Image source @ Visual China
Under the overflow dividend of hot pot and its own characteristics, categories such as impostor dishes and spicy hot dishes once became a hot existence in the catering industry. However, in recent years, with the gradual occupation of the market by head brands and the reduction of consumers' freshness of the category, the popularity of impounding vegetables and spicy hot dishes is also declining.
At this time, the integration of impostors, spicy and hot flavors or dishes, spicy pots in the form of dry pots, and scale plates of spicy hot and spicy categories began to emerge quietly in the market.
What are the characteristics of these convergent categories? Will this be another trend in the future development of the food and beverage category?
The plate is spicy and hot, and now it is integrated with the iterative trend
Recently, the spicy hot plate has begun to have a "trace" trend in the Sichuan-Chongqing region.
Among them, the Chengdu brand old weighing pan spicy hot development is relatively rapid, public reviews show that its chengdu base camp has 40 to 50 stores, Chongqing stores have about 10, at the same time, in Beijing, Hangzhou, Changsha, Nanjing, Wuhan and other places have also opened stores, Guangzhou, Shenzhen stores are also about to open. It is reported that its current signed stores have reached 800.
△ Image source: Old Street Weighing Pan Spicy Hot Official Website
In addition, since 2019, the family's can be pan pan spicy hot in Chengdu has also developed nearly 30 stores, and is expanding to Chongqing and other places; Wenli new scale plate spicy hot in Beijing has nearly 20 stores; Chongqing's Yan Xiao man pan spicy hot just opened about 5 stores; Li Cannon scale plate spicy hot is developing outward with Nanjing as the center...
There are also many brands such as Chen PanPanpan, Spicy PanPan, No. 77 Guangsha Street, Boiling Basket, etc., which also show a good momentum of development, and together set off the "new variety" market of Spicy And Spicy Pan.
Red Food Network found through the public comment search that at present, in many first- and second-tier catering key cities have appeared in the "new variety" of plate spicy hot.
Despite the name "spicy hot", unlike the previous public impression of spicy hot, the plate spicy hot plate does not have a soup, but is more like a dry mixed vegetable or a dry pot.
△ Dried mixed fake vegetables, image source: Sangu fake vegetables official micro
In terms of the form of ordering, the scale plate is spicy and hot, which neutralizes the characteristics of skewers and hot pot. Stores will generally be equipped with a common freezer of skewer shops, customers do not need to order like hot pot, but like eating skewers, impostors like self-selection, the choice of dishes are also similar to hot pot, impostors, skewers.
After the customer has selected the dishes, the staff in the store will blanch the dishes in the bottom of the red oil pot, and after mixing, the finished product is presented on a large enamel plate, which is also the origin of the name "spicy and hot plate".
In terms of taste, the plate spicy hot and dry mixed dishes are similar, adhering to the taste system of hot pot and skewers, the difference is that the plate spicy hot will basically be accompanied by dipping sauce, and in the form of hot pot dry dish, the chili noodles, garlic paste, etc. are placed directly in the large plate of serving dishes, customers can choose to dip or not dip.
In terms of price, the plate is spicy and hot according to the meat dish plate, vegetarian dish plate, a meal down and fake dishes are comparable, many storefronts play the sign is that the average person eats thirty to full. The decoration of the store highlights the style of the city well, and the fireworks are full of fireworks.
The integration of "new categories" is more gimmicky and more advanced
In general, the plate spicy hot is more like the integration and iteration of similar categories such as impostors, spicy hot, dry pots, etc., rather than saying that it is a new category, it is more like a comprehensive upgrade of the 2.0 of the old category, some stores in order to highlight the difference, but also added brine, roasted vegetables, or in the decoration, tableware to make a fuss, play different doors, categories.
And it is this kind of differentiation, so that the "plate spicy hot" has a different point of view and gimmick, if because the taste type is similar, think that these upgraded iterations of the "new category" is not interesting, then it may be a little wronged it.
From the perspective of the form of a la carte and dining, the spicy hot dishes and the impounded dishes are very similar, and they also use their own choice of dishes, which are blanched and seasoned at the bottom of the pot and then served.
However, the characteristics of the spicy hot plate are that the portion is fixed, the taste can be dipped or not, and it can be grasped more independently, and most importantly, the plate is spicy and hot without soup, and it is better to exert force on takeaway. It is reported that the proportion of takeaway revenue in some stores like the old weighing pan can account for more than half of the total revenue.
At the same time, on the basis of the neat and tidy small shop, the plate and plate spicy hot plate upgraded the packaging again, getting rid of the influence of Western-style fast food on Chinese fast food, so that Chinese fast food began to have its own style, and it is a very grounded market style. You know, before this, most of this style can only be seen more in hot pot, Tujia restaurants and other formal meals, or other "big catering" categories.
Now, a fast food restaurant with a customer order of about 30 yuan, in making the same quality of the large catering category, has captured the consumer's demand for spicy hot and spicy hot to see novelty, fresh picture, and film rate in addition to taste, so that the new category has more to see and gimmick.
To some extent, the spicy hot plate is more like a second iteration upgrade of the spicy hot and imposterical dishes as a whole.
