Wen | ball small also
As the most difficult category in the entire catering industry, more than 95% of alcohol is independent players. According to IT Orange statistics, there were about 35,000 bars in the country last year, and the top five pub brands accounted for only 2.2%. Up to now, HARMONE, which is out of the circle with "food and wine museum", has more than 80 directly operated stores across the country, with an annual passenger flow of more than 40 million.
After the epidemic, new catering represented by full-time has sprung up like mushrooms. Whether it is Starbucks entering the breakfast and pub track, or the "hot pot + tavern" model launched by the hot pot, the current catering industry is seeking a new growth curve.
Among them, the most typical "meal + drink" model has become a dual engine for many brands to achieve rapid store expansion.
Since 2015, new-style catering has opened the way to regionalization in first-tier cities. According to the "2021 China New-style Catering Industry Research Report" of the Head Leopard Research Institute, the scale of the new-style catering market in 2020 is 65.28 billion yuan, and the new-style catering industry has entered a period of explosive growth.
Behind the popularity of new-style catering, it is inseparable from the main force of consumption of young people. Different from the eating habits of the elders who eat regularly, the dining time and boundaries of young consumers are more blurred, resulting in dining needs such as brunch, afternoon tea and supper. Only the full-time catering format has a better chance to occupy the fragmented meal time of consumers.
As early as 2016, an old factory building on Garden Road in Wuhan was transformed into a self-catering bar called HARMONE. Compared with traditional restaurants and bars, the biggest feature of COMMUNE is full-time and all-scene operation.
From 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., there are many scenes such as brunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and night economy, covering customers of different dimensions. In the view of the HARMONE team, such a full-time, high-value-added composite format is the future trend.
Image from HARMONE
In September 2021, the listing of the chain tavern Helen Division ignited the wine track, and major brands have successively entered the "meal + drink" model to attract more consumers by extending the operating period, such as Haidilao's Hi Lao Tavern, Xijiade's Dumpling Tavern and the Xiangxiang Tavern where customers drink while listening to live houses.
On the other hand, this two-storey restaurant and bar with less than 300 square meters of space is called the "Restaurant and Wine Museum" on the Public Comments and Little Red Book. Pushing open the door, you can find that in a 20-meter-long area that resembles a supermarket shelf, there are more than 1,000 drinks from Belgium, Germany, Spain and other parts of the world, and customers are like supermarket shopping.
COMBINE, which combines classic restaurants and supermarkets, is undoubtedly a new industry species, which in a sense subverts the traditional ordering model.
In the past, traditional bar consumption usually used "table order", and various fancy sales such as stored value cards brought by waiters led to a sharp decline in the customer's consumption experience. At the beginning of its establishment, COMMUNE abandoned this model, starting from the setting of self-selection areas in the beverage decision-making process, and focused on creating an offline consumer experience for customers to explore freely.
"We didn't adopt this model because the setting of the self-constituency would be more noticeable, nor because we were well-rounded by having a rich variety of drinks." The COMMUNE team said that by optimizing every possible consumer touchpoint and creating an interactive consumer experience, consumers can then have a sense of identification with the brand.
How to achieve rapid expansion in a highly fragmented market? How to do a good job in the operation of "meal + drink" composite format? Recently, 36Kr chatted with the HARMONE team. (The following conversation has been edited)
36 Kr: How did COMMUNE hatch in the first place?
COMMUNE Team: We started with only 5 people, started in Beijing, and have more than ten years of "night economy" business experience. At that time, when we were preparing to open the first HARMONE, we wanted to explore more urban market environments through the opportunity of brand creation, and it happened that the team was more familiar with the market in Wuhan, and finally everyone agreed: first open a company in Wuhan to try.
The main thing is that we have observed a trend in the night economy: only do the format of the night time, the track ceiling will be very low, after all, it is only for a small number of customers. But if we add the daytime period, our customer base dimension can become very rich, and the choice of store location will be more. So at that time, I was thinking about how to extend from the wine plate to the restaurant plate.
36Kr: Why did the first store choose the old factory building on Wuhan Garden Road?
