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This time, Snow King launched a one-dollar ice cup. Making money is secondary, and declaring war is the core purpose.

A few days ago, Mixue Ice City launched the "Snow King Ice Cup" in its stores, selling it for only one yuan, and it sparked heated discussions online.

A friend asked me if the milk tea industry was going to be involuted again. I told him that there were two problems with what he said. The milk tea industry had already been involuted a long time ago, and mainstream brands only had two options: either be killed by others or be killed by themselves.

But this time, people from Mixue Bingcheng didn’t go there for the milk tea at all. They are just not of the same species.

What Mixue Bingcheng really cares about is convenience stores.

In my opinion, convenience stores are the invisible disruptors of China's offline commerce. If there is anyone who can really make Mixue Bingcheng feel uncomfortable, it must be convenience stores.

This time, Snow King launched a one-dollar ice cup. Making money is secondary, and declaring war is the core purpose.

Moreover, the ice cup is actually the most representative of the convenience store business model. To defeat the convenience store in the ice cup is to pry open the underlying business logic of the convenience store, and the strategic significance is far beyond the imagination of many people.

So even though many people don't think highly of the "Snow King Ice Cup", I think that, regardless of the effectiveness, Mixue Ice City's strategic intentions are very clear, and its moves are steady, accurate and ruthless enough.

Commercial competition requires this kind of fatal spirit.

01

What is the killer feature of Mixue Ice City? Many people say it is cheap, which is wrong.

Its advantage is not that it is the cheapest milk tea, but that it is the most valuable drink you can buy under 10 yuan.

Especially when you walk into a convenience store and find that even mineral water costs at least three yuan, and many beverages cost six or seven yuan or even close to ten yuan, you can't help but torture your soul:

At this price, why don’t I go drink Mixue Bingcheng?

After all, Mixue Bingcheng's drinks are freshly made, made on the spot by the store clerk, added with ice cubes and toppings, and then packaged and handed to you. Apart from anything else, the sense of value alone cannot be compared with drinks on the shelf.

Besides, in the summer, drinking beverages is all about cooling down. If you order a beverage at Mixue Ice City, they will actually put ice cubes in it, and you will feel really cool after taking a sip.

What about beverages in convenience stores? The lowest temperature of the refrigerator can only be set to 5 degrees Celsius. If it is hot, the beverages sell well, the store clerks frequently restock the refrigerators, and the refrigerators are opened and closed. It is not certain whether the 5 degrees Celsius can be guaranteed for you.

This is the real difference in taste.

This alone ensures that Mixue Bingcheng has a head start in the summer cold drink competition with convenience stores.

But the popularity of ice cups has changed the competitive landscape.

The ice cup is truly the hidden king of convenience stores. It is inconspicuous but the sales leader.

From this perspective, he is indeed a tough guy who deserves the Snow King's serious handling.

In economics, ice cups are a typical complementary good, which means that buying them alone is not very useful, but when sold together with other goods, they can exponentially enhance their effectiveness.

Just like dumplings go with vinegar, roast duck goes with pancakes, and asparagus goes with shark girl, ice cups are used to go with drinks.

And it is not picky about what you drink. Whether it is soda or juice, tea or milk, the ice cup can take you flying.

Even some drinks, like Coke, are completely different with or without ice.

Therefore, the core purpose of convenience stores selling ice cups is to promote the sales of beverages.

The first people to come up with new ideas for ice cups were Koreans.

As we all know, iced American coffee runs in the blood of young Koreans. The per capita coffee consumption is nearly three times the global average, and the amount of coffee consumed is even higher than in China.

In addition to freshly brewed coffee in coffee shops, a large part of the coffee consumed by Koreans is bagged coffee sold in convenience stores. After all, the price can be much cheaper this way.

Moreover, Koreans have a special hobby for iced drinks. No matter it is summer or winter, there must be some ice in the coffee cup.

So in 2012, CU, South Korea's largest convenience store chain, started selling ice cups and bagged coffee together for the first time.

This selling method quickly spread to neighboring Japan and China. In East Asia, where the convenience store culture is well developed, ice cups, beverages and convenience stores have become an unbreakable iron triangle.

In Japan, the annual sales of ice cups in convenience stores reach 2.57 billion cups, which is better than bottled water. In South Korea, ice cups are always at the top of the best-selling list of major convenience stores.

02

In contrast, the popularity of ice cups in China came later.

Probably during the period when convenience stores were growing most rapidly, ice cups also began to enter the domestic convenience store market on a large scale, occupying a place in freezers filled with ice cream and cold drinks.

