This summer, it was too exciting for the coffee giants.

Just in early August, there were rumors that Starbucks intends to sell 70% of its China-based business. As Starbucks' old rival, Costa Coffee was also sold and evaluated by its former boss Coca-Cola.

However, just when the rumors of "one red and one green" were not yet settled, the first one to complete the sale was Peet’s Coffee, the "white beard" in the fine coffee industry.

On August 28, it was reported that the US beverage giant KDP will acquire JDE Peet's, the parent company of Piye Coffee, for a total price of 15.7 billion euros (equivalent to RMB 131.4 billion).

Compared with Starbucks and Costa, Piye Coffee is not well-known in China. After all, this "old senior" has only been in 3 or 4 years since its establishment in mainland China.

Last year, Pi Ye also produced a good financial report, which showed that his performance in China achieved double-digit growth, and the total number of stores reached 268, which is no less than the size of more than 300 in his hometown in the United States.

However, the Chinese coffee circle is too curled, Starbucks and Costa are both forced to be frustrated by 9.9 yuan, and this "chillness" seems to have blown to Pi Ye.

At the beginning of this year, Pi Ye frequently reported that the store closures were closed, and the originally smooth expansion rhythm seemed to have pressed the pause button. At this time, news of the sale was reported, and it was not easy to say whether it was an opportunity or a crisis for Pi.

But what is certain is that Pi Ye has also reached the moment of change.

Starbucks "Cather of the Grandmaster", fighting across the ocean

If Starbucks is the guide for all Chinese coffee brains, then Pi Ye is the founder of Starbucks.

In 1966, Dutch Alfred Pitt came to the United States. While deeply feeling the prosperity of the United States, he discovered: How can Americans drink this portion of coffee?

So, he named it himself and opened a small coffee shop in San Francisco. He insisted on hand roasting small batches of coffee beans to ensure that the quality of each cup meets his requirements.

Relying on high-quality coffee beans, more and more consumers have become loyal fans of Pi Ye. They call themselves "Peetniks", meaning Pi Ye's fanatical fans. Among them, many young people are also determined to join Pi Ye’s disciple and learn bean baking technology and business experience.

In 1971, three young people who learned from Piye Coffee jointly opened their own coffee shop in Seattle, which was later famous Starbucks.

The original Starbucks also followed the same fine coffee path as Pi Ye. Pi Ye was also Starbucks' original coffee bean supplier. However, when Schultz became CEO, Starbucks gradually found its "third space" evil cultivation route, and gradually became a holy place for couples to date and business negotiations. It also opened its store to China in 1999.

When Starbucks opened stores everywhere, Piye Coffee has been sticking to the route of small-batch roasting and high-quality production of fine coffee, and has developed slowly with a "niche and high-end" attitude. It was not until I saw that my little brother Starbucks had opened nearly 3,000 stores in China across the ocean that Piye Coffee thought of traveling across the ocean to get a share of the pie.

In 2017, Piye Coffee's first store in China was opened in Shanghai, where there were not so many managers at the time, and it stood up with the label of "Starbucks Master".

Pi Ye understands that China does not need a second "third space coffee shop", but it needs a "professional coffee shop" to satisfy the increasingly tricky tastes of coffee minds, so he showed his usual character in the United States: the coffee bean maniac.

When I come to China to open a store, Pi Ye also pays attention to the idea that "the army and horses move, the food and grass will come first", and give priority to building a baking workshop in Shanghai to ensure that the beans in local Chinese stores are baked by Shanghai factories rather than transported overseas. In order to avoid the emergence of "zombie beans", Pi Ye also specially fixed the shelf life of his own beans to about 4 months, which is far lower than the industry's general one-year standard.

In order to strengthen its identity as a "coffee store", Piye Coffee did not design the menu in a fancy way. The overall SKU is only two-thirds of Starbucks, reducing many high-value sweet water, desserts and other dishes.

Compared with the common "milk tea-based" coffee on the market, Piye's richer taste is obviously not suitable for most consumers, but for Piye, sticking to himself is far more important than catering to the market.

Because of this, in an era when coffee chains are generally participating in the price war of 9.9 yuan, Piye Coffee can not only maintain a price of about 40 yuan per cup, but also open nearly 200 branches within 3 years.

Where is Piye Coffee strong enough to go against the current, or is there another strange trick?

The "strange move" of the ancestor: It is better to change lanes and overtake than to fight head-on

The coffee circle today is not friendly to fine coffee.

The huge pressure in the industry has crushed many coffee brands that once wanted to replicate Piye Road, such as Shanghai's Seesaw Coffee, which has been in a trend of closing stores due to business problems since last year. The manner, who was once famous for the handmade barista, also suffered from excessive expansion pressure, causing employees to lose control of their emotions and cause a vicious accident of "splashing customer coffee powder".

But Piye Coffee can not only survive under the high pressure of the circle, but also submit a good performance answer in 2024. In fact, in addition to making delicious food and mixing lattes in the store every day, Piye Coffee also has another business practice: selling beans.

You must know that when Alfred Pitt first founded Pitt, he worked as a raw material supplier for tea, coffee and other beverages. After Pitt was founded, he was once a bean supplier to Starbucks in the early days.

Piye Coffee insists on the character of "coffee bean maniac" just so happens to be useful in this new business.

Now, many people's lifestyles have been changed by the age of home. For example, compared to buying freshly collected coffee offline, many people have started to make coffee at home by themselves. Data shows that in 2023, the size of China's coffee machine market reached 1.233 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.06%, and the compound growth rate from 2019 to 2023 was 38.41%.

