On the first day of opening, more than 40,000 people lined up; the net red milk tea shop sold a cup of scalper price of 200 to 300 yuan; the traffic police shouted urgently; the next day the official issued an apology... The first day of shenzhen Wenheyou's opening was full of topicality and drama.
On the same day, the reporter visited Guangzhou Wenheyou, and unlike the Shenzhen store with a long queue, the reporter could enter the restaurant three minutes after making an appointment to take the number, and five minutes after admission, he could eat at the restaurant. A year before the opening of Wenheyou in Guangzhou, the scene of the opening of 3,000 tables and an average queue of 4 hours is no longer presented.
Is the popularity of phenomenal Internet celebrity restaurants such as Wen Heyou only a flash in the pan? Will today's Guangzhou Wenheyou be Shenzhen Wenheyou's tomorrow? We exclusively interviewed the head of Wenheyou's marketing department and responded to issues such as the operation of Wenheyou's store in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and the future urban expansion strategy.
Operating costs under the aura of "nostalgic old brand"
In June last year, the restaurant complex then known as "Super Wenheyou" was copied from Changsha to Guangzhou. More than 20 city brands with laoguang characteristics and local brand merchants in Guangzhou have settled in. The recombination of old-fashioned architectural styles and local time-honored restaurants attracts young people to "pay for their feelings".
According to media reports, Guangzhou Super Wenheyou once set a record for more than 6,000 tables in line, and some diners lined up at 3 p.m. that day until 9 p.m. Some reporters have visited Guangzhou Wenheyou half a year later and learned that the current number of queues is stable at about 1500 tables on weekdays and about 3500 tables on weekends.
On April 2, compared with Shenzhen Wenheyou, who had snaked hundreds of meters on the same day, Guangzhou Wenheyou looked much more deserted. The reporter took the number at the public account at about 4:20 p.m., and the system showed that there were 7 tables waiting in front of it, and in less than three minutes, the system reminded that it was ready to enter.
After the reporter entered around 7 o'clock during the peak dinner period, he could immediately find a place to eat in the store. From admission to dining, it took less than 5 minutes. On the one hand, the flow of people has dropped sharply, and on the other hand, the gradual withdrawal of long-established shops.
Guangzhou Wen and friends outside the waiting diners
The reporter visited and found that the "Feng Guan Hui Barbecue Restaurant" that had the largest number of followers earlier was now replaced by a flavor restaurant selling traditional flour noodles, and the blind male pill that originally operated the shadowless foot Chen Clan has now been replaced by Chen Tianji's signboard. The stall chef told reporters that at present, Chen Tianji's two stores have closed one, and the existing one has a good business and does not need to queue. According to reports, Wen Heyou Chen Tianji has a fish skin of 28 yuan, which can sell about 600 copies a day on weekdays, up to 1,000 copies on weekends, and more than 15,000 flows every day. And Chen Tianji's old store in Shangxiajiu sells at least 2,000 copies a day, according to the sales volume on weekdays, Chen Tianji's old store is close to 40,000 yuan higher than the daily flow of Wenheyou store.
Due to the inability to adapt to the mode of operation, many long-established operators feel that they are "lacking in skills" between the main store and the branch store, and choose to withdraw from Wenheyou in order to ensure the quality of the brand. Obviously, if the old-fashioned brand of Wen heyou is still in accordance with the past "floor stall" business method, I am afraid it will be difficult to get the expected income, and the "Grandma Beef Miscellaneous" has completed the transformation earlier. Grandma Beef Miscellaneous Direct Sales Has tried another way of operating, that is, to cooperate with the supply chain of large brands such as Tai'er Sauerkraut Fish and Jiumaojiu to solve the problem of standardizing the core elements of catering such as food source, processing technology and supply volume. According to the relevant person in charge, the daily business volume of Grandma Cow Miscellaneous Articles and Friends Shop is 8,000-12,000 copies, and the monthly turnover is about 700,000-800,000 yuan.
The head of the marketing department of Wenheyou responded to the revenue situation of Wenheyou in Guangzhou. "In fact, it is not like the outside world, and the revenue of the Guangzhou store is very good now." Previously, Guangzhou Wenheyou also responded to the self-media report on its "grand view no longer" on the WeChat public account, saying that Wenheyou, as the organizer of the community, needs to do its best to help merchants survive, develop and inherit, and there will be changes in the community, there will be some friends leaving, and some friends will join.
The fame of the long-established street stalls is somewhat accidental, and may not really represent Guangzhou's food culture. After entering Wenheyou, after expanding from one store to two stores and multiple stores, it needs to face problems such as the increase in labor costs, whether the production can be maintained uniformly, and how to maintain the original feelings.
Wen Heyou said that the team is also constantly reflecting on its own problems. "In the process of choosing community partners, we are attracted by the story of the shopkeeper and conquered by the flavor of the food, but is the category itself suitable? Can subsequent operations be maintained? Behind the story and flavor, we need to try and make mistakes and practice to maintain a better functioning of the community. ”
Retro fads are hard to escape copying and sticking circles
It has been pointed out that Guangzhou Wen and You are just a slight modification of the Changsha Wen and You Street scene, and then add some Cantonese slang elements. Learning the lessons of Guangzhou Wenheyou, Wenheyou is more elaborate in the introduction and packaging of Shenzhen.
