15 yuan for 2 cups, 2 tons of pearls are consumed in a month, and the “pearl milk tea single product store” has become popular!

In the first month of the new year, the most popular drink on the streets of Guangzhou is not lemon tea, but pearl milk tea.
A special pearl milk tea shop in Panyu District, which lines up every day, sells only one category, 15 yuan and 2 cups, boiled pearls in a large pot, and the supply is in short supply. A shop can use 2 tons of pearls a month.
I made a survey and found that this kind of “pearl milk tea shop” has quietly become popular in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
1、 Thousands of cups of sunrise, sweeping the whole country, “pearl milk tea single store” is turning popular
Who would have thought that Guangzhou people with lemon tea flowing in their blood would be given a cup of black sugar pearl milk tea ring powder this year.
Recently, in my circle of friends, I found a milk tea shop called “Chen Wending Black Sugar Pearl Milk Tea”. The shop is not big, more than ten square meters. As its name suggests, it only sells one category of black sugar pearl milk tea, four SKUs, and the price is also very earthy. It is 15 yuan per cup, both old and young.
The store environment is also very simple. The most eye-catching “decoration” is a large pot of boiled pearls:
Soft and glutinous pearls tumble in the pot, sticky black sugar forms an amber wall on the side of the pot, and the dense heat is accompanied by sweet smell. A kind of handmade familiarity comes to the face, which makes the pot more visible than milk tea, and the visible production process also makes people more comfortable to drink.
This store is in a mess in Panyu District, Guangzhou. Some industry insiders reported that “2 tons+pearls are used in a month”, and the beverage practitioners who went to the store in Guangzhou heard from the business circle resources that the daily average of a single store is more than 600 cups, and more than 1000 cups on Saturday and Sunday.
On the social platform, “queue every day”, “queue for more than half an hour on average”, “real name authentication is good to drink”, “special trip from Foshan to punch in” and other comments are more frequent.
Following this clue, I searched on the comment platform and found that in Guangzhou, “pearl milk tea single store” has become popular:
The above “Chen Wending Black Sugar Pearl Milk Tea” has opened a second store under the strong appeal of customers;
A brand called “Pot Pearl” has opened more than ten stores;
Guangzhou’s local chain brand Taoyuan Sanzhang has also incubated a pearl milk tea single store, which is preparing for large-scale development.
In Shenzhen, 100 kilometers away from Guangzhou, Baozhu, a pearl milk tea brand from Nanning, has quietly opened nearly 20 stores, and most of them have a score of more than 4, which is the Top10 brand on the regional beverage list.
Is the classic pearl milk tea going to turn red again? “Pearl milk tea shop”, do you want to follow this wave?
2、 Originated in Taiwan and broke out in Nanning, can this model be spread across the country?
Before answering the question, let’s popularize the model of “pearl milk tea single store”:
The origin of pearl milk tea single store is also the birthplace of pearl in Taiwan. In Taiwan, it is called “frog hit milk”. There are many single store brands such as “Chen Sanding”.
In 2020, in Nanning, where the tea industry is developed, there is a brand called Baozhugong, which shouts out the slogan of “pearl milk tea that is safe to drink as a daughter”, and makes health commitments such as “cassava powder and brown sugar in the pearl”, “0 trans fat”. For a time, it was called the “light of milk tea” in Nanning by the industry, which triggered a large number of imitators. Although in Nanning, it has become famous among the industry in the country.
Surprisingly, over the past year, this milk tea model has been established in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, which are fond of lemon tea, and has opened many stores.
So, is “pearl milk tea single store” a good model?
First of all, it is easier for consumers to have a “sense of authenticity” by selling only one category and focusing on its location, which leads to the perception that they will go to a special store when drinking pearl milk tea;
Secondly, the product is extremely simple, highly efficient, with few raw materials, no need for too large stores, no need for complex storage, and the cup production efficiency is very high. It has obvious advantages in terms of rent and labor costs.
It is worth mentioning that in the winter when tea is generally off season, pearl milk tea stores will be more popular.
Let me talk about shortcomings. First, the revenue ceiling is not high. Because some people naturally do not like to eat pearls, the extreme focus strategy of the single product model will make consumers lose their choice. Even those who do not reject pearls will lose their freshness after a long time.
In addition, the taste that is not fresh in summer will also indirectly dissuade some consumers.