COMMUNE Team: Initially, when HARMONE entered various cities, it actually considered more: whether we can meet the local consumption demand and achieve consumption upgrades. The consumption upgrade here refers to the upgrade of the experience that exceeds the guest's expectations on the basis of the same price.
Here we will mention the predecessor of HARMONE - Beer Barn, the store was first opened in Wuhan Northwest Lake. After operating Beer Barn for more than a year, we found that Wuhan consumers are very recognized by this "meal + wine" model, and we hope to further optimize the experience model, so there is the country's first HARMONE, located in the old factory building on Wuhan Garden Road.
Formerly known as a state-owned automobile repair plant, Wuhan Garden Road is one of Wuhan's most successful industrial heritage renovation projects, protected and developed by Japanese architect Takashi Ito. The humanistic atmosphere accumulated from the dilapidated old factory building to the fashion living area is particularly suitable for the consumption scene we want to provide to our guests.
36 Kr: What does the COMMUNE core sell? Definitely not a bottle of wine or a dish
COMMUNE Team: COMMUNE sells an "atmosphere". We wanted to make a social gathering place, from dishes to themed parties, just to emphasize one core key word: "sharing". Take the categories of snack platters, pizzas, and small wine barrels, which are all sharing products, which are very suitable for the social scene of acquaintances of many people.
36Kr: When was the Boutique Store launched? What's the difference between it and a classic store?
COMMUNE team: The first boutique was launched in Shanghai in 2020, and the difference between the classic store and the classic store is mainly reflected in two aspects: one is that the selection will be more exquisite, suitable for business and leisure; the other is to increase more interactive services, so as to convey the world's food and wine culture to more guests who like craft brewing and food and wine; and the guests of the classic store are mostly young people, and pay more attention to the relaxed communication with friends.
In addition to services and products, marketing also reflects two typical emphases. The boutique focuses on the learning and dissemination of food and drink culture, and the classic store focuses on the party culture of easy socializing. At present, the boutiques in Shanghai, Beijing and Zhuhai will hold beer universities every month, organize liquor tastings, the scale is about to maintain a period of about 20 people, we have a special sommelier and tasting link settings, so that the boutique guests can participate offline.
36Kr: Drinking is a major feature of HARMONE, will it conflict with the scanning order?
COMMUNE Team: The order is focused on categories such as cocktails, glasses of wine and draft beer. Most of the beverage categories still require guests to go to the self-selection area to choose, mainly bottled wine. Advocate that guests can experience consumption through a self-selected moving line.
36Kr: Scanning code orders reduces the service experience from the perspective of consumers, but from the perspective of stores, it improves operational efficiency.
COMMUNE team: Some people may think that the service model of quality consumption places should be heavy on labor, why are they still doing scanning code ordering? But objectively speaking, COMMUNE's scanning code ordering is not a de-artificial service, but an excessive manual service.
This is actually a change of concept, the positioning of THE COMMUNE has never been a luxury restaurant, but a social gathering place, hoping that more people can come here to spend. So what we offer is not a nanny service, but more of a social space to explore freely, providing the right service when you need it.
36Kr: What is the unit price of THE COMMUNE?
COMMUNE team: The unit price is 80-120 yuan. The reason why it is said to be "generally" is because harmonie's consumption pattern determines the consumption characteristics of multiple people at each table. A group of friends come to HARMONE on weekends, and they will never buy orders only once a night, and the statistics of the unit price of accurate customers are different from those of restaurants with traditional pay models.
36Kr: What kind of places does COMMUNE want to move into?
COMMUNE team: We have stores as small as three or four hundred square meters, as large as more than a thousand square meters, so from the size of the area alone, COMMUNE has no general standards for store location. We're more around two broad criteria:
First, the matching of the positioning of the city and the business district, such as in Sanlitun Taikoo Li, Beijing World Trade Center Tianjie and other young people's gathering places, we are about to open a store in early 2022; the second is the environmental atmosphere of the business district, we hope that the natural environment around the store can also be "beautiful and delicious". Therefore, in zhuhai Riyuebei Grand Theater, Jilin Beidahu Ski Resort and other scenic spots, we will also choose to enter.
