New Tea Beverage Brands collectively Increasing Investment in Coffee Market

Since 2026, new tea beverage brands have entered a period of concentrated expansion by venturing into the coffee sector. Leading brands are accelerating their transition from initial experimentation to strategic deepening, leveraging their extensive retail networks and mature supply chains to capture market share through differentiated pricing strategies and integrated tea-coffee products. This has solidified the industry’s growing trend toward tea-coffee integration.

In this strategic expansion phase, Guming has taken the lead: by the end of 2025, it had installed coffee machines in over 12,000 stores, launched 27 new coffee products throughout the year, with coffee offerings accounting for approximately 15% of its total store GMV. Chapanda’s coffee business now covers 500 stores and aims to expand to 2,000 by the end of 2026, pricing its products at ¥10.9–14.9 to emphasize high cost-effectiveness. In March, Mixue launched its ¥8 freshly ground coffee, entering the lower-tier market segment with its “Jasmine Fresh Milk Latte” offering.

Mid-to-high-end brands are making synchronized moves. On April 16, Jasmine Milk White launched its “Modern Tea Cafe” series in over 2,300 stores nationwide, with two products priced at 20–21 yuan and made from Honduras Arabica SOE coffee beans; sales exceeded 210,000 cups within eight hours of launch. Shanghai Aunties has positioned coffee as its core category, with over 85% of its stores equipped with coffee machines, and its “Hu Ka” in-store outlets priced at 11–15 yuan. Sweet Lala’s freshly ground coffee has been introduced in more than 1,000 pilot stores, targeting the lower-tier market with prices between 5–8 yuan, and daily coffee sales in some stores surpass 120 cups.

Industry data shows that over 90% of leading tea beverage brands now offer coffee products, with at least 18 of the TOP 20 brands having launched coffee offerings. This concentration of brands reflects two key factors: intensifying competition in the existing tea beverage market, which drives the need to tap into new consumption scenarios like breakfast and office settings; and the ability to deploy coffee operations cost-effectively through existing stores and supply chains, significantly boosting sales per square meter.