Introduction: As the first cold wave arrives, people instinctively wrap their coats tighter, and in their hurried steps, they yearn to hold a hot drink to warm their hands and dispel the chill. Major brands have keenly captured this need, upgrading their warm beverage offerings in an attempt to spark a "warm drink revolution." However, can this surging "warm current" truly warm the market? During recent market visits, the author found that many customers merely glance at the warm drink cabinets before turning away. This coexistence of "boom" and "bust" reflects the complex reality of the warm drink market. Brand enthusiasm surges, but sales disappoint.
In the past, walking into a restaurant, we often saw a familiar scene: a heating pot bubbling with glass-bottled soy milk, which seems to be our earliest memory of winter warm drinks. Today, however, convenience stores have quietly changed this picture. The warm drink cabinet beside the cash register has become standard, stocked with a dazzling array of products, from sugar-free tea and milk tea to coffee.
It's easy to see that in recent years, the warm drink market has become a new battleground for brands. Nongfu Spring, after successfully launching Oriental Little Leaf, quickly followed with a series of "Da Nai Cha" (milk tea) products, promoting them through the theme activity "Small Bottle Warm, Accompany You Through Winter" and setting up offline "Warmth Supply Stations." Meanwhile, Suntory, with the promotional theme "Winter Honey Friend," emphasizes the hand-warming and heart-warming experience of warm drinks in the cold season. In addition, Uni-President's Assam brand has launched a truly zero-sugar, sugar-free original milk tea to meet consumer demand for healthier beverages. Genki Forest's milk tea, in collaboration with the IP "Egg Party," introduced a new brown sugar baked milk tea, and also launched the "Zizai Shui" (Free Water) series. Coconut Full launched sugar-free coconut milk and other innovative products, all vying for a share in the fiercely competitive warm drink market.
But are warm drinks really selling well? Although the warm drink product line continues to expand, market performance has not been as satisfactory as expected. In visits to multiple stores in third-tier cities, the author noticed that despite promotions like "second item for one yuan," "second item at 50% off for same-price items in the warm drink cabinet," and "two items at 88% off," sales remain limited. A convenience store clerk, Xiao Wang, said: "We start putting out the warm drink cabinet from November to March each year, and on average, we sell only about a dozen bottles a day. Customers buying warm drinks are relatively few; people don't have the habit of buying warm drinks, and it's mainly female consumers." Xiao Wang's words reveal an awkward reality of the warm drink market: despite continuous brand investment, consumer purchase enthusiasm is not high.
Market Cold: Multiple Factors Behind Consumer Reluctance
On a social platform, there are complaints like: "After work, I saw many new warm drinks at the convenience store downstairs and wanted to buy one to warm my hands on the way. I opened the warm drink cabinet and checked; it felt warm, but the packaging had no clear date mark, and I didn't know how long it had been heated. Who would dare buy that?" Another netizen asked: "Can plastic bottles be heated?" Behind these questions lie multiple challenges facing the warm drink market.
1. Dual Limitations of Taste and Temperature
Bottled warm drinks often undergo taste changes after heating, a major concern for consumers. For example, fruit juice warm drinks may become slightly overly sweet after heating, while some fruit-flavored drinks may turn more sour and astringent. To maintain beverage quality and stability, the temperature in warm drink cabinets is usually controlled between 40 and 55 degrees Celsius. Although this temperature range meets drinking safety standards, it fails to meet consumers' diverse temperature needs. Many consumers choose warm drinks hoping to put them in their pockets to warm their hands in cold weather. However, at the cabinet-set temperature, the drink quickly cools down in a pocket, failing to meet the need for warmth.
2. Strong Squeeze from Freshly Made Beverages
For immediate consumption needs, freshly made hot drinks seem a better choice than bottled warm drinks. Milk tea shops can innovate with new flavors and products seasonally, offering richer tastes and adjusting drink temperatures to customer preferences. Bottled warm drinks, on the other hand, have limited innovation, little flavor variation, and cool down quickly in the external environment. Competition comes not only from milk tea chains like Heytea and Naixue, but also from convenience store freshly brewed coffee, which is continuously carving into the warm drink market share. For instance, FamilyMart offers Paike Coffee, 7-Eleven has 7-coffee, and Bianlifeng has Sober Hi, typically priced at around ten to twenty yuan, making a breakfast coffee combo convenient and affordable. Clearly, compared to an ordinary bottled drink, consumers are more willing to spend a few extra yuan for better-tasting, properly heated coffee or milk tea. Bottled warm drinks lack core competitiveness in taste and temperature, intensifying market competition challenges.
