Whether the new brand can break the spell of short-lived Internet celebrities is still unknown, but it can be expected that catering has ushered in a golden age, and snacks will usher in the next ten thousand stores.
Author | And again
Edit | perilla
Source | TideSight
In the nearly 5 trillion catering market, snacks account for nearly half of the country.
In 2021, snacks are particularly concerned. Snacks that were once "categories without brands" have been continuously relaxed and scaled, and Internet red brands have continued to emerge, becoming a new fashion for young people.
At present, the domestic Wandian chain brands are Michelle Ice City, Delicious Duck Neck, Wallace and Zhengxin Chicken Steak. Michelle Ice City has exceeded 20,000 stores this year; the shortest time to complete 10,000 stores is the taste of duck neck, currently more than 16,000 stores; Zhengxin chicken steak in 2017 exceeded 10,000 stores, and now has 23,000+ stores; Wallace stores more than 18,000 stores.
Fried chicken, brine, fast food, and tea are all hot industries, but compared with the new brands with high consumer attention in recent years, the king of the four ten thousand stores is slightly "obscure".
From ramen to rice noodles, from milk tea to dim sum, from fried skewers to brine, snacks that have been "ignored" by capital before have been sought after by investors as never before in 2021.
Snacks are no longer "small", who is the next king of ten thousand stores?
According to the "2019-2020 China Snack Industry Development Report" released by Meituan, there are currently about 5 million snack merchants in the country, which is the largest category track in the catering industry.
The people regard food as the sky, and eating is "throwing" and other major events.
According to the incomplete statistics of public information, from 2020 to the present, there have been about 40 financing incidents in the snack field, with a financing amount of more than 3 billion yuan. Behind it are more than 30 investment institutions such as Sequoia Capital China, IDG Capital, Source Code Capital, Gaorong Capital, and Tencent Investment.
Counting the financing of the entire catering industry, only in the first 11 months of this year, rough statistics, more than 220 financing incidents, the disclosed financing amount of nearly 50 billion yuan.
The capital circle has basically reached a consensus - for physical catering, as long as the single-store model runs through and the supply chain is controllable, it is not difficult to produce large-scale chain brands in any category.
Snacks have become the outlet, and capital has also piled up. In the first half of the year, Zhang Lala, Ma Jiyong, Chen Xianggui and other ramen were financed almost in the same period, and in the second half of the year, the same was true for fried skewers and brine.
Among them, the fastest financing and the most typical are Kwafu Fried Skewers and Chen Xianggui. Kwafu has received three consecutive rounds of financing in half a year, with a cumulative amount of more than 150 million yuan; while Chen Xianggui has received 4 rounds of financing in more than a year, with an amount of more than 300 million yuan.
There is coffee and tea in the front, and ramen, skewers and brine in the back. Since the beginning of Huang Taiji and Young Master Xi in that year, entrepreneurs and investors have never stopped digging for single snacks. However, the frustration of the first generation of Internet celebrity items, in addition to its own problems, is largely due to the imperfection of the entire catering industry chain.
Snacks have always been there, why has it attracted so much attention this year and become a popular track?
Under the "snack consumption upgrade", many street foods are worth doing again. The rise of new consumer groups, whether it is food or visual image or user experience, many snack categories in the form of "husband and wife shops" have the need to be upgraded.
Snacks are inherently addictive, with low entry barriers, wide geographical coverage, and a wide variety of types. Although it is more dispersed and has no brands for a long time, it also means that the probability of running out is greater.
In addition, snacks are mostly in the small shop mode. In the case of a perfect supply chain, it is relatively easier to copy, expand faster, and easier to scale chains. Small areas are more efficient, more flexible, and more diverse in site selection.
Liu Yang, founding partner of Jinding Capital, said: "Mainly because the industrialization and standardization of the catering supply chain have transformed the roadside stalls, which has brought great changes to the market; secondly, talent is the fundamental change in the industry. With the change of the incentive system and the improvement of the quality of talents, the innovation of the industry will exceed the imagination of the past generation. ”
In the view of Yuan Zelu, the founder of Kwafu Fried Skewers, a huge gap has formed between the upgrading needs of a new generation of consumers and the supply of the lower end of the market, which is the source of the upgrading of snack consumption.
Yuan Zelu also summed up the nine-character mantra as "small stores, large chains, and full supply", and the sixteen-character policy is, "snack upgrades, community rejuvenation, market sinking, and digital operations".
The snacks were so hot that Michelle Ice City couldn't sit still. According to its official Weibo, in October, its first "Snow King Castle Experience Store" was officially opened in Zhengzhou, Henan, where it not only sold drinks such as milk tea, but also fried skewers such as chicken skewers, rice cake skewers and gluten. In November, Tianyancha data showed that Mi Xue Bingcheng Co., Ltd. applied for the registration of the "Lucky Snack Department" trademark.
Today's snack industry is becoming more and more casual and snack-oriented.
Brand opportunities are most likely to appear in the field of "big race track, category, no brand". The inherent rift in the industry gives brands room to grow, and new consumer waves are also speeding up to create game-breakers.
Ramen is hot in the first half of the year, and skewers are fried in the second half of the year. When many people could not understand lanzhou ramen, which was valued at 1 billion yuan in 2 years, the amount of financing for fried skewers broke through imagination.
Since the beginning of this year, capital has accelerated the branding of snacks. The outbreak of "Ma Jiyong" is mainly due to the fact that lanzhou ramen has a broad mass base. With the upgrading of stores, products and services, more and more consumers are willing to enter the store to consume and pay a higher premium for it.
