COSTA launches IoT coffee machine, intends to enter the unmanned coffee vending market

What sparks will emerge when technology and coffee collide? Recently, Costa, the world's second largest coffee chain, announced a partnership with British industrial IoT company Eseye to promote Costa Express coffee vending machines equipped with IoT technology worldwide. This means that tasting coffee will be more convenient in the future, while operating costs and efficiency will also be further improved.

It is reported that COSTA will use the Internet of Things technology to quickly connect coffee vending machines to any available mobile network, achieve cellular data access anywhere, communicate with back-end systems, and provide health monitoring, local time synchronization and data routing information. At the same time, it ensures that staff can replenish the coffee beans, milk and other consumables needed by the vending machines in a timely manner, and monitor the performance of machines such as coffee grinders in real time, so that customers can drink barista-quality coffee.

In recent years, the Chinese coffee market has grown rapidly. According to statistics from the London International Coffee Organization, compared with the global average growth rate of 2%, China's coffee consumption is growing at an astonishing rate of 15% per year. Guosen Securities research data shows that the annual growth rate of coffee consumption in my country is around 15%, and it is expected that in 2020, the sales volume of the Chinese coffee market will reach 300 billion yuan.

In China's offline coffee retail market, there are already brands such as Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, COSTA, McDonald's, and Yum China. With the popularity of coffee delivery, major brands have entered this field, providing services such as store ordering, mobile phone ordering, self-pickup or delivery. The rise of this trend has also allowed Luckin Coffee to replace COSTA and take the second place in China's coffee market, and other old players have felt a certain amount of pressure.

COSTA's launch of the IoT coffee machine is intended to enter the unmanned coffee vending machine market. Compared with opening more coffee shops, the cost of laying out coffee machines is significantly lower, and it can occupy the market faster. Starbucks and Nestlé have the same idea. In August this year, the Global Coffee Alliance formed by the two giants officially landed in the Chinese market, and Nestlé launched the Starbucks version of the coffee machine. The coffee machine uses Starbucks' coffee beans for fresh grinding, and its main application scenarios are offices and hotels. In this field, Luckin Coffee also announced in June that it would deploy a self-service coffee machine project called "Luckin Coffee". Consumers can automatically lock the nearest coffee machine through the APP and scan the code to make it now, but there is no news about its implementation yet.

Zhu Danpeng, a Chinese food industry analyst, told reporters: "The Chinese coffee market has entered a stage of multiple brands, multiple categories, multiple channels, multiple scenarios and multiple consumption. The launch of the IoT coffee machine by COSTA is equivalent to opening up another scenario where consumers can consume coffee anytime and anywhere." He believes that combined with Coca-Cola's acquisition of COSTA and COSTA's own accumulation in the coffee market, the subsequent layout may be fast, but whether it can quickly seize this blue ocean market depends on its overall progress and layout speed.

Upstream News·Chongqing Business Daily reporter Tang Xiaohao