Wen 丨 BT Finance, author | No scruples
When lu Zhengyao is mentioned, people's first impression is always Luckin coffee, and it is associated with Luckin's counterfeiting scandal.
As for how he turned the rain and clouds in the Shenzhou Department, few people would care. Lu Zhengyao entered the public eye again because he was starting a business again, and this time he was eyeing the trillion-dollar prefabricated market.
According to Tech Planet, the Tongue Tip Technology Group, founded by Lu Zhengyao, is incubating a new project of prefabricated dishes called "Tip of the Tongue Workshop". According to data from Everbright Securities, the prefabricated vegetable industry has increased from 2019 to a compound annual growth rate of 26%, and the market size will exceed the trillion mark in 2025.
Lu's capital technology is invalid
Lu Zhengyao is now completely out of Luckin, and in December 2021, Luckin Coffee issued an announcement of the special shareholders' meeting, and 98.5% of Luckin's public shareholders supported the boycott of the return of the former fake management, which can be said to have received overwhelming support. This completely cut off Lu Zhengyao's way back, marking Lu Zhengyao's complete exit.
Coupled with the collapse of the previous Shenzhou automobile empire, Lu Zhengyao, a capital tycoon, went around and returned to the starting point of entrepreneurship. This time, he took the catering industry as the last stop before retirement, from "fun noodles" to pre-made dishes, not out of the scope of catering, but from the perspective of the development of fun noodles, Lu Zhengyao, who had a history of financial fraud this time, was cold in the capital market.
In the past 2021, Lu Zhengyao was busy and busy, but he could no longer afford to change the catering jianghu. In August, under the immature preparation, Lu Zhengyao panicked and entered the small noodle track. From the project proposal to the preparation of the landing, fun noodles only took 3 months, the biggest feature of the rushed project is that there is no feature, with Lu Zhengyao's celebrity effect, fun noodles in the early stage also caused a certain amount of attention, but soon became "invisible" ordinary small noodles.
At present, some media reports have reported that Fun Xiaomian is seeking a new round of financing, and the current round of financing Fun Xiaomian is valued at 1 billion yuan and is expected to raise 100 million yuan. However, the location of Fun Xiaomian is mainly concentrated around the office building, with high rent costs and many competitors. To a certain extent, this new brand is also facing various pressures, and there is not much capital interested.
The main points of Lu Zhengyao's universal formula of "land-style capital" are summarized as "finding the right track, setting up a company, huge financing, burning money to expand, and rapidly IPO", which also created a myth of 18 months of IPO success.
Under this formula, Shenzhou Car Rental, UCAR and Luckin Coffee were successfully listed. This is a trick that has been tried and tested by Lu's trick, but his financial fraud in Ruixing is equivalent to cutting off the back road, from the current market reaction of the small side, Lu Zhengyao has no magic anymore, and the darling of capital has gradually become the outcast of capital.
Since its opening, the expansion speed is unusually slow, which is completely contrary to Lu Zhengyao's previous playing style, and some insiders have analyzed that the fundamental reason is that Lu Zhengyao's reputation is lacking, financing difficulties, and there is no strong capital as a support, it is impossible to expand rapidly. Fun's financing plan was not smooth, and the lack of "bullets" of FunMian was far from reaching the expected expansion target.
At present, there are only 34 stores in 15 cities across the country, and Lu Zhengyao originally planned to have "106 stores in the first batch, and the second batch of stores to exceed 500". Overall development fell short of 1/10 of the target.
Lu Zhengyao's stride was a little big
At present, the reputation of Fun Noodles on platforms such as Meituan is not good, and the voice of "expensive and general experience" is overwhelming, and the overall market response is flat, far less than the market reaction of Luckin Coffee in that year.
However, its single store model has not yet been firmly established, just over a month from the opening of the first store of Fun Noodles, Lu Zhengyao has been eager to start seeking financing, perhaps there are too many competitors and the progress is too smooth to make Lu Zhengyao panic, or perhaps There are not many bullets" in Fun Noodles, which makes Lu Zhengyao a little anxious.
