Has %Arabica's Traffic Code Lost Its Effect?

Once, just a simple percentage sign, sitting inside felt quite high-end. This specialty coffee brand, using a percentage sign as its logo, became a representative of the internet celebrity coffee wave. Little do people know that %Arabica, despite its Japanese appearance, is actually a specialty coffee brand that started in Hong Kong, China in 2013.

After a year of lukewarm reception, %Arabica's founder Kenneth Shoji collaborated with World Latte Art Champion Junichi Yamaguchi and Japanese architectural designer Koji Kato. %Arabica became known to more people, and stores began to proliferate. Among those who visited the stores for check-ins and consumption, besides coffee enthusiasts, there were also many who came for its unique architectural space design.

Architectural space design can bring huge traffic to a coffee shop in a short period. The first %Arabica in mainland China was located on Wukang Road in Shanghai, and on its opening day, it attracted many people to queue up for check-ins.

Compared to coffee, %Arabica has taken space design to the extreme, so much so that many netizens jokingly call it "a design company delayed by coffee." With its white and natural wood color base elements, combined with different space designs featuring large transparent and bright glass windows, it creates a clean and bright atmosphere, attracting many people to visit and consume.

Currently, %Arabica has opened 109 stores across 17 countries and regions worldwide, with 57 stores in the China region.

What makes %Arabica even more famous is its unique space design style. Its coffee products mainly include milk coffee and Americano based on espresso, other beverages such as lemonade, sparkling water, etc., as well as coffee beans.

Compared to other coffee brands, such as the commercial chain Luckin Coffee, which uses espresso as its base and pairs it with different flavors like raw coconut latte and meteorite latte; similarly, MANNER and SEESAW, which also target the specialty coffee market, have pour-over coffee on their menus, and the selection of coffee bean origins is richer.

In today's Chinese coffee market, consumers are more enthusiastic about diversified choices of coffee beverages and coffee bean types. The foreign coffee brand Blue Bottle Coffee, which also has a celebrity effect, recently entered Shanghai and triggered "long queues" situations.

Compared to when it first entered the Chinese market, %Arabica specialty coffee brand no longer pursues niche as it once did. While accelerating its expansion speed, its brand's celebrity halo has been gradually weakened. From store selections that emphasized bourgeois and exquisite art galleries and street-side buildings, to now more commercial shopping malls and office buildings. %Arabica is exploring more possibilities while expanding its target customers.

Compared to other specialty coffee brands, %Arabica's coffee products are too monotonous. Coffee origins and coffee beverage styles have not changed for a long time. Although this brand often holds latte art competitions and some latte art teaching courses to close the distance with coffee consumers, such activities have not broken through the thin film between ordinary consumers and specialty coffee.

Compared to latte art, pour-over coffee is more popular. Knowledge and techniques about pour-over coffee, as well as information about coffee bean origins, are abundant on social network brands; the popularity of coffee beans from Yunnan, China has also risen in recent years. Blue Bottle and Starbucks have successively released pour-over coffee tutorials on social platforms. Compared to the former two, %Arabica is somewhat inferior.

Chinese local specialty coffee brands have received multiple rounds of financing, and their store locations and quantities are expanding rapidly. Under the repeated pandemic situation, even Starbucks saw a 14% decline in same-store consumption in the first quarter of fiscal 2022. It can be seen that %Arabica's future in the Chinese market is full of challenges.

Image source: Internet

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