Chapter 668 – Beverage wars Part 2 of 2
Feng Yu tasted a cup of Lehaha’s latest product, fruit Tang. It was a warm, orange drink. The taste was normal. It did not taste good or bad. It was a bit sour and sweet. It was similar to what Feng Yu had drunk in his previous life. There should be people who like this taste.
But Feng Yu was not satisfied. How can this drink compete with Cola Cao? If Lehaha’s target were on the Xurisheng Group, then they would have set their sights too low. If Lehaha were to compete with some other companies, then it must be the best company out there. What’s the point of competing with a weaker competitor?
In Feng Yu’s previous life, what was China’s most popular hot beverage? It was not tea or coffee. It was not Cola Cao too. It was milk tea!
The more famous brand of milk tea was U.Loveit and Xiang Piao Piao. Currently, these two instant milk tea were still not available.
The advantages of milk tea were different from the Cola Cao. Cola Cao had positioned its product as a nutrition drink and good taste. The selling point for Milk tea was only the taste. In the future, coffee and chocolate were added to the milk tea.
Zhong Qingxian frowned: “That’s right. Children like to drink this, but adults felt it was too sweet. But after we lower the sugar content, children do not like it. We can’t find the midpoint. This is an instant beverage, and we can’t tell our customers to add in sugar.”
Feng Yu wanted to tell him that it’s not impossible to ask consumers to add in sugar to instant beverages. In the future, many drinks come with a small sachet of sugar. But this Tang were all in big packaging. It will be troublesome to pack sugar sachets together.
“Then, we will target the children as our main segment. After all, our brand has been targeting the children market. But we cannot only have orange favor. We can introduce pineapple, apple, etc. favors. Ask your staff to research on that. Even if the sales are not good, at least we can increase the variety of our products and prevent other competitors from appearing.”
Zhong Qingxian nodded. “I have already asked my people to develop other favors. Orange favor was the easiest to develop and lots of consumers like this favour. But with just this favour, we won’t be able to beat Cola Cao. After the health supplement product incident, nutrition products appeared. Cola Cao was one of them and had already acquired a strong customer base. It was even thought to be an imported product. Their products were also advertised on CCTV. It will be tough to compete with them.”
“Have you thought of developing a similar product to compete with Cola Cao?” Feng Yu asked.
“You are saying that we produce this type of chocolate milk powder? We do have the expertise to produce milk powder, but the taste is not as good as them. It is also hard to control the nutrition values. Cola Cao only has one product, and we do not have any advantage with our brand.” Zhong Qingxian frowned.
Zhong Qingxian had thought about this before. Unless he used aggressive advertising, but that will increase the cost. If the product fails, the losses will be a lot. The advertising fees could be used to market their yogurt and tea beverages. These beverages have lots of competitors.
“Have you been to Taiwan to check out the market there? Have you seen the bubble tea there?” Bubble tea had appeared for 3 months, and it took over Taiwan’s beverage scene. Zhong Qingxian should have tasted it before.
“Bubble Tea? I have drunk it before. Why?”
“What do you think of that milk tea?”
“It tastes alright. The tea is just normal, and I don’t quite like it. But there are lots of people who love it. Manager Feng, are you telling me that we should produce this bubble tea?”
“Why not? It should not be difficult to produce this, right? We can just buy the formula from them or develop it ourselves.”
Currently, there was powder tea in the market. But it was not mixed with milk powder. Customers had to mix it themselves.
Lehaha only needs to find the right proportion of tea and milk and pack it together. Even the raw ingredients could be purchased outside, and they do not need to produce it themselves.
Even the pearls or jelly in the bubble tea could be purchased outside or get some companies to produce for them. All they need to do was to print Lehaha’s label on the package. It was effortless.
“This…… it seems possible. But will the Chinese like this favor?” Zhong Qingxian still has some hesitations.
“If you don’t try, how will you know that no one likes it? This milk tea just needs to have a strong fragrance. Consumers must be attracted to the fragrance. Even if it was not popular in China, we could export it overseas, like Taiwan or Hong Kong. Also, this will be a new product to compete with Cola Cao. We can introduce a milk tea with chocolate favor.”
“Chocolate favor milk tea? Can it still be called milk tea?”
“Don’t worry about this. As long as consumers like it, it is a success. Have you drunk coffee before? The westerns like to drink coffee, and there are many cafes in the coastal cities. The prices are outrageous, and the cost is low. It is mainly for people who want to try what foreigners’ beverage tastes like. We can also satisfy these people curiosity by introducing coffee favor milk tea.”
Zhong Qingxian was confused. He felt what Feng Yu say was not right. Traditional bubble tea might still be possible. Just like what Feng Yu said, they could still export it to Taiwan, and they will not suffer any losses.
But milk tea mixed with chocolate and coffee? It will be a product that’s either here nor there. Who would like it?
Zhong Qingxian was not bold enough to try out new things. Feng Yu remembered Lehaha in his previous life was adventurous with their products. They had introduced Coffee cola, beer favored tea, Kvass, etc. Although people were criticizing their products, they still made profits.
“Ok. Manager Feng, I will get the R&D staffs to test it. But our factory’s capacity might not be enough. Although we have been expanding our factories, we have not produced such products before, and we do not have existing production lines. This will be a huge investment.”
“You can pick the Western region for our new factories. Have you heard of the Guangcai program?”
“Guangcai program? I have heard of it. Are you telling me that we should join this program?” Someone had invited Zhong Qingxian in the past but was rejected. It was because Zhong Qingxian does not have intentions of setting up new branch factories at that time.
“Why not? We can help society and increase our brand image at the same time. Also, the factory over there will be producing powder form beverages. We do not need to worry about transportation. It doesn’t matter even if the transportation takes a long time, as the expiry date is long and will not turn bad easily. The labor cost and land are also very cheap. Overall, our losses will not be high. Most importantly, we will be able to leave a good impression with the leaders. Don’t you want to be known as an entrepreneur with a conscience?”
“Alright. I will look into it. If everything is alright, then Lehaha will join the Guangcai program and contribute to the nation.”
“That’s settled then. Let us celebrate our success in advance.”
Zhong Qingxian paused for a while and asked. “Manager Feng, will there really be people who like this combination?”
Feng Yu: “……” You still don’t believe what I said!