At this time, similar catering competitors meet Xiaomian, Ma Jiyong, Chen Xianggui have all obtained financing early, of which more than 150 chains have met Xiaomian at a valuation of up to 3 billion yuan. At the same time, an interesting phenomenon is that competitor Chen Xianggui sought 1 billion yuan of financing when there were only 22 stores, and Ma Jiyong obtained a valuation of 1 billion yuan for Sequoia Capital when he only had 15 stores.
At this time, Fun Xiaomian already has 34 stores, but only seeks financing of 100 million yuan, compared with the valuation of capital on Fun Xiaomian. This also proves from another side that capital has little interest in the brand, and of course, it may also be that capital is not very interested in Lu Zhengyao.
The financing of Fun Small Noodles was not smooth, and some of the stores were forced to change their names to Fun Bayu and launched "big dishes" such as hot pot pot pot. The positioning was changed from noodle shop to "fast food light food". The expansion from a single noodle fast food to a fast food restaurant with a richer product also shows the great pressure of operation. The problem is again, noodles can be standardized and quickly copied, but it is not easy to copy a wide range of fast food.
Some insiders told BT Finance that Lu Zhengyao himself wanted to build a food group, and initially planned to make hot pot, because of financial reasons, he first made interesting noodles.
Lao Lu clearly knows that there will be a ceiling in the single category track, and his idea is to expand multiple categories and do 20 brands. Noodles are just a category, and in the early days, he and his team also explored categories such as brine rice. However, such ambitions, which require a long period of exploration, are by no means a quick business, and at present, Lu Zhengyao's steps are still a bit big, especially in the case of his credibility damaged.
The three transformations in 4 months can see both Lu Zhengyao's anxiety and his helplessness.
Because Lu Zhengyao himself knows better than anyone that for Fun Xiaomian, their biggest problem is from the 0 to 1 stage. If you don't get financing within 3 months, you will soon be swallowed up. After all, noodles are not coffee without social attributes, and expansion does not have the replicability of Luckin in the past.
Prepared dishes, a new storm?
Pre-made dishes have been hot in the past two years and have been accepted by many catering tycoons. The listing of Weizhixiang has set off a boom in prepared dishes, many catering giants have entered the game, and pre-made vegetable companies have also sprung up, with less than 1,800 related enterprises in 2011 and 12,500 newly registered in 2020.
Behind the rise of prepared dishes is the ultimate demand for efficiency in the B-end catering industry. However, at present, limited by funds, most of the domestic enterprises operating prefabricated dishes are almost "workshop mode", and the registered capital of enterprises is mainly concentrated below 1 million.
This is an excellent opportunity for Lu Zhengyao, who is good at using capital. Judging from the information of Tianyancha, there are 3 related companies in the Tip workshop, namely three branches in Beijing, Hefei and Chengdu, and the legal representatives of the three companies are Yang Zhuo, Zhou Bin and Li Jun, all three of whom are veterans of Lu Zhengyao's Shenzhou department, and the registered capital of the three companies is 5 million yuan, and the three companies are 100% owned by Tongue Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
In order to quickly expand the market, Lu Zhengyao intends to quickly expand the market of the tip of the tongue workshop by joining, the investment amount is not large, only need to invest 30,000 yuan and the store is 8 square meters. However, when signing the contract, you need to pay 10,000 yuan of intention money, and a franchise store only needs tens of thousands of yuan.
Franchise stores are an effective way to quickly expand the market and circle money, and it is reported that an employee in charge of investment promotion signed 30 cooperation intentions on the first day of construction on January 4. It can be seen that the market for prepared vegetables is still worth looking forward to, and the tip of the tongue technology may set off a storm in the prepared vegetable industry.
But capital is a memory, and Lu Zhengyao has shrunk his wealth by nearly 20 billion yuan so far. Can this "capital player", who has neither money nor a reputation, still be able to make waves on the prefabricated vegetable track?