The two cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen have different history and culture, and the memory of the city is different, and Wenheyou has also made a differentiated treatment from it: from the perspective of the settled brands, Shenzhen Wenheyou is more diverse. In addition to the three standards of retro street scenes, time-honored snacks and cultural and creative shops, Shenzhen Wenheyou has added robot elements, ornamental pet shops, tide play brand bubble marts, net red beauty collection shop black holes, and even set up a stage to perform immersive dramas, called "Qi Dream". It can be seen that the Shenzhen store integrates a lot of modern attributes of Shenzhen, introducing many new formats for the first time, and Wenheyou hopes to introduce more traffic in this young and technological city.
Shenzhen Wen and Friends
The person in charge of the marketing department of Wenheyou told reporters that Shenzhen Wenheyou is committed to creating urban products "deep oysters", in order to better explore the taste of the city and create a map of urban food. In addition to creating a "deep oyster", Shenzhen Wenheyou also launched the first batch of 7 urban promotion dishes. "Cha Yan Yue is a good brother of our Changsha, this time come to Shenzhen with us, come to embrace Shenzhen together, and hope to bring a rich experience to everyone together."
In this way, in order to attract more traffic, Shenzhen Wenheyou is like a tide brand complex with a retro shell. "Both modern and nostalgic, conflicting and synergistic." Wen Heyou described Shenzhen Wen Heyou's external expression in this way.
Some self-media have spoken in Zhihu, saying that wenheyou brands from Changsha, Hunan Province, cannot tell the story of Guangshen and Shenzhen. Is this really the case? Trace the history of Wen Heyou, which was originally a restaurant. After selling fried skewers on the side of the road for 9 months, founder Wen Bin opened his first store in Changsha, Hunan Province, and it was not until 2019 that the prototype of today's Wen He You began to take shape. In that year, Wen Heyou restored the landscape of the old Changsha community in the form of all-used objects in the store for the first time, with an area of 5,000 square meters. The extra-large space packaged with Ichijing culture and cuisine gives locals an immersive scene-based experience that has never been seen before, and a business model about "retro trends" is formed.
It is not difficult to see from the construction of the two complexes in Guangzhou and Shenzhen that the Wenheyou brand is trying to get rid of the strange circle of simple copying and pasting of the retro trend. In the emerging city of Shenzhen, Wen Heyou strives to start from the memory and characteristics of the city and excavate elements that are different from the thousand-year-old city of Guangzhou. In the 90s, how many locals and outsiders would pay for the streets and alleys of Shenzhen, it is too early to conclude.
Is Wen Heyou worried that the lively phenomenon of Wen Heyou in Shenzhen will no longer exist a year later? In this regard, Wen Heyou believes that the possible difficulties in the future will not be considered for the time being. "What we have to do now is to develop and present the product content well, to make every corner of the details to the extreme, every food to be delicious, every service to make everyone satisfied, and we are also doing our best to improve every product."
Not afraid of the "pure punch card party" Can the city culture set up a "gourmet Disney"
In April this year, Wen Heyou said on the public account that it would put down "super" and embrace the city, and Shenzhen Wenheyou was launched as an independent brand. At the same time, the public account "Super Wenheyou", which originally gathered the publicity and queuing functions of Changsha and Guangzhou stores, was renamed "Changsha Wenheyou", and the public account "Guangzhou Wenheyou" was established.
From the name change, it can be seen that the Wenheyou brand is looking for the best commercialization path for its IP, and the co-founder of Wenheyou has said that it will "create a paradise for each city". The strategy of "City Wenheyou" means that the Wenheyou brand will extend to more cities in the future. On the one hand, there is a hot "queue tide", on the other hand, a small number of self-media believe that "Hunan people can't tell the story of Guangshen well", how will Wen Heyou, who started from "Changsha", embrace other cities?
According to Wen Heyou's planning, taking the Changsha Hisense store model as the basic prototype, within 5 years, 10 "City Wenhe Friends" will be opened in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and other first-tier cities at home and abroad, and the prototype of "Gourmet Disney" in Wenbin's mouth can be completed.
The head of the marketing department of Wenheyou said that after Shenzhen Wenheyou, the next city of Wenheyou will be opened in Nanjing.
Looking at the "Guangzhou Wenheyou" and "Shenzhen Wenheyou" out of Changsha, although the Wenheyou brand has been working hard in a larger, newer and more fashionable direction, it is still difficult to hide the true color of the "punch card". Wen Heyou responded to this, "Whether it is punching cards or consumption, as long as they are customers who enter Wen heyou, they are all members of our 'community', and I hope that everyone can get a high-quality experience here." ”
It is not difficult to imagine that no matter which city Wenheyou is in, when the crowd of people rushing to the new store landscape and internet red shops recedes, the factors that determine whether the crowd will make secondary consumption depends more on the competitiveness of Wenheyou as a "catering complex" positioning, at present, Wenheyou is still committed to the research of traditional folk catering culture, excavating regional folk snacks, combining with the trend culture, whether the unique "Wenheyou cultural complex model" can be perfectly integrated with each city, is still a problem that the Wenheyou team needs to overcome and think.
Yang Ganjun, co-founder of Wenheyou, has expressed his hope to create a "Disney of the food industry" and revealed that Wenheyou will stop incubating new brands in the next two years. This also confirms from the side that Wenheyou chooses to rely on traffic resources to expand its "circle of friends", introduce more well-known brands to guide the flow of Wenheyou, and achieve the business logic of continuous revenue in the state of circular development.
Aoyi news reporter Lin Shiyan
Intern Liu Jie