「新消费观察」菜单上的“第二曲线”：咖啡成新茶饮标配，巨头们的存量突围战The "Second Curve" on the "New Consumption Observation" menu: Coffee has become the standard for new tea drinks, and giants are fighting to break through their existing stocks

Reporter Zhou Mengting from China Times. net. cn reports from Beijing

Summer is flourishing, and the new tea beverage market is entering a peak sales season. However, upon closer observation, it can be found that top brands such as Meixue Bingcheng, Guming, Chabaidao, and Hushang Auntie have all added coffee product lines to their own menus. This is not the first time that tea beverage brands have ventured into coffee. Previously, Meixue Bingcheng launched an independent coffee brand called Lucky Coffee, and Shanghai Auntie also incubated a sub brand of Shanghai Coffee. Now they have put coffee products on the main menu.

The reason why new tea beverage companies are competing to lay out coffee is twofold: firstly, to open up new growth points in existing competition; secondly, to leverage existing channels and cost advantages to quickly enter the market. However, it should be noted that the coffee industry itself is already dominated by experts, and the smoke of price wars has not yet dissipated. Whether tea beverage brands can establish a foothold in "other people's home ground" is still an unresolved issue.

Add coffee to the menu bar

This summer, coffee quietly appeared on the main menus of several new tea beverage brands. On the menu of Meixue Ice City, in addition to traditional products such as fresh ice cream and classic thick milk tea, the option of Meixue coffee has also been added. The products include American coffee, latte coffee, real orange latte, etc. Not only Meixue Ice City, but also new tea beverage brands such as Guming, Chabaidao, Hushang Auntie, and Tianlala have coffee product lines set up on the menu bar.

To promote coffee products, new tea beverage brands have also done their homework. A reporter from Huaxia Times learned from a person close to Meixue Bingcheng that Meixue Bingcheng has allocated 1 billion yuan in special funds to subsidize franchisees to introduce fully automatic coffee machines, in order to better support store equipment upgrades and provide consumers with richer tasting coffee products.

Sweet Lala has also introduced subsidy measures to attract franchisees. Sweet Lala told reporters, "Sweet Lala headquarters has issued multiple measures such as equipment subsidies, raw material subsidies, and activity subsidies to ensure franchisees' profits. Among them, the price of smart coffee machines is subsidized to one-third of the market price, including installation, debugging, and after-sales maintenance. Sweet Lala is prepared to lose tens of millions of yuan in coffee projects by 2026 and sees this as a strategic investment

Shanghai Auntie has launched multiple creative coffee products. On the basis of traditional coffee types such as American style and latte, creative coffee drinks such as Jasmine Needle King Latte and Fresh Lemon Barley American style have also been launched successively. Currently, these flavored coffees have been integrated into the breakfast consumption scene in stores, forming a full-time coverage with afternoon tea and evening leisure, "Shanghai Auntie told reporters.

To attract consumers, low prices remain the key weapon for new tea drinks. The price of Meixue Ice City coffee products ranges from 5 yuan to 9 yuan, while Sweet La La coffee is priced at 5 to 8 yuan; The Shanghai Auntie Coffee product line ranges from 8 yuan to 16 yuan.

Coffee is known as the "life-saving tool" for migrant workers, and in recent years, new tea drinks have been continuously challenging it, striving to get a share of the pie. However, unlike adding it to the main menu this time, the coffee track was mainly laid out through the establishment of a new brand. Meixue Ice City launched Lucky Coffee, and Shanghai Auntie has also launched Shanghai Coffee.

The Difficulty of the Second Curve

Nowadays, coffee is added to the main brand menu bar. The business logic behind it is still to create a second growth curve.

New tea drinks have been in a fierce battle for many years, and the industry has already entered the deep waters of the stock game. In 2025, although new tea beverage companies have achieved good performance, the parent company of Meixue Bingcheng, Meixue Group, had a revenue of 33.56 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.2%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 5.89 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.7%; Shanghai Auntie's revenue was 4.47 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 501 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52.4%.

However, in the fiercely competitive industry, it is an undeniable fact that the growth of some brand stores has slowed down. Data shows that from August 2025 to February 2026, the total number of stores of 31 mainstream freshly brewed tea beverage brands in China only increased by 4.57%. The growth rate of the freshly brewed tea beverage market (new tea beverages) has significantly slowed down, "the reporter learned from Tianlala.