The positioning of "eating noodles in the study" and fulao noodles pushed the "noodles" to a climax. In July this year, Hefu Fishing Noodles received nearly 800 million yuan of Series E financing, setting a record for the highest financing in the industry in the year. Up to now, the brand has accumulated 6 rounds of financing of more than 1.6 billion yuan.
With sufficient grain and grass, the expansion of stores is also accelerating. According to the data, the number of new stores added by Hefu Noodles in 2021 doubled compared with 2020, and a new store was opened in about 2 days across the country, and the total number of stores is expected to reach 450 by the end of the year.
It is also worth noting that Hefu Fish noodles are also undergoing multi-brand expansion. On May 1 this year, Hefu Noodles landed in Shanghai as a sub-brand "Hefu Small Noodle Wine", and successively entered Fuzhou, Tianjin, Zibo and other places.
In the second half of the year, fried skewers, brine flavor, spicy hot one after another came on the court. Investors have been sweeping streets in Changsha, Chengdu and other places for several months. In order to invest, multiple rounds of visits and persuasion, rapid payment in advance, etc., give entrepreneurs a lot of "tilt".
Wang Kuankuan, the founder of Xijie Fried String, once revealed that in its A round of financing, he got the TS (letter of intent) of more than 100 institutions, including many first-line institutions such as Sequoia Capital China. Finally, under the persuasion of Chang Kaisi, the source code capital who came to the door, he took the money.
The situation is similar to that of the father of the kwa, after several rounds of financing, the investment that had been rejected before also turned around and wanted to invest.
Yuan Zelu, the founder of the Kwa Father Fried Skewer, was previously the co-founder of the "West Young Master Meat Sandwich Bun". Before starting his business, he spent 10 months investigating more than 20 categories such as fried chicken and hot pot, and concluded that small skewers are the categories with the most "ten thousand stores gene".
In Yuan Zelu's view, the eight common genes of the Wandian chain: no regional differences in consumption, heavy taste addiction, fried protein, extreme cost performance, full supply of products, minimalist operation of stores, category anti-cycle, and high proportion of street site selection.
And the category of fried skewers meets all of the above genes almost simultaneously. Seizing this industry opportunity, the Qua Father Fried Skewers took the lead in branding the fried skewers into categories, and combined with the national tide design style of "Kwa Father Chasing the Sun", which was deeply loved by young people.
Ji Wei, founding managing partner of Huaying Capital, said that not only because of optimism about the fried skewer category market, but also because "Kwafu fried skewers have improved the visual presentation and experience of street food, and constructed a new consumption scene and experience." The franchisee empowerment system of Kwafu Fried Skewer is relatively perfect, using the business model of "small store + large chain + full supply", the team has a composite professional background and management concept of Internet + catering, presenting strong product capabilities and brand marketing capabilities. ”
According to the relevant data of the Meituan Research Institute, since 2019, there are more than 17 sub-categories in the snack industry with orders accounting for more than 1%, of which fried chicken and fried skewers rank among the top 10. In the past, the biggest brands in this category were mainly Zhengxin Chicken Steak and Wallace, but now they have been continuously replaced by new brands that have risen. But ramen and fried skewers are just a microcosm of the outbreak of snacks and dining.
"The Matter of Wandian is an obsession for me, and I have seen many Brands of Wandian, including Zhengxin, Absolute Taste, and Wallace, which is also the business philosophy that I determined at the beginning." Yuan Zelu did not hide his dream of Wandian in the slightest.
At present, the number of stores has exceeded 1800 less than 3 years after its establishment, and the number of newly signed and newly opened stores has exceeded 120 in the month.
In more than 2 years, Xijie fried skewers have gone from Nanjing to 23 provinces across the country, with more than 1400 stores and nearly 100 new stores signed every month.
Only from the perspective of industry and growth rate, it is true that the string has the potential of "ten thousand stores".
"The reason why China's catering industry has not given birth to a giant enterprise in the past so many years is neither a small number of categories nor a small number of projects, but the lack of system and core capabilities," Li Xuelin, founder of Hefu Lao noodles, said in an interview with 36Kr, which includes organization, core talents, tool applications, management concepts, automation applications, data management and other aspects, in order to ensure the flexible operation of hundreds of stores, thousands of stores, and ten thousand stores, and the experience is not out of shape.
The small shop model of snack brands chaining is not new. Stinky tofu, duck neck, grilled sausage, etc. are the kings of the first generation of small shops. Although it has a large consumer group, it is not formal. With the rise of brands such as Zhengxin Chicken Steak and Delicious Duck Neck, it has gradually moved from dirty and messy stalls to branding and regularization.
Now, each city will have several snack streets, Forrest Gump pot helmet, appetizer nails, Purple Swallow Flavor Chicken, Fuqian Small Crispy Meat, Snail Powder and so on more than ten kinds of insufficient categories, regional characteristics are constantly being tapped while also meeting the needs of consumers.
Judging from the several popular snack brands, there are mainly several commonalities: attaching importance to the supply chain to lay a solid foundation, so as to achieve scale effects; intensive cultivation of taste, original or pioneering explosive models, the establishment of product barriers; digital operation and management; fast opening of stores, wide coverage, more diversified scenes; better environment, design style closer to young love.
With the joint promotion of entrepreneurs and capital, the snack jianghu has also brought about great changes. According to the "2021 China Catering Franchise Industry White Paper", the chain rate of snack fast food categories in 2019-2020 is 14.3% and 17.3%, respectively. However, compared with the chain rate of more than 55% in Japan and the United States, there is still a lot of room for development.
Whether the current new brand can break the ephemeral internet celebrity curse is still unknown, but it can be expected that catering has ushered in a golden age, snacks will usher in the next ten thousand stores, and there will be dozens of chain catering brands listed in the next 10 years.