660 new coffee products launched in half a year: Why is a cup of coffee increasingly becoming a "daily necessity"?

At 8 a.m., you grab an Americano at the ground floor of the office building; after finishing lunch, you order an iced coffee on a whim; when you feel sleepy at 3 or 4 p.m., you team up with your colleagues to place a takeout order.

A highly interesting shift is taking place in China's coffee consumption landscape.

A large number of people no longer make a special trip to "go out for coffee".

They just pick up a cup casually as they go about their day.

This shift may matter far more than how many new coffee shops have opened recently.

According to the Coffee Beverage Category Development Report 2026, in the first half of 2026, 117 fresh-made beverage brands launched a total of 660 new coffee products at one go; as of June, the number of coffee beverage outlets across the country has reached 284,000, representing a 20.1% year-on-year increase. At the same time, the per-capita consumption at coffee beverage outlets in the first half of 2026 remained largely stable at around 25 yuan, and the proportion of new coffee products priced below 10 yuan has risen to 11.7%.

Another set of data is more intuitive: China's annual per-capita coffee consumption has increased from 16.7 cups in 2023 to 28.6 cups in 2025.

That is a nearly 12-cup increase over two years.

Putting these figures together, we can see that China's coffee market is crossing an important threshold:

Coffee is evolving from a "lifestyle product" that requires deliberate consumption decision-making, to a daily consumer good that features higher frequency, greater convenience, and lower decision-making cost.

This also means the profit logic of the coffee industry is changing.

In the past, brands competed on product branding, in-store environment and the price of a cup of coffee. Going forward, they will increasingly need to compete on a different set of metrics:

Price range × consumption frequency × time slot utilization × single-store efficiency.

660 new products in half a year: why does the coffee industry need so many new offerings?

What does 660 new products in half a year mean in real terms?

On average, these 117 sample brands launched more than 3 new coffee products every single day.

It is also worth noting that these brands are not all dedicated coffee brands.

Among the 117 brands, 42 are coffee beverage brands, and the other 75 are tea beverage brands; 15.6% of the 660 new coffee products come from tea beverage brands.

This shows that coffee is breaking through its original product boundaries.

In the past, when people talked about coffee, they mostly thought of Americano, latte, cappuccino, plus a small number of specialty coffee offerings.

But if you look at coffee menus now, the situation is completely different.

Fruits, tea, floral flavors, grains, and even various local specialty ingredients are being added to coffee. Coffee is also increasingly sold as a bundled package with bread, desserts and snacks.

This is not just a move by brands to "churn out new products for competition".

The underlying business logic is actually to solve a very practical problem:

How many reasons do consumers have to buy coffee within a single day?

In the morning, consumers need coffee to refresh themselves and pair it with breakfast; at noon, they may need coffee to cut greasiness after meals; in the afternoon, they crave the sweet taste and emotional value coffee brings; if brands want to sell coffee in the evening, they have to address consumers' concerns about caffeine intake.

Therefore, a richer product portfolio essentially expands the available consumption time slots.

A traditional Americano may only solve the problem of "feeling sleepy".

Fruit coffee, tea-infused coffee, low-calorie coffee and coffee plus baked goods combos can meet demands for breakfast, afternoon tea, social gatherings, post-meal refreshment and even casual leisure scenarios.

When a cup of coffee starts to compete for all these moments, its competitors are no longer limited to other coffee shops.

It starts to compete for the same spending with milk tea, bottled beverages, convenience store breakfast, and even bread and desserts.

This is the truly noteworthy part of the 660 new coffee products.

Falling prices: the change goes far beyond saving a few yuan

Another major shift is the change in price points.

In the past, there was a very clear consumption threshold for coffee.

For a cup of coffee priced at 30 to 40 yuan, you would hesitate for a moment to consider whether it is worth buying; if you drink one cup a day, the monthly expense would add up to nearly 1,000 yuan.

But when coffee enters the price range of 9.9 yuan, 12.9 yuan, 15 yuan or even lower, the entire consumption logic changes.

