In the matter of "old-fashioned operation", some are in danger, and some are like fish in the water.
The owner of the restaurant company is | in the month and a half wen
On September 25, 2021, at the 15th China Industry Development Conference, Zhu Baojun, Chairman of Baoxuan Catering Group, delivered a keynote speech "Time-honored Brand · A New Legacy: The Digital Journey of the Ear and the Eye"
At the beginning of the speech, Zhu Baojun threw out the point of view: "In today's era, it is not easy for a brand to operate for 10 years, it is not easy, to exceed 10 years, or even 100 years, it is really necessary to think of danger in peace, be down-to-earth, and at the same time have to talk about some 'strategy'." ”
The words resonated with many peers at the scene.
In addition to reviewing the development process of Ear eye fried cake for more than 100 years, Zhu Baojun shared more about the innovation of the old brand, the "strategy" of multi-brand, and how to use digital reform to achieve a great improvement in the group's operating efficiency.
Here's what the public talk was about:
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I am very pleased to have the opportunity to share it at the China Catering Industry Development Conference. As a representative of Tianjin's intangible cultural heritage long-established enterprises, "Ear Eye" was born in 1892 (18 years of Qing Guangxu) and has been passed down for 129 years. In this process, I went through the process of "family inheritance to master-apprentice inheritance" and "state-owned enterprise restructuring to introduce private capital", and finally, the Baoxuan Food Group, which I founded, officially took over the ear and eye brand. Along the way, we also have a lot of experiences and experiences.
Behind a good brand, it must be a good look
Some people always ask me: How should a century-old intangible cultural heritage brand be passed on? In my opinion, the promotion of old brands or innovation is inseparable from the word "fundamental". Behind a good brand must be a good appearance, which is related to the times, to meet the needs of the moment, to find the roots.
Taking fried cakes as an example, we have carried out all-round planning of ears and eyes from various aspects such as increasing production, expanding categories, and building brands.
Let's start with increasing production. Ear eye fried cake making has undergone a process from handicraft to industry. At that time, the handmade fried cake was made in uneven portions, which was greatly affected by the season and temperature, and the taste was unstable. On the basis of inheriting the traditional technology, we have standardized, processed and industrialized the production of fried cakes, built a constant temperature and humidity production and processing base of more than 40,000 square meters, and created a controllable and scientific fried cake production line to improve production efficiency and solve the problem of product supply. At present, the daily production capacity of the cake workshop can reach 200,000, and the daily production capacity of the filling workshop can reach 20 tons.
I would also like to emphasize that the factory and ingenuity are two concepts, not contradictory, ingenuity is a belief and a root, and the factory is a way and a way to achieve ingenuity.
Let's talk about expanding the category. The most traditional fried cakes have only a single bean paste flavor. We have innovatively developed chocolate, hawthorn, black sesame, taro and other new products to meet the needs of consumers of different ages. We also sell "Ear Eye Bean Filling" and develop a healthy low-sugar filling. In the Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and other traditional holidays and festivals, to the ear to buy bean paste home to personally wrap tangyuan, wrapped rice dumplings, has become a new tradition of many Tianjin people. In addition, we have also launched a number of seasonal product gift boxes, including Mid-Autumn Moon Cake Gift Box, Spring Festival Noodle Gift Box, Tangyuan Gift Box, etc.
"Chocolate flavored" fried cakes are popular with ladies and children
Finally, build a brand. The Ear Eye brand started from a small street shop and has reached a diversified development, with the dual tracks of "Ear Eye Fried Cake Shop" and "Ear Eye Club" coexisting. Regular fried cake shops are set up on the streets of Tianjin, selling products in a short and fast way, which is convenient for citizens and tourists to buy. In 2013, we established the "Ear and Eye Club", which focuses on fine dining. We hope that "Ear and Eye" is not only a snack category, but also a representative brand of Tianjin cuisine covering fast food and dinner.
When doing catering, the strategy is "fundamental"
I've always thought that customers are bigger than restaurant managers. We operate catering, the same is to embrace customers, embrace the market.
Baoxuan Food & Beverage Group currently has a number of brands such as Baoxuan Fishing House, Ear Eye, Jin cuisine collection, Dafulai, Cheese Forest, Crab House, Baoxuan and so on.
These brands are very differentiated, and each has its own "penetration".
For example, there are fried cake shops that position snacks, Baoxuan Fishing House that locates mid-range home-cooked restaurants; there are also more high-end ear and eye clubs and Jin cuisine collections, which are also listed as "black pearls"; and Dafulai has gone from the original single breakfast category to now covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, positioning the national canteen, and strengthening cooperation with the Meituan platform in the future, optimizing the model, making efforts to take out, and quickly copying; Cheeselin is "China's first Western restaurant", which was taken over by us in 2020, and Baoxuan Food Group became the controlling party. We will use the promotion advantages of the Internet after renovating and restoring the style of that year to create an "internet celebrity" restaurant.
Different positioning, attracting people with different needs, running a business fundamentally depends on strategy, how to play each card? What effects will each have? This is all something that the boss needs to take into account.
Embrace the Internet and revolutionize operational efficiency
With the development of society, we also realize that traditional catering must undergo digital transformation and upgrading in order to better serve the new generation of consumers.
On the one hand, we have built an online brand marketing matrix. We have opened an official account on short video platforms such as Douyin, intuitively presented the production process of fried cakes to the audience through videos, introduced the brand history, and promoted new products in stores, and 7 videos have been released so far. We also use WeChat public accounts and WeChat Mini Programs for brand promotion, and timely push new products and offers to subscribers.
On the other hand, we also "enjoyed" the dividends of the brand potential to spread on the spot.
Ear Eye Restaurant (Five Avenue Store) was shortlisted for the 2022 Black Pearl Restaurant Guide; before that, Ear Eye Restaurant (Gulou Store) has won the honor of "Black Pearl One Diamond Restaurant" for three consecutive years, and in the three years since it was on the list, both online traffic and in-store customer flow have achieved great growth - in 2021 compared with 2019, online traffic increased by 34.3% year-on-year in the first half of the year compared with 2019. Black pearls have also been of great help to the promotion of local cuisine, attracting many foreign consumers who have come to visit, with an increase of 27.2% in the first half of 2021 compared with 2019. This also gives us more motivation to make exquisite dishes.
In addition, the new generation of consumers prefer takeaway, and we also actively strengthen cooperation with Meituan takeaway, hoping to send the ears and eyes directly to the consumer's table. After the launch of takeaway, we found that takeaway can not only increase operating income, but also expand the coverage of stores. Originally, a store could only cover the consumer population of 3 kilometers nearby, but we can now see in the background that the farthest takeaway order has been delivered to a distance of 12.6 kilometers from the store, that is, compared with the original 3 kilometers, the current operating radius has tripled. In the future, all ear and eye stores will launch takeaway, and will redesign the takeaway menu for the needs of different scenes such as afternoon tea and supper.
I would also like to share with you that we are now actively trying the "unmanned noodle shop", from processing to service, to the final checkout, the whole process of intelligent operation, greatly improving efficiency.
In short, the long-established brand carries the history and memory of a city. In the process of taking over and passing on ear and eye, DaFu Lai and Cheeselin, we regret to see that many time-honored brands and intangible cultural heritage skills have been lost in the long river of historical development. Old brands should not be locked in safes, and should continue to evolve in line with the pace of the times.
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