Intermediate Offline Catering Marketing Strategy: Taking Manner
as an Example
Qing Han
Shenfu Yucai Experimental School, Shenyang, 110000, China
Keywords: Manner, Marketing, Product, Strategy.
Abstract: With the social development, many customers who lose weight or need high-intensity mental work are also
increasing, and people's demand for coffee is increasing. In China, coffee has gradually become a part of life,
which leads to fierce competition in the coffee industry. Based on 4p theory and taking Manner as an example,
this paper analyzes the marketing problems of small and medium-sized enterprises in popular industries. Four
dimensions, including price, product, marketing and location are used to analyze Manner's practical marketing
strategy to increase sales volume. Through analysis, it is found that the unclear product positioning and
improper marketing strategy are the two biggest problems affecting the development of Manner: Manner is
not well-known in second-and-third-tier cities, and the product income cannot cover the company's operating
cost. By comparison, it is concluded that Manner is more suitable for learning Luckin's marketing model that
Manner should target customers and cultivate customer loyalty.
1 INTRODUCTION
Recently because the coffee industry has risen, an
increasing number of coffee shops have appeared
everywhere in streets. Two most successful cases in
China are that Starbucks and Luckin coffee have
almost taken up all the market due to either
Starbucks’ high quality and high price or Luckin
coffee’s high cost performance. But their quality
ranks in the middle. As a high-quality coffee shop,
Manner coffee even beats the traditional American
brand Starbucks in its flavor and taste. To be more
accurate, Manner’s Americano is added with some
materials like soda, which enhances its taste. So
Manner's Americano is more pupular with customers
than Starbucks. As an inexpensive coffee shop, its
price (after reduction) is even almost on par with the
brand -new Luckin coffee. Although it has become
the preference of white-collar workers in the
mansion, Manner coffee’s popularity and sale are far
less than two tycoon coffee brands. But its
commercial price and development potential cannot
be ignored. It is well-known that if a frog is put into
lukewarm water and then water is heated up slowly,
the frog will not survive because the frog enjoys the
current situation and is used to the lukewarm water.
But when the water is boiled, the frog will die. Many
medium-sized offline enterprises are like the frog,
and Manner is one of the enterprises. Manner is now
in a situation like a frog in lukewarm water which
seems to be safe. But in fact, there are very big risks
because Manner's sales volume is not ideal and it can
only struggle in the coffee industry. When the market
of coffee industry is saturated, Manner will be like a
frog in boiling water, and its result will only be
eliminated. This essay will elaborate on that the
dilemma of Manner may be attributed to its vague
market positioning.
2 BRAND INTRODUCTION
In 2015, MANNER COFFEE was established in
Jing’an District, Shanghai. The brand belongs to
Shanghai Yinhe Industrial Co., LTD. The local coffee
culture of Shanghai which Manner coffee depends on
spreads to the whole country. It has become one of
the largest boutique coffee chain brand in China with
1,500 offline shops. After seven-year development,
Manner's first store in Northeast China was opened in
Wangxiang City Mansion in Shenyang in 2022. This
means that Manner, a boutique coffee shop which
only developed in big cities, gradually entered the
market of second-and-third tier cities. Until 2024,
Han, Q.
Intermediate Offline Catering Marketing Strategy: Taking Manner as an Example.
DOI: 10.5220/0014113100004942
Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Applied Psychology and Marketing Management (APMM 2025), pages 313-317
ISBN: 978-989-758-791-7
Proceedings Copyright © 2026 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda.
313

Manner has opened 16 physical coffee shops in
Northeast China, 15 of which are from Liaoning
Province. Take Manner coffee in Shenyang as an
example, the marketing strategy of Manner is not
successful.
Manner has also been a unique coffee company in
China's coffee industry that has implemented the
concept of environmental protection. The
environmental policy is that each guest who brings a
non-disposable cup to the store for coffee will gain
5yuan reduction. With the support of environmental
protection strategy, the prices of most Manner's
products are around 10 yuan. Unlike the coffee with
more water from Luckin coffee and Cudi coffee
whose price are 9.9yuan, Manner not only has
maintained the lower price, but also has ensured the
quality and taste of coffee. Manner is not inferior to
Starbucks. Besides, the price of Manner coffee is one
thirds of the Starbucks’s coffee. However, compared
with Starbucks and Luckin coffee, Manner is more
like to compete with milk tea industry.
