In recent years, coffee has been favoured by Chinese young office workers due to its good efficacy in refreshing and awakening. The Chinese coffee market has experienced significant growth, reaching CNY 200.7 billion in 2022 and estimated to increase by 21.56% to CNY 369.3 billion in 2025. [1] With winter on the horizon, coffee brands are preparing to captivate consumers with a fresh wave of enticing offerings. Kamen Club has summarized the recent coffee product launches and identified several trends. [2] In this article, ChemLinked further analyses these trends based on the market response in China.
Trend 1: Widely Addition of Osmanthus Blossom
With fascinating flavour, osmanthus flower is favoured by many Chinese people. Since it generally blossoms in September and October, plentiful coffee brands launching products during this period prefer adding osmanthus blossom to their offerings. For instance, Starbucks unveiled an osmanthus-flavoured mousse espresso, in which osmanthus-flavoured syrup is added to mix with coffee and milk. Nowwa Coffee extracted the juice of superior osmanthus and added it with honey to the brand’s latte product, offering consumers a refreshingly sweet coffee with a rich osmanthus aroma. Moreover, Luckin Coffee rolled out a product that blended latte with osmanthus longjing tea, a type of scented tea made from osmanthus flowers and longjing green tea.
Actually, osmanthus elements have been used to coffee for a long time, but this seasonal favour is still attractive to consumers. Many osmanthus-flavoured coffee products entered the stores’ top 3 hot-selling list soon after they launched. Take one store in Changsha for example, Luckin’s osmanthus longjing latte was sold more than 40 cups per morning, with the sales volume ranking in the top 3 of the store.
Trend 2: Coffee and Alcohol Combination
As the combination of coffee and alcohol gaining popularity, the diversity of alcohols give abundant possibilities for this innovation. In this regard, the most extraordinary representative was Luckin’s baijiu-flavoured latte. In September 2023, Luckin co-branded with Kweichow Moutai, a Chinese baijiu giant, and launched a new coffee product containing less than 0.5% 53-degree baijiu. This product captured Chinese consumers’ interest and was sold above 5.42 million cups on the first day of its launch, with sales exceeding CNY 100 million. Manner, another Chinese prominent coffee brand, introduced an Americano with whisky. Furthermore, Peet’s Coffee opened a new store with Hope & Sesame, a bar, supplying coffee and spirit speciality, such as Cocoa Espresso Martini, with gin, espresso, liqueur, cocoa and almond as ingredients.
In most consumers’ opinion, coffee and alcohol are two food categories with entirely different functions and tastes. The concoction of them is likely to generate their curiosity to experience the products. Moreover, coffee brands’ cooperation with prominent alcohol brands can also raise some consumers’ interest in products since it decreases the consumption threshold of expensive alcohols. For instance, although Moutai’s baijiu products are too expensive for consumers to purchase, the cost of baijiu-flavoured latte is within their affordable range.
Trend 3: Creative Utilisation of Spices
Apart from common spices like cinnamon, niche spices such as rosemary, basil, ginger, citronella, etc., have been used to make distinctive coffee products. For example, M Stand, a Chinese chain coffee brand, launched a Tom Yam Gong flavour coffee, combining Americano with citronella, pandan and lemon. Manner unveiled an Americano product with ginger flavour, made by pouring hot espresso into the ginger sparkling water. The encounter of these two liquids can produce a large amount of bubbles, which are easy to swell and spray like an “explosion” under external force like stirring, shaking, etc. Therefore, during the manufacturing and consuming processes, the coffee is mostly likely to explode. This intriguing experience appeals to many Chinese consumersand becomes a hot topic on social media.
Generally, the use of spicescan infuse coffee products with selling points and novelty, thereby enhancing their appeal to customers. But the taste of the final product remains of significant importance to consumers. If the added spices fail to offer enjoyable flavours, it can may result in an adverse effect. For instance, Starbucks’s two new varieties of iced shaken espresso (ISE), tomato rosemary and orange basil ISE, were criticised by Chinese consumers, as many felt that these new products tasted like liquid Italian spaghetti with meat sauce.
Trend 4: Emerging New Plant-based Milk
Two new plant-based ingredients—rice milk and Chinese water chestnut milk emerged in China’s coffee market. Rice milk, benefiting from its mild taste, pairs well with various flavours in both cold and hot drinks. Cotti Coffee recently rolled out three rice milk lattes with original, coconut and citrus flavours. The smooth and slight sweet taste of this milk type well balances coffee’s bitterness. Chinese water chestnut milk offers a thick texture, fresh taste and unique aroma. When combined with coffee, it brings about a harmonious and soft flavour profile. In the autumn equinox of this year, M Stand introduced a Chinese water chestnut latte product.
Currently, comparing to Chinese water chestnut, rice milk is more widely added to beverages like coffee and tea. In addition, it can become a kind of beverage itself and be consumed with oats, red beans, etc. At present, Chinese consumers are fond of rice milk related products due to their good tastes and friendliness to digestion. A Chinese beverage brand focusing on rice milk products named Laibeimiyin revealed that the average daily sale of its hero product oat rice milk reached 350 cups.
Trend 5: Coffee plus Tropical Fruits
Tropical fruits provide coffee brands with another avenue for innovation. At present, avocado and durian are commonly used in the coffee. For instance, Nowwa Coffee blended avocado, coconut milk and iced coffee together. Lucky Cup mixed durian with latte, adding more flavours to the product. Some brands also tried to apply new niche tropical fruits to coffee products, such as olive and Indian gooseberry. M Stand jointly introduced a speciality containing nuts, olives and sparkling water with Breitling, a Switzerland watch brand. Goodme, a Chinese domestic milk tea brand, unveiled an Americano product with Indian gooseberry and lemon. The liquid coffee’s bitterness, lemon’s sourness and Indian gooseberry’s sweetness and freshness endow the product with a multi-layer taste.
Mintel’s investigation indicated that more than a quarter of Chinese urban coffee consumers aged 20-24 preferred coffee products with less bitter taste. [3] Therefore, adding fruits with sweet and/or sour tastes to balance coffee’s bitterness and enrich its flavour is helpful to increase consumers’ purchasing possibilities. According to YICAI, half of Seesaw Coffee’s revenue comes from products with seasonal flower and fruit flavours. [4] In recent years, various coffee brands launched a wide range of fruit-flavoured coffee. In 2021, nearly half the new products of coffee brands were fruit-flavoured coffee. [5]
Trend 6: Fruit-Flavoured “Sparkling Coffee”
Adding fruit-flavoured sparkling water to coffee not only alleviates coffee’s bitterness but also increases the novelty of products, which is also welcomed by Chinese consumers. Seesaw Coffee blended tonic water, blueberry and mulberry juice, and liquid coffee extracted from citrus-flavoured coffee beans together, creating a product with a sparkling and fruity taste through the embrace of bubbles and fruits. Moreover, distinctive sparkling coffee can be forged by adding sparkling water with different fruit flavours. For instance, Manner had diverse sparking Americano products with lemon and pomelo flavour, grape flavour, etc.
Indeed, the six coffee trends represented brands’ innovative approaches to developing products that appeal to consumers. In the future, fueled by the promising market potential of the coffee industry, it is anticipated that brands will continue to introduce intriguing new coffee products.
**Disclaimer: The cover image and all images used in the article are from the Internet.
Notes:
ChemLinked provides market intelligence services including market analysis, brand strategy, competitive analysis and consumer research, If you are interested in these aspects, please contact us by email contact@chemlinked.com or tel +86 (0) 571 8609 4444. For more details about the Chinese coffee market, please see Chinese Coffee Industry Market Insights and Consumer Analysis.
