Editor’s Note: This article comes from WeChat WeChat official account FBIF Food and Beverage Innovation (ID: Food Innovation), and is reproduced by Entrepreneurial State with authorization.
Speaking of drinking tea, what comes to mind is the tea in a thermos cup for middle-aged people, the tea in grandpa’s teapot, or the tea in a teahouse?
None of the above three seems to have anything to do with young people at present.
In the eyes of many young people, drinking tea is a "traditional" and "complicated" thing, not to mention developing the habit of drinking tea (excluding young people who love tea in Fujian and Guangdong).
Undoubtedly, young people are an important consumer group at present. The "New Consumption Trends in China" jointly published by Ali Research Institute and BCG Consulting mentioned that young customers have great consumption potential, which will drive 69% consumption growth in the next five years.
So it’s 2020. How far is it between China tea with thousands of years of history and young people?
Throughout the tea industry, compared with traditional retail tea, new tea drinks such as hi tea and Naixue tea are more concerned by young people. When young people pursue new tea, to some extent, the distance between young people and tea is closer.
But it also illustrates the pain point of China tea industry:New tea makes young people drink tea, but they don’t fall in love with tea and packaged tea.
Not long ago, we saw a packaged tea in the live broadcast room in Li Jiaqi, and sold 80,000 boxes in 3 minutes. So after a survey, this packaged tea brand named CHALI Chali has sold 300 million packs of tea for six years, with a daily sales volume of over 500,000 packs and tens of millions of fans.
CHALI tea products
Image source: CHALI Chali Tmall flagship store
This data is eye-catching in the packaging tea industry in China. This can’t help but make us think: do young people really don’t like tea? Or is China Tea not ready for young consumers? How does CHALI tea make young people drink China tea?
01 Who doesn’t love China tea or young people?
There is a question worth discussing: China tea and young people, who doesn’t love who?
The popularity of new tea can already be seen. The biggest difference between the so-called new tea and traditional milk tea is that the original leaf tea is used instead of tea powder as the tea base.
It is worth mentioning that Peng Xin, the founder of Naixue’s tea, once mentioned in a public speech that in 2019, the sales of Naixue’s sugar-free pure tea was higher than that of milk-covered tea [1].
This also answers the above questions from the side.In fact, it is not that young people don’t accept tea, but that tea doesn’t accept young people.
People have been drinking tea for thousands of years in China. In the eyes of many people,Drinking tea is a daily thing, and it is also a thing that needs attention.. For example, what temperature water is used, how to wash tea, what utensils are used to make tea, how to soak it, how many times to soak it, and so on.
From the classification of tea, China tea not only has six tea series, but also has a wide variety of categories from the origin. It must take time and energy to figure this out.
But for young people, if they are not really interested, it is generally difficult to take the initiative to learn these doorways of China tea.This sets a threshold for young consumers to drink tea: what kind of tea should I buy? What kind of tea suits me? How to soak?
So, "Instead of thinking about these doorways, just buy a cup of milk tea or coffee.. "-probably is the voice of many young people don’t drink tea.
There is still a problem in the current market of China tea, which sets a threshold for young consumers-the price issue.
In a survey of 2200 young people drinking tea conducted by Tea Life in WeChat official account, one question was "Do you think the better the tea, the more expensive it is?". The results show that both people under the age of 20 and people over the age of 35 believe that the better tea does not mean that it is more expensive, and there is also the possibility of business speculation. This shows thatYoung consumers think that there are some problems in the current tea market in China, such as chaotic and irregular prices.
Young people’s attitude towards tea prices.
Image source: Tea also lives
Now, after 90 or even 00, there is an obvious feature in consumption-paying attention to cost performance, not blindly pursuing high or cheap prices, but seeing whether the price and experience match..
For young people, there are many kinds of tea itself, but the same variety has a large price range, so it is difficult for them to accurately distinguish whether the product matches the price.
From the cost performance, we can talk about products. At present, the retail tea in China is mainly bulk tea. It’s not that young people don’t like to drink loose tea, butBulk tea often has uneven quality.And young people have always been particular about product quality. Secondly, to buy bulk tea, if you want to try a variety of tea, you have to buy multiple packages/cans, which is costly.
The product innovation of retail tea is also a problem, such asFew enterprises try to match tea according to young people’s preferences.There are also homogenization problems in the varieties of fruit tea and herb tea.
