As the first major category of catering, the current hot pot track has entered the stage of white-hot competition.
When the milk tea small ingredients are more and more like eight treasure porridge, the hot pot is not far behind, and it has also opened a vigorous process of adding ingredients.
Ingredient hot pot has become a means for major hot pot brands to differentiate their products.
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Cai Daqi, the owner of the restaurant company, | wen
Hot pot is popular
The brand camp is constantly expanding
At the beginning of this year, the hot pot was greatly updated, and 4 new pot bases with ingredients were shelved: sauerkraut white meat pot, curry pot, black pepper beef pot, suki pot, and the taste covered the north and south.
Before that, Tang Tang relied on the bottom of the pot to fight the world, such as full of duck blood, tofu, constantly tumbling Desktop spicy pot, beauty and beauty of the red flower glue chicken pot and so on.
In recent years, the entire hot pot industry has gradually become popular with ingredient hot pot.
Tang Tang is just one of the representatives of the hot pot with ingredients. The brand potential is very strong Tan duck blood hot pot, the original is to use the bottom of the duck blood pot to cut into the market; Laowang is to do the pork belly chicken hot pot to the extreme, harvest countless health hot pot powder; the main fresh beef hot pot left court right courtyard, launched a special brisket pot, to enrich the product attributes; brother lao guan is the head brand of frog hot pot, consumers often need to queue for two hours, only for a mouthful of fresh and spicy frog meat.
The strong vitality brought by the bottom of the pot is gradually being seen and recognized, and more and more hot pot companies are joining this camp.
Take the very hot brine hot pot in 2020 as an example. According to public reviews, there are hundreds of hot pot restaurants with spicy brine products in the Sichuan-Chongqing area alone. Most brands have a unit price of between 70-80 yuan, taking the low-end route. With the high price of play, such as Xianhezhuang, Halogen Principal, Halogen Spelling and other brine hot pots to achieve explosive growth.
Anything can be added?
There are two major paths to the source of the bottom of the pot
The popularity of the hot pot is not only that more and more companies have joined the camp, but more importantly: the product category is becoming more and more abundant, showing the trend of "everything can be added".
At present, there is a material pot bottom, with a variety of tricks, and it is a grand view. To summarize briefly, there are roughly two paths:
The first is the base of the main ingredients.
For example, the main ingredients such as chicken, beef, and lamb can take the route of changing tastes, evolving into a multi-flavored pot bottom such as stew, black pepper, spicy, sauerkraut, etc., and can also be combined with different ingredients to evolve into a more complex taste. Chicken, cattle, and other parts of the sheep can also develop a variety of ingredients, such as brine pots, lamb stick bone hot pots, beef offal pots and so on.
The most mature chicken in the supply chain can increase fat intestines, flower glue, abalone, taro, coconut and other ingredients, and transform them into multiple small categories such as fat sausage chicken, flower glue chicken, abalone chicken and so on. Because of the health attributes of chicken, chicken hot pot also takes the route of health nourishment.
The second is the base of classic dishes.
Many dishes with unique flavors can be adjusted to become the bottom of the pot with ingredients. For example, the old duck set under Grandma's family, with old duck, ham, dried bamboo shoots, and Nongfu Mountain Spring stew, after eating duck and drinking soup, you can also eat some simple dishes. The source of this unique "duck hot pot" is the old duck pot, a well-known traditional dish in Zhejiang.
There is also a chicken hot pot brand liziba Liangshan chicken that is active in Chongqing, the prototype is a combination of a variety of nourishing ingredients of braised chicken, and then developed into a spicy and fragrant chicken hot pot, after eating chicken and taro, sand ginseng, it becomes a spicy pot bottom.
In addition, exotic cuisine can also be included in the category of hot pot, such as Japanese sukiyaki, Korean kimchi pot and cheese pot, etc., although not mainstream, but each has its own characteristics.
