Two weeks ago, Pizza Hut launched a blockbuster new "Chinese Flavor" series, which attracted great attention from the industry, because the inspiration for the new season of products is obviously derived from two major Chinese food blockbuster categories, sauerkraut fish and spicy pot.
As the head brand of Western-style catering and the creator of the pizza category in the Chinese market, Pizza Hut has made great efforts to conquer the "Chinese stomach" in recent years.
Issue 2847 in total
Wang Jing, the owner of the restaurant enterprise, | wen
Discover the "Taste of China"
Pizza Hut sells "jianghu cuisine"
Starting in 2019, Pizza Hut launched the "Chinese Taste" series, exploring the "Chinese Cuisine" that integrates Chinese and Western cuisine, based on China's history and humanities, to create "Chinese Flavor in Western Restaurants".
This year's "Taste of China" is already in its third season, and the product has been more thoughtful, and even given a theme to pizza. In this set of "fireworks" series of dishes, the most eye-catching is the "Spicy Pot Style" super supreme pizza and the "sea bass get water" sauerkraut sea bass pizza, full of fireworks, full of Chinese most familiar homely atmosphere.
"Spicy Pot Style" Super Supreme Pizza has selected five meats and five vegetarians, twelve flavor spices, with Da Hong Pao peppercorns and a variety of pepper combinations, the ingredients are rich, spicy but not dry, and highly restore the taste of spicy pots on the street side of the city. At the same time, the pizza continues the popular petal cheese cake side some time ago, with 12 shiba buns, which greatly enhances the layering of this meal.
The "sea bass get water" sauerkraut sea bass pizza is based on the popular sauerkraut fish that has attracted much attention in the field of Chinese food in recent years. This pizza uses thick and juicy leaf mustard greens, fused with large sea bass meats, and a soft and fragrant shiba bun on the outside, giving the "sauerkraut fish" a more impactful expression.
The Chinese people pay attention to good color heads, "perch to get water", obviously taken from the harmonic sound of "like fish get water", the ingenuity of product naming, so that this wave has added more ingredients to pay tribute to tradition. As a "pizza expert", Pizza Hut also highlights the superior category characteristics of pizza itself in its products, and combines the popular categories of Chinese food with a high audience base to form a "Chinese flavor" with outstanding highlights and no sense of violation.
Image source: Network
As a Western-style catering giant that has been in China for 31 years, Pizza Hut has increased its localization innovation efforts in recent years, and has diversified innovative products to meet the needs of different localized consumers. Behind this is Pizza Hut's courage to lead the continuous innovation of Western-style catering, as well as the confidence to deepen the local market.
From product to scene
How western food categories conquer the "Chinese stomach"
Once Western-style catering, from product categories, to research and development concepts, to the target audience, are walking on a route that has no communication with Chinese catering. Testing the localization of the waters, while maintaining the original brand characteristics, is what many Western-style catering brands are exploring.
In this regard, Pizza Hut has been ahead of the curve, and through years of hard work, pizza has been turned into a downright imported pizza into a people-friendly delicacy that "flies into the homes of ordinary people". Looking back at Pizza Hut's several "Chinese flavors", it can be seen that from multiple dimensions such as products, concepts, scenes, and marketing, there is a steady progression that is not impatient.
In the first stage, famous dishes took the lead and attracted attention
In 2019, Pizza Hut first mentioned the concept of "Chinese flavor", and the main task at this stage is to quickly attract attention and release the signal of brand localization innovation.
Pizza Hut cleverly chose the traffic passwords of "Famous Family" and "Famous Dishes", and launched the stunning double pepper chicken pizza that reproduced the Hunan cuisine master "Xu Ye", the fruit wood flavored roast duck pizza with the flavor of the "Quanjude" fruit wood fragrant roast duck flavor in Beijing, and the slow-cooked beef pizza with rock sugar plum sauce made of plum meat sauce using the century-old method.
These famous dishes with a high reputation in the Chinese food industry have brought trust endorsement to Pizza Hut's product innovation, highlighting the tonality of the product, paying tribute to Chinese food culture, and attracting widespread attention.