Packaging is also one of the reasons why young people don’t choose tea, orAt present, young people are rarely considered in the packaging design of tea industry.. In the era of Yan value, young people have a unique taste in product packaging design, and good-looking, tonal and fashionable are all complaints. However, at present, many tea packaging does not cater to the aesthetics of young people, and still maintains the traditional design style.
How can we let young people buy if they can’t even poke the packaging?
Product problems can be attributed to the basic status quo of the whole tea industry.
One isThe level of industrialization is not highIn many places, tea enterprises are still in the form of small-scale peasant economy, and the production mode is workshop-style. From picking to making tea, the degree of human participation is high, which brings problems such as high production cost, low resource utilization rate and low efficiency of production and processing.
The second isLow degree of standardization.Product standardization is not only reflected in the form of prefabricated packaging, but also in the standardization of planting and production, transportation and storage, as well as the standardization of taste and flavor. Without standardization, how to ensure the quality of each piece of tea is consistent?
The third isSupply chain problem. The common full supply chain mode is that growers provide tea raw materials to processors, and processors (including packaging) sell them to consumers in wholesale and retail modes. Few enterprises can cover the whole supply chain. If there is no full supply chain model, it is very likely that downstream demand will be strong, upstream production will not keep up, or upstream overcapacity and downstream inventory backlog will occur.
At present, many people still rely on friends’ recommendation to buy tea, or go to a tea shop to try it.Brand is not the primary factor for consumers to choose.
This is because the branding of tea in China is not enough. There are several reasons: first, some varieties are limited by the origin and production capacity, and the brand development is also limited; Second, because many brand employees, most of them used to be traditional tea gardens or teahouses, lack experience in making modern consumer goods.
There are fewer brands, and there are fewer brands for young people.
When young people can’t tell the difference between good and bad tea and the price of tea, brand means quality.. Therefore, the lack of brands is also one of the manifestations that the tea industry does not accept young people.
02
On average, 500,000 packs of tea are sold every day. How can "young people fall in love with drinking tea" in tea?
These four problems in the tea industry can easily shut young people out.
CHALI Tea, which sells 500,000 packs of tea per day and 6 packs of tea per second, hopes to try to solve these problems from the aspects of products, supply chain and brand, so as to make young people fall in love with China tea.
It is worth mentioning that slogan in CHALI tea is "BE A TEA FAN (this generation fell in love with this bag.）”。 This generation is young people, and this bag refers to teabags. CHALI Tea takes letting young people fall in love with China Tea as the core of the brand.
In the first step, CHALI tea chooses to use teabags to cut into the track where young people drink tea, and its core product is the original leaf triangle teabag.
Teabag originated in the west. Since Lipton entered China in 1992, teabag has opened the China market.
Nowadays, teabags have become an important part of tea consumption in the world. As far as the proportion of tea bag consumption in the total consumption of tea products is concerned, the world average level is 23.5%, and the consumption of tea bags in developed countries in Europe and America is obviously higher than the world average level, 80% in Europe and 90% in the United States and Britain [2].
CHALI tea triangle teabag
Image source: CHALI Chali Tmall flagship store
By contrast,The consumption level of teabags in China is only 4%.. According to the 2016 China Tea Bag Market Research Report released by Ai Media Consulting, the size of China’s tea bag market in 2016 was about 6 billion.It is estimated that by 2020, it will exceed 35 billion yuan., the market potential is huge [2].
Compared with the traditional bulk tea in China, teabags are more convenient and simple to drink, and only need to add water, which lowers the threshold for young consumers to drink tea and makes them feel that drinking tea itself is not complicated. At the same time, the convenience of teabags brings the diversity of consumption scenes.
Teabags in CHALI tea, for example, have different combinations of flavors, which reduces the cost for young consumers to try different kinds of tea.
Young consumers pay attention to the quality of tea, and the most intuitive expression is whether it is good or not.. In an interview with FBIF, CHALI Tea said that "delicious" is an important standard for the research and development of products in CHALI Tea.
In order to meet this standard, if the international evaluation standard of CTC red broken tea bags is far from meeting the needs of consumers, CHALI Tea has established a unique "CFDS four senses evaluation system", which controls the quality through smell, taste, feeling and vision, and each sense will be further divided into more than five evaluation standards. It can be said that each model will stand the 21-fold test.
