How Milk Tea Addiction Turned to a Sought-After Local Café in the Northern Mindanao
It’s just a pandemic, you’ve got business!
Philippines is home to millions of solid cafephiles and milk tea aficionados. Among all of Southeast Asia, Philippines ranked second of the most number of milk tea drinkers. In 2019, a survey conducted by GrabFood, found out that Filipinos consume an average of five cups of milk tea in a month. GrabFood recorded a tremendous 3,000% increasing average growth of milk tea orders in that year.
According to GrabFood, what’s driving this growth is not just die-hard bubble tea fans who can’t go a week without drinking this sweet treat, but a growing bubble tea fan club in Southeast Asia. The number of bubble tea lovers on GrabFood grew over 12,000% in 2018 — and there’s no sign of stopping!
With increasing consumer demand, how is Southeast Asia’s bubble tea supply catching up? As of December 2018, GrabFood has close to 4,000 bubble tea outlets from a network of over 1,500 brands — a 200% growth in bubble tea outlets in Southeast Asia. This figure is crazy!
Not just Philippines, Milk Tea is a global addiction
In a report published by CNN, a recent study shows that the bubble tea industry is expected to grow by almost $2 billion to a whopping $4.3 billion by 2027.
Again, bubble tea or Milk Tea orders in Southeast Asia recorded a 3,000% increase in 2018 alone, while the drink has been popping up in menus outside of Asia for quite some time as well. Some other countries like Germany, for instance, added bubble tea to its McDonald’s menu back in 2012.
How devoted are fans of the drink? Recently in Singapore, when bubble tea shops were ordered to close temporarily to contain the spread of Covid-19, anxious crowds rushed to get their last sweet fix and bid their favorite beverage a temporary farewell. (CNN, reports).
On a business side, the data presented is a crazy opportunity to take advantage to. Jiving the hype of milk tea craze in the urban folks, we believe it’s a great opportunity to bring the madness to the remote provinces — specifically Zamboanga del Norte in the Northern Mindanao.
With a total population of 1.1 million, starting a local business with such demographics is not a bad but rather a great standpoint, plus, Zamboanga del Norte has a thriving economy.
Because there are already milk tea cafes doing good business in the area, we made sure the brand that we’re going to build is something that will scrape-out the hyper-provincial mindset of our target market in terms of money spending.
The challenges on building the brand
Starting out the brand, we came up across four major challenges:
- The café perfect spot. It has to be not far and not inside Dipolog City, one of the densely populated cities in Zamboanga del Norte, where other milk tea businesses thrive. Because of the owners vision to bring the milktea culture to the remote areas on the peninsula, we chose Manukan, the hometown of the owner.
- Pricing range that will standout from the competitors. In 2006, a study by National Statistics Coordination Board (NSCB), found Zamboanga del Norte Province to be the Philippines’ poorest province with a poverty incidence rate of 64.6%, an increase from 47% in year 2000 statistical figures. This data is a determining factor that challenged us on pricing Teaste Me products that would suit to the economic standards of the target market.
- The café theme — the Instagramable feel. Targeting the Gen Zs and the Millennials was a challenge because bringing the milk tea urban culture is quite new to our target market. Or if not new, it’s quite familiar. Meeting their demands can be a heap of a toe — interior design, product designs and packaging. All these can have a tremendous effect on the business of not very well thought at the beginning.
- Start-up budget. Our goal was to put-up a milk tea cafe from scratch that is “socialan-but-affordable” with just a limited start-up capital.
With everything put together, TEAste Me was born.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
— Thomas Edison
It’s just pandemic, you’ve got business!
Starting a business is really difficult especially in this time of pandemic. But it does not mean you don’t have to try. Use the circumstances be the starting ground of something you are really passionate about.
Like TEAste Me, with combined knowledge of data and passion, we were able to help the owner build something that she really cares more than just sipping her favorite milk tea.
Speaking about data, it might sound too technical or something very unfamiliar to you but it’s a very crucial factor to always put on the table when planning out to start your own business. Data determine the flow of your business. It guides you on all the deciding factors on laying out your business development plans.
We are in the modern business world. Everything runs on a data. On a scale. And it’s really important to understand this how it will affect your business especially when you’re just starting out.
Are you starting out a business? Or are you struggling to focus on-boarding your business? You need help. I’m Syed Qassim and am here to help you grow your own business.
P.S
If you love this post, please clap, and leave your insights in the comments. Thank you so much. Stay safe everyone…
This article was first published on Acabo CC.