The second stage: classical cultural scene, enrich the product connotation
In the "Taste of China" in 2020, Pizza Hut set the tone with the "state banquet", adopted the G20 state banquet cooking technique, continued the concept of high-end and people-friendly, and also played the "ancient style". The cultural concept of two new Pizza Hut Dongpo beef pizza and Pizza Hut Dongpo steak is taken from the Song Dynasty wenhao Su Dongpo. This cultural IP that "knows how to eat" has brought a beautiful reverie of "poetry and wine to take advantage of the years" for the product.
At this stage, Pizza Hut has begun to "play the scene", a number of Pizza Hut restaurants across the country have been transformed into theme stores, there are exquisite ancient style decorations into poetry hanging paintings, antique table cases, the wall is decorated with Su Dongpo's famous work "Chibi Fu", the waiters are also dressed in ancient costumes, so that customers can cross for a second.
The third stage: the selection of products to look at the "big base", the scene highlights the humanistic care
In 2021, Pizza Hut's play style has upgraded, first of all, it is more ambitious in terms of selection. According to the "2020 China Catering Big Data", the number of searches for "sauerkraut fish" has surpassed that of "yellow stewed chicken", and when the Chinese restaurant industry is still discussing the differentiated innovation of sauerkraut fish, Pizza Hut crossed over and easily won with its own Western food genes.
The understanding of the scene is obviously more profound, pizza hut no longer only uses the scene as a tool to attract attention, but gives the scene emotions, stories, and humanistic care.
In line with the theme of this time to create a pop-up theme shop - fireworks jianghu pizza shop, starting from the entrance of the "guest officer please enter" projection lamp, it will be full of fireworks and rivers and lakes atmosphere, immersive cake shop punch card area, fun street sign wall, and even placemats, etc., bringing a novel and kind fireworks atmosphere. Popular idol Zhao Liying personally performed the cool jianghu fan, which not only catered to the enthusiasm of young people to punch cards, but also provided an atmosphere environment with fireworks for young families to eat.
An epidemic has made people really feel that the fireworks of gathering together to eat home-cooked food are deeply valuable. So this time, Pizza Hut walked into the streets of the city, went deep into the alleys, looked for the most pyrotechnic temperament of the "jianghu dish", and created such a "fireworks and rivers and lakes burning" fashion cool scene.
Image source: Zebra Pictorial
It not only has cool visual effects, but also carries the epinix of life of "four square food, but a bowl of human fireworks". This brings a fatal attraction to young people who are noisy on the outside and afraid of loneliness on the inside, and it is easy to achieve accurate circle powder with scenes.
Continue to expand brand potential
Pizza Hut is in the next big game
For foreign catering brands, many times, "Chinese style" is just a theme of product innovation, why should The winner be in full swing on this year's "Chinese flavor"?
The first thing that can be seen is that the "national tide recovery" in recent years has always brought dividends to the catering industry, and has become an important innovation theme in the industry, and Pizza Hut has seen good feedback from the market from the beginning of the test to the continuous deepening.
And Neisanjun believes that There is a deep-seated reason why Pizza Hut's "Chinese flavor" this year is so wonderful.
Since the beginning of the "same-store sales back to the positive" in 2019, the overall potential of Pizza Hut has continued to rise, and after several years of adjustment, the profitability of the store has increased, and it has the basis for further large-scale store opening.
Yum China's second-quarter financial report shows that Pizza Hut added 70 new stores in the first half of this year, the largest year-on-year increase since 2016. Yum China has said it will continue to increase store density and penetrate into more new cities.
The "Chinese taste" this time is like a charge, from the taste, concept, scene, are aimed at a larger audience base, a broader market. With the continuous deepening of the "Taste of China", Pizza Hut is likely to begin to expand, increasing the density of stores in first-tier cities while continuing to sink to the second- and third-tier markets.
The pizza category brought by Pizza Hut has been hot in the Chinese mainland market for 30 years, and has begun to fully enter the era of popularization, with universal taste, grasping the "Chinese stomach", which has become a key point for further development. For three consecutive years, the "Taste of China" series has stuck in an extremely advantageous position for Pizza Hut's next expansion.