Why More Tea and Coffee Chains Are Launching Drinks With Neither Tea Nor Coffee

Brief (coffeeyo.com): In recent years China’s tea-drink and coffee tracks boomed into a white-collar lifestyle, but this summer something is off: more and more new products from tea and coffee chains contain neither tea nor coffee. This analysis explains why brands are pivoting to caffeine-free, all-day, wellness-oriented drinks.

In recent years, as China’s economy has raced ahead, the tea-drink and coffee tracks have been on fire — buying a coffee on the commute to perk up, or a milk tea in the afternoon to comfort oneself, became the lifestyle of urban white-collar workers. But this summer something seems off: more and more new products from tea and coffee shops contain neither tea nor coffee. What is going on?

I. Are more and more tea-and-coffee shops selling neither tea nor coffee?

According to a Blue Whale Finance report reposted from Tea-Coffee Observation, among the new products of a growing number of tea-and-coffee brands, there is neither tea nor coffee. Data from Yilan Business shows that from January to June 2026, 25 tea-and-coffee brands collectively launched 88 tea-free, coffee-free drinks, with 27 new items in March alone — a phased peak — and new-product counts stayed high thereafter.

This shows that tea-free, coffee-free drinks are no longer a tentative niche-category probe, but have entered a normalized new-product stage. June data further confirms this: six brands launched eight such new products; although down from March’s peak, they remained running at a high level.

Among them, Shuyi Burning Grass Jelly launched three products — ice-cream watermelon grass-jelly coconut, ice-cream watermelon coconut, and ice-cream mango sago — all adding a vanilla-flavored ice-cream scoop; Cotti Coffee launched “Live Lychee Light Coconut Water,” and Chabaidao added “Buddha’s Hand Lemonade.”

By product base and form, today’s mainstream tea-free, coffee-free drinks fall into five categories: milk-based, plant-based, fruit-and-vegetable juices, sparkling water, and dessert-style meal-replacement drinks — a rich variety that fits different consumers’ drinking preferences.

II. What is really behind the innovation at tea shops?

Tea shops and coffee shops today seem increasingly “not doing their proper job.” You go to buy a coffee and the clerk recommends an avocado yogurt smoothie; you go for afternoon tea and find the best-selling items on the menu are various “wellness waters” containing red dates and longan. What is going on?

First, ever-intensifying homogeneous involution is forcing tea-and-coffee firms to transform. In past years, seeing tea drinks and coffee boom, everyone rushed to open stores, and capital poured in madly. The result? Tea shops on every street, a coffee stand at every corner. This explosive growth brought the direct consequence of severe homogeneous involution. You sell raw-coconut latte, I sell raw-coconut latte; you launch “multi-meat grape,” I launch “multi-meat grape.” The innovation threshold was dragged to rock bottom — you launch a new product today, and tomorrow neighbor Wang can make an identical one.

The consequences of this homogeneous competition are very serious: the growth ceiling of a single store is extremely obvious. When a brand’s product moat disappears, consumers lose loyalty — I go wherever it’s cheaper, wherever the line is shorter. At this point, if a brand wants to break the growth ceiling, to survive or even thrive, it must break out and must diversify. So the “not selling tea or coffee” we see is actually the inevitable choice brands make to find a second growth curve. Expanding into caffeine-free drinks is to capture those who don’t drink coffee or tea, to pull those lost customers back into the store. This is not “not doing their proper job”; it is “self-rescue” in a stock-competition environment.

Caffeine-free wellness drinks on display

Second, breaking through the time barrier of consumption scenarios has become a common choice. Friends who have done physical retail know that a store’s biggest cost is rent, and rent is calculated by the day — if you can only do the morning rush, you are probably losing money.

Traditional tea-and-coffee products, whether tea or coffee, share a natural “Achilles’ heel”: they contain caffeine. Caffeine is great for staying alert, but at night it becomes a “roadblock” to consumption. In the evening, when consumers want a drink, they hesitate: if I drink this coffee, will I not sleep again tonight? This psychological barrier directly causes traditional tea-and-coffee shops to miss the nighttime consumption scene.

That is real, tangible business — how could the brands not be envious? To maximize store productivity per square meter and earn back the day’s rent, brands began racking their brains to build so-called “all-day consumption solutions.” Have you noticed that many tea-and-coffee shops now push “morning C, evening A” — selling coffee in the morning and alcoholic drinks in the evening, or launching various “goodnight drinks” based on milk and paired with red dates, longan, even millet?

These products share a common trait: they contain no caffeine, and even tout sleep aid and wellness. This move is actually clever — it squeezes the time value of the same store dry, letting it catch the time-pressed worker in the morning, the social crowd wanting to relax and chat in the evening, even the soul needing comfort late at night. This is using product-structure adjustment to trade for time extension; the business logic behind it is very clear.

Third, functional consumption is increasingly becoming mainstream

In the past, consumers entered tea-and-coffee shops mainly for a rich, distinctive drink — great taste was the only core demand. But today, the awakening of health awareness is reshaping consumption logic: young people enjoy the pleasure drinks bring while worrying about the burden of high sugar and high calories; low-calorie, low-sugar, wellness and functionality have become important criteria for choosing drinks. This shift from “taste first” to “function first” is not a niche demand but has become a mainstream consumption trend.

Constrained by ingredients and craft, traditional tea-and-coffee struggles to find a perfect balance between taste and health; the labels of high sugar and high caffeine naturally contradict today’s health needs. Caffeine-free drinks, by contrast, precisely fit this trend: replacing artificial additives with natural ingredients, meeting sugar-control needs with low-calorie formulas, and giving drinks wellness functions through components like red dates, goji berries and probiotics. When consumer demand shifts from “tasting good” to “drinking healthy and useful,” a brand that clings to the single tea-and-coffee category will inevitably fall out of step with its core customers. Expanding into caffeine-free drinks is essentially the brand’s proactive response to the consumption trend — shifting product logic from satisfying taste to meeting the dual needs of health and function, hitting consumers’ pain points with more precise products.

All-day beverage solutions at a chain store

IV. The competitive focus of tea-and-coffee brands is undergoing a fundamental shift

What wars did everyone fight in the past? Category wars. You sell tea, I sell coffee; we kept to our own lanes, or competed for market share within our respective single-item tracks. But now it’s different — competition has risen to the dimension of capturing consumers’ “all-day, all-scene” lives.

What is “all-scene”? From morning to night, from work to leisure, from quenching thirst to socializing, brands want to enclose you in their ecosystem. When a coffee shop starts selling non-coffee drinks, it is blurring the boundaries of the track; it is no longer just a place providing caffeine, but a comprehensive beverage-solution provider.

This strategic shift is, for the industry, actually a dimension-raising blow. Brands that cling to a single category and refuse to cross over may find their living space squeezed ever smaller. Because your opponent is no longer a peer, but those “giants” with strong supply-chain capabilities who can flexibly switch scenes. Future tea-and-coffee competition is not just about whose coffee beans are pricier or whose tea leaves are fresher; it is about who understands human nature better, who can fill consumers’ 24 hours more completely.

Source: Blue Whale Finance (reposted from Tea-Coffee Observation); data from Yilan Business.

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