City walks rake in big money for beverage enterprises

Young consumers ideal target of brands looking for new sales opportunities

City walks, or exploring a city on foot, have become the trendiest pastime for residents this summer, after the craze of playing with flying disks, camping and paddle boarding. In fact, city walks are generating new business growth points for beverage makers.

Between January and July, a search of the hashtag "city walk" on lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) surged over 30-fold.

Posts related to city walks have been trending, especially among the younger generation. Incomplete statistics from Xiaohongshu show that China's city walkers have in the past year traveled over 320,000 kilometers, or the equivalent of eight times around the earth.

Market-savvy merchants have been quick to sense the resultant business opportunity.

In July, Guangzhou-based LINLEE, a brand that focuses on tea-based lemon drinks, launched city walk-themed Crocs-style sandals — plastic-like clogs punched with holes. For 48.8 yuan ($6.7), consumers can get a bottle of hand-squeezed lemon tea as well as a pair of shiny green sandals and a toy duck. LINLEE's marketing strategy has proven to be a success. Within three days of launch, orders for the city walk-themed sandals surpassed 300,000 pairs, generating revenue of over 12 million yuan.

Cumulative views of the hashtag "LINLEE city walk clogs" on Xiaohongshu reached 1.58 million times, while it exceeded 38 million times on short-video platform Douyin.

"July and August are the peak tourism season. City walk, as a lightweight travel experience and lifestyle, has become a buzzword on social media," said Su Chang, marketing manager of LINLEE. "According to our observation, among city walk-related posts, consumers care most about where to go and what to wear during city walks. Taking what to wear as an entry point, we launched thematic clogs, encouraging consumers to wear a comfortable pair of shoes, buy a bottle of lemon tea, and go for a city walk."

The company originally planned to promote the activity only in South China, where people are used to wearing sandals or slippers all the time. However, once the product was launched, the topic "LINLEE city walk clogs" went viral and the company soon decided to promote it nationwide.

Hi Five, a Zhengzhou, Henan province-based coffee chain store, likewise launched a "drinking while city-walking" promotional activity. It said that between July 8 and Aug 8, consumers could take a city walk to Hi Five, and get a stamp for every purchase.

A complete collection of six stamps collected from its six branches in the city made consumers eligible for a quarterly coffee coupon card worth 399 yuan, which they could use to get around 25 cups of free coffee.

"The popularity of the event was much better than we expected. Some customers finished the collection in a single day. They also brought their family and friends to our stores. We ran out of the 500 stamp collection cards and 100 quarterly coffee coupon cards we originally prepared, in just one week, and had to increase the supply of cards," a spokesperson of Hi Five said. During the event period, sales revenue surged by around 20 percent in a single day, the company said.

Apart from its regular coffee, newly launched products have also received wide popularity. Data from the company showed that the city walk-themed marketing event has not only brought in new consumers to its stores, but also enhanced the loyalty of regular customers.

"Regional coffee brands have close bonds with local consumers. Taking good use of a city walk boosts stickiness between brands and users, offering regional coffee brands more defenses against price shocks by major coffee chain brands," Kamen Club, a Beijing-based beverage industry tracker, said in a report.

Overlap of interests

On why city walks have generated great business for beverage brands, industry experts said the target consumers of city walks and beverages mostly overlap.

Data from Xiaohongshu showed that the most active group of city walkers are those aged between 24 and 28, who are also the main target consumers of tea and coffee makers.

"The consumption scenario of city walks and beverages matches perfectly. Wandering in the city, and taking a cup of coffee or lemon tea while resting, is the most typical scenario of city walks. Furthermore, young people are fond of looking for stylish, well-decorated beverage stores to spend their weekends. Now, with the popularity of city walks, many of them choose a coffee shop/teahouse as their city walk destination," Kamen Club said in the report.

According to the survey by Xiaohongshu, the top cities with the highest number of city walkers are Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen in Guangdong province, Wuhan, Nanjing, Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Chengdu and Xi'an, showing why an increased number of beverage makers there are keeping their businesses up with the new trend.

A blogger in Nanjing visited over 300 coffee shops in the city, and drew up six "coffee walk" routes, by which consumers may walk across the city, drop by stylish coffee shops, buy a cup of coffee, take photos, and enjoy the atmosphere.

Livin Guangzhou, a local lifestyle media outlet, joined hands with 14 featured coffee shops in Liwan district in Guangzhou and launched a coffee walk map of the district.

The marketing event aroused attention both online and offline, and boosted the businesses of the coffee shops.

By August, posts related to "coffee maps" on Xiaohongshu surpassed 110,000.

The craze and consumer traffic brought on by city walks revealed to beverage merchants how they could grasp new business opportunities and potentially grow over the long term.

"City walk is just a temporary social topic. For beverage makers, the thing is to take advantage of the trendy topic to constantly reach out to consumers with the brands' distinct content, and form a unique competitiveness," Su of LINLEE said.

"With fun marketing events, enterprises can leave a deeper impression on consumers. Furthermore, we need to make efforts to constantly create diversified marketing events in the future to build up a brand image and resonate more strongly with consumers," she said.

Lu Buyun, a business strategy expert in Guangzhou, said young consumers are now turning into a major consumption powerhouse.

"Taking advantage of the latest trend, brands should establish closer links with consumers, learn about their needs and product feedback, and constantly optimize their products and services to realize sustainable development," Lu said.

With the approaching autumn leading to cooler weather and beautiful scenery, conditions are even more suitable for city walks. Coffee and tea brands may consider taking advantage of the popularity of "the first drink in autumn" and city walks to tap further business growth, industry experts said.