Campus coffee into a branded traffic password

Today's college students are exposed to coffee earlier than people in the past, and in some ways, they also need coffee
more than college students in the past.
The campus' thirst for coffee seems to have become the new traffic password
for coffee brands.
More and more brands and entrepreneurs are rushing into the campus to compete for the first cup of coffee
in the hands of college students.

The smell of coffee wafts around the campus

More and more coffee shops are choosing to open their stores on campus
.
In Beijing, 27 coffee shops were crammed into Tsinghua; In Peking University, 8 cafes are scattered in all corners of Yanyuan; The coffee shops of the NPC are based on different building groups, with two or three under every few buildings
.
If you search for "university" and "coffee" on social platforms, you will find many college students' campus coffee shop sharing posts
.

A student in Fuzhou said that the real feeling of the purchasing power of college students was after becoming a part-time employee of a coffee campus shop
.
Compared with other stores, the student consumer group is significantly different
from the off-campus population.
White-collar workers will always take away a freshly made American or latte before the morning meeting, and the simplest method is to add water to the coffee, or add a little ice and coconut milk, and a cup of coffee is good
.
For most student customers, high-coffee-content drinks for refreshment are no longer the only option, students are keen to try new products, love cold drinks far more than people outside the school, and order varieties are also varied, far more complex and difficult to make
than white-collar orders.

The different needs of college students are also forcing coffee shop workers to improve work efficiency
.
The campus' thirst for coffee seems to have become the new traffic password
for coffee brands.
Before that, the university campus was a world of competition between Michelle Ice City, Yihetang, and Guming
.
The most recent public data stuck in the second half of 2020, when Luckin Coffee alone opened more than
300 campus stores nationwide.

Starbucks is on college campuses with the Starbucks Coffee Service,
a partnership with Nestlé.
This service station covers a smaller area and has entered many universities in Guangzhou, Tianjin, Chengdu, Nanjing and other places
.
Manner Coffee is located at Shanghai University and East China Normal University, and is competing for emerging markets
.

Brands compete for college students' first cup of coffee

With the "detachment" of high school life, especially the promotion of grades, college students tend to pursue personality needs and meet the needs of function, graduate school entrance examinations, public entrance examinations, scientific research, employment pressure hits, under the pressure of the atmosphere of involution, many group discussion tasks can not be completed in the library, many people write papers also want to borrow the white noise of the café to stimulate inspiration, coffee becomes a "enjoyment" or "condiment"
under tension and tiredness.

It was also in recent years that some cafes on the Tsinghua campus extended their opening hours to cater to the needs of
students studying hard.

With the rush to buy on campus, brands are vying for college students' first cup of coffee
after enrollment.
The first part of this war is to bring down
the price.

Wu Yanli, a teacher at Guangzhou University of Science and Technology, said that the product price of "Starbucks Coffee Service" has not been downgraded due to the sinking of the brand, and students see 20-30 yuan of coffee, go once, and never go
again.

Coco Duke, Shuyiyao Immortal Grass, Yihetang, and Michelle Ice City, which opened the campus earlier, seem to be more suitable for the campus market, and their prices are mostly between 4-15 yuan, which have long been purchased by students
.

Savvy coffee merchants are well aware of the sensitivity of students to price, so they lower prices again and again, and the stores are rented smaller and smaller, without seats, and they can take them wherever they go
.
A southern brand "shouldn't have had", and a cup of American style only costs 9.
9 yuan
.

The new coffee brand sets the price of a cup of coffee at more than a dozen yuan, and students who are used to buying milk tea suddenly feel, "You can buy coffee with the money of a cup of milk tea, and the latter is obviously more advanced
than the former.
" ”

Michelle Ice City will not miss this market, opened a new brand of coffee unique, named "lucky coffee", the number of stores nationwide has reached 1300, and around the university crazy expansion, the price is even lower, a cup of latte only 6 yuan
.

