What Is a Dirty Coffee and Why Is a Tea Brand Selling It
A dirty coffee is an espresso-based drink where chilled milk or a milk-and-cream layer is poured over a hot shot, so the two stay partly separate and the surface looks streaked or dirty. Lele Tea has now entered coffee with its own brand, Doudoule, opening a first store in Shanghai and offering a Dirty series priced at 15 to 28 yuan.
Tea brands moving into coffee is not new; Naixue Tea already sells specialty coffee and marks Tea & Coffee on its signage. Doudoule shares Lele Tea's ordering mini-program and membership points, keeping the two brands linked. For anyone wondering how to drink dirty coffee, the usual approach is to skip stirring and sip through the layered milk and espresso.
In recent years, domestic demand for coffee has continued to rise, attracting many brands to enter the market across sectors. New-style tea beverage brand LELECHA has also launched its independent coffee brand — Doudoule — and opened its first store in Shanghai. Previously, tea beverage brands such as Naixue Tea had already ventured into the coffee sector, and the integration of tea beverages and coffee is becoming a new industry trend. Doudoule continues LELECHA's rigorous quality standards, offering products such as the Dirty series coffee, priced at 15-28 yuan. At the same time, LELECHA is continuously closing the distance with young consumers through cross-industry marketing. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of Doudoule's features, market strategy, and challenges, and explore the prospects of tea beverage brands expanding into coffee.
Domestic consumers' demand for coffee is growing日益, and the coffee market has therefore attracted an increasing number of participants. Recently, Doudoule, the first coffee brand under new-style tea beverage brand LELECHA, officially opened in Shanghai. In fact, tea beverage brands entering the coffee sector is not unprecedented — for example, the highly popular Naixue Tea in recent years has introduced specialty coffee products in its stores and prominently marked "Tea & Coffee" on its signage. It can thus be seen that coffee is gradually becoming an important component of tea beverage stores.
LELECHA is a new-style tea beverage brand centered on "tea drinks + soft bread," upholding the core concepts of happiness, Eastern craftsmanship, and artistry, and dedicated to advancing the technological and youthful development of tea while exploring more possibilities for tea drinking. LELECHA is the originator of the dirty bun in the Shanghai area. Thanks to the popularity of the dirty bun, the brand's awareness rapidly increased, and the dirty tea series of drinks also became its classic signature.
Although Doudoule is an independent coffee brand under LELECHA, the two remain closely connected. For example, in terms of products, Doudoule has also launched coffee drinks featuring "dirty series" elements. In the online ordering system, Doudoule Coffee and LELECHA share the same ordering mini-program, through which consumers can find stores of both brands, and the membership points of the two brands have also been integrated.
However, in terms of store design and product appearance, Doudoule is more minimalist than LELECHA. Doudoule Coffee's store design resembles the oval outline of a coffee bean, with seating both indoors and outdoors. The coffee packaging features the logo's playful smiling expression, with a concise and clean style.
As a coffee brand under LELECHA, Doudoule also inherits LELECHA's philosophy of artisanal tea-making. LELECHA exercises extremely strict quality control over its tea beverage products, with some tea bases developed in-house; in bread-making, LELECHA insists on on-site handcrafting, and among its partners are professionals with over a decade of baking industry experience, providing technical support for the continuous innovation of soft bread.
Doudoule Coffee likewise strives for excellence in ingredient selection. Currently, the products in its stores cover only the coffee category, including espresso and brewed coffee such as the dirty series, classic Italian style, and selected single-origin coffee bean series, with a price range of 15-28 yuan.
According to Beijing Business Today, industry insiders believe that LELECHA's move aims to open up incremental markets for the brand, hoping to acquire new customers through its coffee business. This is because the brand cycle of tea beverage brands is indeed shorter than that of other industries, mainly due to the extremely high demand for innovation in the tea beverage market and the rapid pace of product iteration — once a brand slackens in innovation or R&D, it can easily be eliminated by the market.
It is worth noting that Doudoule Coffee is not LELECHA's first cross-industry venture. LELECHA has previously carried out cross-industry marketing collaborations with brands such as NetEase Yanxuan, Coca-Cola, and Mentholatum, increasing various interesting social interaction methods by engaging with young consumers, and continuously gaining exposure among young people through cross-industry marketing to convey a lifestyle.
*Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