Tianlala continued to tell reporters, "The current new tea beverage industry has entered a stage of intensive stock competition from a period of high-speed growth. The market growth rate has slowed down, and store expansion and large-scale closures are occurring simultaneously. The industry reshuffle is accelerating, and the focus of competition is shifting from scale expansion to single store profitability and quality management. At the same time, with serious product homogenization and fierce price wars in the new tea beverage market, top tea beverage brands have jumped out of their main tea beverage business to seek new growth. More than 10 brands have already laid out coffee, and the coffee track has become a must answer question

The person close to Meixue Ice City mentioned above told reporters, "Meixue Ice City has always focused on freshly brewed tea drinks as its core. Coffee belongs to the category that Meixue has been selling for a long time, and plays a more complementary role in the menu. The freshly ground coffee machine is an upgrade to the existing coffee category, and in order to further strengthen this complementary positioning. Lucky Coffee is a professional brand that focuses on freshly ground coffee, with higher professional standards for product menu, equipment configuration, and production technology. It is more focused on meeting the consumer group with clear needs for professional freshly ground coffee

In addition, brands such as Guming, Hushang Auntie, and Tianlala still heavily rely on a single main brand to this day. Against the backdrop of increasingly fierce industry competition, it is urgent to open up a second growth curve.

Lin Yue, chief consultant of Lingyan Management Consulting and analyst of the catering and food industry, analyzed our reporter and believed that "the expansion of the coffee product line by the new tea beverage brand is an active change under the pressure of performance growth. Its core is to find a second growth curve through strongly related categories. In recent years, with the intense competition among tea beverage brands, store expansion and single store revenue have reached the ceiling, and the market has entered a stage of stock game. However, there are still opportunities for structural adjustment in the coffee market, and there is still some space for affordable popular coffee and innovative coffee

Can you grab this cup of coffee soup?

Adding coffee to new tea drinks also has its own advantages - the brand stores have a huge scale. At the end of June, the reporter learned from people close to Meixue Ice City that there were over 44000 stores in Meixue Ice City nationwide; By the end of 2025, the number of Gu Ming and Hu Shang Auntie stores will both exceed 10000, reaching 13554 and 11449 respectively. The low technological threshold of coffee itself makes the huge channel advantage of New Tea Drink its core competitiveness in entering the coffee market.

The reporter learned that after the product line upgrade of multiple test stores in Zhengzhou, the coffee cup volume of Meixue Bingcheng has significantly increased compared to before, with some test stores even reaching nearly 170 cups per day. Shanghai Auntie told reporters, "By upgrading coffee machine equipment and coffee bean quality, Shanghai Auntie has made coffee a core category for brand promotion, covering more consumer scenarios and enhancing the operational vitality of the store." Sweet Lala also told reporters that its core goal is to drive overall revenue growth of the store through coffee drainage. At present, the number of stores that have launched freshly ground coffee has exceeded 1000, and the overall revenue of test stores has increased by over 50%.

However, it is not an easy path for new tea beverage brands to grab a share of the coffee market. The current coffee market is already crowded enough, filled with strong competitors such as Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, Kudi, Novah, Manner, and Lucky Coffee under the Milkshire Ice City brand. As of the end of the first quarter of 2026, Luckin Coffee has reached 33596 stores, while Kudi, Novah, Manner, and others are equally strong. According to data from Narrow Gate Restaurant, as of June 15th, Kudi Coffee had 16624 operating stores. The reporter learned that the Nuowa store has already exceeded 10000.

In order to seize the market, coffee brands have been engaged in a price war for the past two years, and professional coffee brands have been fighting fiercely. In this context, can new tea drinks benefit from the coffee market? Lin Yue told reporters, "From a data perspective, the coffee category still has a certain effect on boosting the performance of tea drink brands, with varying degrees of revenue increase. This indicates that consumers are still willing to taste fresh coffee. Although the coffee market is crowded, new products are beneficial for tea drink brands to drive repeat purchases, increase social volume and brand stickiness

Responsible Editor: Huang Xingli Editor in Chief: Han Feng