There is a history of hot pot
How do hot pot ingredients become base ingredients step by step?
In the category of hot pot, hot pot can be understood as a cooking method, using soup water to boil various ingredients, which can be roughly divided into Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot, Beipai hot pot, Cantonese hot pot, and other hot pots (such as Dianwei hot pot).
Adding ingredients to the hot pot, the earliest appeared in the Cantonese hot pot, that is, the side stove. The best beef and mutton or Qingyuan chicken are cooked in a charcoal casserole dish, occasionally shabu vegetables, and the initial role of the base of the pot is to borrow the taste, and the umami taste of the main ingredients is integrated into the bottom of the pot, whether it is soup or shabu-shabu, it is quite flavorful.
Cantonese hot pot with its health characteristics, in recent years in the country popular in recent years, can be described as one of the promoters of the popularity of hot pot.
Another thrust at the bottom of the pot is from the Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot. Everything can be hot pot, many new categories into Sichuan and Chongqing, will be transformed into spicy hot pot, such as spicy fried crab, after eating crab plus soup base, is the umami seafood spicy pot bottom.
With the help of the mature supply chain system and the opportunity of the development of the western region, the spicy hot pot began to expand to the whole country, and also led to the development of the ingredient hot pot.
The most typical is the popularity of fish hot pot, not only there are common varieties such as blackfish and spotted fish, but also very local characteristics of the consumable fish, yellow spicy dingo; not only can evolve into spicy, sauerkraut, tomato and other flavors, but also can be combined with fat intestines into fat intestines fish hot pot.
At present, as the development of hot pot categories becomes more and more mature, the boundaries of hot pot are constantly blurred, the region is gradually weakening, and various categories are constantly integrated, and the material hot pot is the embodiment of this high degree of integration.
In a hot pot restaurant, there is not only the spicy flavor of Sichuan and Chongqing, but also the sauerkraut pot in the northeast, the Cantonese-style Qingyuan chicken pot, and perhaps the Japanese Sukiyaki, which is happy and harmonious.
Proactive or forced to innovate?
Racetrack competition forces hot pot to materialize
Now to eat hot pot, many times have been indistinguishable: whether to eat hot pot, or eat hot pot base?
On the surface, the popularity of the hot pot is that the hot pot brand is constantly innovating and adapting to the psychological changes of consumers.
On the one hand, consumers' demand for hot pot is becoming more and more refined, hoping to jump out of the routine and eat more personalized and differentiated products.
On the other hand, the bottom of the pot is more valuable and more popular with consumers. For a simple example, on the one hand, there is an empty pot bottom of 50+ per capita, only simple side dishes floating, and on the other side is more than ten pieces of feed pot bottom, full of materials, heating can be eaten, consumer choice is self-evident.
From the perspective of deep reasons, the materialization of hot pot is the inevitable result of hot pot category competition.
According to the "China Catering Big Data 2021", the chain rate of hot pot has increased from 15.1% in 2019 to 18.3%, exceeding the average chain rate of the catering industry by 15%, and the number of stores of fish hot pot alone has reached 12%. Hot pot is the most mature category and track of Chinese catering.
According to relevant figures, at the end of 2019, the number of hot pot stores in the country has exceeded 580,000, and in 2018, the number of stores is less than 400,000, with a huge growth rate and a huge number of stores, resulting in fierce competition in this category.
Under the giant division of traditional hot pot, do not want to enter the Red Sea, can only focus on subdivision of small categories, must be through continuous innovation, create subdivision categories, create differentiation, to attract consumers, in the fierce hot pot competition to find new profit margins.
Therefore, whether this innovation is voluntary or forced, the fierce competition in the hot pot industry has made hot pot brands more and more focus on product innovation on the bottom of the hot pot and constantly add ingredients.
Therefore, the hot pot has materialization, which is the inevitable result of the competition in the hot pot track, and it is expected that in the future in the catering market, the innovation of hot pot will continue to lead the trend.