On February 25th, the American coffee brand “Blue Bottle Coffee” opened its first store in mainland China. On the opening day, fans lined up to buy; large number of customers waited outside the store and lined up for hundreds of meters. Even many scalpers were eyeing the business of reselling the coffee.
That morning, the whole Suzhou River was crowded. Before eight o’clock, a long queue had been formed in front of the coffee shop. At nine o’clock, the “inner ring” queue turned three columns, and the queue needs to start at the “outer ring”.
During the whole opening period, it took an average of 3 hours from queuing to entering the store. Some even got up in line at 6 o’clock just for a cup of Blue Bottle Coffee.
The opening of the first Blue Bottle Coffee store has even attracted many scalpers. According to media reports, although there are restrictions on the passenger flow in the store, there was no limit on the number of cups of coffee purchased by a single customer before 3 p.m.
Many scalpers buy in groups of three, place an order of about 20 cups at one time, take them out of the store in batches and resell them, shouting a high price of 150 yuan per cup.
Blue Bottle Coffee line triggered a rush to buy, online sales are also very prosperous. At present, it is also available online in the WeChat mini program. Blue Bottle Coffee e-commerce channel sells coffee beans synchronized with the store, and peripheral products such as mugs, environmental protection cloth bags, etc.
Less than an hour after the launch, all the coffee bean products have been sold out. The selling price of blue bottle coffee is mostly in the range of 30 ~ 50 yuan, including 32 yuan / cup of Americano, 42 yuan / cup of latte, and 46 yuan / cup of mocha. The prices are higher than those of Starbucks.
The popularity of Blue Bottle Coffee in China’s first coffee shop is related to its location choice to land in Shanghai.
After all, this city is crowded with a group of Chinese people who love coffee most. The Shanghai coffee consumption index released by Shanghai in 2021 shows that Shanghai has the largest number of cafes in the world, and its coffee consumption ranks first in the country.
According to another report of the Shanghai coffee consumption index, independent coffee and boutique coffee shops account for 55.88% of the total. Boutique coffee is popular, and Shanghai has ushered in the “third wave of coffee wave”.
The most memorable symbol of Blue Bottle Coffee is the small blue bottle, a simple and impressive “blue bottle” logo, and there is no text message on the blue bottle logo.
The blue color of this logo has high brightness and the shape of the blue bottle is special, so it can establish a communication point, grab the attention of customers, and let the Blue Bottle Coffee brand take the lead in the simple decision-making behavior of consumers.
As a brand that has been established for nearly 20 years, it is known as “the Apple of the coffee industry” because of its investigation on the freshly ground and freshly brewed coffee and the high quality of coffee beans.
Before the opening of the store in Shanghai, the pre-training of baristas lasted for more than 2 months. In terms of products, blue bottle coffee insists on using coffee beans scored higher than 84 points. It is used within 45 seconds after grinding. On average, a cup of coffee has to wait 15 minutes.