text | Dai Haotong
Edit | Peng Xiaoqiu
Around 2008, the number of domestic tea brand stores increased, especially various Taiwanese milk tea brands, which were popular in the mainland market and occupied half of the market. Domestic consumers' consumption demand for tea drinks is gradually increasing, which has also promoted the development of the tea drink industry. According to relevant data, there were only 7,410 new tea drinks in my country in 2010. As of 2019, there were 87,000 new tea drinks in my country, and increased by 321% year-on-year.
It is precisely because of this market opportunity that " Jordan Road ", founded in 2008, has successively launched special cocktails (combined with fruit, cocktails and tea), stockings milk tea , Hong Kong-style lemon tea and other series of drinks to the market. After several years of trial and accumulation, in 2015, "Jordan Road" began to shift its main business to fruit tea and tea drinks, and used it to enter the fresh tea drink track.
At present, in terms of product , the company has launched 40 tea drinks with a price ranging from 9 yuan to 23 yuan , targeting young consumers born in the 1995, including students and white-collar workers. In terms of business model, Jordan Road mainly focuses on offline direct stores. So far, the company has laid out 310 offline stores in second- and third-tier cities.
Since the establishment of the brand, the company has launched a number of high-selling tea drinks. "Jordan Road" founder Deng Huibin told 36Kr that according to the timeline order, the first one was the Hong Kong-style lemon tea launched in 2015. At that time, the most popular Hong Kong-style lemon tea in the entire tea beverage market accounted for about 10%. Since this tea drink uses Sri Lankan black tea as the base tea, it has a strong taste.
Then, in order to enrich the product variety, Jordan Road created a signature lemon tea. The characteristic of this tea drink is that it uses high mountain green tea as the base tea and is made of a whole perfume lemon . Deng Huibin revealed that the reason why these two new materials were chosen is because their fragrance was more fragrant, and the taste of Gaoshan Green Tea was relatively fragrant. After it was launched on the market, this product was loved by more young consumers, with sales accounting for 30%, so it became one of the signature drinks.
New product
In addition, in terms of milk tea series, Jordan Road also launched a " Boba Milk Tea ". In terms of material selection, Jordan Road uses cassava flour imported from Thailand as the "pearl" raw material. In terms of process, the company uses to polish for more than 40 minutes to make pearls. The advantages of high cost and long time are good taste and glutinous texture. "Many of the Boba pearls on the market are broken with one bite. In comparison, the taste of Jordan Road is more chewy," said Deng Huibin. The release of
Boba Milk Tea and Recruitment Lemon Tea has brought revenue increase to Jordan Road. At the end of 2015, the two tea drinks, which also accounted for 30%, helped the company's revenue increase by 50% year-on-year.
in the company's core advantages are mainly reflected in the establishment of a complete supply chain by Jordan Road. In order to achieve stable and good quality control, in 2017, Jordan Road began to establish its own supply chain in terms of tea research and development, tea production, lemon cultivation, etc. First, in order to control product quality from the source of raw material planting, Jordan Road has established two perfume lemon orchards. The current annual production capacity of is as high as 800,000 kilograms, and a total of 3.2-3.5 million cups of lemon tea can be produced. Secondly, in tea production, Jordan Road ensures the quality of tea through its own Sugimoto tea factory, and has carried out research and development around the preliminary processing of fresh tea trees, tea refined processing, and fragrance-enhancing technology. The company has built a tea garden with an area of 500 acres in Yingde .
Deng Huibin said that according to the team's observation, in recent years, among the 1 million order data, the proportion of users of standard sugar points is less than 1%, and most of them are the proportion of half-tang and little sugar. This means that consumers want to reduce their dependence on sugar and pursue light sugar and zero-burden tea products.
Because of seeing this trend, under the premise of ensuring the unchanged taste, Jordan Road and Home of Food of South China Agricultural University jointly developed a light sugar to replace the original rock sugar raw material. The entire R&D process took more than half a year and was led by more than 30 food engineers . The R&D work has been completed and is sold to the market.
Unlike the rock sugar used in the past, the light sugar syrup developed by Jordan Road is made of high-fiber syrup made of arabinose , resistant dextrin and oligoisomaltosol , without adding sugar alcohol. This light sugar syrup not only achieves the same taste as rock sugar syrup, but also contains up to 15% dietary fiber. The L-arabinose it contains can inhibit the absorption of sucrose by inhibiting the activity of sucrose enzyme in the human intestine. Judging from the dietary fiber content, a cup of milk tea is about 1 apple, and a cup of lemon tea is about 3 apples.
Each product needs to undergo several rounds of internal review before it is launched. The company formed an evaluation team composed of 21 employees, and scored them around evaluation dimensions such as sweetness and sourness, overall appearance, and sales price. At the same time, in order to resonate with young consumers, Jordan Road launched the IP "Sasa Bear" and designed a series of cultural and creative products, such as umbrellas, tea cups, etc.
In terms of team size, there are as many as 500 employees of company, including employees of direct-operated store employees, of which 12 employees are engaged in product research and development positions, which is higher than the average level of 2-3 people in the industry. The operation position accounts for the highest proportion of personnel in the team. In terms of employee training, the company conducts an average of 50 training people every month, and incubated 600 professional tea mixers throughout 2021.
Talking about the next step of planning, Deng Huibin said that the company will increase its R&D efforts this year and enhance its support for direct-operated stores and franchise stores. It will allocate 20 employees to serve franchisees to increase the activity of the store. At the same time, the company will continue to optimize the employee training system and improve the training requirements for employees, and the training time will be increased to 21 days.
