How do local chains lower coffee prices so far?

Domestic Chinese coffee chains have pushed freshly ground coffee to around ten yuan a cup, sometimes under ten with subsidies. The shift comes from store expansion, higher shop counts, and a cost structure that differs from early foreign entrants, whose pricing reflected European and American income levels. Cheap coffee is therefore not automatically a quality problem.

People often ask why does coffee make me feel drunk, and the answer is caffeine stimulation rather than alcohol, so you cannot get drunk off coffee in the usual sense. The same gap between perception and fact applies to price. Bean cost is one input among rent, labor, and volume, so a low price can coexist with drinkable, freshly ground coffee.

Many people habitually assume that coffee should be expensive, and that cheap coffee must have problems. But the emergence of domestic Chinese coffee chains has shattered this perception, bringing freshly ground coffee down to just over ten yuan or even under ten. This article explains, from the perspectives of consumer attitudes, market development, and cost structure, why coffee can be cheap, and why the relationship between coffee bean quality and price is not simply proportional. It also provides coffee enthusiasts with a professional communication channel and a way to purchase specialty beans.

"Can coffee this cheap really be drinkable?" "With the price pushed so low, the bean quality probably isn't up to par, right?" For a long time, the labels people attached to coffee always circled around one word: "expensive." Whether in the years before coffee became popular in China or now that it has become a mass beverage, before domestic brands rose up, high coffee prices seemed only natural.

It was not until Chinese domestic coffee chains stormed into the market that domestic coffee pricing began to loosen. As these brands continued to expand their stores, the number of coffee shops surged and prices kept falling. An ordinary cup of coffee now averages only around ten-plus yuan, and with various brand subsidies, you can get freshly ground coffee for under ten yuan—something consumers would not have dared imagine just a few years ago.

In today's world of material abundance, coffee is long past being some rare, high-end imported novelty. Ten-plus yuan a cup is actually entirely reasonable. But the long-standing attitude toward coffee consumption was led astray, largely under the influence of those foreign brands that entered China early on. When these brands first came to China, their pricing often referenced levels in European and American markets. For Europe and the US, where per capita income is already very high, that might have been an ordinary price, but for a still-developing China, converted into RMB, it seemed especially expensive.

These foreign brands did indeed play a role in introducing Chinese people to freshly ground coffee, but because of this, for many years, whenever people mentioned coffee, they associated it with high prices. Even if they had never drunk it, they knew it was not something ordinary people could consume regularly. As a result, coffee drinkers tended to be higher-income people who used it to project an image, so for a long time coffee appeared only in major cities.

Setting aside high-income groups, most ordinary people's monthly income is only a few thousand yuan. With the cost of living already so high, how many people would be willing to spend several dozen yuan on a cup of coffee? If coffee pricing had never been pulled back into a range that ordinary people consider reasonable, it could never have spread and developed rapidly in China.

If something is truly to develop rapidly, it must be accessible to more people; it is impossible to drive the coffee industry solely through high-income earners in first- and second-tier cities. Therefore, to make the coffee market big in China, you have to cater to the needs of ordinary consumers, and lowering prices is the most direct and effective means.

Most consumption habits spread from economically developed regions to relatively less developed ones. A group of big-city workers developed the habit of drinking coffee, and when they go to develop in other places, they will also drive local coffee consumption. And affordable pricing is precisely what makes people in all regions feel that coffee is a beverage they can consume daily.

"Can coffee this cheap really be drunk?" Why not? As an ordinary consumer, drinking coffee is more about waking yourself up or satisfying yourself; not many people really delve into coffee flavors. The coffee is freshly ground and made, the quality is acceptable, the taste is acceptable, and the price is not expensive—that is enough. How many milk tea drinkers agonize over what kind of tea leaves are used in the base?

Everyone should consume according to their own actual circumstances; there is no need for everyone to pursue high-priced brands and so-called high-quality living. Expensive things are not necessarily good, and cheap things are not necessarily bad. The key is that the consumer feels it is "worth the money."

Nowadays, coffee cultivation standards are improving year by year, and the coffee beans that reach consumers are rarely truly bad in quality; they basically remain at an ordinary or decent level, and the cost price is not high either. So ten-plus yuan for a cup of coffee is very normal. The same logic applies to coffee beans—don't assume that just because a merchant sells cheaply, they must be ripping you off.

Image source: Internet

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.