Source: Finance World Weekly
Lu Zhengyao, who "started his last business", was in trouble again. The chain noodle shop he founded, Fun Noodles, recently closed its first store in Beijing at Phoenix Hui Shopping Center. The store information has also been removed from the shelves of public channels such as Meituan and AutoNavi.
When fun noodles were born, they were once full of aura. After Luckin Coffee was out, Lu Zhengyao gathered the former Shenzhou Department and Luckin Coffee's centaurs to start incubating this project. At the same time, the "eating noodles" investment boom in the venture capital circle has risen, and the industry has speculated that the "fun noodles" that have stepped on the wind will continue Lu Zhengyao's usual way of playing, quickly achieve scale expansion, and become the "next Luckin" in the catering industry.
However, in just half a year, Fun Xiaomian has experienced financing difficulties and name changes, and the pace of expanding stores is relatively slow.
When the first store in Beijing was exposed to close, Lu Zhengyao had already embarked on a new "pre-made dish" track and began to promote the "Tip of the Tongue Workshop" project.
The concept of pre-made dishes is in full swing, and Lu Zhengyao can accurately step on the stroke every time. However, can he continue to replicate Luckin's "success model" in the catering industry?
－01－
Interesting little noodles of "cold"
At four o'clock in the afternoon, the food area on the basement floor of Beijing Phoenix Hui Shopping Center was deserted. In one of the humble corners, the first store of the food project "Fun Noodles" founded by Lu Zhengyao, a capital tycoon and founder of Luckin Coffee, is located here.
Today, the store's sign has been changed to "Fun Bayu", but there is no longer any shadow in the store. The callers at the front desk and the screen at the cash register were pitch black; the back kitchen lights had been extinguished, and the cutlery was packed and stacked aside.
The staff of Phoenix Hui Shopping Center said: "At the end of December last year, Fun Noodles moved away and has not been open since New Year's Day. ”
(Photo: Photo by Caijing Tianxia Weekly)
It is understood that on August 8 last year, the first store of Fun Noodles in Beijing was officially opened, and some of the meals sold were also given a "66% discount" discount. On the same day, Fun Noodles, located at No. 16 Financial Street, Jiangbei District, Chongqing, was also opened for business. After Luckin Coffee was eclipsed, Lu Zhengyao once again went out to start a business, and "Fun Small Noodles" quickly attracted a lot of attention, and the discussion of whether it can become the next Luckin has also risen on the Internet.
But in less than half a year, the first store in Beijing has come to an end.
The decrease in passenger flow caused by the epidemic may also be a major factor affecting the business of fun noodles.
The clerk of a noodle restaurant next door to Fun Noodles said that with the reduction of the flow of people in the mall, the business of catering businesses on the basement floor of Phoenix Hui this year is more deserted than in previous years, "My family's turnover at night can only sell to 1,000 yuan, and the business of Fun Noodles is estimated to be no better."
The clerk of another spicy hot shop believes that there are too many noodle businesses and the competition is too fierce. "Several of them sell pasta and compete with each other for customers."
"Finance world" weekly noted that in the phoenix shopping mall only one basement floor, five noodle shops have been opened. But so far, only the interesting small noodles have been closed.
At the beginning of its birth, fun noodles once attracted much attention from the outside world. In May 2021, there were media reports that Lu Zhengyao summoned the original Shenzhou Department and Luckin Coffee to launch a new entrepreneurial project, focusing on noodle business. According to the report, according to people familiar with the matter, Lu Zhengyao's strategy for making noodle restaurants is to "open 500 stores across the country" and "make a food city, and eventually form an online app."
After the official operation of Fun Xiaomian, according to the initial plan, its first batch of stores will successively enter 14 cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, and the first batch of expansion targets will be 106. The second batch of expansion plans will be launched on August 18, 2021, entering eight cities, including Fuzhou, Hefei, Changsha and Nanchang.
