Produced by Tiger Sniff Commercial Consumer Group
Author|Miao Zhengqing
Visual China
Tiger Sniff Note: On June 17, a dispute between employees and customers at Manner Coffee's store plunged the highest-valued local specialty coffee chain into a whirlpool of public opinion. On the evening of June 21, Manner Coffee issued an apology statement on its official WeChat. But the criticism of Manner Coffee has not stopped. People wonder when the coffee brand, which already has 1,200 stores, became like this, and whether the doubts about Manner Coffee are a wake-up call for the entire industry.
The other side of the story is that in the first half of 2024, the Chinese coffee market, which was eaten up by the price war in 2023, is experiencing a cold wave. Almost all of the top chains and well-known specialty coffee shops are facing challenges: some brands are experiencing year-on-year declines in same-store sales, while others are in a wave of store closures.
It's a stressful time.
Manner Coffee became the first volcano to erupt, but it may not be the only one.
Han Yulong, the founder of Manner Coffee, and Xu Yi, the founder of Bilibili, have similarities: they both took their hobbies as a career and created a new thing, and with the entry of capital, they gradually retired behind the scenes.
And the company they founded has gradually "deviated" from their former idealism, and has grown into a "dream child" that is not exactly the same.
Now Han Yulong spends most of his time looking for beans in the production area, visiting stores all over the country and coffee roasting factories.
At Manner Coffee's roastery, Han Yulong often grabs a handful of freshly baked coffee beans and judges the quality of the roasted beans based on experience. Sometimes, he would try to blend several different beans and then happily brew a cup of blended coffee to drink – just as he did when he was at the helm of Manner Coffee's first two-square-meter store on Nanyang Road.
It may not be accidental that the two stories of Han Yulong and Xu Yi both take place in Shanghai: there are the most vivid entrepreneurial minds, the most hungry capital, and many exquisite and rigorously trained professional managers, and the latter two always happily form an alliance, and eventually become a key force in rewriting the history of a company's entrepreneurship, influencing the trend.
But for the two founders, the plot is not compassionate, at least they have achieved financial freedom: Xu Yi's wealth has reached 27 billion yuan in 2021, and the wealth of Han Yulong and his wife has reached 6.7 billion yuan in 2023.
Capital, never sleeps.
But the dream is not all.
The idealist's triangular balance
The name Manner was originally intended to emphasize the value of human nature.
In March 2015, the movie "Ace Agent" was released in Chinese mainland. Han Yulong, a barista from Nantong in Shanghai, watched this movie and was moved by one sentence in it: Manners maketh man. (Tiger sniffing note: Manners maketh man is Old English usage, its modern meaning is Manners make the man, Chinese meaning "a gentleman is based on etiquette, character begins with manners.") ）
At that time, Han Yulong was already planning to open his own coffee shop in Shanghai, and "Manners maketh man" inspired him, and finally he and his wife discussed the name of the store "Manner Coffee".
This is not the first time Han Yulong has started a business.
Around 2012, Han Yulong, a photography enthusiast who studied veterinary medicine, opened a bicycle + photography theme coffee shop "Provence" in his hometown of Nantong. From this store, you can see some shadows of Han Yulong's future Manner Coffee: idealism, literature and art, and the pursuit of individuality. He has almost spliced his hobbies and knowledge into this small shop: lizards and other animals, dead bicycles are sold, and the walls are covered with photographs......
This shop amplified Han Yulong's interest in coffee. Around 2014, Han Yulong came to Shanghai and worked in the Volcan brand coffee shop to make coffee and be responsible for roasting. At that time, the learning culture of the barista circle in Shanghai was very hot, and it was not the same as the lifeless and pompous atmosphere of today. In 2014, Shanghai's coffee circles often organized free evening learning sessions or tastings – usually at 90 p.m., some independent coffee shops would provide young baristas with equipment, materials, and skills for free.
Several local specialty coffee shops (and brands) in Shanghai have had a strong influence on Han Yulong's coffee skills. This also influenced the underlying genes of Manner Coffee. A core person in the Shanghai coffee circle who is familiar with Han Yulong's early years told Tiger Sniff that in the Shanghai coffee circle in 2014, everyone admired hand brewing and pursued the influence of "people on coffee flavor".
The founder of a certain brand told Tiger Sniff that Han Yulong had participated in the barista training activities she held, and everyone focused on learning coffee skills at the event, and the two most common themes of the event were: roasting coffee beans and pour-over coffee. Often, people will use special flavored coffee beans, cup, and then choose the best of the night.