According to Red Catering Big Data, from 2024 to 2026, the per-capita consumption at coffee beverage outlets continued to decline, and stabilized at around 25 yuan in the first half of 2026. Among new products, the 10-yuan to 15-yuan price range accounts for 9.9% of the total, and products priced below 10 yuan account for 11.7%.

The biggest effect of falling prices is not just "saving 10 yuan".

Instead, it reduces the psychological decision-making cost required to complete a purchase.

This is very similar to bottled water and breakfast soy milk.

When a cup of coffee costs over 30 yuan, you may ask yourself: "Should I drink coffee today?"

When it only costs a dozen yuan, you are more likely to directly ask: "Should I get an Americano or a latte today?"

The first question decides whether you will make the purchase at all, while the second only decides which product you will buy.

Once consumers cross this threshold, consumption frequency is very likely to change.

This is also why a very obvious trend in China's coffee market over the past few years is not simply turning more people into "coffee lovers", but getting more and more people to form a regular purchasing habit.

However, there is a very important business paradox here:

The more coffee becomes like a daily commodity, the larger its sales volume may be, but the harder it is to earn high profit from each individual cup.

Low prices can drive higher consumption frequency, but they also compress the gross profit per cup.

Therefore, whether a coffee shop can make profits in the end cannot be judged by sales volume alone.

After the total number of coffee outlets hits 280,000, competition shifts from "whether there is a store nearby" to "whether the store is close enough"

As of June 2026, the number of coffee beverage outlets across the country has reached 284,000, representing a 20.1% year-on-year increase, and the chain store ratio has reached 47.3%.

The report also shows that coffee beverage outlets have covered more than 90% of cities across the country, and the number of coffee shops in third-tier and lower-tier cities is still growing at a relatively fast pace.

This signals a very important change.

In more and more cities, the problem consumers face is no longer "is there a coffee shop nearby?", but:

Which cup of coffee is the closest to me?

For daily consumer goods, "proximity" is of critical importance.

People may be willing to drive for half an hour to eat at a specialty restaurant, but few people will go out of their way to travel a long distance every day just to buy a dozen-yuan cup of coffee.

Therefore, when coffee enters the high-frequency consumption stage, one of the core resources the industry competes for gradually expands from prime storefronts in large shopping malls to all kinds of points that are close enough to consumers.

Communities, office buildings, schools, hospitals, industrial parks, subway entrances, transportation hubs, and even a few square meters of space in convenience stores can all become coffee sales points.

This explains why coffee shops are getting smaller and smaller.

Pick-up stores, window-serve stores, community stores, in-stores, and unmanned coffee equipment are emerging continuously.

Because what consumers want may not be a coffee shop with exquisite decoration where they can sit for two hours.

Most of the time, they just want to spend two minutes on their way to work to pick up a cup of coffee and go.

The cost structures of these two types of business models are completely different.

Why are convenience stores and tea shops starting to sell coffee?

If coffee is truly becoming a "daily commodity", an inevitable result will be:

More and more players will start selling coffee.

The report shows that among the top 100 tea beverage brands ranked by outlet number, 69% of them have already deployed fresh-made coffee business.

Convenience stores are also re-exploring coffee business.

Western fast food chains, bakeries and other formats have earlier formed relatively stable coffee sales models.

The underlying logic behind this is not complicated.

Because they already have a steady flow of consumers.

A bakery that already has customers coming in to buy bread in the morning can add a coffee machine, and turn a 15-yuan transaction into a 25-yuan one.

Convenience stores already serve breakfast, commuting and late-night consumption scenarios. If freshly ground coffee can be embedded into their existing offerings, they are not trying to attract consumers to make a special trip for coffee, but to get consumers to pick up a cup of coffee when they buy rice balls.

The same logic applies to tea beverage shops.

They have already paid the rent, their employees are already on site, and their supply chain, membership system and takeout system are already in place. If adding coffee products can bring in new consumption time slots, the marginal cost of selling one more cup of coffee may be lower than opening a brand new independent coffee shop.

Therefore, what is actually happening is not simply "cross-industry operation".

Rather, coffee is evolving from a specialized store format to a standardized product capability.

In the past, you had to open a dedicated coffee shop to sell coffee.