Suddenly, the outside world has been holding their breath, whether the interesting small noodles will replicate the expansion trend of Luckin Coffee that year.
Like Luckin Coffee, fun noodle stores are generally small in area, the decoration is Japanese simple style, and users also need to order through small programs. But its style and Luckin also have a big difference: the location of fun small noodles, like the first store of Beijing Phoenix Hui, is positioned in the food court on the basement floor, facing the low-end customer group; compared with other stores in the stall, it has not started a "price war" in terms of meal pricing.
Many consumers believe that the food of Fun Noodles is "featureless and expensive". In Beijing's fun noodle shops, the per capita consumption is more than 30 yuan, in terms of the positioning of its white-collar working meals, the pricing is still more expensive, higher than the per capita consumption of about 20 yuan of the same type of noodle restaurant "drunken noodles".
However, the follow-up financing speed and store expansion of Fun Xiaomian are completely different from Luckin Coffee.
In 2021, capital falls in love with "eating noodles". On the flour catering track, a wave of investment has been set off. However, the financing news of the interesting small side has not been released for a long time.
In early September 2021, the company's second urban expansion plan was abruptly suspended.
In September, a news of "lack of money in fun noodles" was exposed. According to media reports, "Fun Small Noodles" is seeking financing of 100 million yuan, and the valuation of this round of financing fun small noodles is 1 billion yuan. On October 20, according to Tianyan' investigation, there was an industrial and commercial change in The Tip Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Fun Xiaomian, and the registered capital of the enterprise increased from 10 million yuan to 198.7 million yuan, which seems to have won the support of investors.
In November 2021, less than three months after the official operation, Qu Xiao Noodles was renamed "Fun Bayu", adding hot pot pot and other dishes to the original small noodle products. On the catering track, the incident of brand renaming is rare. However, for the renaming of the interesting small noodles, many people in the industry are positive. After all, in their opinion, this is better than the original "fun small side" positioning.
Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, said, "Pasta itself is a traditional Category in China, it is not an imported product, and it cannot form a high-end brand image, and the entry threshold is also low; the category of small noodles is even more difficult to differentiate." Unlike ramen, which already has head companies such as Nishibe, there are also ingredients and regional ethnic characteristics to bless them. Coupled with the low cost performance of small noodles, it is the reason why its stores are cold. ”
Top-level design expert Sun Wei said: "The renaming of Fun Noodles means that it will reposition its brand, focus on the characteristic flavor of Sichuan and Chongqing, and directly reflect the taste and characteristics on the brand, and focus and attract consumers more." The addition of categories such as hot pot pot can also increase the unit price and gross profit margin of customers. This means that its top-level design is more reliable than the original. ”
However, the development of "Fun Bayu" is not smooth. At present, according to the "Fun Bayu" Mini Program, its number of stores in the country is 33, which is far from the goal of "500".
Lu Zhengyao once had great expectations for the food project. He once revealed to the outside world that the tip of the tongue technology is his "last battle before retirement", hoping to treat it as a long-term career and not to be too capitalized; and to change the style of the past, requiring "every store to have a profit before it can continue to open a store."
But Lu Zhengyao did not invest too much in the noodle project with a "single-minded" attitude. After testing the water for more than half a year, Lu Zhengyao set his sights on the new prefabricated vegetable track.
－02－
Lu Zhengyao is eyeing the new outlet of pre-made dishes?
Not long ago, according to media reports, the Tip of the Tongue Technology Group was incubating the new project of prefabricated dishes "Tip of the Tongue Workshop".
According to the official introduction, the tip of the tongue workshop through the origin of the procurement of first-hand fresh raw materials, processed into semi-finished products, through the cold chain transport to the retail terminal, consumers as long as the simple cooking can enjoy the food; and the price of prefabricated ingredients and raw materials directly purchased by supermarkets is close, the price of fast cooking dishes is only 50%-60% of the price of general restaurants.
