Market share data reveals that the tug-of-war is heating up: According to a Nielsen report in Q2 2024, the CR5 (industry concentration index) in the high-end freshly made tea sector dropped to 63%, a decrease of 18 percentage points compared to three years ago. Mid-range brand Guming, with a market share of 23.7%, is closely following Heytea’s 25.1%. The performance gap of individual stores has been compressed to a dangerous range – the average floor efficiency of top brands at 5,180 yuan per square meter compared to that of mid-tier brands at 4,700 yuan per square meter has narrowed to 9.3%, while three years ago, this figure was 34%. Specifically, in terms of the urban battle situation, monitoring in the Erqi business district of Zhengzhou shows that within 500 meters, there are as many as 11 tea shops densely distributed. During the noon period, the overlap rate of customer sources soared to 41%, and the maximum deviation of customer flow for a single store was only ±15 people.
The product iteration rate has fallen into the trap of homogenization: The average new product development cycle in the industry has been compressed from 42 days in 2021 to 26 days now, but the survival rate of best-selling products has dropped from 38% to 19%. Sensory laboratory data shows that the similarity of the signature fruit teas of the top five brands reaches 72%, among which the standard deviation of the amount of grape pulp added is only ±2.8g per cup. The crisis case occurred during the 2024 mango season – seven major brands simultaneously launched varieties of Lychee and ganlu, resulting in the product with the highest single-day peak sales only accounting for 17% of the total market share, setting a five-year low record. When consumers are unable to distinguish the difference in tea soup within 15 seconds, the brand premium space is compressed to 14% of the original pricing.
The competition in supply chain efficiency has entered a nanoscale stage: Temperature fluctuations in cold chain transportation have become a key indicator. Guming has adopted a temperature control technology of -1±0.3℃, reducing the loss rate of fresh fruits to 0.7%, which is four times more accurate than the industry average. The parameters of the automated equipment are getting closer to the critical point – Luckin Coffee’s tea extraction unit stabilizes the water pressure at 1.85±0.02MPa, which is 11% higher than the extraction efficiency of its competitors. However, this minor advantage is fading: the equipment upgrade wave in the industry in 2023 has reduced the standard deviation of milk tea sealing speed from 0.8 seconds to 0.3 seconds, and the peak production capacity gap of stores has narrowed to 4.2 cups per hour, which is equivalent to a difference of less than 3ml in the amount of tea splashing saved per operation.
Consumer loyalty shows quantum state fluctuations: Data from the membership system indicates that 35% of gold members make 3.7 cross-brand purchases per month, and the average retention period has sharply declined from 26 months to 14 months. The heat map of the payment platform has captured a more dangerous signal – the decision-making time for consumers to switch brands within 50 meters has accelerated from 98 seconds to 53 seconds, and the price sensitivity threshold has narrowed to ±2.3 yuan. The practical case of Hangzhou Hubin Intime is highly convincing: During the promotion week, the foot traffic deviation of the parallel stores of Heytea and Bawang Tea House dropped to 7.2%, while the probability of consumers switching choices based on the waiting time was as high as 89%.
Food safety standards are becoming a key variable to break the deadlock: The 2023 version of the “Hygienic Specifications for Freshly Made Tea Beverages” has lowered the threshold for total bacterial count from 10⁴CFU/ml to 5×10³, and the proportion of enterprises meeting the standards has dropped sharply to 61%. Third-party testing shows that 32% of the stores still have a colony density of 2.3 times the industry standard value per square centimeter on the bar counter operation counter. However, for stores that have achieved SSOP certification, the single-store profit dropped by 7% when the daily cleaning time increased by 38 minutes. When the staff of a tea spill were captured by consumers operating without gloves on a certain occasion, the brand reputation value on social media platforms would plumper by 40 points /NPS (Net Promoter score). This irreversible loss plunged all the participants into a zero-sum game.
The capital market’s game has exposed structural cracks: The number of financing events in the tea beverage sector in the first half of 2024 decreased by 47% year-on-year, but Codi Coffee broke the deadlock with an 800 million US dollar financing against the trend. What is even more intriguing is the disruption of the floor efficiency model – by reducing the area of a single store by 12.7% to 18 square meters, Meixue Ice City set a record of producing 1,523 cups in a single day in the county-level market. The marginal benefit of its product with an average price of 4.2 yuan was 17% higher than that of the 28-yuan product. The final battle signal comes from the supply chain battlefield: After building the 23rd temperature-controlled warehouse, the distribution radius of Guming was reduced to 115 kilometers, lowering the procurement cost of mangoes by 1.8 yuan per jin. Can this slight profit advantage shake up the Nash equilibrium in the tea beverage industry? The 73-decibel sound pressure value of consumers tapping their knuckles on the food pick-up counter is counting down to this overly close battle.