In the future, more and more places will be able to sell coffee as long as they have a high-frequency consumption scenario.

Why may dedicated coffee shops not necessarily make more money?

This also answers a seemingly contradictory question:

Why are more and more people drinking coffee, but dedicated coffee shops are not necessarily getting more profitable?

Because the expansion of the market does not mean that the profit of every single store will grow in tandem.

Assuming the price of a cup of coffee drops from 30 yuan to 15 yuan, and consumers who used to drink 2 cups a week now drink 4 cups a week.

From the consumer's perspective, coffee has clearly become a high-frequency consumer good.

But for outlets, whether revenue can grow depends on several other metrics:

How many cups can they sell in a single day?

Are the orders in the morning, noon and evening evenly distributed?

How much is the rent amortized to each cup?

How much is the labor cost?

How much are the platform delivery and marketing expenses?

Does the store area generate sufficient revenue?

What are the raw material costs for coffee beans, milk, fruits and other ingredients?

This is one of the biggest differences between daily commodity business and lifestyle business.

The former tends to rely more on turnover efficiency.

After prices drop, outlets must "squeeze out" profits again through higher order density, lower fixed costs, and higher utilization rate of equipment and labor.

Therefore, a coffee shop that is only busy for two hours in the morning and largely idle for the rest of the day, even if it seems to have good foot traffic, is not necessarily a high-efficiency business.

On the contrary, a pick-up store of only a dozen square meters, that sells breakfast coffee in the morning, caters to post-meal demands at noon, sells fruit coffee and tea-infused coffee in the afternoon, plus takes takeout orders, may generate far higher sales per unit area.

After the coffee industry truly enters the mass consumption stage, the business story becomes easier to tell, but operational efficiency becomes harder to achieve.

Coffee is turning into a "time-driven business"

Therefore, what the 660 new products in half a year truly reveal is not how innovative the coffee industry is.

Rather, a cup of coffee is competing for more time slots across the 24 hours of a day.

In the morning, it competes with soy milk and breakfast milk.

In the afternoon, it competes with milk tea and sugar-free tea.

In convenience stores, it competes with bottled beverages.

On takeout platforms, it even competes for afternoon tea orders with desserts and baked goods.

Once coffee shifts from "making a special trip to drink" to "picking up a cup casually", the entire industry's value chain will change.

Branding is still important, but proximity matters more;

Taste is still important, but repurchase rate matters more;

Total number of outlets is still important, but the single-store business model matters more;

New products are still important, but whether new products can fill previously idle consumption time slots may matter more.

Of course, the "commoditization" of coffee does not mean that all brands have to follow the low-price route.

Specialty coffee, high-end in-store spaces and unique experience offerings will still have their own market. The data from Red Catering is only an observation of sample brands and dedicated coffee beverage stores, and cannot represent all coffee consumption scenarios.

Low price is a double-edged sword.

It can expand the consumer base and increase drinking frequency, but it may also expose outlets to greater cost pressure. Whether selling a cup of coffee is a good business ultimately comes down to rent, labor, raw material costs, delivery expenses and order density.

But one thing is increasingly clear:

China's coffee market is moving from the stage of "educating consumers to drink coffee" to the stage of "enabling consumers to buy coffee anytime".

These two stages only differ by a few words in description, but their business models are completely different.

The previous stage was a competition to see who could operate a better coffee shop.

The current stage is a competition to see who can make their products more accessible to consumers in the morning, at the office, in convenience stores, in communities and on takeout platforms.

Therefore, when evaluating coffee business in the future, we should no longer only ask:

How many outlets does this brand have?

We also need to ask four more questions:

What price range does it operate at? How often do consumers buy its products? How many consumption time slots can it cover in a single day? And how much store space and cost does it need to fulfill all these orders?

When these four metrics become increasingly important, the real change taking place in China's coffee industry is not just about taste.

Rather, coffee is increasingly becoming a daily consumer good just like breakfast, bottled water and afternoon tea, a product that people can buy casually without deliberate consideration.

Once an industry reaches this stage, the next round of competition will no longer be about who can package a cup of coffee as more high-end.

It will be about who can sell this cup of coffee into more people's daily lives with higher efficiency.