BEIJING, September 5 (TiPost)— Kweichow Moutai, China’s most valuable distilled spirit brand well-known as the national liquor, has achieved win-win results through new partnership to bolster its presence in the country’s younger generation.
Credit：Luckin Coffee
Chinese coffee chain operator Luckin Coffee announced it sold more than 54.2 million cups of the sauce-flavored latte with the sales topping RMB100 million on Monday, the first day of its launch. The new drink broke daily sales record of a single offering for the coffee company founded in 2017. That is such an outstanding result compared with previous hits, such as the cheese latte that sold 1.31 million cups on its launch day. That is also an incredible success for Kweichow Moutai Co., Ltd.
As a joint offering with Moutai, the sauce-flavored latte was priced at RMB38.00 (US$5.20) apiece, and customers can get a 50% discount for a limited time if they order it online with a coupon. Luckin also offers unique paper bags and co-branded cup sleeves for the new drink, featuring the similar structure and color setting to Moutai’s signature logo and packaging design of a combination of red, blue and white. In China’s traditional distilled liquor Baijiu, sauce, also known as sauce aroma, refers to a flavor that smells similarity to fermented bean pastes and soy sauces.
According to Luckin, each cup of the new latte is made with coffee and thick milk that contains alcohol less than 0.5% of overall content. The alcohol content comes from Feitian Moutai, the flagship Moutai offering which has 53% alcohol. Luckin and Moutai’s co-branded drink soon received welcome from Chinese consumers and ignited fervent discussion at Chinese social media. A Luckin’s store in Xidan, the traditional commercial area in downtown Beijing, has received orders of more than 500 cups in less than four hours when the new drink went on sale, according to a state-run national newspaper China Securities Journal. A worker at the store told the paper that its ordering system had suspended sales of the source-flavored latte as of 11:04 a.m. on Monday as the key ingredient --milk with Moutai spirit was sold out, and the drink was unavailable until about 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. that day.
“Can we drive a car after drinking the Moutai coffee” became the top 1 topic at Chinese Twitter-like social media on Monday, with an accumulative 600 million views from Monday to Tuesday morning. Luckin’s after service staff said minors, pregnant women, drivers and those allergic to alcohol are not recommended to the new coffee. A worker at Beijing’s transportation authority suggested consumers should not drive after drinking alcoholic beverages as they will consider drivers whose alcohol content exceeds 20 mg per 100 ml blood as driving under the influence.
China has a huge consumer base of young with a potential young drinker population of up to 490 million, according to Ries Strategic Positioning Consulting. The consulting firm estimated only 11.2% of young people prefer the spirit with an alcohol content of more than 30 percent, and 39.6% of the group, the highest proportion, prefer drinks with about 10 % of alcohol.
The partnership with Luckin marks Moutai’s latest effort to woo younger consumers. The century-long brand introduced three variations of Moutai-infused ice cream on its “i-Moutai” digital marketing platform in May, 2022. All available units were sold out within mere 51 minutes, with an impressive total of over 40,000 units sold and generating sales exceeding RMB2.5 million.
Ding Xiongjun said in the past May that the ice cream with Moutai flavor had sold nearly 10 million cups ahead of the first anniversary of the launch. The ice cream has established an extensive presence with 27 flagship ice cream stores spread across 24 provinces and municipalities throughout the country. In addition to its physical stores, the ice cream is available for purchase online through various platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, TikTok, and i-Moutai. It can also be conveniently ordered through China Merchants Bank APP mall and other banking platforms, expanding its accessibility to a wider customer base.