After more than a year of "coffee study", in 2015, shortly after the screening of "Ace Agent", Han Yulong opened the first Manner Coffee, and compared with most Manner Coffee stores today, the first store has built a core framework: through the semi-automatic coffee machine to retain the influence of people on the flavor of coffee, take the specialty coffee route and try to make a high customer unit price, and use blended coffee beans to reconcile the balance between taste and cost.
But this store also has some characteristics that some Manner Coffee stores don't have today: the small shop is high-level, the third space is abandoned, and the unique pyrotechnic atmosphere.
At this time, Han Yulong's business logic can be summarized as: trying to make cost-effective coffee and more advanced taste in cost-effective coffee. At that time, the unit price of most SKUs of Manner Coffee was between 15~20 yuan, and the quality of the coffee beans provided was close to the taste of 30~40 yuan coffee in specialty coffee stores.
Its "price-performance ratio" is based on the high-efficiency model of small shops, and under the cost pressure of lower rent, Manner Coffee can operate with lower profit margins; And its "higher taste" is based on the clever blending of coffee beans and the human concoction of the drink.
If you sum up, there are three key elements in Han Yulong's tactical foundation when he started his business: points, coffee beans, and people.
它们构成了Manner Coffee最早的一组三角平衡。
How Manner evolved into a crazy efficiency machine
In 2015, it was an era without Luckin and Cudi, and a few years ago, the bubble bursting of Korean coffees such as Coffee with You and Zoo Coffee caused a large number of blank coffee spots in Shanghai.
In the following three years, Manner Coffee's stores grew slowly, and as of 2018, the total number of Manner Coffee stores was only 10.
有熟悉Manner Coffee早期历史的人告诉虎嗅，当时Manner Coffee的租金成本占收入比甚至不到10%。
At that time, the cost of Manner Coffee coffee beans was even lower. Han Yulong found a cost-effective solution for Manner Coffee by selecting his own beans and communicating with the manor to adjust the flavor: taking the standard American style as an example, the early Manner Coffee used a blend of 4~6 coffee beans, and adjusted the cost and taste of the entire recipe by adjusting the proportion of coffee beans such as Mandheling.
It's worth noting that this blending is the same way Manner Coffee does today, with each batch of American-based beans made up of different varieties of beans that are always roasted with subtle flavor differences. In order to ensure the stability of the overall taste and flavor, "people" are at the heart of Manner Coffee's operation.
"With a semi-automatic coffee machine, the barista can make subtle adjustments. If, this batch of coffee beans is roasted deeply, it may taste slightly bitter, then the taste can be adjusted by changing the brewing water temperature; If some East African beans are added to the new batch, the taste may be a little more acidic, but the water temperature and the weight of the ground coffee can be adjusted to soften the taste. A professional barista of an international brand told Tiger Sniff that he said that there are two ways to solve the problem of flavor stability in the coffee circle: international brands, by establishing more advanced and larger roasting plants and improving roasting technology to unify the global supply of coffee beans to ensure that the flavor of each batch is almost stable; Brands that don't have large roasting plants or advanced roasting techniques generally need to involve baristas more deeply in the coffee making process, training people to ensure consistent flavor and mouthfeel.
A subtle detail is that in the three years since its founding, Manner Coffee has hired baristas who are skilled baristas with years of experience. This practice is maintained by Manner Coffee to this day, and they recruit more mature baristas by offering higher wages than their peers. Then, through the semi-automatic coffee machine and the mature barista, the flavor and taste stability brought by the coffee bean blending are solved.
However, with the intervention of capital, Manner Coffee embarked on a more radical expansion path, and the triangular balance relationship composed of "points, coffee beans, and people" gradually became unbalanced.
In terms of locations, taking Shanghai as an example, the number of locations in the old town suitable for Manner Coffee has gradually decreased, and Manner Coffee has begun to open stores in shopping malls, office buildings and other more expensive areas, and these places generally do not have 3~5 square meters of points, which means that Manner Coffee's store type has begun to become larger; In terms of coffee beans, with the strong rise of Luckin in 2017 and the ensuing entry of local coffee entrepreneurship into a frenzy, the norm of the entire coffee bean market in the past few years has been broken. Some new brands began to "copy" the coffee bean recipes of specialty coffee brands and star coffee brands, so the cost of some basic coffee beans commonly used in the specialty coffee circle began to rise, and even some key beans were hard to find. Around 2017, the rapid development of the tea circle also began to affect the coffee circle, and some tea brands began to poach baristas in order to supplement talents.
"Some well-known tea brands once made Manner Coffee's baristas a core target for poaching." A founder of the tea circle once told Tiger Sniff in 2021.
