Why Is This Breaking Coffee Story About T97 Gaining Attention?
T97 Coffee drew attention through a Douyin livestream where a host and an off-screen voice trade rap-style lines, with a signature "chong chong chong" move. Peak concurrent viewers reached 28,000, and a single livestream drew up to 2.6683 million views in about 15 days. Founder Li Xiao has claimed T97 will surpass Luckin, though T97 has only 43 stores.
The brand's first livestream in May drew weak numbers before the rap format arrived in September. Followers now exceed 210,000, and franchise inquiries have doubled. Industry readers watching coffee news and competition coffee trends will note the gap between viral content and offline scale, since Luckin operates thousands of stores while T97 has just over 40.
Coffee brand T97 recently shot to fame with a wildly different Douyin livestream: instead of the usual sales pitch, the host and an off-screen voice trade rap-style lines, accompanied by a signature "chong chong chong" (charge, charge, charge) move that viewers have dubbed "Big Mouth." Founder Li Xiao has publicly declared that T97 "will definitely surpass Luckin in the future," yet T97 currently has only 43 offline stores, a stark contrast to Luckin's thousands. From lackluster viewership in its first livestream in May to a peak of 2.6683 million views after switching to a rap-driven sales format in September, T97 is using catchy content to drive traffic. This article reviews T97's brand positioning, its path to online virality, its offline expansion pace, and the doubling of franchise inquiries, while exploring whether this chant-style coffee selling can keep working—offering readers tracking the coffee industry a useful reference.
Recently, T97 Coffee suddenly went viral during a Douyin livestream. In the livestream, there was no "3, 2, 1, link up" urging, nor constant cries of "fam, bros." Instead, the host and an off-screen voice traded lines in call-and-response fashion, bodies swaying to the rhythm, as if trying to blend hip-hop into coffee.
Because of his distinctive mouth, the host is called "Big Mouth" by viewers. When introducing discounted coffee coupons, Big Mouth half-squints and makes his signature "chong chong chong" move. Click into the livestream, and you might mistake it for a rap show; in reality, it's the Douyin sales livestream of "T97 Coffee Flagship Store" (T97 for short).
After watching, netizens sighed: It's just too addictive!!!!!
According to reports, T97 founder Li Xiao once publicly declared that T97 "will definitely surpass Luckin in the future," with just over 40 stores aiming to overtake Luckin's more than 7,000. As soon as he said this, netizens questioned: only a few dozen branches, and you're already challenging Luckin Coffee?
Back in May, T97 Coffee launched its first Douyin livestream, and the initial numbers weren't impressive. It wasn't until September, when it adopted a rap-style sales format, that popularity clearly climbed, with peak concurrent viewers reaching 28,000 and followers now exceeding 210,000. Over the past 15 days or so, a single T97 Douyin livestream has drawn up to 2.6683 million views, and for one consecutive week, viewership exceeded 2 million per session.
Public information shows that T97 focuses on specialty coffee with high quality and high cost-performance, combining professional coffee aesthetics with creative R&D to bring coffee lovers a relaxed sensory experience. T97 was founded in April 2021, and its product "Xiao Hei Tiao" surpassed 470 million in sales within three months of launch. Differentiation and high cost-performance have become an important part of T97's rapid market capture.
After delivering strong online results, T97 also began laying out offline stores. At the end of 2021, the brand opened its first offline pop-up store in Hangzhou's Tianmuli. With its professional brand tone and minimalist product style, T97 is being chosen by more and more young consumers.
Today, T97 Coffee has quickly broken out thanks to elements such as "will definitely surpass Luckin," "sales up 7x in a week," and its "addictive livestream," becoming a coffee newcomer whose popularity has surged recently—almost without warning. As of now, T97 has entered 28 cities with 43 offline stores, all of which have made it onto Douyin's local city cafe collection lists.
Looking at recent sales data, in addition to online, offline stores see an average of 1,000 yuan more in transaction value, basically all from discount coupons sold in T97's livestream. At the same time, the number of franchise inquiries received through the backend for T97 has doubled from 150 per day to 300–400.
On one side are the founder's ever bolder pronouncements; on the other is the "Big Mouth host" selling coffee in chant style. Either way, it seems to have a different tone from other coffee brands currently on the market. In this "fast-food era," being addictive really does seem to have become the secret to breaking out.
It's hard to say when e-commerce livestream selling shifted from competing on price and products to competing on content. Previous marketing methods such as hype, acting, and PK battles were quickly eliminated after brief bursts of popularity, after which new content-selling scenarios emerged, such as clubbing-style selling and outdoor selling. New gimmicks and new content formats keep emerging, and T97's "chant-style selling" of coffee has pushed these tactics further—all we can say is that competition is getting fiercer.
Whether T97 Coffee's future development will be good or bad is still hard to judge. But judging by current traffic, it has indeed given Li Xiao's T97 Coffee a boost. Yet in the face of young consumers who pursue tone and differentiation, can Li Xiao's approach really keep working?
Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
