---
title: "Sugar-Free Tea Dominates the Cooler, Competing in These 4 Areas"
description: "If you frequently visit supermarkets or convenience stores, you may have noticed a shift in the beverage cooler. The era of sugary drinks like Master Kong Iced Tea and Uni-President Assam Milk Tea is fading, replaced by a wave of new sugar-free teas. DT Finance's statistics show that in 2023, over 60% of new tea beverage products were sugar-free, with 18 brands launching 25 new sugar-free teas in 36 flavors."
author: "爱喝无糖茶的DT君"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2023-05-18"
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# Sugar-Free Tea Dominates the Cooler, Competing in These 4 Areas

> If you frequently visit supermarkets or convenience stores, you may have noticed a shift in the beverage cooler. The era of sugary drinks like Master Kong Iced Tea and Uni-President Assam Milk Tea is fading, replaced by a wave of new sugar-free teas. DT Finance's statistics show that in 2023, over 60% of new tea beverage products were sugar-free, with 18 brands launching 25 new sugar-free teas in 36 flavors.

If you frequently visit supermarkets or convenience stores, you may have noticed that the beverage cooler has changed. The era of "sweetness" once dominated by Master Kong Iced Tea and Uni-President Assam Milk Tea is fading, and now the prime spots in the beverage cooler are occupied by frequently launched sugar-free teas.
(Photo: Beverage cooler at a FamilyMart in Jing'an District, Shanghai)
DT Finance's statistics on 41 new tea beverage products in 2023 show that over 60% of innovations were in sugar-free tea (a total of 18 brands launched 25 new sugar-free tea products with 36 flavors). Not only traditional tea brands like Suntory, Master Kong, and Nongfu Spring are investing heavily in sugar-free tea, but other brands are also starting to make moves: in March this year, herbal tea brand Wanglaoji launched a new sugar-free herbal tea in a camellia flavor; Coca-Cola also welcomed spring with two new flavors of sugar-free tea—its Ayataka cold-brew series added jasmine tea and Wuyi Dahongpao; in early May, Heytea launched a bottled sugar-free tea—the Kongcha series with roasted rice and barley plant-based drink... The popularity of sugar-free tea is an indisputable fact. This time, we start with new products to see where the wind is blowing for sugar-free tea in 2023.
**Frequent New Launches of Sugar-Free Tea**
**Competing in These 4 Areas** Just as the first principle of coffee being "latte-ified" is to improve its bitterness, the first characteristic of new sugar-free tea products is using fruit and floral flavors to alleviate the bitterness of pure tea. Lemon, lychee, jasmine, and gardenia are common flavors. Additionally, some sugar-free teas incorporate fresh plants like mint and lotus leaf. For example, Linlong Tea Room's "Rose Lotus Leaf Light Tea" blends the herbal fragrance of lotus leaf with rose; Danone's new "Zhicui" herbal and floral tea drink also uses multiple teas and flowers—the yerba mate flavor adds mint, and the hibiscus flavor adds elderberry and blueberry. Their common feature is freshness and lightness, without using strong fruits or overly rich floral scents to mask the true taste of tea. Some sugar-free teas do not add fruit or floral flavors but instead restore the original tea taste through improved processes or selected tea leaves. Coca-Cola's Ayataka cold-brew series emphasizes "cold-brew process, slow brewing at low temperature," and the emerging brand "Rang Cha" (Let Tea) launched a high-mountain green tea, emphasizing "from an ecological tea garden at an altitude of over 1000 meters, 100% raw juice extraction." In addition to optimizing or innovating in taste, sugar-free tea has also elevated the "no burden" aspect: previously it was 0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories, 0 flavoring, 0 additives, and in 2023, another one was added—0 caffeine. In April, Heytea launched the "Kongcha" series with roasted rice and barley drink, and on the bottle packaging, in addition to 0 sugar, 0 calories, and 0 fat, there was an extra line: 0 caffeine, no added flavoring, can be consumed all day, "drink to feel empty." Similarly, Genki Forest also launched a new "Mai Cha" (Barley Tea) containing barley, with only six ingredients in its list: water, roasted barley, roasted corn, roasted buckwheat, vitamin C, and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Besides emphasizing 0 caffeine and being drinkable at night, Mai Cha also promoted the selling point of "replacing water" and increased the single bottle size to 600ml. At the same time, Nongfu Spring and Suntory also increased sizes: Oriental Leaf launched 900ml bottles of Qinggan Puer and Jasmine Tea, and Suntory launched a 1.25L jasmine oolong tea.
**Overall, the four characteristics of new sugar-free tea products can be summarized as: refreshing without bitterness, restoring the original tea taste, thirst-quenching without burden, and large bottles for free drinking.**
**The Popularity of Sugar-Free Tea**
**Is the Result of the Deep Link Between Sugar and Health** Sugar-free tea is not a new thing. In 1997, Japanese sugar-free tea brand Suntory entered the Chinese market. This healthy drink, which was a hit in Japan, failed in China because it was considered "tasteless" and "not tasty." In 2004, Uni-President's brand "Chaliwang" entered the mainland market. In an era dominated by iced tea, green tea, and jasmine honey tea, it promoted the concept of "tastes like freshly brewed" and "natural, sugar-free," but just seven years later, Chaliwang withdrew from the mainland market. In the same year, Nongfu Spring launched Oriental Leaf, which was once rated as one of the most unpalatable drinks in the world due to its disastrous taste. For many years afterward, the sugar-free tea market was lifeless. 2017 was a turning point. After this year, brands began to focus on sugar-free tea: in 2017, Genki Forest launched "Ran Tea"; in 2018, Coca-Cola launched "Ayataka," Xiaomi Youpin launched "Pingze Tea," and Wahaha launched "Anhua Dark Tea" and "Yi Tea"; in 2019, Uni-President launched "Chuanqi Cold-Brew Dancong Tea," and C'estbon launched "Zuowei Tea Story"... The market size of sugar-free tea is not large, but it is growing rapidly. According to the "2023 China Sugar-Free Tea Beverage Industry White Paper" by iyiou, online sales of sugar-free tea beverages were only 46.795 million yuan in 2018, and by 2022, this number had roughly increased tenfold. What happened in between?
