FamilyMart Opens Boutique Coffee Shop! Is This Set to Compete with 7-Eleven?

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FamilyMart Opens Coffee Shop!

FamilyMart's coffee brand Let's Café has been cultivating the coffee field for as long as 16 years. Now, FamilyMart's first independent coffee experience store has officially opened, marking further progress in the coffee domain.

On December 22nd, the Let's Café PLUS store located at No. 71, Section 2, Zhongshan North Road, Taipei began trial operations. This is FamilyMart's first independent coffee experience store. According to reports, the current business hours are from 7:30 AM to 9:00 PM. After several days of trial operation, it will enter the formal business stage on December 26th.

FamilyMart was founded in 1972 and is a Japanese chain convenience store group. Its main products include common convenience store items such as beverages, snacks, bento boxes, magazines, and comics. In August 1988, FamilyMart expanded into the Taiwan region of China, establishing its first store in Zhongshan District, Taipei. The store was jointly established by Japan's FamilyMart and Taiwan's Hefeng Enterprise Group.

Taiwan's FamilyMart launched the coffee brand Let's Café in 2006, while Mainland China's FamilyMart launched ParCafé. This was positioned to compete with CITY CAFE, which belongs to the rival convenience store brand 7-ELEVEN. The opening of Let's Café PLUS this time also marks another step forward for the brand.

In 2018, Taiwan's FamilyMart, with the goal of creating "a convenience store within a coffee shop," opened its first Let's Café flagship store in Taipei. However, this store was a quick coffee shop attached to a FamilyMart convenience store.

The Let's Café flagship store specifically targets urban consumers' demands for coffee taste and light food spaces. In addition to introducing single-origin beans typically found in specialty coffee shops, such as Yirgacheffe, Golden Mandheling, and Alishan, it also heavily invested in importing the "Coffee Master" professional pour-over coffee machine costing millions and UCC's globally patented foam coffee machine.

According to reports, the annual sales of Let's Café coffee in Taiwan's FamilyMart have already reached 160 million cups. The goal is to achieve annual sales of 200 million cups by 2023, with the annual growth rate of single-origin coffee reaching 15%-20%. Years of deep cultivation and astonishing sales have given the brand enough confidence to open independent stores.

Store Design and Features

The design of the Let's Café PLUS store completely avoids FamilyMart's green color, instead adopting dark blue as the main color tone, which is Let's Café's brand color. The store area spans over 130 square meters and provides 30 seats. The internal space is square, rectangular, and very bright, with extensive use of wooden elements, creating an atmosphere that makes people want to stay longer.

Menu and Offerings

The store offers several series including single-origin coffee, cold drip, bubble coffee, Americano, honey Americano, single-origin Yirgacheffe, and cocktail coffee. Single-origin prices range from NT$80-500 (RMB 18-115). Daily Americano and latte cost NT$100 and NT$130 respectively, all within normal price ranges.

The most expensive coffee beverage is NT$500. This coffee can be described as extremely rare - it's a limited-edition cold drip coffee made with beans called "Taiwan Yunlin Gukeng Geisha." It's available in limited quantities daily. If you want a hot drip coffee made with these beans, it costs NT$400.

Of course, if you don't like coffee, that's fine too. The store also offers several types of Twinings tea beverages, as well as freshly made smoothies and milk drinks, such as blueberry banana milk smoothies, seasonally limited strawberry milk smoothies, etc. All dairy products used are from small farmers' fresh milk.

For light food, there are nearly 30 options including honey pancakes, chocolate, mentaiko cheese, cream puffs, salads, and sandwiches, with prices ranging from NT$70-250 (RMB 15-60). The overall value for money is quite good.

Let's Café PLUS also continues FamilyMart's core environmental philosophy, providing environmental measures such as free rental of reusable takeaway cups, discounts for bringing your own eco-friendly cup, and wheat-based eco-friendly straws.

Image source: Internet

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