplify the menu and keep some products with a relatively high order rate.
Source of Wancheng’s coffee shop: photo courtesy of the interviewee
Xu Jie’s coffee shop has just opened and has also ushered in a peak passenger flow. However, in September last year, a new Ruixing opened in May Square opposite the shop, which was just three months after her trial operation.
Xu Jie didn't seem to care much about Ruixing's entry. "The passenger flow has indeed been significantly divided. However, even if you buy one of our cups, you may buy two cups of Ruixing, but the positioning is different. We are specialty coffee." Xu Jie said that the current cup volume has gradually stabilized from 100 cups in the peak period to around 50 cups. Taking into
account the monthly rent, water, electricity and property fees of 5,000 yuan, the wages of 7,000 yuan for two people, and the cost of coffee beans and milk, each It
has to invest nearly 20,000 yuan a month
, and it is currently able to maintain a break-even balance.
Different from Xu Jie and others, Ah Chang’s store has paid back its original cost after two months of trial operation. The
price of coffee is around 13-25 yuan. A total of 20,000 cups have been sold since July last year. The daily cup volume is currently Steady at around 100 cups.
"About 90% of customers come because of sharing on our short video platform." Ah Chang said
.
Ah Chang said that the store grew up with its fans. In the initial stage of the trial operation, many fans came from far away places such as Linyi City.
There was also a customer who drove 4 hours just to come here for a cup of coffee and pack two cups back home.
When the "net celebrity check-in place" gradually calmed down, the number of foreign guests gradually decreased, and the number of local guests increased.
According to Ah Chang's observation, not only young people come to drink coffee, but also some middle-aged or elderly people order a cup of "professional" coffee
, stand outside and drink it before leaving
.
Overall, young consumers account for about 70%, middle-aged consumers account for 20%, and elderly consumers account for 10%.
Xu Jie found that, relatively speaking, office workers in big cities drink coffee out of need, but coffee in county towns is not a "necessity", but has a stronger social attribute.
Most of the people who come to
the store are civil servants and teachers, as well as "little young people" who are in love
. They choose to come to the coffee shop to get together, and they usually stay for about 1-2 hours.
The coffee sold in the county is "a little sweet"
Talking about the current business status, Ah Chang bluntly said that he is satisfied, even exceeding expectations.
But both Xu Jie and Ono expressed some dissatisfaction, and Ono said that "I didn't feel that the original idea was fully realized."
"Frankly speaking, it is not easy to open a coffee shop in the county." Ono mentioned that
sometimes some customers would question, "Why is it so expensive?" Some customers even asked, "Why can't your American style be latte art?" Customers returning from other places will ask, "Why is your taste different from Starbucks?"
But these can only be patiently explained.
Source of Wancheng’s coffee shop: photo courtesy of the interviewee
Xu Jie said: "It is not enough to achieve a balance of income and expenditure. Sales can also be increased. After all, we still have to earn money to eat, and sometimes we may regret it. Can we save more when we invest in it? Will the next store will be better."
It is worth mentioning that the competition of coffee shops in county towns is becoming more and more intense.
After Ono, Xuwen County opened four more coffee shops one after another.
In Jinxian County, some dessert shops also bought coffee machines to make freshly ground coffee for sale.
In addition, coffee brands such as Ruixing have also accelerated their efforts to target the sinking market.
According to the "2020 City Business Charm Ranking", there are 90 fourth-tier cities and 128 fifth-tier cities across the country, a total of 218 cities.
If calculated by administrative division, the "China Statistical Yearbook 2021" shows that by the end of 2020, there were 2,844 counties and 38,741 townships in China.
According to the narrow door restaurant data, according to the distribution of cities, as of January 3, Ruixing had 668 stores in fourth- and fifth-tier cities (county and town stores will belong to prefecture-level cities), and 561 lucky cafes. There are 279 Starbucks; according to the location distribution, Luckin has a total of 250 township stores, Luckin has 180 stores, and Starbucks has 140 stores.
Based on this rough calculation, each fourth- and fifth-tier city has at least 2 Luckin or Lucky Coffee, and 1 Starbucks; at the same time, Luckin has settled in 0.65% of the towns, and Lucky Coffee and Starbucks are 0.46% and 0.46% respectively. 0.36%.
Sino-Singapore Jingwei noticed that in order to attract more customers, coffee shop owners in county towns also "show their talents", either by developing new products to suit the tastes of county consumers, or by adding desserts to enrich categories, or by developing new ways of commercial realization.
Ono mentioned
that in order to allow customers to accept it as soon as possible, he made a lot of sweet special coffee, similar to the taste of milk tea
.
In addition, the store also sells milk tea and simple meals, and
milk tea accounts for about 60% of the total income
.
In the next step, Ono plans to go out to "study art". In addition to baking technology, he will also see how other people's coffee shops in the county cope with adversity.
"Consumers in county towns like to drink sweets, and coffee needs a lot of sugar, which is the biggest difference from coffee in big cities." Xu Jie also mentioned that in order to facilitate customers outside the province, she has also developed vacuum-packed espresso coffee. Douyin has put on the shelf a 169 yuan set meal for cooking tea around the stove.
In addition, since the art school is right next to it, Xu Jie plans to regularly plan some music activities to attract customers.
Ah Chang received the first business cooperation with a brand coffee machine last month.
(For more report clues, please contact Ma Jing, the author of this article, email: majing@chinanews.com.cn) (China-Singapore Jingwei APP)
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