What Does the New China Post Coffee Store Offer?

China Post opened its second post office coffee store on Cat Street in Xiamen on April 29, following the first location in Xiamen's Guomao area that debuted on February 14. The new coffee store adds cat-themed elements for visitors and cat lovers, and during its May 1 to May 14 soft opening it partnered with OATLY on a hidden-menu eco-friendly drink.

Customers had to say a code phrase, hinted as unknown, green, celestial body, to order the special. OATLY reported strong first-quarter performance in Asia, with its Barista product contributing significantly, and the brand is expanding into new-style tea drinks and plant-based ice cream. The post office coffee project continues to grow despite earlier pandemic-related closures.

After opening China's first post office café on February 14 this year, China Post has officially entered the coffee market as a national team player. Amid an enthusiastic consumer response, the country's second post office café opened on Cat Street in Xiamen. The new store blends the local characteristics of Cat Street, creating a space for cat lovers to socialize, and has partnered with oat milk brand OATLY to launch a hidden-menu eco-friendly special. Meanwhile, OATLY posted strong first-quarter performance in Asia, with its Barista product contributing significantly, and the brand is accelerating its expansion into diverse categories such as new-style tea drinks and plant-based ice cream.

On February 14 this year, China Post's first national post office café officially debuted, marking the "national team's" formal entry into the coffee arena. Fueled by strong consumer enthusiasm, the country's second post office café opened its doors in Xiamen.

The first post office café was located in Xiamen's Guomao area, and after opening it received enthusiastic public support, with news circulating online from time to time about packed stores and surging orders. Not long afterward, affected by pandemic lockdowns, the store was forced to suspend operations along with many other food and beverage outlets.

Despite these setbacks, Post Office Coffee continued to improve gradually afterward. On April 29, the official Weibo and WeChat public account of Post Office Coffee simultaneously released a preview of the country's second store. The new store is still located in Xiamen, Fujian, at Cat Street in Xiamen (No. 12 Ding'aozai, Siming District).

Unlike the first store that opened earlier, the second Post Office Coffee store, building on the original postal-themed post office, incorporates the environmental characteristics of the surrounding Cat Street area, with cat-related elements arranged inside, aiming to create a place for leisure and socializing for cats and cat lovers.

During its soft opening period (May 1 to May 14), the Post Office Coffee Cat Street store teamed up with OATLY to launch a hidden menu, and consumers had to say a code phrase to taste it in-store. The official hint for the code phrase was "unknown, green, celestial body," from which it is not hard to infer that the code was "What is a green planet."

According to netizens' shares, the core ingredients of this eco-friendly coffee special jointly launched by Post Office Coffee and OATLY include coffee, oat milk, coconut juice, and grape jelly, among others.

In this co-branding collaboration, OATLY is particularly noteworthy. The oat milk brand OATLY, which successfully rose to fame through coffee channels, recently held its first-quarter earnings meeting. The brand's revenue in the first quarter of 2022 reached $166.2 million, up 18.6% year on year. Although multiple food service outlets in China were temporarily closed due to the pandemic, OATLY's Asian market still brought in $28.7 million, up 15.3% year on year.

In the first quarter, OATLY had already placed products in more than 21,500 retail stores and over 37,000 food service outlets in Asia, with food service contributing 75% of sales in the Asian market; among that, 80% of sales in the Asian market came from the "Barista" series. And among the retail and food service stores in China where OATLY is present, more than 17,000 closed in the first quarter of this year due to lockdowns.

This plant-based milk brand, which has long been "deeply tied" to coffee, is now no longer limiting its sights to coffee. This oat milk giant is going all out to advance product diversification. In its "Master Series," in addition to "Barista," it is also targeting the new-style tea drink sector, co-launching with Shuyi Tealicious the plant-based new tea drink "Orange Camellia," which surpassed one million units sold in just 10 days on the market. The launch of the new "Tea Master" oat milk marks OATLY's formal entry into the new-style tea drink arena.

In addition, OATLY has also launched plant-based ice cream products and partnered with the Chinese new retail e-commerce platform Freshippo to release co-branded plant-based ice cream bars.

After observing that the best-selling milk format in China is portable 200 ml to 350 ml packaging, OATLY also offered consumers oat milk products in similar formats and placed them in retail channels.

The reason OATLY became popular is due, on the one hand, to the competitive relationship it formed with the dairy industry, and on the other hand, to the fact that it met the needs of lactose-intolerant coffee lovers. Afterward, OATLY partnered with many coffee brands such as Starbucks and MANNER, helping more coffee consumers become aware of the brand. Strictly speaking, so-called "oat milk" is not a dairy product but a plant-based beverage, more accurately called "oat base."

At a time when the global environmental protection trend is strong, just how many consumers can this oat drink giant win over?

Image source: Internet

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