Genki Forest Enters the Herbal Tea Arena: Reshaping the "Botanical Beverage" Category
At the start of the new year, Genki Forest launched a new product under its Freezen brand—"Cooling Herb Tea." This beverage, made with six herbs—chrysanthemum, plumeria, licorice, mesona, mint, and green tea—deliberately downplays traditional "herbal tea" cues in its visual presentation. The label emphasizes "Cooling Herb Tea" as a visual anchor, while the slogan "Six Herbs, Nature's Cool Recipe" conveys a lighter, more everyday communication style.
This move is significant against the backdrop of a sluggish herbal tea market. Data from China Industrial Information Network shows that the market size of China's herbal tea peaked at over 50 billion RMB in 2015 and has declined annually since. Wanglaoji, a category leader, saw its core revenue drop by over 1.2 billion RMB in 2024, with net profit falling 24.38%.
Image source: Xiaohongshu @Shenghuokexuejia
The Structural Dilemma of Traditional Herbal Tea
The core challenge facing traditional herbal tea lies in the disconnect between product positioning and consumer demand.
First, there's the sugar issue. To improve palatability, traditional herbal teas are often high in sugar, conflicting with the prevailing "low-sugar" and "zero-sugar" trends.
Second, there's scenario fixation. The famous tagline "Afraid of getting heaty? Drink herbal tea!" successfully captured consumer mindshare but also confined herbal tea to dining scenarios like hotpot restaurants. This makes it difficult to penetrate higher-frequency daily scenarios such as casual leisure, office work, or study.
Genki Forest's Approach
The distinctiveness of Genki Forest's Cooling Herb Tea lies in its attempt to move beyond the traditional "herbal tea" framework and redefine the product's value proposition.
In terms of formulation, the choice of six herbs aligns with Freezen's "medicine and food homology" philosophy but adopts a compound logic closer to traditional herbal remedies. Regarding scenarios, descriptions like "Soothes the throat, refreshes the mind" and "Super cool, drink anytime" anchor the product in personal scenarios—afternoon fatigue, busy work—differentiating it from the group dining scenarios tied to "heatiness."
In essence, Genki Forest isn't trying to create a "better herbal tea"; it's building a new "botanical beverage" category—retaining the functional perception of herbs while shedding the scenario limitations of traditional herbal tea.
Image source: Genki Forest
Technical Perspective: The "Compounding Support" of TELLCAN SCIENCE
Translating such a concept into a scalable product requires solving a series of technical challenges.
Combining multiple herbs can lead to flavor interference or undesirable bitterness and astringency. How can overall flavor harmony be achieved while reducing sugar? This is where TELLCAN SCIENCE's compound sweeteners excel. They perform a "balancing act," using precise sweetness modulation to highlight the herbs' natural refreshing notes, rather than relying on flavors to "mask" or "modify."
For a product packaged transparently, how can the tea's bright, clear color be maintained throughout its shelf life, preventing oxidation and darkening caused by herbal extracts? TELLCAN SCIENCE's compound color fixatives offer a solution, delaying color degradation without compromising the product's "no additives" claim.
Herbal ingredients are rich in starches and colloids, which can lead to sedimentation and layering, affecting the drinking experience. Here, TELLCAN SCIENCE's compound emulsifiers and thickeners, working synergistically with colloidal microcrystalline cellulose, build a stable suspension system. This ensures a consistently smooth texture in every sip—By utilizing physical control means, this offers a "clean label" solution independent of traditional preservatives.
Regarding flavor, the product adheres to a "no artificial flavors" principle. This means all taste experiences must originate from the herbs themselves. TELLCAN SCIENCE's technical value here lies not in "adding," but in "releasing"—optimizing processes to help the herbs fully express their natural flavors, allowing consumers to genuinely perceive the nuanced layers of the six herbs.
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The "Backend Logic" of Category Upgrade
Genki Forest's latest move signals a new direction for the botanical beverage category: shifting from "single-function" to "integrated experience," from "scenario-bound" to "scenario-free," and from "empirical formulas" to "scientific compounding."
This underscores the critical value of upstream technical expertise—transforming "herbs" from traditional cultural symbols into tangible, dependable product attributes in modern beverages. Achieving this requires not only the brand's front-end consumer insights, but also the systematic support of behind-the-scenes technical partners like TELLCAN SCIENCE.
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