3. Packaging Safety Concerns
Consumers have significant doubts about warm drink packaging, mainly worrying that plastic bottles may release harmful substances when heated, especially when packaging lacks clear heating time and date labels, further raising safety concerns. Most warm drink products use PET as packaging material, which, although heat-resistant up to 70°C, is prone to deformation at high temperatures, affecting appearance and significantly shortening shelf life to about 14 days. Compared to the 6-12 month shelf life of room-temperature beverages, the short shelf life of warm drinks undoubtedly increases management difficulty and further weakens consumer purchase confidence.
4. Channel and Cost Constraints
Due to the high maintenance costs of warm drink cabinets, small brands generally find it difficult to enter the market due to cost constraints and packaging material issues. This has led to a market where warm drink cabinets are predominantly dominated by major brands like Nongfu Spring, Suntory, Nestlé, and Uni-President. Due to cost issues, these brands focus their warm drink cabinet placements in convenience store channels, while other terminal outlets such as supermarkets and restaurants rarely have warm drink cabinets. The absence of warm drink cabinets has undoubtedly become a major bottleneck for market expansion. For terminal store owners, if brands provide subsidy support, they might consider adding warm drink cabinets. However, without such subsidies, many owners hesitate due to concerns about increased operating costs. After all, once beverages are placed in warm drink cabinets, their shelf life significantly shortens.
The Path to Breaking Through in the Warm Drink Market
Overall, there is still a large gap in the warm drink market, but to truly "warm" consumers' hearts, efforts are needed in product innovation, consumer awareness enhancement, and channel expansion.
1. Product Innovation: Seize Niche Demands
Targeting the main consumer group of warm drinks—women—brands can deeply explore and innovate around the core concepts of health and wellness. Female consumers often pay more attention to product ingredients, efficacy, and positive effects on the body. Ingredients like red dates, goji berries, and longan are always highly regarded for their nourishing properties. Incorporating these elements into warm drink products could be more attractive. For example, Genki Forest's "Zizai Shui," positioned as a Chinese-style health water, launched in February 2023 and exceeded 100 million yuan in sales within four months. Additionally, for special groups like the elderly and children, warm drink products should focus on health attributes such as low sugar and no additives, ensuring easy drinking and safety. By improving and thickening packaging materials, the safety of heating time can be enhanced, reducing the impact on taste after heating. At the same time, strictly control processing procedures to maintain product stability.
2. Enhance Consumer Awareness: Break Down Safety Concerns
Regarding the heating of bottled beverages, many consumers have concerns, and brands need to use effective strategies to eliminate misunderstandings about warm drinks. On one hand, leverage the broad influence of social media platforms to publish educational content on the safety of heating warm drink products. Based on scientific data and experiments, prove that heating product packaging at appropriate temperatures does not affect beverage safety or quality, while further improving the standardization of the warm drink market, ensuring product shelf life, and dispelling consumer doubts about heated beverages. On the other hand, organize offline activities, such as warm drink tasting sessions, allowing consumers to see and taste for themselves, strengthening communication with consumers and deepening their recognition of warm drink products.
3. Optimize Channel Layout and Increase Coverage
To effectively boost warm drink sales, the most important thing is to distribute the products widely so consumers can see them; only then can purchases and repeat purchases occur. Therefore, optimizing channel layout, increasing the number of warm drink cabinets in terminal stores, and improving coverage are key to increasing warm drink sales. On one hand, consider developing more economical and efficient maintenance technologies for warm drink cabinets, reducing maintenance costs, and creating more energy-efficient warm drink equipment, allowing more small brands to enter the market and increasing market vitality. On the other hand, establish partnerships with more chain supermarkets, restaurants, and other terminal stores, providing subsidies to encourage them to install warm drink cabinets, expanding coverage and ensuring products reach consumers more broadly.
Final Thoughts
In today's consumer market, consumer needs are no longer limited to cost-performance ratio but place greater emphasis on emotional experience and spiritual comfort. Especially in cold weather, warm drinks are not just a choice to warm the mouth and hands but also a dual pursuit of health and inner warmth. Therefore, brands need to innovate products, optimize experiences, understand consumer needs for healthy warm drinks, and establish emotional resonance with consumers, truly making warm drinks "warm" their hearts.