What Does NOWWA's Expansion Mean for Commercial Coffee Beans?

NOWWA Coffee opened 120 stores at once, pushing its nationwide total past 1,700 locations across more than 100 cities. The Shanghai-based budget chain, founded in 2019, added stores in Guangzhou plus 10 lower-tier cities such as Nanchang, Jinhua, Huangshan, and Zhanjiang. Online delivery supplies over 75% of sales, and most drinks sell for around 15 yuan.

The new batch skews toward smaller cities: third-tier locations made up 38 stores, or 32%, while East China accounted for 37% and Central China 25%. As demand for coffee beans for commercial use grows, an asset-light model with low prices puts pressure on supply chains. Industry attention now centers on a market projected to reach trillion-yuan scale by 2025.

NOWWA Coffee recently announced the simultaneous opening of 120 stores. In addition to strengthening its presence in Guangzhou, the new stores also expanded into 10 lower-tier cities including Nanchang, Jinhua, Huangshan, and Zhanjiang. This budget coffee brand, founded in Shanghai in 2019, is accelerating its penetration into the national market by leveraging an asset-light model in which online delivery accounts for over 75% of sales, along with approachable pricing of around 15 yuan. As of July this year, its total store count ranked third among domestic chain coffee brands, with over 1,700 stores nationwide covering more than 100 cities. Against the backdrop of a coffee consumption market expected to reach a trillion-yuan scale by 2025, NOWWA Coffee's expansion pace has drawn industry attention.

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Recently, NOWWA Coffee announced on its official WeChat account that 120 stores were opening simultaneously. These new stores not only continue to deepen their presence in first-tier cities like Guangzhou, but also extend to 10 cities including Nanchang in Jiangxi, Jinhua in Zhejiang, Huangshan in Anhui, and Zhanjiang in Guangdong. According to Jiemian News, in terms of regional layout, East China accounts for 37%, with 44 stores; Central China has 30 stores, accounting for 25%. Notably, the number of stores opened in third-tier cities reached 38, accounting for 32%.

NOWWA Coffee was established in Shanghai in June 2019 and is affiliated with Shanghai Lixing Technology Co., Ltd. Similar to Manner and Luckin Coffee, NOWWA Coffee is also positioned in the budget market, with its core customer base being working professionals in their twenties and thirties, and product prices mostly concentrated around 15 yuan. In addition, the brand also offers tea drinks, baked goods, and peripheral products, quickly establishing a foothold in the fiercely competitive market with its positioning of affordable and convenient beverages.

In terms of business strategy, NOWWA Coffee has always focused on online channels. Previous data showed that revenue contributed by its delivery channels exceeded 75% of total revenue, making asset-light operations a distinctive label for the brand. Currently, NOWWA Coffee has launched on mainstream delivery platforms such as Ele.me and Meituan. It can be said that this brand has precisely captured young consumers' demands for coffee — affordable prices, good taste, convenient purchasing, and fast preparation.

In addition, NOWWA Coffee frequently launches various cross-industry co-branded products, covering IPs, commercial brands, and cultural brands. For example, this year it first collaborated with outdoor brand NORTHLAND to launch "Bottle Coffee," and then teamed up with Chengdu-style Chinese bun brand "Li Yubai" to create a limited-edition Chinese breakfast set "Eat Green Buns, Guard the Green 'Horse,'" all of which successfully attracted considerable consumer attention.

In recent years, the coffee market has continued to heat up. According to statistical forecasts, by 2025, China's coffee consumption market is expected to reach 1 trillion yuan. The expansion speed of various brands' stores also reveals the intensity of competition in this track. Most domestic chain coffee brands have shown ambitions to aggressively open stores.

Chain giants represented by Starbucks and Luckin lead the industry with an absolute advantage in store numbers. On September 27 this year, Starbucks announced the official opening of its 6,000th store in mainland China. At a previous investor exchange meeting, Starbucks had proposed a plan to add 3,000 stores in three years, meaning a total of 9,000 stores by 2025. In addition to these two leading brands, Manner, Seesaw, M Stand, NOWWA Coffee, and others are also deeply favored by consumers and are likewise accelerating their expansion pace.

NOWWA Coffee has been expanding its market through small-store grab-and-go and alliance models. In its first two years, its store count was only in the single digits, but since last year, the number of stores has begun to grow exponentially. In June this year, NOWWA Coffee had just opened more than 100 new stores at once, with the total number of stores exceeding 1,500 at that time and covering more than 50 cities. Now, less than half a year later, news of a hundred stores opening simultaneously has emerged again. Does this mean it will continue to expand in units of a hundred stores going forward?

Following Starbucks and Luckin, according to statistics, as of July this year, NOWWA Coffee's total number of domestic stores ranked third among chain coffee brands. Currently, it has more than 1,700 stores nationwide, covering over 100 cities, which works out to an average of about 500 new stores per year.

Driven by the enthusiasm of today's young people, coffee is at a critical stage in its mass-popularization process. Those brands that can stay ahead of the industry have undoubtedly grasped the core of popularization — high-quality products, moderate prices, and operating methods that align with young consumers. More critically, the founding team is passionate about the coffee and dining industry and is willing to start from the consumer's perspective to continuously refine and optimize products.

Image source: Internet

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