3 PROBLEM ANALYSIS
In 2019, there was a large-scale epidemic in the
world, and under the influence of the epidemic, many
small companies went bankrupt. As a new company
that had just been operating for four years, Manner
was undoubtedly greatly affected, but Starbucks was
much less affected, because until 2019, Starbucks
already had more than 30,000 stores (Lombardi et al.,
2021).
According to the 2021 China Youth Coffee
Lifestyle Trends Insight，60% of Chinese consumers
had more than three cups of coffee per week, which
is already on par with the countries whose citizens
prefer coffee (CBNData, 2021). The competition of
coffee industry is fierce, but there are only two coffee
brands that make coffee better in China, which are
Starbucks and Luckin. The 4P model is the standard
for testing enterprises. In 4P theory, Manner does not
perform well.
3.1 Product
Manner coffee adopts Arabica boutique coffee beans
that are also used by Starbucks, which results in little
difference in quality between the two brands.
However, why does Starbucks get a good lead？In
addition to the popularity gained from early entrance
to market, Starbucks can offer consumers a wider
variety of choices. For example, Starbucks American
coffee is divided into classic espresso, golden
Espresso, low factor espresso, etc. Meanwhile, the
Americano category can also be divided into other
choices, according to concentration, temperature,
type of cup and other options. In contrast, Manner’s
Americano only has two variables for customers to
choose: temperature and concentration. The wider
selection of Starbucks coffee encourages more
consumers who like Starbucks or want to try
Starbucks to choose it, which improves the reputation
of Starbucks. Therefore, Manner coffee can provide
more choices to meet customers’ different tastes.
In terms of product variety and product
innovation, Manner has relatively excellent
performance. Manner has learned from Luckin's
grape Americano and has created new products such
as pineapple Americano, dried ginger Americano and
Tonic Americano. Compared to its competitor --
Luckin coffee’s grape Americano, Manner has
utilized its own creativity, replacing pure water with
sparkling water to improve the taste of coffee. In
recent years, matcha flavor has enjoyed the
popularity. Many businesses have mixed matcha into
their own products, such as matcha latte, matcha
cookies, matcha ice cream. Some even have
combined matcha with jasmine tea to make products.
Manner has launched iced coconut matcha to cater to
the market, which is also one of Manner's most
popular products. As a boutique coffee, the quality of
its products is far ahead in the same type of coffee,
but the product innovation needs to be improved.
Manner has novel ideas but these ideas are not
necessarily accepted by the public, such as dry ginger
Americano which many customers are difficult to
accept. Therefore, Manner can conduct a survey on
the public taste in order to create a popular coffee
taste.
3.2 Place
According to a survey, when Chinese consumers buy
coffee products, nearly 70% of consumers choose to
drink coffee away, and only 30% choose to drink
coffee in the cafe (Shang, 2023).
While most Manner stores are located to office
buildings, Manner stores in Shenyang are completely
different. Take the Manner coffee in Wanxiang
Mansion in Shenyang as an example. Manner is
located at the entrance of Wanxiang Mansion's
square, on the opposite of shops of Starbucks and
Lamborghini, close to M coffee bar, a western
restaurant. Wanxiang Mansion is an old-brand
shopping mall which is high end in the commercial
center of Shenyang, where the flow of people is stable
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and the popularity is high, helping Manner occupy a
favorable position. However, the location of the small
square in Wanxiang Mansion has not received much
attention. Compared to the shopping district, the
small square is farther away from the main street and
most of the people who want to come to the small
square are those who want to buy cars and eat meals.
Besides, it is directly opposite to Starbucks, so
customers will be attracted by Starbucks and choose
Starbucks directly instead of Manner.
Manner continues to learn from the latecomer
Luckin, but does not want to give up the Starbucks’
customer market. A part of Manner shops choose the
same offline marketing model as Starbucks.
