Tim Hortons partners with Alibaba to serve coffee in China

Tim Hortons has teamed up with Alibaba to sell its bottled coffee drinks in China. The Canadian coffeehouse and restaurant chain will be using the Chinese e-commerce company’s Freshippo stores to sell bottled coffee to the locals.

Tim Hortons revealed its new 2-year partnership deal with Alibaba Group’s grocery chain late last week. As part of the agreement, they will also be launching co-branded products.

According to Reuters, starting next month, Alibaba's Freshippo will be selling Tim Hortons bottled coffees in its more than 300 stores across the nation. Customers can also find the products through the grocery store’s app. It was mentioned that premium beverages such as Velvet Cocoa Coffee would be available to the locals.

Tims China, the Chiese unit of the coffee chain brand, is also backed by the tech giant, Tencent Holdings. It just inaugurated its 500th store in the country’s Dongguan city, located in southern Guangdong province, last month, but more is yet to come as the company’s goal is to create a "profitable network" and have around 2,750 stores in China by the year 2026.

While this is Tim Horton’s plan, it was noted that it still needs to catch up with Starbucks, which is currently dominating the market in the foreign coffee brand category. The American coffeehouse company is already operating about 6,000 outlets in China. It has deals with Alibaba as well to bolster its product distribution.

South China Morning Post reported that the first Tim Hortons products to be sold at Alibaba’s 300 Freshippo stores and app are the chestnut latte and velvet cocoa coffee. Moreover, aside from the sale of beverages, the two companies will also jointly work on research and development of co-branded products.

They will cooperate on product design, positioning, pricing, and promotion of their newly developed items. Tims China’s chief executive officer, Yongchen Lu, said that this agreement is very beneficial to Tim Hortons as it will now have multiple channels to release its products in China. The coffee chain’s reach will surely go farther through Freshippo, which already has millions of customers.

Photo by: Erik Mclean/Unsplash