‘They said they were the Apple of coffee’ Nestlé discontinues Blue Bottle

Nestlé Blue Bottle, Coca-Cola Costa, etc.

Successive sales of coffee franchises

Accelerate portfolio reorganization

“Improve profitability and efficiency”

Big players in the global food industry are withdrawing from the coffee franchise business one after another.

Just 5-6 years ago, global food giants were rushing to buy cafes, saying, “We need to increase offline contact points to survive,” but now they are clamoring to “sell them even at a low price.”

Nestle acquired a 68% stake in Blue Bottle Coffee for approximately $425 million (approximately KRW 980 billion) in 2017. At the time, Blue Bottle Coffee was called ‘the Apple of coffee’ and was considered a brand leading the specialty coffee trend. The total corporate value estimated at the time of the transaction was approximately $700 million. Experts predicted that Nestle would launch Blue Bottle Coffee at a significantly lower market price than eight years ago. This is the so-called stop loss.

Blue Bottle was a premium brand that boasted a hand-drip extraction method in which a barista brews coffee by hand and an elegant interior. This is the method most disliked by large corporations that value profitability and operational efficiency. Introducing an automated system like Starbucks that produces espresso at the touch of a button will damage Blue Bottle’s brand identity, and if it sticks to the existing method, it will not be able to grow the brand quickly. Eight years have passed since the Nestle acquisition, but the number of Blue Bottle stores still remains at around 100 around the world. It is embarrassing to even compare it to Starbucks, which has 40,000 stores around the world.

https://n.news.naver.com/mnews/article/366/0001127522