On the one hand, in terms of price, taste and audience, the spicy hot dishes are on par with the ordinary spicy hot and impostered dishes that have been tested by the market. On the other hand, from the decoration, it is more inclined to the restaurant store, and the product presentation can not only meet the dine-in needs of office workers, white-collar workers, and even tourists, but also become an advanced version of fast food, but also take into account takeaway, enrich sales channels, and further upgrade these two categories.
In this sense, such a category is not a new category in the true sense, but it cannot be simply summarized as an upgrade of fake dishes or spicy hot, perhaps, we use the "mixed race category" to describe it more appropriately.
△ Image source: Li Cannon weighing plate spicy hot official Weibo
And with the hot pot, skewers, impostor gene of the plate spicy hot, spicy pot how far can go, whether there can be such a good development momentum of the "predecessors", we still do not know, but perhaps we can see from it, in the homogenization of catering competition, such "mixed- race" categories may appear frequently in the future.
In the future, the "mixed race" category may appear more
If in the past 5-10 years, Chinese catering has transitioned from the "big restaurant + roadside stall" model to the "popularization + diversification" catering under the background of the Internet, so that many categories and dishes such as hot pot, sauerkraut fish, yellow braised chicken and rice have been screened, redone and packaged throughout China, and have been on the huge stage, then now it seems to have begun to enter the stage of secondary screening and secondary advancement.
With the rapid development of catering in recent years, homogenization has become an unavoidable problem, and catering people must accept the fact that the popularity of existing categories is gradually declining, the survival cycle of catering brands and stores is shortened, and consumer demand is still escalating.
Even if the catering category revenue has dominated the hot pot for many years, the past one or two years have begun to show signs of weak growth, Haidilao, sipping and feeding two major hot pot listed restaurant companies are not satisfactory business conditions, closed news, may be the current epitome of the catering market.
△Image source: Sipping and feeding the official Weibo
But at this time, it is not the end of the road. As the old saying goes, the popularity of hot pot stores has declined, the popularity of hot pot retailing is rising, the scale of hot pot brands is increasing, and hot pot is continuing its fiery state in another way.
The entire catering market seems to be the same, and the homogenization of categories and stores is also promoting the emergence of innovation, which is why the categories that have been popular can be innovated and integrated, and taken out to do it again, just like the current plate is spicy and hot.
The previous brand of fake dishes is to upgrade the original roadside food stalls, roadside stalls, mom-and-pop shops, if we regard it as the 1.0 version of the fake dish, then now the plate spicy hot is in the version of the fake dish 1.0 and then upgraded, the previous round is a simple category mining, then this round may be called a mixed innovation of the category.
△ Image source: The official Weibo under the hibiscus tree
And this kind of integration has been foreshadowed before, Wen Heyou will combine tourism and catering, Heytea will combine tea and milk cover, and the brine hot pot that combines spicy brine and hot pot has also become a major hot pot in the post-hot pot era, and since then there have also been brands that have integrated cooking, kebabs, etc. into the hot pot, winning the freshness of consumers, standing on the shoulders of giants, forming a new hot spot on the hot spot.
Now such brands and categories are appearing more, such as the fusion of spicy pot has also become a category of market attention.
In fact, spicy pot is not a new category, many places in the country have dry pots, and impound vegetables and other shabu-shabu different, dry pots are mostly fried, the pot in the soup is very small, the pot dishes are various, can be spicy taste, can also be pickled pepper flavor, braised is not impossible, the pot can be ignited, added. Spicy pot is the selection of the most mass-based spicy flavor of dry pot, based on Chongqing hot pot, buoyant flavor type to improve and enlarge.
△ Image source: Hanku spicy pot official Weibo
Hanku Spicy Pot, a subsidiary of Hanku Catering Brand, has developed nearly 500 stores since the opening of the first store in 2015, with more than 15,000 takeaway orders per day and a monthly transaction volume of more than 10 million yuan.
In addition, Nan HotPot and Principal Halogen jointly created the Pingjie HotPot Highway Night Market, which integrates hot pot and Chongqing stall snacks, as well as The Chongqing Night Market scene; combines Chinese dim sum and Western-style baking dim sum with Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau and Hutou Bureau; Xiaobei Tea House moves Chongqing stall snacks to small shops with chongqing Damba tea characteristics, from decoration, layout, tableware to products to combine Chongqing snack culture and Dam Dam tea culture; the fusion of new Chinese barbecue has also gained good traffic this year...
Such a small shop, some of the customer list may not be high, but the profit is not small, and it is easy to copy, form a chain, for consumers to eat and play well and easy to produce films, it is easy to become the "darling" of social media, forming a market heat. With the standardization of catering and the gradual maturity of the back-end supply chain, under the blessing of big data for consumer integration and analysis, it is believed that such "mixed-race" categories will gradually increase.
△ Pingjie hot pot road night market, image source: red food network photo
But on the other hand, we should also see that categories such as dry pots and spicy pots, although there is a certain market, there are many stores, but there are not many brand chains, which cannot form a brand effect and scale effect, and are still in a state of category without brand.
At this stage, these categories may not be enough to set off the storm of hot pot and sauerkraut fish in the past, but when these small innovations are bright enough and enough, they are bound to change quantitatively and lead to qualitative changes, and the catering industry as a whole may stand on another higher level. Perhaps, the current catering category is moving from the peak to the trough, but the emergence of these "mixed-race" categories may be driving the development of the category from the trough to the peak.