36Kr: But the better the business circle and internet celebrity land, the more difficult it is to enter
COMMUNE Team: Class A business districts and properties, is the certification of high-quality brands. COMMUNE hopes to create a better experience with more and more excellent businesses.
36Kr: What are the requirements for popular business districts like Joy City, Hopson Hui and Sanlitun Taikoo Li?
COMMUNE team: mainly focused on the visual presentation of stores and store selection. Some business districts prefer COMMUNE reserve stores to settle in, but the reserve stores have a very clear set of rules for engineering conditions and the positioning of the surrounding target customers. We will adapt the type of business district according to the type of business district.
36Kr: COMMUNE's store design is the company's own team.
COMMUNE team: from the establishment of the brand to the present, COMMUNE brand design and space design are the company's stable design team, a total of more than 50 people, we from the beginning of the brand has paid great attention to the design value, the team believes that the scene consumption is an important part of the guest experience, while the design can follow the needs of the operation together with the iteration, to avoid the disconnect between the drawings and the landing, and truly achieve the design landing.
36Kr: I heard that the store design has been iterated to version 5.0, what is the logic behind it?
COMMUNE team: We mainly based on several points: one is the local culture and space property conditions, implanted themes and murals created by artists; the other is to cooperate with the operation to improve operational efficiency, such as the ordering of the bar, the combination structure of kitchen equipment, how to meet the requirements of fast meals. In fact, every HARMONE store is continuing to renovate and upgrade, because our annual traffic is relatively large, and the loss of the entire software and hardware is also relatively large.
36Kr: The impact of the epidemic on the pub is still quite large, how can the business situation of COMMUNE remain so healthy?
COMMUNE team: COMMUNE's customers are more sticky, and the word-of-mouth spread and repurchase rate of old members is relatively stable. Not only are people willing to introduce more friends, but they are also willing to wait for the store to open when we close the store. In addition, during the epidemic, we not only renovated our existing stores, hoping to present a new environment for guests when we returned to work, but also strengthened our takeaway business through our fan base and interacted with guests online.
36Kr: What are the conditions that need to be in place to do this kind of full-time operation?
COMMUNE team: First of all, the product, because the full-time operation of "meal + wine" is aimed at two groups of customers with different needs, and whether the two formats can be well integrated during the day and night period is whether the product can keep up with the needs of these two groups of customers.
Whether it is a restaurant bar or a bar, it is actually difficult to do both between meals and wine. Frankly speaking, few consumers go to bars to eat, because most of the bar food is difficult to eat, lack of consumer mentality; there are few consumers who go to the bar to drink, after all, compared to the bar, there are not many drinks available in the bar.
The second is the atmosphere. Atmosphere is a very abstract and subtle thing, which includes various dimensions such as spatial environment, music and lighting.
Finally, there is operations. This is difficult to achieve overnight, mainly thanks to the COMMUNE team's more than ten years of operational experience in the "night economy", on this basis we will increase the experience of the meal sector. From an operational point of view, running HARMONE well requires two aspects of experience, "meal + wine", in order to truly open a store out of the full-scene mode.
36Kr: Does HARMONE pay more attention to online traffic at present?
COMMUNE team: We attach great importance to this point, in addition to our official public account reading volume can often reach 100,000+, other Little Red Book, Douyin and other platform updates we are also starting to update. It is expected to focus on this area next year, and the current plan is to establish links with vertical KOLs in more than 30 cities across the country to strengthen the exposure.
But that doesn't mean COMMUNE has traffic anxiety. The current stage is not a simple contest of sound size, but at the same time focus on outputting better content to win the reputation of guests. The launch of these external channels, and even the marketing investment of the entire social media, is actually to direct public domain traffic to the private domain and become COMMUNE's own fans. Therefore, we have also been developing our own customized membership system to strengthen investment in IT technology.
36Kr: How to summarize HARMONE's brand building in one sentence?
COMMUNE TEAM: We are building HARMONE into a social gathering place, and we hope to become an open and comfortable social platform for acquaintances to meet the needs of more people in their leisure time.