Illustration packaging in CHALI tea
Image source: CHALI Chali Tmall flagship store
In terms of products, the core product of CHALI tea is the original leaf triangle tea bag, which includes three kinds of fruit tea, scented tea and health tea. Peach Oolong in fruit tea is especially popular among young people, and it is the best-selling product in its Tmall flagship store, with a monthly sales of 70,000+. In the buyer’s evaluation, many consumers said that "you can smell the aroma of peaches when you open them", "the combination of peaches and oolong tastes just right", "you can see clear peach particles and complete tea", "high value" and "easy to brew".
CHALI tea peach oolong
Image source: CHALI Chali Tmall flagship store
As mentioned above, China tea faces the problem of standardization, and the solution in CHALI tea is to establish a grading system. The standardized grading system in CHALI tea includes tea garden grading, picking grading, making grading, finishing grading and tea grading.
Teabag is actually a way to solve the problem of low standardization and industrialization of tea industry.. The shape of teabags determines that they depend on machine processing, and the promotion of industrialization also means that standards need to be established. In CHALI Tea, six famous teas in China are used to complete a teabag in 33 processes, and the establishment of teabag industry standards is explored.
On the issue of supply chain, CHALI Tea hopesCreate a flexible supply chain with sufficient capacity and comprehensive channels..
The upstream of the supply chain is divided into tea planting, R&D and production. CHALI Tea has 7 tea garden bases in China, and the tea is directly supplied from the producing area. In research and development, we have jointly established a national food and beverage research institute with Otsuka Food in Shanghai and a CHALI tea laboratory with the Tea Research Institute of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The Nansha headquarters base in CHALI Tea House covers the trinity of production center, R&D center and International Tea College.
Base of CHALI tea garden
Image source: official website in CHALI Tea
In the middle and lower reaches of the channel, CHALI tea has formed a channel network combining B-end and C-end:Online whole network sales, B-end big customers, supermarkets+convenience stores, retail experience stores..
At present, CHALI Tea has settled in 10 B2C online platforms such as Tmall, JD.COM, Youzanwei Mall and Xiaohongshu. Last year’s Double Eleven, CHALI Tea was listed as the Tmall Food Million Club, ranking first in herb tea category for four consecutive years. In B2B, CHALI Tea has expanded to hotels, airlines, tourism and corporate office channels.
New retail is an important layout in CHALI tea in recent years. CHALI Tea Store has opened retail tea experience stores in Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan and Hong Kong to let more young people contact CHALI Tea Store. The day before yesterday, the tenth store in CHALI Tea was officially opened in Chongqing. In addition, CHALI Tea also has Tmall Smart Store and JD.COM Digital Store.
CHALI Cha Li Chongqing Store Opened
Image source: CHALI Tea Official Weibo
These channels are closer to the daily consumption habits of young people than the traditional sales channels of China tea, such as teahouses, tea shops or brand tea shops.
Young people are most interested in marketing for FMCG. CHALI Tea uses popular "tricks" that young people like in brand building and marketing. I hope.Gradually change the stereotype of many young people about the "tradition" of China tea.
For example, the figure in CHALI Tea appeared in the live broadcast of Li Jiaqi. CHALI tea told FBIF,Live broadcast development to seize virtual shelvesBoth traditional e-commerce companies such as Taobao and JD.COM, social e-commerce companies in Pinduoduo, and entertainment e-commerce companies in Tik Tok and Aauto Quicker are traffic portals for young people, covering people in first-and second-tier cities and people in third-and fourth-tier cities.
CHALI tea appeared in the live broadcast room of Li Jiaqi.
Image source: Taobao live screenshot
In addition, CHALI Tea has cooperated with many brands, such as Southern Weekend, Shuke, Marubi, Lamian Noodles Shuo and other cross-border brands. Last year, we also launched a joint customized Tea bag with Black Tea Bejian Toothpaste, and launched a challenge activity of "Tea takes a small mood" in Tik Tok, with a total of 130 million plays.
CHALI chali x black chabeijian custom-made tea bag
Image source: CHALI Tea Official Weibo
CHALI Tea also co-branded the popular movie IP, for example, it once launched a customized suit of the movie to the sky kingdom and Better Days.
From making teabags, retail system and brand marketing in CHALI tea, we can see that the style of CHALI tea is to make China tea into fast-moving consumer goods. CHALI Tea also said in an interview with FBIF that,I hope CHALI Tea will become the leader of China tea fast-moving products, which is equivalent to Nestle in coffee.Use FMCG to promote the development of tea industry and capture young people.