The more coffee machines are sold, the more coffee beans are sold, and naturally they are in the air. It just so happens that Piye Coffee has always been famous for its "small batch roasting and stable quality" coffee beans, so it successfully launched its own online coffee bean business.

Open the homepage of Piye's online store and you will find that most of the SKUs of Piye Coffee are mainly coffee beans, coffee liquids and coffee-hanger coffee. Compared with the SKUs supported by Starbucks relying on peripheral products and coupons, it seems too professional.

Piye Coffee's ability to tell stories offline will also feed back online sales. In Tmall's coffee bean reputation statistics, Piye Coffee has always occupied the top five seats and has almost never been absent. In boutique supermarkets such as Sam and Hema, which focus on middle-class consumers, Piye’s coffee beans also appear in more conspicuous places in the shelves.

According to Piye's annual report, the online business penetration rate of coffee utensils + coffee beans is as high as 38%, and the overlap of online and offline members is also as high as 30% to 40%, which shows how loyal Piye's "Peetniks" is.

Of course, just the beans with a wide variety of online categories cannot meet the needs of "Peetniks", so Piye Coffee came out with the second move, turning the store into a coffee club.

Pieye's store is more like a place where "Peetniks" gather every week than a simple cafe.

Although Piye does not open many stores, every key store will be carefully decorated, such as the Shanghai Bund Central Plaza store. Piye even invited a well-known Italian design team to design and decoration. In addition, baking machines such as Piye's own baking bean manuscripts and roasters worth hundreds of thousands per unit will be displayed in the store, showing Piye's cultural history to every "Peetniks".

Mr. Pitt

Pi Ye will also invite baristas to offer courses from time to time to teach members roasting and trawing skills. I believe that many Shanghai managers have started their barista career in Pi Ye’s lobby.

In this way, the stickiness of "Peetniks" is extremely high. The annual fee for Piye membership is as high as 580 yuan/year, but the frequency of repurchases reaches 7.2 times/month, 30% higher than Starbucks.

The "V6-level membership" who spends more than 12,000 yuan every year in Piye contributes 27% of Piye's online turnover, which makes many peers envious.

In the increasingly rolling coffee world, Pi Ye has shown another possibility: serving a few people well, and living a very comfortable life.

Pi Ye's "small trumpet" fights the world again

At present, Piye Coffee has about 268 stores across the country, 90% of which are located in the core business districts of first-tier cities. Compared with Starbucks' "downward roots", Piye is more clear about his positioning: serving the middle-class people in first-tier cities.

Relying on the "small and beautiful" model, Piye Coffee has opened up its own living space in China, but the disadvantage of this model is also obvious, that is, the ceiling is too low.

In the first half of 2025, Piye Coffee opened a total of 16 stores. At the same time, Piye Coffee also closed many stores with poor operating conditions, such as Piye's first store in South China, Shenzhen Vientiane World Store, which was exposed to be closed at the end of July this year.

As for the reason for the closure, Piye Coffee explained that it was because of rent pressure and the parent company's business adjustment, but all signs indicate that the middle-class market seems to have reached its peak, and Piye Coffee also has to work hard to change.

Relying on the "small and beautiful" model, Pi Ye can completely flatten it at the current scale. Although it can maintain the style, it is not conducive to the financial report of a listed company. Besides, Pi Ye is currently in the "change of bosses", and JDE Peet's also needs some new actions to prove that he has "promising future".

In the Chinese coffee market, Pi Ye seems to have only one trick left to tell a good new story: break into the affordable coffee market of 9.9 yuan and grab cakes with Luckin, Kudy and Starbucks. Of course, Pi Ye would not choose to "reduce himself" to fight a price war, but chose to reopen a small account to fight a "agent war".

At the end of 2024, Piye's sub-brand Ora Coffee was officially established and its first store was opened in Beijing.

Ora Coffee's main products are concentrated around 15 to 25 yuan. If you stack coupons, the price can also drop to around 9.9 yuan. At the same time, Ora Coffee has also launched a roast + coffee set priced at around 20 yuan, targeting McDonald's "poor ghost set".

Compared with the old boss Piye, Ora Coffee has a smaller store and simpler decoration. The menu is not only coffee-oriented, but also launched many new tea beverage products.

In fact, if you want to compare Ora Coffee with Luckin, Kudy, Starbucks and other brands, it seems that there is no advantage in price and category. As Piye's "small account", Ora Coffee's biggest advantage actually comes from Piye's own strong reputation for coffee beans.

When promoting, Ora Coffee often emphasizes that its coffee beans are derived from Arabica coffee beans in Colombia, Brazil and other places, and has inherited the technology of small-batch roasting of Piye Coffee, and it also ensures fresh roasting of 28 days.

It seems that Ora is going to bring "equality of quality coffee" to the affordable coffee circle, using quality to differentiate with other brands, but there is undoubtedly a doubt about doing this: for workers who usually drink 9.9 yuan of coffee as "life-sustaining water", can the attractiveness of 28-day fine roasted beans beans beans beans be compared with the stimulation of a large coupon and freight reduction?

As of now, Ora Coffee is still in trial business. As for whether consumers will buy this cup of "youth version" Piye Coffee, it depends on the business situation after the brand starts to run.

The years of fighting between Luckin, Kudy and Starbucks has made the Ice American style successfully rooted in the hearts of every worker, but compared to the popularization of coffee, it obviously takes more time and time to make coffee "quality".

The coffee war is never short of new players. Can Pi Ye, who has changed the American habit of drinking coffee, still repeat the same story in China?