BEIJING, September 8 (TMTPost)— Kweichow Moutai Co., Ltd., owner of China’s No.1 distilled spirit brand Moutai, may double down its diversification effort to attract more young consumers.

Credit：Moutai

Moutai was said to roll out liquor-filled chocolate soon and another new offering-- chili sauces was said to be right under the development, according to National Business Daily, a nationwide Chinese financial and economic daily newspaper. Moutai’s new project tapped its fermentation technology and the unique process of chili sauce from Guizhou, the southwestern province of China which is also home of Moutai’s headquarter, the paper cited Xiao Zhuqing, an independent commentator of China’s spirit industry. Xiao said he had tasted a Guizhou-flavored chili sauce in Moutai and expected the legendary spirit company would achieve mass production of its chili sauce in the near future. As another sign of Moutai’s chili sauce ambition, Qichacha, a provider of data and analytics on Chinese companies, showed Moutai has filed for registration of a number of trademarks that suggested new operation involving chili in China in June. These applications for trademarks under the category of advertising & sales and instant foods are pending for approval.

Many Moutai insiders later dismissed news about upcoming chili sauces. They told Chinese news media outlet Cailian that Moutai doesn’t’ have such offering if it doesn’t have any relevant release, in other words, the official information serves the standard. Cailian also learned that Moutai will launch chocolate filled with liquor in the future.   

At an event for the first anniversary of the ice cream launch in May, Moutai Chairman Ding Xiongjun said his company will ramp up research and development (R&D) of products like chocolates, alcoholic beverages, popsicles to create product matrix with different types, prices and distinctive features, the state-backed financial and securities newspaper the Securities Times reported earlier this week.

The reports came as Moutai and its new partner Luckin Coffee launched their co-branded drink earlier this week. The so-called sauce-flavored latte was priced at RMB38.00 (US$5.20) apiece, and customers can get a 50% discount for a limited time if they order it online with a coupon. In China’s traditional distilled liquor Baijiu, sauce, also known as sauce aroma, refers to a flavor that smells similarity to fermented bean pastes and soy sauces. According to Luckin, each cup of the new latte is made with coffee and thick milk that contains alcohol less than 0.5% of overall content. The alcohol content comes from Feitian Moutai, the flagship Moutai offering which has 53% alcohol.

Luckin Coffee announced it sold more than 54.2 million cups of the sauce-flavored latte with the sales topping RMB100 million on Monday, the first day of its launch. The new drink broke daily sales record of a single offering for the coffee company founded in 2017. That is such an outstanding result compared with previous hits, such as the cheese latte that sold 1.31 million cups on its launch day. Luckin said on Thursday that many stores had sold out the sauce-flavored latte this week due to shortage of Moutai, therefore, it had placed an urgent order of Feitian Moutai and organized suppliers for emergency production. The company expected the latte will be first available in some of cities from September 10 and stores across China will gradually resume supply of the drink from September 19. 

The partnership with Luckin marks Moutai’s latest effort to woo younger consumers. The century-long brand introduced three variations of Moutai-infused ice cream on its “i-Moutai” digital marketing platform in May, 2022. All available units were sold out within mere 51 minutes, with an impressive total of over 40,000 units sold and generating sales exceeding RMB2.5 million. Ding Xiongjun revealed in the past May that the ice cream with Moutai flavor had sold nearly 10 million cups ahead of the anniversary.

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