And the capital is not satisfied with the speed of Manner Coffee opening ten stores in three years. As a result, a rapidly fattening Manner Coffee began to appear, and it quickly went out of the old city of Shanghai, out of Shanghai, and out of the south...... In the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, Manner Coffee has added 4 and 3 new stores in a single day many times.
The balance is broken.
In 2015~2018, the ratio of rental cost to income of Manner Coffee stores was generally less than 10%, while the ratio of salary to income of Baristas of Manner Coffee was also controlled at about 10% during the same period.
Along with expansion, the first imbalance is rent. A person familiar with the matter told Tiger Sniff in the second half of 2023 that the rent-to-revenue ratio of some Manner Coffee's stores in Beijing and other places has exceeded 23%, and the rent-to-revenue ratio of some locations is even close to 40%.
Soon, the coffee bean equilibrium in the early triangular equilibrium also changed. Due to the emergence of larger stores and the repositioning of Manner Coffee, more SKUs are starting to appear: for example, for meals, for example, coffee drinks with more flavor attributes. This means that the traditional bean cost model is no longer enough to cover the new Manner Coffee.
And labor prices are also rising. Taking Shanghai as an example, from 2018 to 2021, the average salary of basic baristas increased by more than 15%, and the resources of senior baristas with hand pouring ability and knowledge of coffee flavor have become the focus of competition for major brands. More brands are starting to target Manner Coffee's coffee talent and actively poaching it. Prior to 2020, the management team had tried to push for salary increases within the company, but Manner Coffee was smaller at the time. Manner Coffee's large-scale salary increase for baristas began in 2020, and the average salary of Manner Coffee as a whole has changed from 3,000 to 8,000 yuan. In the years since, Manner Coffee's salaries to front-line baristas have been about 30% higher than the industry average.
With the salary increase, Manner Coffee began to face higher labor cost pressures.
The changes in the industry in 2023 have further exacerbated the pressure on Manner Coffee.
The price war started by Luckin and Cudi in 2023 has triggered a consumption boom of cost-effective coffee, and the consumption power of "medium and high customer unit price coffee" in the market has begun to decline: in the state of consumption grading, the number of users with high price sensitivity in rigid demand coffee consumption is increasing. In the second half of 2023, the rise of lemonade and new tea drinks will begin to share the "belly capacity" of coffee drinks with medium and high unit prices.
最终，Manner Coffee只能向“人效”要效益。
"There is not much room to get rent dividends through points, and the cost of coffee beans itself tends to be normal, so if you want to adjust the cost model, you can only change the human efficiency. Manner Coffee's changes or strategies in recent years have all been based on human efficiency. A senior coffee analyst told Tiger Sniff that if Manner Coffee in 2015~2018 was "small shop with high efficiency", then the current Manner Coffee is more like "small team with high efficiency".
So far in 2023, Manner Coffee's store operation model is based on a "shift system": some stores have started to reduce labor as much as possible in a single period of time – this is the so-called "one-person store model". The basis of this model is shifts: during the shift period, the number of baristas in the store is reduced to the "limit of operation".
Manner Coffee has also begun to use part-time baristas, and through part-time baristas to reduce labor costs, Manner Coffee will officially start using part-time baristas in stores from 2024. According to the information on Booss Zhipin, the salary of part-time baristas at Manner Coffee is mainly hourly salary, and the average salary of barista apprentices is 25~30 yuan/hour. Most part-time baristas are required to be able to work at least two days a week, for at least three hours a day.
Part-time baristas, whose main job is to pack takeout, communicate with customers, etc., are not involved in coffee making. It is not the same as the current model of some brands in the industry that use a large number of part-time baristas to undertake coffee production.
In short, in terms of barista cost, on the one hand, Manner Coffee has reduced the "number of people on duty in the store" in a single period, and tried to solve the store capacity by improving the output efficiency of a single person; To further reduce costs, part of the work of a full-time barista is shared by a part-time barista.
It is worth noting that, unlike the outside world that "Manner Coffee does not have a store manager", the real situation is that Manner Coffee has a "store manager" position similar to that of a store manager. The store manager is also involved in the shift, which means that when you go to a Manner Coffee store, the barista in front of you is the person in charge of the store.
It is reported that under such a model, a Manner Coffee store can basically rely on three people to complete shifts to ensure the operation of the store. But this means that in a single time, the baristas on duty need to "output at full capacity", otherwise the supply will not be able to keep up.
One hidden challenge was that Manner Coffee needed to secure the number of cups sold in the store and drive store revenue through higher cup outputs; At the same time, in the face of rising rental costs and coffee bean costs, Manner Coffee needed to balance costs through human efficiency. Eventually, it evolved into a model that relied heavily on the barista's individual "output".