Starbucks has detailed customer needs. It not only has
played music, installed library lighting and power
plug in the store but also has launched online order.
Starbucks has aimed to serve more customers with
different needs more effectively. Compared with
Starbucks, Manner does not have a perfect store
environment that satisfies most customers. Manner
does not make a correct decision on the location of
the store in accordance with its positioning so it is
hard to attract loyal customers. Manner can increase
the stores in line with its own positioning, while it
remain the existing stores to prepare for drawing the
public eyes.
3.3 Price
In 2015, Manner coffee became the cheapest in the
coffee industry after its launch. Compared to the
coffee at the price between 30-50 yuan, the price of
Manner coffee was only 15-25 yuan. However, it did
not grasp the timing to market. Three years later,
cheaper Luckin coffee came out, with its price at 9. 9
yuan, making the competition between coffee brands
more fierce. Luckin regularly send coupons to
customers in order to ensure customer loyalty and
stimulate consumption (Lingyu, 2020).
The price of Manner are lower among the coffee
industry, and its price is in line with that of most milk
tea shops, whose price is not suitable for coffee
drinkers. Coffee drinkers can be broadly grouped into
two categories, including the working class and the
professional elite. For the working class, the monthly
salary of 3000-6000 is not enough to support them to
buy high-priced coffee after covering the living
expenses, so Luckin has become the best choice for
them. Luckin Coffee often collaborates with popular
brands to increase its visibility and attract customers
to purchase its products. Consumers who are fans of
a particular IP will buy coffee because of products
related to that IP (Yi, 2024). These IPs are mostly
cartoons or videos that young people enjoy, which
happens to match the consumption level of most
young trendsetters. In contrast, for the professional
elites, high-priced coffee like Starbucks coffee is
more like a status symbol. Unfortunately, Manner has
been ruled out from these two groups. It takes up the
rest group whose market share is not large. Its pricing
results in a narrow audience, so the pricing strategy
needs to be optimized. In contrast, Luckin's stock
price fell and was delisted due to financial fraud in
2020, which did not seem to affect Luckin's sales. The
reason is that Luckin has become an irreplaceable
low-cost product in the coffee industry. Most of
Luckin's customers are ordinary consumers who do
not pay attention to the stock market, and Luckin has
mastered the customer loyalty with cheap prices and
products that meet the tastes of the the public.
Compared with Cudi coffee whose marketing
strategy, price and products are the same with Luckin,
only Manner has the ability to compete with Luckin
coffee. There is a common feature between Manner
and Luckin that the price of their products is half or
more cheaper than many coffees on the market.
3.4 Promotion
The founder of Manner Han Yulong wanted to open
a coffee shop for coffee itself, and he hoped that
people who came to drink coffee would be those who
love coffee (Zhou, 2022). As a result, Manner focused
more on the evaluation and feelings of coffee drinkers
rather than marketing. Thus, marketing is a weak
point of Manner. Without popularity, Manner does
not vigorously promote the reduction policy aiming
to environmental protection to attract customers who
want to obtain environmental protection reduction or
who want to advocate environmental protection
concepts. In contrast, Manner’s competitor---
Starbucks has become the "leader" in the coffee
industry in terms of environmental protection
concepts.
Secondly, Manner's market positioning is not
clear, which makes it unable to make effective
marketing methods. Every kind of media is a new
kind of enterprise sales channel (Wei, 2021). With the
development of the information age, the marketing
model of traditional media has changed a lot, which
has opened up a new business track that coffee shop
needs network marketing (Wang, 2024). Firstly,
Manner's fame in second-tier cities came from social
networking apps such as XiaoHongshu, which has
prompted many young people who follow the trend to
check in and take photos. Although it helped the store
gain a lot of traffic and bills, this part of the
Intermediate Offline Catering Marketing Strategy: Taking Manner as an Example
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population did not really love or need coffee. On the
contrary, the long queue led the Manner's original
customers - office workers not to be able to buy coffee
in a short time.
As the leader of China's coffee industry,
Starbucks coffee even once has become the pricing
standard in the coffee industry. In Paryani K's
research conducted in 1970, it was stated that
Starbucks' success relied on three strategies: coffee,
customer experience, and service (Lingyu, 2020).