**Stepping out of the small circle of sugar-free tea, an important conceptual shift is that health has become linked to sugar.** The first was the worldwide "anti-sugar movement." In 2009, Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of California, fired the first shot in the "anti-sugar movement": he gave a lecture titled "Sugar: The Bitter Truth," telling people how sugar harms health. In 2016, the Journal of the American Medical Association exposed a bigger scandal about sugar: "The Sugar Association had bribed Harvard researchers in 1965 to write scientific articles proving that sugar is safe and healthy, and to shift the blame for cardiovascular disease to saturated fat and cholesterol." Sugar went from sweet pleasure to a health hazard.
**While sugar became closely linked to health, more research and statistics were also reminding Chinese people of their "unhealthy" state:** In 2016, a report on global adult weight published in the medical journal The Lancet showed that China surpassed the United States to become the country with the most obese people in the world, with nearly 90 million obese people; in 2021, the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that China had the highest total number of adult diabetes cases in the world, reaching 140 million... The pandemic that began in 2019 made health increasingly important: in 2022, DT Research Institute conducted a survey on "What has the pandemic changed?" asking people what had become more important compared to before the pandemic. 60.8% chose "health," ranking first. Against the backdrop of the anti-sugar movement and the health trend, high-sugar beverages began to reduce sugar. Cola is one of the most criticized beverages. The book "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" states: "Americans' love for soda has gone from fondness to over-reliance. And nutritionists almost unanimously agree that when discussing obesity, soda is the most serious and direct cause among the 60,000 products sold in supermarkets." After the sugar scandal in 2016, Coca-Cola responded with a sugar-reduction strategy—"Between 2017 and 2019, Coca-Cola adjusted the formulas of 885 products, averaging nearly 300 formula adjustments per year, whereas in 2016, only 80 formulas were changed." Subsequently, sugar-free beverages experienced an explosion. During Tmall's 618 shopping festival in 2020, Genki Forest, known for its "sugar-free sparkling water," surpassed Coca-Cola to become the top seller in the beverage category. The sugar-free trend swept through, from carbonated drinks to sparkling water, and now it's tea's turn.
**But Sugar-Free Tea Is Not Replacing Sugary Drinks; It's More Likely Replacing Mineral Water** While sugar-free tea and sugar-free beverages are booming, sugary milk tea and cola have not declined. In 2023, sugary drinks are still being launched, but they are collectively reducing sugar, trying to provide "healthier sweetness": Nestlé's "Tea Extract" uses the slogan "low sugar, real juice," Heytea's "Light Fruit Tea" says "light sugar, light taste," and Genki Forest recently launched a slightly sweet green tea, as the name suggests, low sugar, slightly sweet... The desire for sweetness still has a place. What about sugar-free tea? It may be replacing drinking water more than sugary drinks. In April this year, Master Kong launched "Chuncui Zero Sugar High-Mountain Oolong Tea," and it introduced the term "water substitute," meaning this drink is mellow and thirst-quenching, and can be used as a substitute for drinking water. The "2023 China Sugar-Free Tea Beverage Industry White Paper" by iyiou shows that the top three taste demands of consumers for sugar-free tea all point to "tea flavor," and what they most want improved is the obvious bitter taste, followed by "other flavors overpowering the tea taste." In other words, in terms of taste, sugar-free tea is responsible for being refreshing, with a sweet aftertaste and tea flavor, which is a completely different experience from the sweet and sour, stimulating, and joyful taste of sugary ready-to-drink tea. From the perspective of drinking scenarios, sugar-free tea is more like "flavored drinking water that can be consumed daily." In fact, around 2020, there was a trend of "young people drinking tea," not by brewing tea leaves with hot water slowly, but by drinking cold-brew tea that has tea flavor and is more convenient—the "2020 Tmall Tea Industry Consumption Trend Report" shows that cold-brew tea grew nearly 10 times faster than the overall tea category in 2020, with most orders coming from post-90s and post-95s. In the past two years, compared to cold-brew tea, bottled sugar-free tea has gone a step further in convenience. Many young people have developed the habit of buying a bottle of sugar-free tea from a convenience store when thirsty, treating it as water. A post-95s netizen @Xiaomei told DT Finance that she and her colleagues like to buy sugar-free tea from convenience stores, "mainly to avoid drinking tasteless water, because drinking plain water is boring." Price is also a factor that allows people to make quick decisions when consuming. Since 2022, drinking water brands such as C'estbon and Nongfu Spring have successively raised prices, 1-yuan water is gradually disappearing, and 3 yuan has become the common price for packaged drinking water. Sugar-free tea usually costs 4-7 yuan, and in some convenience stores, there are promotions like "buy one get one free for an extra 2 yuan," which is not much different from the price of mineral water. In addition to retail in convenience stores, in larger supermarkets and online, a considerable number of people are buying sugar-free tea by the case. A heavy sugar-free tea enthusiast @Lu Youdao habitually "stockpiles" Suntory: "A case of 15 500ml bottles costs 57 yuan, which is less than 4 yuan per bottle. I drink two bottles a day, and a case doesn't last long." (Cover photo source: FamilyMart)


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