If you go to Convenience Bee frequently, you will feel it very clearly. If you want to buy iced coffee, the clerk will directly ask you to take an ice cup from the freezer, and then make the coffee yourself under the coffee machine.

This ice cup can also be sold separately, the medium cup is 3 yuan, and the large cup is 4 yuan. Compared with Mixue Ice City, it is a sky-high price.

The price is not cheap, but it does not mean that it is not cost-effective. It depends on who you are comparing it with.

If you think of it as mineral water frozen into ice, then others sell 500 ml for 2 yuan, while your 200g ice cup sells for 3 or 4 yuan, which is really not cost-effective. But if you think of it as a substitute for freshly made drinks, it is completely different.

If you buy coffee outside, even the cheapest cup of coffee will cost you 9.9 yuan, and expensive ones like 15 or 20 yuan are normal.

But if you buy a three-dollar ice cup and take it home, add a two-dollar freeze-dried powder or cold brew liquid, and then add some water, congratulations, you only spent four or five dollars and got a decent iced American coffee.

With this calculation, it is extremely cost-effective.

If you are more creative and add half a cup of grapefruit juice and half a cup of oolong tea, or use cola with concentrated lemon juice, or milk with jasmine tea, the cost is just two bottles of drink plus an ice cup, no more than fifteen yuan. But what you get, in addition to a cost-effective DIY special drink, is the ritual sense of exquisite life.

At this point, you can probably understand why the ice cup has been upgraded from an inconspicuous invisible king in convenience stores to the top summer cold drink in the summer of 2024. It relies on a cost-effectiveness.

This has touched the sore spot of Mixue Ice City.

The main price range of Mixue Bingcheng is 5 to 10 yuan, and the main price range of ordinary drinks plus an ice cup is also 5 to 10 yuan.

In addition to ordinary drinks, Mixue Ice City has added a sense of value and ritual to freshly made drinks. Ordinary drinks plus an ice cup also have a sense of ritual.

Mixue Ice City can provide the ultimate icy drinks in the summer, and it can also make ordinary drinks by adding an ice cup.

Originally, everyone was competing on a differentiated basis, but the popularity of ice cups changed the landscape, and convenience stores and Mixue Ice City formed a comprehensive competition.

Given this situation, if Mixue Ice City does not take action, it will no longer be the Snow King that has dominated the beverage industry for the past twenty years.

So we see that Mixue Ice City acted decisively and opened the eyes of its competitors and consumers with its one-dollar ice cup. As long as the price butcher starts the chainsaw, the ensuing commercial war will probably be a bloodbath.

03

Of course, one point we must mention is that although the ice cups of Mixue Ice City and the ice cups sold in convenience stores look the same and are used in similar ways, they are not the same species in the food industry.

The ice cups in convenience stores are industrial-grade fast-moving consumer goods. Their scientific name should be edible ice, which is a close relative of ice cream and popsicles. Their production must also meet a series of cold drink industry standards. Adding the costs of logistics and warehousing, it is difficult to achieve a price of one dollar per cup.

But Mixue Ice City is different. Ice cubes are the raw materials that milk tea and coffee shops need to open their doors to do business. If you ask the clerk for them, they can even give you a bag of ice cubes in a plastic bag for free.

Therefore, Mixue Ice City has the confidence to set a "rule-breaking" low price because when it comes to ice making, the catering industry has an advantage over fast-moving consumer goods. This is a cross-industry dimensionality reduction attack.

Besides, Mixue Ice City does not expect to make money from ice cups. What it wants is that the ice cups in convenience stores cannot make money, and it wants those consumers who go to convenience stores to DIY drinks to turn around and consider Snow King’s ice cream and lemonade.

One thing that everyone may overlook is that in today's domestic market, in the ready-made beverage track represented by milk tea and coffee, the biggest variable is not the players within the industry, but the cross-border players from outside.

This year, KFC started to promote its coffee at 9.9 yuan, and McDonald's also used unprecedented efforts to promote its own McCafé. In the convenience store sector, FamilyMart even started to promote a coffee + sandwich combo at 9.8 yuan, hoping to regain the right to speak in the coffee market by using breakfast as an entry point.

The coffee industry has been fighting a price war for a year, and Luckin Coffee has already shown signs of fatigue. It was supposed to have reached its goal by this year, but once external disruptors enter the market, this price war may become a protracted one.

The coffee market is like this. As the leader in the tea beverage market, Mixue Bingcheng will never remain indifferent and allow these barbarians from other industries to knock on its door.

While ice cups are just becoming popular, quickly launch a price war to suppress competitors and destroy this immature seedling.

Everyone knows what the Snow King is thinking.

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