🟢 The war for coffee
The war for coffee supremacy has been fierce for many years in China, and it's still heating up. Whether you're in the food market or not, this is one of the best proxies to understand Chinese consumers and our global economy.
Please think about what you want of Starbucks but since its reinvention as a global brand in the early 2000s, this coffee shop franchise now generates more yearly revenues than McDonald's. And in China, one of the enormous consumer battlefields on the planet, the war for coffee supremacy is raging (Shanghai is supposed to be now the city with the most coffee shops in the world).
By 2011, the company had 500 stores in China and spearheaded a revolution in consumer behaviors. Not only was drinking coffee now a thing but paying a hefty premium on branded takeaway coffee was a status symbol, while hanging in a Starbucks with a laptop was a sign of entrepreneurial spirit.
Soon after, many copycat businesses appeared, unable to duplicate Starbucks' glamour until Luckin stepped into the game.