“There will be a group of loyal fans, especially those who like to eat pearls. However, the relative heat will decrease in summer, and there will be advantages over other tea drinks in winter. I visited this project in Taiwan before I made Tarling about 5 or 6 years ago. I thought about doing it, but I felt that the market was not as big as lemon tea, so I chose to make lemon tea later,” said Xie Canwu, founder of Tarling.
In general, this is a category with obvious advantages, but also obvious ceiling. In the mature tea market, can it make money to open such a small store? How big is the market capacity of such a brand?
3、 Can pearl milk tea still run out of big brands today?
In essence, this is also a method of subdividing categories.
Subdivision category has achieved a number of brands in the industry, such as Yangzhi Ganlu, Shaoxian Cao, Peach Drink, Cherry, etc., all of which are to find a popular category as a pacesetter to break through the market, stand out by differentiation, rapidly expand to a large scale, and form a brand.
In fact, the pearl milk tea single store model is a more extreme method of subdividing categories, which subtracts the stores in a more thorough way to achieve the highest level of efficiency and human efficiency.
Whether this business can make money or not and whether it can grow depends on whether the race track of the segment you choose is broad. In my opinion, the pearl milk tea category has the genes of scale:
1. Pearl milk tea is the mother category of tea and the product with “root”
As the first generation product of the tea industry, pearl milk tea has once occupied the whole industry since its spread from Taiwan. Many of the first milk tea of the post-80s and post-90s are probably pearl milk tea. Later, many milk tea innovations have evolved from pearl milk tea, which is the parent category of tea industry products.
Pearl milk tea is also a global symbol. As early as 2005, it was included in the Oxford English Dictionary under the English name of bubble tea. To some extent, pearl milk tea is even the external symbol of the tea industry.
Among all the sub-categories, pearl milk tea is undoubtedly a parent category with a large audience. It is a category that “widely exists in the first 10 years and will not disappear in the next 10 years”. Such categories can survive through the life cycle for a long time.
2. High store efficiency and low store opening cost
I have seen many pearl milk tea stores in Guangzhou, which are generally characterized by “small stores and few employees”.
Because the category is focused, it does not need too many raw materials, nor too much storage, nor too much manpower, so the threshold for opening a store will be lowered. In the cup production process, a spoonful of pearls, milk and tea soup can be added to seal the cup, and the human and peace effects will be extremely high.
3. Lemon tea category has been set as a “model”
In Yunnan, there is a brand called Kirin Big Mouth Tea, which sells only one type of lemon tea in the store. 20 stores have been opened in Kunming, and the goal this year is to open 200. At present, it has become a brand that Kunming tourists must punch in. In the lemon season, which focuses on lemon tea, there are more than 800 stores.
It is also a broad track, like the refreshing lemon tea and the soft waxy and burnt pearl milk tea. When a category has polished the business model, opened up the supply chain, achieved standardization, and has enough potential, if it can produce an excellent brand, it can drive the category to the whole country and run out of thousands of chain stores.
4. For this category, we should tell the story of “health, no addition”
Finally, we must also see that, unlike lemon tea with its own health attributes, pearl milk tea has been popular for more than 30 years, but there are still some deep-rooted misunderstandings in the market.
To do a good job in this category, it is necessary to tell a good story of “health, no addition”, such as cooking on the spot, seeing is believing, and obtaining trust from raw materials in public.
epilogue
Relying on pearl milk tea, brands have been born at every stage.
For example, in the early stage, CoCo can be used. “Boba milk tea” and “Dahongpao pearl milk tea” are the memory of a generation of milk tea.
Later, Lujiao Alley became popular nationwide with a cup of “black sugar deer pill”. In recent years, Huicha has opened more than 100 stores in Guangdong Province relying on the single product of “golden brown pearl milk tea”; It’s round and true. Make a circle of pearls with your hands.https://store.stoneitech.com/
The development of tea is now, and it may be time to return to the original. This time, the pearl milk tea has become popular in the form of a single store, which once again confirms the vitality of the classic pearl milk tea.
The more classic and rooted products are, the easier it is to penetrate the cycle and survive for a long time.
The consumer market always needs new stories. If you only want to do a small and beautiful business, the single-item store model is worth looking forward to; But if you want to build a thousand-store brand, you need to consider innovative products or expand categories after the single-store model is mature.