Nayuki Follows Heytea With Lower Prices and Pushes Further Into Coffee, Snacks, and Chinese Pastries

This is an English adaptation of a FoodBud historical article originally published on January 17, 2022.

After Heytea lowered prices, Nayuki followed.

In Nayuki's limited-time "easy purchase" product series, prices were cut by RMB 5-7. The two lowest-priced items were a light Jin Mudan (金牡丹) tea drink and a light Americano coffee, both benchmarked against Heytea's lowest product price of RMB 9.

It was not clear whether Nayuki's price reduction was intended as a long-term move or as a round of pricing tests. Around the same period, Nayuki was also running a sixth-anniversary 34%-off promotion. With stacked discounts, the lowest-priced drink could reach RMB 6. New Nayuki stores were also offering buy-one-get-one promotions.

Heytea previously responded to its own price cuts by saying it had reduced prices on some products thanks to brand momentum, scale advantages, supply-chain accumulation, and upstream work, while keeping formulas, ingredients, and quality unchanged.

Automation and Store Economics

Nayuki had already announced that its self-developed automated tea-making equipment had begun trial operation in some stores during off-peak periods. The company expected the equipment to be formally rolled out across Nayuki tea stores nationwide before the end of the third quarter of 2022.

According to Zhaimen Canyan data cited in the article, Nayuki's store-opening momentum over the previous year remained strong as it chased Heytea's store scale.

Nayuki's own announcement showed that in the fourth quarter of 2021, from October 1 to December 31, the company opened 149 new stores, bringing its national store count to 817. It closed seven Nayuki tea stores, while 23 standard stores began converting into Nayuki PRO stores.

As of December 31, 2021, Nayuki had more than 42 million members, up more than 40% from the end of the prior year. Its third-quarter 2021 repeat-purchase rate reached 32.40%. The article noted that registered members are not the same as active members.

Nayuki had described two main store formats: standard stores and PRO stores. Standard stores required about 20-25 staff, while PRO stores, which did not have a back kitchen, could remove bakery staff and operate with about 10-15 staff. When Nayuki reached 1,000-1,200 offline stores over the following three years, it expected PRO stores to account for 70% of the total. That would lower average store-level headcount.

Beyond store format, Nayuki also expected to use Teacore digital training and SOP optimization to reduce cost ratios. At the time, the company had an internal target to bring this cost line down.

The operating logic was straightforward: traditional tea preparation required manual brewing, with strict controls on water volume, temperature, ice added after brewing, and final tea temperature range. If the process missed the range, the tea could be discarded. With an automated tea maker, staff could put in the materials and press two buttons. That could reduce labor, lower waste, and improve consumer experience. Nayuki's store labor cost ratio was around 20% at the time.

This helps explain why Nayuki and Heytea were cutting prices on pure-tea products. Efficiency was improving, and low-priced items could also drive traffic and repeat visits. The article compared this with Mixue Bingcheng's long-running strategy of using low-priced lemonade and ice cream as traffic-driving products, even if those items would be unattractive as standalone profit centers.

From Tea to Coffee, Snacks, and Pastries

Nayuki was also testing more at store level, beyond tea and bakery. Its storefront signage had added the English word "Coffee," shifting the positioning to "Tea & Coffee."

In stores, Nayuki had begun adding snack-style retail products such as potato chips and nougat. Display cabinets and tabletops were no longer used only for tea leaves and bakery items; snacks were being placed in prominent positions to lift store sales through retail products.

On January 14, Nayuki also launched more than 20 new Chinese-style pastry items at its Dream Factory store, with six products released simultaneously in stores nationwide.

Nayuki had previously sold seasonal pastries such as mooncakes and qingtuan. This launch was broader, covering more than 20 products including walnut cookies, crisps, and pineapple cakes. Pricing for the new pastry range was concentrated between RMB 6 and RMB 30.

The article argued that a path from tea drinks to bakery, Chinese pastries, and afternoon-tea snacks could work as a transaction-conversion model. Whether Nayuki's approach would pressure bakery-format stores still needed to be observed through future financial results.

A report from Yicai and Heytea was cited as showing that 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. was a peak period for milk tea orders. Pairing afternoon tea with casual snacks or baked goods therefore made intuitive sense.

The article noted a subtle but important consumption sequence: consumers are less often seen ordering bakery pastries first and then adding a drink. Starting with drinks and converting into snacks or pastries could produce a different business result.

Nayuki was moving from tea drinks toward a more retailized model spanning snacks, bakery, and Chinese pastries. How far that model could go still depended on later financial data.

Note: store targets, automation rollout timing, pricing, membership data, and financial-market implications are historical figures from the 2022 source article.