03
How many reasons does it take for young people to fall in love with China tea?
CHALI tea provides a reference for the rejuvenation of China tea from a practical point of view, and we hope to make a conclusion: How many reasons do young people need to fall in love with China tea?
1, more convenient, more choices
The product is the key. The success of teabag is obvious whether it is in CHALI tea made in China or Lipton from abroad. In the past, consumers had the impression that tea bags were cheap and of poor quality, but now we see that tea bags are just a form that allows people to drink tea more quickly, without affecting the quality of tea.
Besides teabags, what other convenient tea categories may appear in the future?Tea with quantitative packagingIt is a direction, and it is only necessary to add water, without considering the steps of washing tea and how to brew it.
The taste of tea can also be innovated, but it mainly refers to blending tea. The taste of pure tea comes from quality assurance.
Some young people may not like to drink original tea, and mixed tea with fruity or floral fragrance is more attractive to them. Although there are too many fruit teas and herb tea on the market, there is still room for innovation.What kind of fruit, what kind of flowers and plants, and the proportion of matching can be improved by combining consumer research.You can also learn from foreign products.
2, more scenes, let young people drink tea can also become a habit.
Nowadays, when making fast-moving consumer goods, we all pay attention to the combination of "people and goods yard", and the proportion of scene consumption is increasing, which is also the place where China tea needs to make great efforts to innovate.
In a survey of 2200 young people drinking tea conducted by Tea Life in WeChat official account, they were asked the reasons why they didn’t like drinking tea. "It is inconvenient to drink at work and study" is one of the important reasons. This shows that young people have a demand for drinking tea, but the China tea in the market is lacking in this respect.
Investigation on the reasons why young people don’t like drinking tea.
Image source: Tea also lives
Scene consumption is first related to the category of tea, which has been mentioned above. In addition to teabags, instant tea is also the development direction of convenient tea drinking in the future.
Scene consumption focuses on the matching of products and scenes.. For example, the student party wants to drink some tea with remarkable refreshing effect when studying in class, and the working party wants to have some health-preserving tea at home on weekends. It is worth mentioning that CHALI Tea launched "Daily Tea" last year, focusing on drinking different teas at different times and in different scenes every day.Refresh yourself in the morning, relieve boredom after meals, and refresh yourself in the afternoon.Three bags a day and 21 bags a week are all in one box.
CHALI cha Li mei ri cha
Image source: CHALI Tea Official Weibo
The more subdivided the scene, the better it can meet people’s needs. At the same time,Over time, it can also cultivate young people’s habit of drinking China tea.
3. Tea culture can also be young.
Young people don’t drink tea, which is related to tea culture?
Maybe it does have something to do with it. The tea culture in China is extensive and profound. Although most young people don’t know much about it, they are at least in awe. This awe may have developed into a "stay at a respectful distance from China tea".
Looking at the current China tea, some brands will add traditional and illusory explanations such as "Zen" and "Tea Ceremony" to their products.It seems to promote tea culture, but in fact it has established a gap with young people..
The spread of tea culture needs the way of young people. For example, based on tea products, combine the big V that young people like to popularize tea knowledge and interact with young people’s communication methods.
It is worth mentioning that the cultivation of tea aesthetics is the key to the popularization of tea knowledge.. Q&A in Zhihu: "Is the reason why young people don’t drink tea a problem of product experience or cultural identity?" User Chen Jie’s answer points out the internal problems of the tea industry.
"There is a major called Tea Studies in China University, which has established a very complicated knowledge and culture system. However, due to the complexity of the research, practitioners gradually forget the lowest level of tea, that is, the aesthetic education on the taste of tea.Ignoring the cultivation process of the most intuitive sensory experience makes us fall in love with tea in the dimension of spiritual understanding, but unable to perceive tea from the perspective of physical aesthetics.. "
04
tag
Tea does not only mean tea ceremony and tea culture, but also a drink.Middle-aged people drink it, young people drink it, Chinese drinks it, foreigners drink it, the so-called middle class drinks it, and ordinary people drink it.
The problem of "making young people fall in love with China tea" that we are discussing today is not only that China tea industry wants to capture young consumers, but also in this process.Tea enterprises should make changes, solve the current problems and promote the development of tea in China.Let China tea go to the world.
This article (including pictures) is reproduced by the cooperative media and does not represent the position of the entrepreneurial state. Please contact the original author for reprinting. If you have any questions, please contact editor@cyzone.cn.
