If you take stock of this year's highlight products, I believe that milk tea will be the choice of most people.
With the arrival of giants, the entire milk tea market has become more and more lively. In the context of fierce competition in categories, the same "animal milk" + tea with various products emerge in an endless stream, and it becomes more difficult to follow the new milk tea brands that follow the current and then think of going out of the circle.
A very real problem in front of them: how to make milk tea well, is it blindly following the general trend of the market or making a difference in another way?
In the 100 billion milk tea market, the new milk tea track is crowded
As a major category in the beverage industry, the milk tea market is fiercely competitive, especially in the past two years, driven by the milk tea brand, the popularity of the milk tea category has continued to rise.
According to the data of the Prospective Industry Institute, the market capacity of China's milk tea will reach 98.6 billion yuan, close to the level of 100 billion yuan, of which the market size of new-style milk tea will reach 50 billion, accounting for 81.4% of the overall milk tea market sales, and the market is promising. Especially in the past two years, under the background of the popularity of milk tea categories, China's milk tea market share has maintained a rapid growth trend, and it is expected that the market size will exceed 120 billion yuan in 2023.
The huge market size of milk tea and the extremely high category popularity have also attracted many enterprises to get involved, such as unification, xiangpiaopiao, wangwang, etc. Have joined, and the giant has accelerated the innovation and product iteration of the milk tea category on the one hand, but also faces serious problems of slow innovation and homogenization.
As mentioned earlier, today's new brands are still learning the products that have been out of the circle, making a big fuss about "animal milk", but have you ever thought that now with young consumers becoming the main consumer group, with the growth of demand for health cognition, they are no longer satisfied with the combination of a single "animal milk" and tea, and can not meet the new consumer demand will naturally lead to a gap in the milk tea beverage market, which is still a huge space and opportunity for new brands.
Whoever can meet the needs of consumers with a new choice of diversified diets will have the opportunity to make a splash on the crowded milk tea track!
How can milk tea brands go out of the road of differentiation?
In the current era of such a fast-moving consumer culture. For brands, spending huge costs to create new products has both great opportunities and challenges. In the current market environment, if companies want to make milk tea drinks into explosive drinks, they must make differentiation and grasp the hottest categories at present.
What category is currently the hottest? Na Food is considered to be plant milk!
If 2017 is a "breakthrough in plants", then 2019 is the establishment of a "plant kingdom": plant meat, plant yogurt, etc. have appeared, and 2021 is setting off a "plant milk revolution".
From the market point of view, according to tmall new product innovation center data show that in 2020 the growth rate of the plant beverage market is as high as 800%, the number of buyers rose by 900%, of which oat milk increased by 212%, while the "2020-2025 China plant protein beverage industry market demand and investment planning analysis report" also shows that the average annual growth rate of the plant milk industry in the next few years is expected to remain above 20%, and it is expected that by 2025, the plant milk market size will exceed 300 billion yuan, catching up with the milk market size.
Image source: Euromonitor International
The heat of the market has also given major brands and capital the motivation and confidence to enter the plant milk market:
On the one hand, Yili, Mengniu, Vita and other industry giants have accelerated the launch of new plant milk products, and have shown their strengths in the war situation;
On the other hand, new consumer brands represented by Swedish brands OATLY and Omar Planet have also taken advantage of the general trend of plant milk sales to climb all the way and rise rapidly;
In addition, the new brands represented by the new generation of domestic healthy tea beverage brands, Jean Tea, have also innovated in plant-based categories.
It is reported that the tea brand recently launched a plant milk tea product, in the choice of raw materials, the product broke the traditional milk tea cognition, pure plant production, does not contain a drop of milk. Select two natural raw materials: Australian peel oats and alpine tea garden pure good tea, one bud and two leaves, real tea original leaf extract, and the use of enzymatic technology to retain the natural aroma of Australian peel oats, the two gold ratio, no added sucrose, taste and health win-win. Real tea is real plants, really low fat, so that tea not only brings the majority of consumers to indulge in plant milk tea products, but also brings new categories and new opportunities into the plant health drink track.
Behind both plant milk + sugar-free ready-to-drink tea is health, which coincides with the concept and pursuit of the new generation of consumers. The new plant milk tea products released by the tea group are precisely to meet the needs of consumers for natural health and nutrition and delicious taste in a diversified way. It is foreseeable that the combination of making tea plant milk tea innovative, or will set off the next whirlwind of milk tea.
With innovation to open up a blue ocean of competition,
Let the tea use strength to be the best
The metabolism of commercial society, like nature, is endless, inevitable and cruel. As this sentence says, the milk tea consumer market has also undergone an obvious change in recent years, with the main consumer group expanding to a younger class and the rise of young consumption power. In such a market environment, change is general, unchanged is dead!
If you think about it, the beverage market in China is fiercely competitive at the moment. Over the years, beverages have been highlighting their own features in order to meet the diverse needs of consumers. The basic drinking water emphasizes that it is only a "porter of nature" and shows the original ecology. The functional drinks that relieve fatigue and increase vitality have become the boosters for the revival of athletes with full blood; the herbal tea family has demonstrated its own fire failure. In the past two years, sugar-free drinks have impressed consumers.
If you look at the changes along the way, you can see that the drink has become healthier and more primitive. Behind this, consumers emphasize that drinking drinks is not to be happy, but also to be healthy. Demand determines production, consumer-driven this industry development trend, the more can meet the health needs of consumers of beverages, the more competitive the market.
As a new generation of healthy tea beverage brands, according to its founder, the new generation of products emphasize health, experience more diversified, and more in line with the needs of a new generation of young people for healthy drinks.
According to public information, Jean Tea Group was established in 2020, from the perspective of its product layout, whether it is the first launch of the tea bag series "Heshan Set", or the original ecological alpine pure tea beverage, 0 sugar 0 calorie fruity tea beverage, the main features are natural and healthy attributes, coupled with the newly launched plant milk tea, let the tea has formed a "new generation of healthy tea drinks" professional FMCG product matrix.
It is understood that at present, two flavors of tea plant milk tea are listed this time: original oat milk tea and jasmine oat milk tea, which have been successively settled in major convenience systems and landed in the official flagship stores of Let Tea Tmall and Jingdong, so that tea mini programs can also be purchased.
NaShi feels that with the launch of this plant milk tea that adopts a sugar-free formula and allows the tea aroma and oat flavor to achieve a natural balance, coupled with its own sugar-free, low-fat and zero-burden attributes. And the increasing popularity of oat milk, so that the tea plant milk tea or will become the standard for young people.
In the view of na food, for the current milk tea market, the most important thing is to make the market bigger. Because only by truly meeting the diversified needs of consumers and catering to the right market trends can we stand out in the highly competitive milk tea beverage market.
For brands that have already entered the milk tea category, it is time to compete for differentiation. It is even more difficult to get ahead in the overly limited homogeneous competition. Just as this "new generation of healthy tea drinks" has made tea innovations in milk tea, what do good brands need? Man has no self, and man has my essence.
Under the future development trend, the consumer market of milk tea drinks is still promising. Who will write the story of the future milk tea beverage industry, let us wait and see.