On January 10th, the first store of "Tip of the Tongue Workshop" opened in Beijing, selling main products including prepared ingredients and quick cooking dishes, the main slogan is "Everyone is easy to be a chef", and launched a "new store opening, 30% off for the whole site" promotion.
According to the Tip of the Tongue Workshop App, there are more than a hundred SKUs in the Tip workshop, and the price of the products is cheaper than ordinary pre-made dishes, ranging from 10 yuan to 46 yuan, and most of the commodities are priced below 30 yuan. Customers place orders for 49 yuan, and the store also provides free delivery services.
(Source: Screenshot of the Tip of the Tongue Workshop App)
It is worth noting that the tip of the tongue workshop has opened up the franchise model. According to the Tip of the Tongue Workshop App, the threshold investment amount of franchisees is 30,000-110,000 yuan. Because the threshold is not high, the internal employees of the tip of the tongue workshop revealed that there are many people who come to consult. On January 9, the tip of the tongue factory also held a merchant joining meeting in Xiamen.
According to media reports, according to the recruitment plan, the initial goal of the tip workshop is to develop to 3,000 stores in the early stage of 2022. Many people in the industry believe that Lu Zhengyao wants to use this way to improve cash flow.
Wen Zhihong, a partner at Hejun Consulting, believes that Lu Zhengyao's entry into the prefabricated vegetable track is likely to hit a wall on a small surface. "Prefabricated dishes are actually standardized and industrialized. Its model is through the industrial production of the back-end central kitchen, and then through the supply chain logistics distribution to the front-end, the sales method has been retailed, so it is easier to achieve rapid scale expansion of prefabricated dishes. It may be that Lu Zhengyao realized that traditional catering is not easy to standardize after making small noodles, so he began to further consider making pre-made dishes. ”
But in any case, the prefabricated dish that Lu Zhengyao aimed at has already stood on the cusp.
According to Tianyan, the number of registered enterprises engaged in prefabricated dishes in 2015 was 4,000; but by 2020, the number of newly registered enterprises reached 12,500. Hema fresh data shows that the proportion of "post-95" young people buying semi-finished dishes has reached twice that of "post-65s". Guohai Securities believes that in the next 6-7 years, the total B-end and C-end market size of domestic prefabricated dishes can reach 50,000-6 trillion yuan.
Capital that loves the "table" is also optimistic about this outlet. Since last year, there have been financing news for prefabricated dish projects including Meizhou Dongpo, Three Meals with Ingredients, Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, Wangjiadu Food and other brands.
In April last year, Suzhou Weizhixiang, which focuses on the research and development, production and sales of semi-finished dishes, went public and became the "first stock of prefabricated dishes". Within one month of listing, the stock price of Weizhixiang rose nearly 4 times, and the price-earnings ratio exceeded 100 times.
But the pre-made wet market is still in the early stages of development. Consumers have not yet formed consumption habits, and it takes a long time to educate the market.
Some prefabricated vegetable merchants have told the "Caijing Tianxia" weekly that the domestic food processing technology has been greatly improved, with a sterile production environment, the taste recovery and nutritional recovery of frozen products can almost be consistent with the ready-made catering, and the shelf life of 6 months can be achieved on the basis of not adding additional food additives; however, there are still many consumers who believe that the prepared food is "not healthy and nutritious enough" and positions it at the low-end consumption level.
At the same time, as with pasta, there are already a large number of players gathered in the pre-made market. In addition to start-up companies, many large and medium-sized catering companies are also eyeing the field of prepared dishes, such as Babi Food, Weizhixiang, Qianwei Central Kitchen, etc. They have been working in the catering industry for many years, or have supply chain advantages, or have a deep understanding of local cuisine.
Lu Zhengyao's "tip of the tongue workshop" wants to chase this outlet, and may have to go through a long trial and error stage.
－03－
Can't replicate the "Luckin model"?