Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant: A bowl of Su-style noodles on the national road

Grasping the heart of the young wins the future, and grasping the stomach of the young wins the present.

People take food as the sky, catering has always been the top priority in people's daily consumption, not only just need, high frequency, but also has obvious social attributes, so the food and catering industry has also become a concentrated flashpoint of consumption upgrading in recent years - three and a half meals to promote freeze-dried coffee, Zhong Xuegao to promote ice cream ice products... A large number of vertical catering food categories have exploded, and surprising brands have been born.

These brands and products continue to become social currencies between people, and the continuous popularity in social networks has become the object of people's scramble to punch cards. Ten years ago, people would never have imagined that an offline tea shop could also be crowded and even attract the attention of scalpers, but now it is no surprise, and recently the same story has happened in the noodle food category.

Parallel to the consumption upgrade of the catering industry, young consumers are confident in China's local culture, which has also set off a "national tide" trend in recent years. For enterprises, this also means that brands have gradually departed from the framework of quality competition and entered the era of aesthetic, cultural and personalized brand competition. Obviously, the "national tide" will be a long-term cultural trend, and a large number of Chinese time-honored brands will also usher in their second spring.

Songhe Tower is at the intersection of the two lines of food and beverage consumption upgrading and China's national tide culture. As a 264-year-old Chinese long-established brand, Songhe Tower has found the path of brand rejuvenation and national tide through the development of the opposite store in addition to traditional meals, and has also opened the second curve of corporate growth.

As of the end of July 2021, in addition to 12 restaurant stores, Songhe Lou noodle restaurant has opened 36 stores across the country, and it is expected that Songhe Lou noodle restaurant will reach 100 stores in 2021.

<h2>Make the first bowl of Su-style noodles for young people</h2>

If it is not a Jiangnan person, I am afraid that I do not know much about the Songhe Tower, if it is a Jiangnan person, I am afraid that the older generation of its brand impression is still stuck in the dinner. Like a large number of chinese time-honored brands, SongheLou did have problems in the early days of brand aging and disconnection with young people.

The turning point came in 2018, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. acquired Songhe Tower, and after reorganizing the brand value, in the second half of that year, the first noodle restaurant of Songhe Tower opened for business.

On the one hand, small noodle products belong to leisure food, in recent years, received the attention of young people, there are social currency attributes, and noodle shops can thus become the carrier of young people's offline social scenes; on the other hand, the entire category of noodles is also achieving rapid consumption upgrade transformation, the earliest from instant noodles, such as self-heating pot, snail powder and other instant noodle upgrade products, and now the offline food stores, brand chain stores have also ushered in the transformation opportunity of volume and price, and the noodle track has become an important consumption outlet for capital attention in the past two years.

In addition to being able to grasp the trend of the industry, in fact, Songhe Tower also has its own unique advantages in making noodle restaurants. From the perspective of brand history, Songhe Tower originated in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the earliest business is to sell meals with noodles, famous for Braised Meat Noodles, Marinated Duck Noodles and other Su-style noodles, and its Brine Duck Noodles was selected as one of the "Gusu Ten Bowls of Noodles".

Although the history of the earliest noodles in Songhe Tower is probably only known to "old Suzhou", Suzhou noodles and even Jiangnan red soup noodles, as a traditional noodle food category, have a deep impact on the subsequent Jiangnan food culture, and have a good product foundation and user base. Suzhou people are recognized as love to eat noodles, but Su-style noodles have not formed an obvious head brand for a long time, there are more than 20,000 large and small noodle restaurants in Suzhou alone, and there are few brands that carry out product iterations for the dining habits of young people at present, so under the new consumption upgrade, the advantages of Songhe Tower are self-evident.

At present, Songhe Tower divides the dinner and the noodle restaurant into two brand lines and operates in parallel, the noodle restaurant is more inclined to communicate and interact with young consumer groups, and the main meal is still the main soda dish. It is not difficult to see from the site selection strategy that Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant focuses on opening in shopping malls, which is closer to the consumption distance of young people and deeply interacts with users through various operational activities.

Since 2020, Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant has seized the window period of the epidemic, accelerated the expansion of stores, and stood out from the noodle shop track. According to Songhe Tower, Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant will open 300 stores as soon as possible in the future, as a representative brand of Suzhou noodles, to achieve a nationwide layout.

<h2>Promote Soviet-style noodles to the whole country</h2>

Chinese food culture is profound and rich and diverse, so local cuisine has more or less national problems, even the popular Sichuan cuisine, but also rely on years of labor output and hot pot explosives to gradually penetrate the country. However, from the perspective of the industry trend of consumption upgrading and healthy diet, Su-style noodles may also usher in the opportunity of nationalization.

Different from the noodle culture in other places, Su-style noodles pay attention to "not eating from time to time" and "not getting bored with food". The so-called "not eating from time to time" means that the ingredients will be rotated regularly according to the four seasons and twenty-four solar terms, which not only ensures the taste experience of food, but also connects more closely with traditional Chinese culture; and "food is not boring" refers to the careful selection of ingredients and excellence, which is of course the future direction of food culture.

