In this day and age, every business is worth reinventing.
Over the past five years, modern fresh tea brands have undergone explosive growth, while the coffee market has simultaneously emerged as a vibrant, fast-evolving category.
Luckin Coffee single-handedly turned its brand mantra of “high-quality, accessible coffee” into a mainstream consumer lifestyle.To meet surging consumer appetite for coffee offerings, fresh tea chains including Yihetang, LELECHA, NAYUKI and HEYTEA have followed suit by integrating coffee items into their menus—signature creations such as yuen yeung and fruit-infused coffee now feature widely across their product lines.
Coffee and tea are once again converging in today’s beverage landscape. What novel innovations will stem from the fusion of these two world-famous drinks? We break it down, starting with a groundbreaking coffee machine launch event.
Part 1 –
New Consumption Trends Fuel a Revolution in Coffee Equipment
From 2018 to 2020, Dr. Coffee Suzhou released 13 fully automatic coffee machines for scenarios including bakeries, convenience stores and office buildings.
At yesterday’s new product launch, the brand unveiled its latest machine model, engineered to satisfy emerging demands within the broader beverage and food service sector.
Our informant in the industry explains that there are two types of demands in coffee machines.
Some operators prioritize the immersive on-site coffee-making experience to showcase professional barista craftsmanship.
Others prioritize ease of operation, streamlined workflows and consistent beverage quality to scale their business models to the fullest.
Catering to these divergent market demands, Dr. Coffee broke through conventional R&D boundaries for fully automatic coffee machines and delivered six core breakthroughs:
Technological Innovations
Smart & Digital Solutions
Premium Materials & Precision Craftsmanship
Ultra-Durable Commercial Hardware
Youthful, Stylish Aesthetics
Rapid, Responsive After-Sales Support
This article will focus on two core pillars: the brand’s technological innovations and its intelligent digital operation systems.
All technological innovations fall into two core categories: elevating overall machine performance and catering to emerging consumer beverage demands.
Dr. Coffee's proprietary grinding system delivers substantial performance upgrades. Equipped with ceramic flat burrs rather than conventional conical burrs, it produces evenly balanced coffee grounds with higher grinding precision and shorter processing times. To satisfy evolving market preferences, the brand’s pioneering brewing and milk frothing technologies stand out as core competitive strengths.
Standard coffee serving sizes range from 12oz to 16oz. As cost-effectiveness becomes a top consumer priority, coffee drinks are following the lead of tea beverages with larger cup volumes. 16oz servings were previously categorized as large rather than medium sizes. Larger cup volumes require an increased coffee dose to preserve rich, consistent flavor profiles. To solve this pain point, Dr. Coffee has launched a 21g single-serve coffee dose capacity — equivalent to the total coffee used for three standard espresso shots on conventional coffee equipment.
The machine also integrates cutting-edge technologies including low-pressure extraction and steam-free milk frothing. We will further elaborate on how these technologies benefit modern tea-coffee hybrid beverage operations in the following section.
Touch screen, one-click coffee making, time/temperature/water amount configurations, self-service vending… Dr. Coffee's smart, digital solution offers all of the above, and way more.
This is how they illustrate their smart & digital solution: in the past, whenever there are changes in the menu, all stores should enroll in a training session, online or offline; sometimes an engineer must be sent to site for support. Now, thanks to IoT, it takes one engineer and one computer at the headquarters to change the menu and corresponding configurations for every single store in the chain.
Frontline store employees no longer require lengthy training to produce consistently standardized drinks. This drastically cuts training timelines and simplifies onboarding procedures for new hires.
At first sight, such innovations seem to be irrelevant to tea beverages; but on second thought, they can be huge.
02PART ——
What does innovations in coffee machine do for tea beverages?
There are two ways to approach this question.
01 | Combination of tea and coffee
There is one classic combo of tea and coffee – yuenyeung, or coffee flavored milk tea.
Nayuki, LELECHA and many other tea beverage brands are now offering variations of yuenyeung, mixing coffee into their milk tea base.
In addition, coffee beverages have evolved beyond black coffee and milk coffee; they are often served with bubbles and jellies to satiate the market taste. Coffee plus fruit is also an emerging trend, for example, lemon coffee.
Reviews can vary for such innovations. One criticism is worth contemplating: many think the bitterness of coffee undermines flavors of the fruit or milk tea. By adjusting roast level of the beans or water temperature, it is possible to extract coffee's aroma, but not so much its taste.
Dr. Coffee's new model offers low pressure extraction less than 2 bar, in addition to the regular 9 bar.
Low pressure extraction was designed to reduce the bitterness of americano. But it is also worth trying for making fruity coffee or yuenyeung – maybe there is a way to preserve the fragrant aroma of coffee, without having its bitterness overpowering the drink.
Dr. Coffee's proprietary frothing technology also offers food for thought for tea baristas. Traditionally, the foam on top of drinks are steam-frothed hot milk. With Dr. Coffee's machine, you can create thicker, denser and more lasting froth without heating your milk.
Whipped cream and cream cheese toppings are quite common nowadays for tea beverages. But as consumers' awareness for health grows, they look for a lower-fat topping with similar texture. Maybe Dr. Coffee's frothing technology has the answer.
02 | Combination of production and management
Dr. Coffee’s proprietary frothing technology brings valuable new ideas for tea shop baristas. Traditionally, beverage foam is made from steam-heated frothed milk. Dr. Coffee’s equipment generates thicker, creamier, longer-lasting cold froth with no milk heating required.
Whipped cream and cream cheese toppings are widely used in fresh tea drinks today. However, as consumers’ health consciousness rises, demand is growing for low-fat toppings that deliver the same rich texture. Dr. Coffee’s frothing system offers a viable solution to this market demand.
To find out more about Dr. Coffee's fully automatic commercial coffee machines, visit booth 1.1H E40 at HOTELEX Shanghai.