Can SOE Coffee and Specialty Coffee Justify Resort Pricing?
Manner Coffee opened the second stop of its travel series inside The Sanya EDITION hotel, where a latte costs 50 yuan instead of the usual 15. An Americano runs 45 yuan, specialty drinks 55 to 60 yuan, and pour-over reaches 200 yuan. One customer said the 50 yuan latte tasted no different from the regular 15 yuan version.
The pop-up menu covers selected pour-over, SOE coffee and other specialty coffee, set in a warm wooden space near a free art exhibition. Manner's regular stores charge 15 to 25 yuan and give a five yuan discount for a reusable cup. Observers read the move as borrowing Starbucks' split between regular and Reserve stores, though the ongoing coffee price war makes the outcome uncertain.
Manner Coffee, long positioned as affordable specialty coffee, recently opened the second stop of its travel series at The Sanya EDITION hotel, but a high-priced menu sparked widespread discussion. One consumer who ordered a 50-yuan latte said the taste was no different from the usual 15-yuan regular version, and could only be seen as paying for the vacation atmosphere. According to the price list, this pop-up store charges 45 yuan for an Americano, 50 yuan for a latte, 55 to 60 yuan for specialty drinks, and up to 200 yuan for pour-over, a stark contrast to the 15 to 25 yuan pricing at regular stores. Manner's move is speculated to be imitating Starbucks' strategy of distinguishing regular stores from Reserve stores, but amid the increasingly fierce coffee price war, whether this differentiated pricing can win market recognition remains to be seen.
Recently, Manner Coffee announced the destination of the second stop of its travel series — Sanya, Hainan. According to the official description, this store is located inside The Sanya EDITION hotel, with a space dominated by warm-toned wooden style, and a free art exhibition nearby for visitors, combining viewing art with drinking coffee and adding more ways to experience a seaside vacation.
In addition, Manner designed a menu for this store that is completely different from its regular stores, covering selected pour-over, SOE coffee, and specialty coffee, among other drinks. The seaside, vacation, coffee, and art exhibition — these elements come together, naturally attracting many consumers and tourists to visit.
However, many consumers who visited the store were shocked by the prices on this special menu, because the drink prices far exceeded their established impression of Manner.
In the minds of most consumers, Manner has always taken a high cost-performance route, with approachable drink pricing, and bringing your own cup saves another five yuan. Because of this, Manner has a large number of loyal fans, and this netizen who went to Sanya is one of them. He mentioned that seeing a Manner store made him feel especially familiar, and after entering he ordered a latte without hesitation, only realizing at checkout that this latte was priced at 50 yuan, not the 15-yuan version he usually drank.
This netizen also said he could not taste any difference between this latte and the 15-yuan one, and could only comfort himself by saying the extra money was paying for the environment.
According to the price list posted by the customer, the Manner Sanya pop-up store uses selected SOE coffee beans, offering three SOE bean options. If made as an Americano, a 237ml small cup is priced at 45 yuan; as a latte, it comes in two sizes — a 237ml small hot cup and a 355ml large iced cup — both priced at 50 yuan. Selected specialty coffee is available only in large size, priced between 55 and 60 yuan. Selected pour-over coffee comes in small and large sizes, priced from 70 yuan to 200 yuan.
Customers who frequently buy from Manner were generally shocked to see this price list. The main reason is that Manner's regular latte or Americano is usually priced between 15 and 20 yuan. Even regular stores that also offer SOE coffee bean options and regular pour-over coffee charge only 20 to 25 yuan, a gap of as much as double compared with the 45 to 50 yuan pricing at the Sanya store.
Such high pricing quickly sparked heated discussion, with many netizens commenting: "What is going on, so expensive?! I was still thinking of bringing my own cup," "What???" and "So expensive." Some netizens also analyzed that this Manner is located at The Sanya EDITION hotel, which is one of Hainan's "Top Ten" hotels, with rooms costing more than 2,000 yuan per night. If Manner moved into such a prime high-end hotel and sold a cup for only 15 yuan, "how many cups would it have to sell to cover the rent?"
In fact, Manner has long positioned itself as affordable specialty coffee, mainly with small stores, with prices mostly concentrated in the 15 to 25 yuan range, and has attracted a large number of customers many times through co-branded IPs and free merchandise. Now that the brand has begun launching some high-priced, high-quality coffee products, it inevitably makes people speculate that its intention is to follow Starbucks by distinguishing regular stores from Reserve stores, thereby enhancing brand influence.
If this strategy continues, such high-priced Manner stores may continue to increase in the future. However, given the current fierce price competition in the coffee market, whether Manner's differentiated pricing can truly attract customers to pay is still hard to determine.
Image source: Internet
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
