Coffee is still chic in China, exactly how fashion brands wish to appear. A café smells great and typically costs less than 200,000 yuan.
Photo from Pantechnicon
By CHEN Qirui
Fashion brands are always trying new ways to push more of the same old stuff onto the same old customers, and the latest trend is to open in-store coffee shops.
Maison Margiela has cafes in Chengdu and Shanghai, and a “pop-up coffee space” in Shenzhen. Ralph Lauren, whose Ralph’s Coffee opened its first China location in Beijing two years ago, is about to open another in Shanghai. The list goes on.
China hadn’t had a coffee culture until recently but the market reached 382 billion yuan (US$65 billion) last year and is expected to exceed 1 trillion by 2025. In some big cities, per capita consumption is almost as high as one cup a day.
To a large extent, coffee is still considered chic in China, and this is exactly the response the fashion brands are trying to stimulate. A cafe fits well into the rest of the store, and it smells great. It typically costs less than 200,000 yuan to set up an in-store cafe.
The fashion brands themselves, unsurprisingly, like to make a fuss. The smallest details, including the floor plan, electricity consumption and food storage, are given tremendous amounts of consideration.
“We need the right licenses and must understand the regulations,” said HUA Zhener of Maison Kitsuné. Cafe Kitsuné contributes 10 percent of brand revenue with locations in Beijing and Shanghai fully managed by in-house teams.
Other brands outsource their operations instead. Maison Margiela Cafe, for example, is run by Chengdu-based Small Coffee Company, which owns restaurant chain Bar Lotus. Local partners know market conditions and can bring their own customers to new cafes.
Coffee, of course, is just a sideshow. The point is to get customers to browse the racks and buy bags and clothes. Those who think they have enough expensive bags and clothes already, can always come in and change their minds.
Another consideration is to relate better to younger customers. Ralph Lauren, largely synonymous with dad polos among Chinese millennials, has made Ralph’s Coffee a social media phenomenon with its bear mascot, vintage decors and photo-friendly food.
The main problem seems to be that customers don’t like the cafes much. Online reviews are full of complaints about long queues, high prices and mediocre products. A customer who went to a Maison Margiela Cafe during its first weeks said she had to wait for at least 20 minutes for a latte at 10am and the line was only getting longer. The latte, which cost 40 yuan, tasted exactly the same as “the coffee shop next door,” which charged half the price.
