蜜雪把现磨咖啡卖到5元，难的是什么？What's so difficult about selling freshly ground coffee for 5 yuan by Miyue?

AI Introduction

Behind the doubling of sales at the 5 yuan freshly ground coffee fragrance store in Meixue Ice City is a supply chain revolution of over 40000 stores: from freshly ground coffee beans and fresh milk to optimized fruit ingredients, a quality long-distance race about 'freshness' is quietly unfolding in the mass price range

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Recently, a fully automatic coffee machine has been added to the bar at a Meixue Ice City near Nanpu Metro Station in Panyu, Guangzhou.

After opening the store every day, the staff should first turn on the machine and perform a self check to see if there are enough coffee beans in the bean compartment. Someone ordered coffee, and the machine started grinding and extracting beans on site. The process has gone through a few more steps than before, and the store now has a fragrance that was not very noticeable in the past.

Assistant Xiaolin (pseudonym) said that now whenever someone orders coffee, "the whole store can smell the aroma of freshly ground coffee".

The changes are also reflected in sales volume. Before the replacement, this shop sold about 20-30 cups of coffee a day, and when it was good, it could reach 40-50 cups; After installing the new freshly ground coffee machine for a month, its daily sales increased to around 70 cups, and during holidays it could sell 100-160 cups.

It is worth noting that after using the freshly ground coffee machine, the standard iced Americano is 5 yuan and the espresso is 6 yuan.

On social media platforms, there have been more reviews surrounding the 5-yuan freshly ground coffee from Meixue. Xiaolin observed that after about three weeks of replacing the machine, there was a significant increase in repeat purchases in the store.

Freshly ground coffee is not fresh, and 5 yuan is no longer a novel low price. It's not difficult to make a delicious freshly ground coffee in a single store, but the challenge is to bring this new process into a network covering over 40000 stores in China and reproduce it stably within a few yuan price range.

The more stores and the farther they are distributed, the more changes a machine brings not only to the bar counter: coffee beans need to be rotated faster, fresh milk needs to arrive at the store in a shorter time, and the pace of equipment, training, logistics, and delivery needs to be recalculated.

Coffee is not an isolated upgrade either. In the past year or two, Meixue has adjusted the ingredients for beverages such as Bangda Fresh Orange, Full Cup Passion Fruit, Jasmine Green Tea, etc. What consumers see is a more direct aroma of beans, milk, and fruit, with a more pronounced aroma of tea, while the backend changes the ingredients and delivery methods of a menu.

Therefore, this coffee machine provides a glimpse into the beauty of honey snow: a company known for its ability to control costs on a large scale, how far can the quality of a few yuan price range go after adding more "freshness" to its menu?

The current grinding is not early, but Miyuki chose a more difficult price band

Looking back ten years, instant coffee is a more suitable choice for the price range of honey snow.

At that time, commercial coffee machines were expensive, and coffee beans, fresh milk, and temperature controlled delivery were additional costs. The depreciation of equipment, raw materials, and labor behind a cup of coffee are difficult to fit into the familiar range of a few yuan that Meixue is familiar with.

In recent years, consumer coffee drinking habits, commercial equipment, and standardized supply have gradually matured, and Meixue's coffee product line has also undergone three changes.

Originally instant, it later became "factory pre grinding+store drip filtration": coffee beans are roasted and ground in the factory before being delivered to stores. Nowadays, whole beans enter stores, and after someone places an order, machines start grinding, pre soaking, and extracting them to preserve the flavor of the beans more completely.

What this machine really changes is the timing of grinding: coffee beans are ground into powder in advance and then ground before serving.

It seems like just moving a process from the factory to the counter, but the difference is easily noticeable and noticeable. Ordinary consumers may not be able to say the clear production area and extraction parameters, but whether the coffee is fragrant or not, and whether there is only bitterness left in the mouth, are very direct feelings.

Xiaolin was also the first person to feel the change. She felt that in the past, the taste of Meixue's coffee was relatively light and not very mellow. After switching to freshly ground equipment, every time the machine started working, a clear coffee aroma would waft out of the store. The feedback given by consumers is simpler: "Coffee tastes better now

Besides the coffee beans, the other half of the changes are hidden in the latte.