In addition, Su-style noodles also have a unique food culture, such as toppings are separated from pasta, and when ordering, first noodles, then toppings, then snacks, and final drinks. This set of Jiangnan noodle culture has actually been passed down since ancient times, and according to relevant research, China's earliest noodles were born in Suzhou.

The three points of seasonal newness, refined ingredients and traditional culture make Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant have the potential to constantly break the circle and be recognized by young users, which is also the brand background that supports its exit from Suzhou Jiangnan and realizes the expansion of national chains.

In the crayfish season, the crayfish noodles launched by Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant have been recognized by young users and become the net red products in the store; and in the hairy crab season, the crab flour noodles in the store have been well received by a large number of users. Dismantling it can be found that seasonal new can ensure brand popularity, ingredient refining can achieve brand reputation, and traditional culture forms brand stickiness.

Although the brand connotation is in line with the current catering trends and user needs, the scale and standardized replication of stores are the key to the process of market expansion.

As early as 2007, Songhelou Restaurant was laid out nationwide, and a research and development team and a central kitchen system were built. When Songhe Lou noodle restaurant was born in 2018, in fact, the large-scale and standardized system behind it already had a foundation, so Songhe Lou noodle restaurant could achieve rapid national replication after the business model ran through.

Today, in addition to the traditional Jiangnan area, Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant has entered the South China market. In June 2021, Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant entered Shenzhen for the first time and opened two stores, and the market feedback was good. According to the official disclosure of Songhe Tower, at present, the repurchase of Songhe Tower noodle shop accounts for 20%, and the proportion of member consumption is about 30%. Behind the consumer stickiness, it is actually consumers' recognition of the Songhe lou noodle restaurant brand and a whole set of catering culture behind it.

<h2>Seize the new catering traffic dividend</h2>

At the level of users' brand awareness, how to make young consumers accept the "old brand" is still a challenge. For the Songhe Tower, the "Chinese time-honored brand" thing actually has two sides.

The positive side is that there is an inherent brand foundation, a crowd base and a historical background, which will be more labor-saving at the communication level; but the negative side is that the reversal of consumers' inherent perception of the brand is sometimes even more difficult than re-creating a new brand for precise positioning, and if the brand transformation fails, the damage to the "Chinese time-honored brand" is undoubtedly huge. Therefore, how Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant interacts and communicates with young consumers has become the key to product publicity.

In addition to product-side innovation, a major brand operation of Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant focuses on tapping the traffic dividend of online communication channels, which means that young consumers continue to promote the conversion of online traffic to sales orders while interacting with young consumers online.

On the whole, we can divide the Channels of Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant into four parts: home platform, store platform, social media, and offline surroundings, and Songhe Lou Noodle House has also carried out refined operation of traffic in these four channels.

First of all, takeaway and other home platforms, takeaway users' consumption scenarios are mostly one-person or two-person food, social attributes are low, and users are more concerned about the experience of the product itself. In fact, takeaway has always been a "minefield" for the experience of noodle products, and Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant also has many innovations in takeaway products, such as the customization of takeaway packaging materials, the separation of noodle soup, the adjustment of the method of making noodles, and even users can choose raw noodles and quickly make and eat themselves at home.

The second is that Dianping waits for the store platform, and the users who come to the store pay more attention to the comprehensive platform of the store, and the elements of consumption considerations are more multi-dimensional, so they also need more professional and refined operations. Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant uses catering traffic service enterprises to carry out relevant in-depth operations, and the sales of public comment channels account for about 15-20% at present.

In addition, online social media platforms, such as platforms such as Double Micro Yi Jidder B Station Xiaohongshu, such people are more based on content interest brand attention and consumption, Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant has been building a team to explore the corresponding operation. It is worth noting that the head social media platform itself is also improving the quality of e-commerce, local life and other businesses, such as Douyin began to try to join the local content section of eating, drinking and having fun, with the running of such social media traffic paths, online traffic may become a major source of business increment for catering enterprises.

Finally, the traditional offline organic traffic, natural traffic usually comes from surrounding customers, more habitual consumption, but at the same time there is a certain demand for new products, the launch of new products can usually effectively stimulate peripheral customers to repurchase, operation strategy and product strategy will be combined into one.

From the perspective of the development of the catering industry, online traffic operation capabilities and catering digital transformation will be an important breakthrough in the future development of Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant and even all current catering enterprises, seizing the online traffic dividend released by misconduct, and also enabling catering enterprises to find a new blue ocean in the market competition.

The catering industry is in an era of continuous category segmentation, and in the context of digital traffic dividends and communication dividends, the potential energy of vertical category outbreaks will continue to be released, and the small noodle track and Songhe Lou Noodle Restaurant are only one of them, but they will never be the last.