He puts ground coffee into a triangular bag and brews it in 3 minutes to wake up the sleepiness. The repurchase rate is 30%.

◆ Liao Jianhe said: "I have been in contact with coffee since high school. I thought it was very bitter at first, but later I gradually fell in love with it."

Text | Pencil Road reporter Xu Maozhu

►Introduction

"Coffee Star Triangle Specialty Coffee" (hereinafter referred to as "Coffee Star") is a ready-to-drink coffee brand that focuses on triangular ground coffee bags and provides peripheral products such as mugs and coffee pots. Consumers can get coffee close to freshly ground quality by soaking the triangular coffee bags in hot water for 3 minutes. In addition, "Coffee Star" also provides a subscription service to deliver coffee bags to users on a monthly basis.

After the Spring Festival this year, the product was officially put on sale online. At present, about 6,000 people have purchased more than 20,000 boxes of coffee, with a monthly sales growth rate of about 20% month-on-month, and cumulative sales of about 1 million yuan.

Note: Liao Jianhe promised that the data in the article is correct and is responsible for its authenticity. Pencil Road has backed up the audio transcript to endorse the objectivity of the content.

“Why can’t coffee be made into a product like tea bags?”

Liao Jianhe and two partners founded the Taobao mall "Aikahui", which sells coffee beans and related utensils. Liao Jianhe said: "When running a Taobao store, some customers were exposed to freshly ground coffee for the first time and would ask us how to use the utensils. However, it was difficult to teach them how to control the water temperature and the ratio of coffee powder to water because the learning threshold was high. Inappropriate methods would also damage the taste of the coffee."

Based on customer feedback and the team's desire to escape competition from homogenized Taobao coffee shops, they came up with the idea of ​​roasting and grinding the coffee beans and then putting them into filter paper bags. Users only need to drop the coffee bags into hot water to drink the ground coffee.

Therefore, Liao Jianhe organized a four-person R&D team to start an 18-month exploration.

"We initially wanted to use tea bag filter paper to package coffee powder, but coffee powder is finer than tea powder and would leak into the cup, affecting the taste." The team then tried the packaging filter paper for drip coffee, but due to its slow penetration speed, it took a long time to brew the coffee, which damaged the user experience.

After trying more than 70 types of filter papers, the team found a Japanese supplier they had met at a coffee exhibition, and customized filter papers from them. The products were then imported into the country after production was completed.

According to Liao Jianhe, only by allowing the coffee powder to fully contact with the hot water can a good extraction effect be guaranteed. Therefore, the team also put a lot of effort into the shape of the filter paper packaging. After trying cubes and cones, they finally chose a triangle, "which not only has a large surface area, but also has a stable structure and is not easily deformed."

Every step in making coffee must be carefully considered. "It is difficult to get the flavor out of the coffee beans if they are roasted too lightly, and the taste will be bitter if they are roasted too deeply. The roasting degree also needs to be coordinated with the grinding degree, that is, the size of the coffee powder particles." To this end, the team spent all day in a laboratory filled with the aroma of coffee, adjusting parameters such as temperature and time.

"Coffee Star" combines coffee powders from different origins and varieties to achieve a better taste . There were 12 recipes for the Italian espresso flavor. In order to select a combination that suits consumers' tastes, the team invited 200 "Aikahui" regular customers to taste the products as experience officers and improve the recipe based on their opinions.

The team leveraged the supply-side resources of "Aikahui", used coffee beans from Sumatra, Colombia, Brazil and other places, and selected two OEM factories in Guangzhou and Shanghai for mass production.

◆ Currently, "Coffee Star" offers two flavor options, and two new flavors will be launched this month.

Last November, "Coffee Star" launched two types of triangular ground coffee: Italian Espresso and Colombian Huilan. The product is priced at 58 yuan per box, with 10 bags per box. The coffee bag can be extracted in about 3 minutes after being put into boiling water. In addition, ice water and milk can also be used to make coffee.

Taking into account the low level of consumer awareness of new products, the team first promoted the product through daily coffee information, Enjoy and other lifestyle and shopping guide public accounts. "Coffee Star" currently has more than 50 cooperative new media.

At the same time, some of the new media partners are also distribution channels for the product. According to Liao Jianhe, up to 3% of readers of a promotional tweet can be converted into product consumers. The product currently has about 100 distribution channels.

In order to increase user stickiness, "Coffee Star" launched a subscription model, providing three packages of 138 yuan/month, 360 yuan/quarter and 680 yuan/half year. "Coffee Star" will deliver once a month, providing users with 1 pack of products per day that month.

At present, the triangular ground coffee and iced brew cups, mugs and other peripheral products launched by "Coffee Star" have attracted more than 6,000 customers, with a repurchase rate of 30%. About 12,000 orders have been completed, 20,000 boxes of coffee have been sold, and the monthly sales growth rate is about 20% month-on-month, with cumulative sales of about 1 million yuan.

The project has launched an angel round of financing of 5 million yuan, selling 15% of its shares. The funds will be mainly used for market development and product upgrades.

/The End/

Edited by Luo Zhengchen and proofread by Yang Mao

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