Special tuning is the best breakthrough categoryGu Ming, the "special manager", has released a new explosive product.Recently, the social media platform has been flooded with the "Instant Rice" series
Special tuning is the best breakthrough category
Gu Ming, the "special manager", has released a new explosive product.
Recently, the social media platform has been flooded with the "Instant Rice" series: Thai rice milk coffee mixed with a whole rice ice cream has been rated by netizens as the "most popular coffee in Guming".
From bitter tangerines to instant rice, Gu Ming successfully cut the cake on the coffee track by continuously breaking the circle with special notes. A "coffee promotion battle" for tea beverage brands is fully underway.
Mi Latte will soon flood the screen
Guming has transformed from a milk tea brand to a tea coffee brand
Guming coffee has hit the market again.
Last week, Guming launched a new series of rice products nationwide, including instant rice latte, all ice rice American style, and salty cheese Thai rice.
This coffee series with rice as the protagonist unexpectedly became popular after the summer "off-season new release".
Among them, the most highly praised is the Mi Latte, which is made of rice milk ground from Thai jasmine rice as the base and topped with a whole rice ice cream. It costs 9.9 yuan per cup, and its appearance and value are directly enhanced.
Image source: Xiaohongshu blogger @ Dutch Flying with Mist Dew, authorized
The flavor remains online without additional sugar, with a distinct sweetness of grains and a granular texture of fine rice grains. It has been dubbed by netizens as "liquid rice pudding" and "super unbeatable explosive and delicious", receiving over 3000 likes and many bloggers replicating it.
In fact, this product had already made an early appearance at the Guming Partner Conference in May and sparked a round of discussions.
At the conference, Gu Ming proposed for the first time to directly double the proportion of coffee revenue to 20% -25%, and Immediately Youmi is another hot selling seed after Bitter Gan Lai and 1000 Milk Cap Coffee.
By the end of 2025, over 12000 Guming stores nationwide will be fully equipped with coffee machines, with daily coffee sales reaching 70-80 cups per store. The proportion of coffee to store GMV has risen to about 15%.
Based on the current scale, the coffee category will leap from a billion level supplementary business to an independent growth engine with billions of imagination space.
At the April performance meeting, Wang Yun'an, CEO of Guming, accurately positioned the future direction: "We hope our track will shift from milk tea to tea cafes
The penetration of tea beverage brands represented by Guming into the coffee market has shifted from peripheral exploration to positive assault.
A fierce "coffee promotion battle" is sweeping across the beverage market.
From defense to counterattack
Special tuning is the best breakthrough category
Many senior researchers believe that specialty coffee is becoming the best breakthrough category in the battle to upgrade coffee.
Shanghai Auntie: Over 150 cups of specially brewed coffee have been served in a single store
In May of this year, Shanghai Auntie launched the "Four layered Fragrant Coconut Maqiduo". This coffee is infused with four layers of flavors: coconut water, coconut cloud top, coconut sauce, and coconut flakes, combined with Arabica coffee beans freshly ground and extracted. As soon as it was launched, it became the best-selling coffee product in the brand's history.
According to exclusive information from Kemen, this coffee ranks first in both repurchase and new customer acquisition categories, with many stores selling over 150 cups. This cup of specially brewed coffee, which is not inferior to a boutique coffee shop, is based on the typical research and development thinking of tea beverage compounding.
By the end of 2025, over 85% of Shanghai Auntie's stores have completed the installation of coffee machines, and coffee sales in some stores in northern experimental provinces account for over 15%.
Chabaidao: Coffee business covers over 2700 stores
Last month, Chabaidao launched its first co branded coffee series with the Chinese animation IP "Mortal": five special coffee series: Kale Avocado Latte, Pistachio Coconut American, Pistachio Genting Latte, Vanilla Ice Cream Latte, and Fresh Orange C Latte.
Whether it's the combination of avocado and kale, or the addition of ice cream and milk cap, they all introduce the gameplay of tea drinks, making a cup of special coffee interesting, flavorful, good-looking, and delicious.
Multiple franchisees have reported an increase in foot traffic during the joint venture period, with a significant increase in order volume during the breakfast period. Franchisees have reported that daily coffee sales continue to rise, with some stores exceeding 100 cups per day.
Data shows that the number of stores covered by Chabaidao Coffee's business has increased from about 200 at the beginning of the year to over 2700 (as of June), far exceeding the target set at the performance meeting.
Honey Snow Ice City: Pilot stores have an average of 177 cups of coffee per day
The latest coffee pilot data from Meixue Bingcheng shows that the daily coffee sales of multiple stores account for over 20%, with some stores selling over 9000 cups in 53 days of new listings, resulting in an average daily coffee sales of 177 cups.
On the coffee menu of Mi Xue, traditional Italian coffee is extremely rare, while specialty coffees such as Lanxiang Oolong Fresh Milk Latte, Stir Fry Lemon Pomelo Coffee, Dubai Rich Chocolate Top Coffee, and True Orange American style coffee dominate the absolute majority.
When Guming adds Thai fragrant rice to her latte, Chabaidao turns pistachios into cloud tops, and Shanghai Auntie upgrades her raw coconut latte with quadruple coconut, it is a clear signal that tea beverage brands have shifted from defending against customer loss in the early days to taking the initiative in making coffee.
Everyone is launching a collective counterattack against coffee giants on the differentiated track of specialty coffee.
Definition of Chinese style coffee
Being reshaped by tea drinks
According to the "2026 New Tea Beverage Industry White Paper" by Zhuoshi Consulting, the growth rate of the freshly ground coffee market from 2019 to 2025 will reach 27.5%, while the growth rate of freshly made tea beverages during the same period will be 17.8%. The sharp difference in growth rate allows all tea beverage brands to see the strategic value of coffee.
But tea beverage brands did not choose to engage in a direct price war, but instead used their best methods – flavor innovation, supply chain reuse, emotional value, social communication – to enter the specialty coffee track.
Gu Ming's use of "bitter citrus", "1000 times milk cap", and "rice immediately" proves that tea drink brands can make special notes that are not inferior to boutique coffee; The pistachio cloud top latte from Cha Bai Dao proves the enormous potential of coffee topper gameplay; Shanghai Auntie's small butter latte and quadruple coconut flavored coconut latte prove that the classic flavor of "tea drinking" also has a market.
Specially brewed coffee is no longer a "transitional solution" for tea brands to make coffee, but a "breakthrough category".
According to the "2026 China Beverage Industry Product Report" by Kemen, more than 90% of the 691 newly launched coffee products in 2025 are flavor/creative products, namely specialty coffee.
After several years of competition and replacement, it seems that there is a new answer to the question of 'what kind of coffee is suitable for the Chinese market'. Integrating different flavors and creativity into specialty coffee beyond coffee and milk may become the core idea for making coffee in tea drinks.
In the next three years, we may see:
1. The proportion of SKUs for specialty coffee in tea beverage stores continues to increase, shifting from a supplementary category to a pillar category;
2. The parallel development of "coffee specialty" and "tea specialty" forms a complete "specialty beverage" track;
3. More "non coffee" ingredients such as grains, nuts, spices, flowers, and herbs have been introduced into coffee, completely restructuring the coffee perception of Chinese consumers.
In this counterattack led by specialty coffee, the definition of Chinese coffee may also be reshaped by this year's tea beverage brands.
This article is from WeChat official account "Kamen Club" (ID: Kamen Club), the author: Guojun, 36 krypton is authorized to release.
Liaoning ICP Security No. 21122402000217