Whether a cup of milk coffee tastes good or not, the freshness and richness of the milk are important variables. In the past few years, Meixue has been upgrading its milk, initially using room temperature milk; In 2026, some stores will gradually start using 100% Yue Fresh Fresh Milk.

Fresh milk and freshly ground milk are no longer scarce abilities. What Mi Xue needs to face is: how to become a stable supply of these quality experiences that have been verified at higher prices, after entering the price range of 5 yuan American style and around 10 yuan milk coffee.

Present a 'fresher menu' in the network of tens of thousands of stores

The competition in the raw material side of the tea beverage industry has long been fierce. Placed in the rhythm of peers, Miyuki's upgrade choice is not radical; Put it back into its scale, the problem will become different.

In 2020, the number of franchise stores in Meixue Ice City exceeded 10000. Nowadays, the official website of Meixue Ice City shows that the brand's stores have exceeded 49000; As of the end of 2025, the total number of global stores of Meixue Group (including Lucky Coffee and Fresh Beer Fulujia) is 59823- in five or six years, the number of single brand stores has exceeded 45000.

In addition to scale, there is also geographical span. The stores of Mixue are even distributed along the 318 National Highway, Motuo, Mount Taishan Peak, Suifenhe and other border areas in Xizang. Nearly 60% of the stores in the country are located in third tier cities and below.

There are few samples in the industry that can be directly copied to improve freshness with such a scale and span. A product entering stores nationwide requires the establishment of raw materials, expiration dates, transportation inventory, and store operations simultaneously.

Brands with fewer stores and higher average order value can create flavor differences around niche ingredients, small batch purchases, and more complex store production. However, the core products of Meixue are still priced between 2-9 yuan, and its stores cover a large number of low tier cities. It can only take another path: to leave more complexity in the research and development, supply, and equipment aspects, and to keep store operations as simple as possible.

The "fresher menu" presented by Mixue now has some changes that can be directly perceived by consumers: coffee beans are freshly ground, and milk coffee is starting to use fresh milk; Bangda Fresh Orange has switched to compound orange juice, and the passion fruit in a full cup has been upgraded from a single variety to a combination of "golden+purple skin passion fruit", resulting in a richer taste; The number of times jasmine flowers are infused has been increased to 7 times, making the fragrance more prominent.

After adjusting the taste of Bangda Fresh Orange, some old consumers actually feel that it has become less flavorful. The richer and sweeter taste of the past, when consumed for a long time, will become the "original flavor" recognized by consumers. When changing raw materials, many consumers feel uncomfortable and some may directly ask if the formula has been changed. After a period of time, this type of feedback gradually decreased.

This is also a special scale that needs to be considered in the innovation of Meixue products: tens of thousands of stores are looking for a larger common denominator of flavors, making the experience that most consumers can perceive and are willing to repurchase more stable.

Mixue's approach is to prioritize the selection, grading, and preservation of fruits as much as possible to the production and supply ends, while stores only retain standardized production steps. This can not only make the fruits fresher, but also reduce the fluctuations caused by employees' reliance on experience judgment.

At the consumer end, all complex raw materials and technical information will ultimately become two simple judgments - whether it tastes good or not, and whether the price is worth it.

After the menu update, the supply chain of Wandian system is racing against time

Behind a 'fresher menu' is an iteration of a complete set of basic system capabilities. Coffee is now ground whole beans, and the time requirements for milk and fruit raw materials are also higher. The time gap between storage and distribution and stores is shrinking.

Some inventory that used to be scheduled on a monthly basis now needs to be calculated on a daily or even hourly basis.

Coffee beans are still a typical example. In the past, the shelf life of honey snow coffee beans was 90 days. Factories can produce ahead of schedule, and warehouses can also reserve inventory. Even if a certain link is delayed for a few days, there is still buffer space in the future.

Now, the circulation cycle of coffee beans is at its limit. Factory production should be as close to the order as possible; After baking, testing, and packaging the beans, please send them out as soon as possible. Stopping at the factory for one more day will result in one less day of use after arriving at the store.

The time for fresh milk is tighter. The shelf life of fresh milk in the trial run is only 19 days, and it needs to be controlled within 36 hours from the warehouse to the store as much as possible. The logistics system that used to focus on products at room temperature needs to be supplemented with temperature controlled warehousing, full temperature control, and stricter shelf life management.