If you compare the salary horizontally, the vast majority of baristas with the same qualifications can get 30%~50% higher salary in Manner Coffee than other brands. However, in the entire chain coffee market, the average salary of the barista industry is not high, 8,000 yuan ~ 15,000 yuan is almost the ceiling of this industry. (Tiger sniff note: Some international brands will pay more than 20,000 yuan or more to senior baristas)
"You may need to take more than 10,000 dollars and solo for hours in the store to make coffee continuously." A barista told Tiger Sniff.
Coffee market mania, the sympathetic barista
"Most of the baristas don't really drink good coffee. On the one hand, they can't afford it, and on the other hand, they don't have time. In 2023, a professional barista who has participated in international coffee competitions told Tiger Sniff that he believes the saddest thing in the circle is that almost all of the most expensive winning beans in every coffee bean competition in the world are bought by Chinese, but the Chinese market has not yet formed a healthy and sunny coffee culture.
"This market is deformed. The better baristas are either busy pleasing the wealthy or obsessed with winning prizes. The barista gave an example: in a well-known coffee bean competition in China in 2023, the brand-sponsored coffee estate locked up most of the top 10; In another competition, participating estates and individuals need to sign a cooperation agreement with a brand first, otherwise they will not be allowed to participate.
"Let a coffee bean win an award, and then use it as a gimmick to quickly push the price up in the market and then monetize. This market is becoming like this. In the past few years, it seems that the coffee market is very hot, but think about it calmly, the vast majority of our consumers still only know about American style and latte, and coffee culture has not penetrated into the consumer group; Our coffee beans have won many awards internationally, but it is still difficult for baristas in our tens of thousands of coffee stores to accurately tell the history of the world's core coffee bean estates, and it is difficult to tell the real coffee culture and knowledge beyond the product manual. ”
A 27-year-old professional barista describes his daily work to Tiger Sniff: he works for one of the largest coffee chains in the country, and he works an average of 13 hours a day (including morning and evening cleaning time). He needs to produce at least 200 drinks a day, but most of the time he's like a machine: holding down the button and scanning the code accurately. With cameras in the production room, he didn't dare or was interested in experimenting too much, and even his communication with customers decreased with the number of years he worked.
"When I first started in the industry, I used to talk about coffee beans with beautiful girls, but now I'm really not in the mood for that. They just wanted to get their coffee and weren't too interested in what Arabica was. The barista said.
Another pour-over barista who works for a well-known specialty coffee chain describes his confusion. After working each day, he is not allowed to "try something new" in the store – such as taking some ground coffee and ingredients to brew some new flavors – which is seen as wasteful and pointless. "I just need to make it in the order in which I was trained. Even when I make a hand punch, how I should explain to the customer and how to twist the cup (to show professionalism) are all prescribed. ”
Based on the market price in 2024, the salary of a barista in Shanghai is about 8,000 yuan, and the salary in the north may be slightly lower. In most specialty coffee stores, the price of a basic American style is about 20~40 yuan, and if you want to experience unique flavored beans or award-winning coffee beans, the price of a single cup may reach 80~120 yuan or even higher.
"Most domestic professional baristas have never drunk competition-grade coffee beans in the real sense." The above-mentioned coffee practitioner clearly told Tiger Sniff.
It is worth noting that since 2024, the entire coffee market is experiencing "cold wave weather", and the coffee environment is under pressure, which increases the pressure on each brand.
The latest quarterly earnings reports from Luckin, Starbucks, and Tims show that same-store sales will all decline year-on-year in 2024. Some well-known specialty coffee chain brands will encounter a wave of store closures in the second quarter of 2024.
"This pressure will eventually be passed on to the barista at the end." According to a coffee industry analyst, baristas are likely to be "emotionally unbalanced" when more pressure is passed on to the end, according to a coffee industry analyst.
"After all, they are human beings, and they can even be said to be a group of people who have dreams of coffee, are closest to coffee, but are drifting away from their dreams. They may have fantasized about playing games and becoming great baristas, but in the end they may be swallowed up by their busy work, their hobbies, their thinking, and their lives, and they can only fight for a few taels of silver. The above-mentioned analysts said.
Lurking under the public opinion crisis of Manner Coffee is actually a "total crisis" of the entire coffee industry: after a few years of manic running, the coffee industry needs to return to the most basic care for baristas - giving them a decent salary to drink better coffee, a more humane professional environment, and safer production conditions.
This may not be the only thing for the Manner Coffee family.
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