There is still profit margin
for this low price.
Zeng Yuhui, who used to do on-campus distribution entrepreneurship at Guangzhou University of Science and Technology, said: "A 420ml American cup costs 2.
59 yuan, of which the straw, cup sleeve and lid of the full set of packaging materials together cost 0.
59 yuan
.
Coffee with raw coconut, milk and ordinary fruits costs slightly higher, but it can also be controlled at about
5 yuan.
Those brand chain stores with their own supply chain can also reduce costs
.
”

To some extent, low-cost pragmatism and closed management have become the "commercial moat"
of on-campus coffee shops.

Catch up with the campus coffee trend

In the face of the booming demand for campus coffee, some people firmly believe that first-line brands cannot eat this market, and there will always be more sinking places
that brands cannot touch.

In Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province, Liu Liyuan, who graduated for 8 years, also plans to open his own coffee shop, and then make a chain brand.

In particular, in the past three years, the business on campus has also had incomparable advantages outside the school - not affected by the epidemic, the more closed the school, the greater the demand on campus, and the better
the business.
”

The biggest headache is the tight shop in universities
.
On campus, almost all shops have to be grabbed, and good places are even more difficult to find
.
In a fiercely competitive bidding meeting, the competition object is a 40-square-meter shop in a university, more than 30 merchants have come, starting from 50,000 yuan, all merchants must write their bidding prices, and at the same time show the price, each person has only one opportunity
to bid.
Liu Liyuan took advantage of the store for 5 years with a price of 91,200 yuan per year
.
This price is 3 times the rent of the same area near the school, but Liu Liyuan feels that it is worth it
.

In the eyes of businessmen, being able to enter the campus to win a place and pay rent is almost the only threshold
for coffee brands to enter the campus.
Manpower expenditure and raw material costs are not worth mentioning in the face of stable passenger flow, the contract is signed for 5-10 years at a time, even if it is subleased, the transfer fee can make the first to earn steadily
.

In addition to low prices, the winning formula of campus business also includes capturing and nurturing students' tastes
.
Liu Liyuan explained that college students are the most stable source of customers, and new students are like constantly renewing water in the pool, which can give businesses the greatest room for error
.
"Opening a store outside the school serves people 3 kilometers nearby, and the product is not delicious at the beginning, and consumers will not come again
.
The school is different, assuming that the first year of business is not good, the second year changes the menu, the products and tastes are updated, and the new class of students can be re-trained and repaid
.
”

Not only drinking coffee, owning a coffee shop is also a demand
for many college students.
On social media, many college students are sharing how to open a "dormitory café.
"

Wang Kaikai, who is located in Chuzhou City, Anhui Province, also wants to flow into the rivers and lakes
of campus coffee.
He is fascinated by the atmosphere of boutique cafes, and feels that coffee shops in small cities are different from first-tier cities, where there are no migrant workers moving computers, no one talking about business, customers coming and going, just to relax, or just want to have a cup of coffee, he wants to bring this culture to college
campuses.
The ideals of romanticization are good, but surrounded by numerous coffee brands, it is much
harder than it may seem to run a coffee shop with style independently.
Wang Kaikai said, "The buying habits of college students are being cultivated more and more fixed
.
”

Wang Kaihua spent 15,000 yuan to buy coffee equipment, plus the school was exempted from rent and utilities, and the actual cost of opening a store was less than 20,000 yuan
.
Even if the investment is not high, the price of coffee is half that of the off-campus, and every cup sold will be taken away by 2 yuan for part-time students, and they will survive in a hurry, but they still can't make any money
.
Because even for the same price, peers identify more with the brand than with his small shop, and it is
becoming harder and harder for college students to earn money for this cup of coffee.

Industry insiders said that catching up with the campus coffee trend also requires a variety of categories to be new and carefully operated, in order to be welcomed
by college students.

(Wang Jiayi, comprehensive arrangement)

China Food News (November 14, 2022, version 07).

(Responsible editor: Wang Jiayi)