The delivery vehicles have also been renovated accordingly: the same vehicle is divided into zones to carry goods at room temperature and raw materials that require temperature control, reducing mutual influence through partitions and independent doors. For areas farther away, it is necessary to use pre positioned warehouses and other methods to regain time on the road.

The supply chain is racing against time, while stores have to deal with inventory.

Fresh milk is checked on a daily basis, coffee beans are stocked differently based on sales during weekdays and holidays, and fruit ingredients that require temperature control must be returned to their designated locations and recorded immediately upon arrival at the store according to regulations. Xiaolin said that after opening a pack of coffee beans, they are often consumed far before the expiration date.

The more the menu emphasizes freshness, the more the delivery rhythm needs to be close to the actual sales volume of the store.

In order to adapt to the turnover of short-term guarantee materials, Meixue has also lowered the overall minimum order amount for free delivery fees in stores, with a decrease of nearly 40%. Stores can restock with smaller batches and higher frequency, reducing inventory and capital occupation.

The last few meters of delivery have also been included in the adjustment. In the past, after the driver moved the goods to the back of the car, the store staff had to move them into the store themselves. After the implementation of 'unloading goods into the store', drivers will deliver the goods to the designated location of the store. This service currently covers about four fifths of domestic Meixue stores, reducing the time that store personnel are occupied by moving goods during peak hours.

The store is responsible for the changes on the other end. When the new coffee machine first entered the store, some franchisees felt that the operation was more complicated than before; The fully automatic equipment also pre writes the grinding degree, water temperature, water powder ratio, pre soaking and extraction time into the program, and ordinary employees can complete the production according to the process after training and examination.

This is quite similar to Meixue's early practice of "pounding 15 times with a glass of lemon water".

Tens of thousands of franchise stores cannot require every employee to have the same experience and feel. The larger the scale, the more standardized and lightweight the operations at the store end, and complex things need to be constantly moved backwards - into research and development, factories, warehouses, logistics, and equipment.

The procurement volume and supply system brought by scale also leave some cost space for upgrading raw materials. Taking passion fruit raw materials as an example, after adjusting the original purple skin passion fruit to a combination of "golden passion fruit+purple skin passion fruit", the franchisee's order price decreased by 12%.

The other side of scale is that even a change in a bean, a box of milk, or a coffee machine can be amplified into adjustments to the production, warehousing, distribution, and franchise systems.

This may also be a more worthy topic for discussion than the "coffee machine moving into the store" itself in this round of product upgrades by Meixue. Freshly ground coffee has been matured by previous brand education, and fresh milk and fruit have also appeared in higher price ranges. What Meixue needs to do today is to continue promoting these quality elements that have already been recognized by consumers to the public price range, and overall raise the consumer experience threshold. This is obviously a relay long-distance race that requires patience.

Consumers still see a menu ranging from a few yuan to ten yuan: 5 yuan American style, a cup of milk coffee, and a fruit drink. The backend has added faster coffee beans, 19 days of fresh milk, temperature controlled delivery vehicles, more frequent replenishment rhythms, as well as new equipment and training standards.

This system must absorb most of the complexity in order for stores and consumers to have the opportunity to experience simple and good products.

For every step forward in the quality of a drink, the subsequent system may have to follow suit, especially since this supply chain covers more than just city stores. The Mangya line of Mixue pushes this logic to the extreme - Mangya is located at the junction of Qinghai, Xinjiang and Xizang, and it is more than 300 kilometers from Golmud to the west. In order to deliver goods to two local stores, delivery vehicles have to drive all the way from Lanzhou warehouse to Mangya, and the return journey is often empty, with a shipping cost of several thousand or even tens of thousands of yuan per trip.

The further you go to the end of the network, the more scattered the stores become, and transportation will consume more shelf life. A menu should cover these areas, and storage and transportation cannot be designed solely based on the national average. Just looking at one route, one or two stores may not necessarily be economical; Placed in the national system, they test whether this supply network can deliver the same product standards to farther places.

For consumers, the most ideal outcome is not to feel these complexities. He still only needed to spend a few yuan to place an order at a familiar store, and then found that today's coffee was a little more fragrant than before, the milk flavor of the latte was a bit more complete, and the fruit in the fruit tea was closer to the real fruit flavor.

This article is from Tiger Sniff, original link: https://www.huxiu.com/article/4884566.html?f=baijiabaiducom