Therefore, the Starbucks’ coffee helps the China's
coffee industry orient a fixed consumer group - the
elite white collar about 25 years old. Similarly,
Luckin is also a company with clear market
positioning. In 2018, Luckin opened its first store in
Beijing with the slogan of low-priced coffee. Its
consumers are mostly office workers and students,
who engage in activities that need intensive mental
labor and have low purchasing power, which also
expands the sales market of coffee. The Luckin’s
physical shops have widespread distribution and the
distance between the shops is short. Luckin Coffee's
expansion speed is very fast, opening 2064 stores in
just 20 months since its establishment (Xinhua Daily,
2019). which means Luckin coffee adapts to the
popular marketing environment. At the same time,
Luckin supports customers to buy coffee in their
shop. Therefore, Luckin coffee fights out those high-
priced coffee with its lower price at 9.9 yuan,
attracting customers to go into the store. Therefore,
Manner can learn from these brnads' marketing mode
to increase sales volum.
Manner's applet and app utilization rate was low,
which was a big gap with Luckin and Starbucks.
Starbucks' app promoted sales volume and customers
would click the app frequently, increasing the number
of repeat customers (Xinhua Daily, 2019).
Taking Manner coffee shop in Shenyang as an
example, although it actively took part in the take-out
industry and registered stores on the take-out apps
which is commonly used in China, the starting price
was up to 80 yuan which ruled out a crowd of office
workers who wanted to drink coffee alone. Unlike
Luckin coffee whose policy is quick returns and small
margins or Starbucks whose policy is high price with
high positioning, Manner still maintains the slow
development with the idea that focuses on coffee
itself when Luckin and Starbucks spare no effort to
find endorsements. However, Manner has not
stagnated. In early November 2024, Manner shop in
Shenyang adjusted the starting price of takeout to 18
yuan, which also increased the original monthly sales
of 300+ to 2000+.
In combination with the price, it can be concluded
that the Manner pricing should not be the same as the
price of milk tea because people who like to drink
milk tea will not like to drink coffee. Besides, those
who enjoy drinking coffee will not choose coffee
whose price is more expensive than 9.9, or choose the
coffee that is targeted at workers.
4 SUGGESTIONS
Manner should first make clear its market
positioning, use more marketing means and launch a
key market to individual customer group. The authors
firmly approve that Luckin is more suitable to
become Manner’s learning example according to
Manner's price and quality. Therefore, manner should
continue to increase the numbers of stores, and
actively promote the concept of environmental
protection and reduction policies. Luckin is a
competitor at the same level of Manner, and Manner
can share the market with Luckin through quality.
Manner and Starbucks use the same kind of coffee
beans, so their quality is better than Luckin coffee.
Secondly, Manner should increase the selectivity of
goods, such as sweetness, concentration, temperature.
Offering more choices can meet more users' needs,
which attracts new customers and increases customer
loyalty. At the same time, Manner can change the
business model, learn the franchise system of Luckin,
and take the franchise fee as the main income rather
than the income from coffee itself, so as to obtain
more benefits. The franchise system can help store
expansion, and the ubiquitous stores are also a
method of publicity. Although excessive stores will
make the brand impression of Manner more low-end,
opening the market can get more revenue. Manner
stores should not only open in office buildings or
shopping malls, but also carry out synchronous
development. It should serve customers from the
counter, focus on takeout, or takeaway purchase
methods.
5 CONCLUSION
These intermediate brands, such as Manner, have
great development potential. With a proper strategy,
the efficiency will be doubled. The appropriate
strategy is a scheme based on the 4p model to
maximize the benefits. At the same time, Manner
should understand its competitor, imitate and learn
their competitors' marketing strategy so as to surpass
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its competitors. Manner should change its current
marketing mode, actively publicize its own
advantages, target consumer groups to enhance
customer loyalty and brand choice. In all walks of
life, there is no lack of businesses that will go
bankrupt because of poor marketing, like Manner.
Taking Manner as an example, the bottom problems
of such enterprises should be analyzed to help
enterprises with real potential to be seen by the
public.
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