In December last year, the revenue increased by 5 times year-on-year, and the number of offline coverage points in Shanghai has exceeded 1,000.
Author: Soda
Producer: Bright Company
Last month, in the elevator advertising screen of New Wave Media, brand advertisements for Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan began to appear quietly. In the updated bright yellow main color brand image, the slogan of "easy to make a dish" is looped.
"Delicious, healthy, etc. are the basic standards of the food and catering industry, and the main purpose of the emergence of prepared dishes is to save users time and energy in cooking." Therefore, when we choose the label, we emphasize the characteristic of 'relaxed'. ”
Recently, Pu Wenming, the founder of Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan, said in an exclusive dialogue with "Bright Company" that in the past 1 year, Xiaomeiyuan has completed the small goal of "surviving", and the next thing to think about is how to "live well" - compared with the previous focus on sales, "brand building has become a new issue in Xiaomeiyuan." ”
According to the latest news, following the B round of financing obtained in October last year, Xiaomeiyuan recently completed a new B+ round of financing, led by Baidu Venture Capital, Dingxiang Capital and old shareholder Zero One Venture Capital, and the industrial and commercial change was completed last week. Both financings were held by 42 Zhangjing as the exclusive financial advisor, and the funds obtained were mainly used for product research and development, brand upgrading and market promotion, with a cumulative amount of more than 100 million yuan.
In the above two financings, "brand upgrading" is one of the main projects for the use of funds. Pu Wenming admitted that among the main expenses in Q4 2021, the cost of brand building has indeed increased significantly compared with before, but this is the company's "due meaning of sustainable development".
With the Spring Festival approaching, its advertising screen content has recently begun to include the latest "Chinese New Year's Eve meal" package content, and the overall color matching is adjusted to red, and the visual effect is quite festive.
This year, Xiaomeiyuan launched a total of 3 "Chinese New Year's Eve meal" packages, the official price is 399 yuan, 699 yuan and 999 yuan, and added the form of pick-up coupons to adapt to the different needs of "two families" to "four generations in the same house".
Pu Wenming revealed that as of now, including the enterprise side and the retail end, the package sales have reached millions of yuan. According to the initial feedback of the market, it is expected that the overall sales will exceed 10 million yuan.
At the same time, in order to cooperate with the call for "local New Year", Xiaomeiyuan recently announced that from now until the Spring Festival, its online and offline channels are "not closed" - not only will all offline store guides be on duty, but also users who buy products on online platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, pinduoduo and other online platforms "Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan Self-operated Store", Xiaomeiyuan will give priority to SF Logistics delivery and distribution.
Since its establishment, Xiaomeiyuan has gradually achieved the goal of offline profit + online breakeven. Since the offline profits have been "always very good", since Q4 last year, Xiaomeiyuan has gradually put online operations on the agenda.
"At the end of last year, the company's online channels have begun to reduce losses, and as of now, they have basically achieved breakeven." Pu Wenming revealed that today, its online and offline channel revenue account for about 50% each, and the online "ROI (input-output ratio) has been controlled at a good level."
According to the latest data obtained by "Bright Company", in December 2021, the overall revenue of Xiaomeiyuan has increased by 5 times compared with the same period last year.
"When the 'post-90s' and 'post-95s' return to their families, we expect that it will be the outbreak of pre-made dishes." Pu Wenming thinks.
But Xiaomeiyuan's current goal is still to "only race against itself" and does not regard other prefabricated brands as competitors. He believes that "the basic plate of upgrading the catering industry brought about by changes in consumption habits is very large, and it is more important to seize opportunities and lead the track." ”
The sales of "Chinese New Year's Eve Rice" are expected to exceed 10 million
Compared with last year, the Chinese New Year's Eve meal package launched by Xiaomeiyuan this year has been greatly enriched from the content to the form. In terms of dishes, it is precisely designed according to regional preferences, Chinese New Year's Eve meal specifications, it is also divided into three grades according to the number of diners.
Xiaomeiyuan Tiger Year Spring Festival Chinese New Year's Eve Meal Set Promotional Poster (Source: Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan)
The "Bright Company" inquiry found that as early as last December, its Chinese New Year's Eve meal had been launched in the Xiaomeiyuan Tmall flagship store, the Jingdong flagship store and the WeChat Mini Program, including 10 dishes (3-5 people) A set, 12 dishes (5-8 people) B set and 16 dishes (8-10 people) C set, with the official price of 399 yuan, 699 yuan and 999 yuan respectively.
According to Pu Wenming, less than half a month after the launch of the Chinese New Year's Eve meal package this year, sales have soared to about one million yuan.
This year, its C package has also been selected into the Spring Festival welfare pool of Guangming Group employees; Shanghai's "time-honored" first food has also set up a counter for Xiaomeiyuan, and the two sides are currently working together to promote Chinese New Year's Eve meal package.
In the early days of sales, because there are relatively more "group orders" from the enterprise side, the most expensive C package sales are more impressive. But as the Spring Festival approaches, the offline retail segment will quickly take off, and the sales of the more cost-effective A package and B package will keep up, "when the real sales peak will be reached." Pu Wenming expects that by the Spring Festival, the proportion of retail ends will reach 60%-70%. Due to the relatively high profit on the retail end, the overall sales and profit margins of Chinese New Year's Eve meals will be significantly improved.
Last year's Spring Festival, as a test of water, "insufficient stock" Xiaomeiyuan only launched a Chinese New Year's Eve meal package, but after being put on the market, it was quickly sold out, and "the orders of two or three enterprises consumed the inventory."
This year, Pu Wenming and the team began to set up a project for Chinese New Year's Eve meals in August last year, and carried out fine planning from the aspects of dish selection, supply chain adjustment, and market expansion.
"For example, when we develop a set menu, the first thing we focus on is to ensure the portion size of the dish." To this end, each set meal is tested, and the R&D team will arrange all the dishes and ask the maximum number of tasters marked in the package to evaluate collectively.
Taking its 699 yuan mid-range package as an example, the package of Xiaomeiyuan weighs about 6.3Kg, "indicating that the amount of 5-8 people must ensure that 8 people with ordinary meals are full."
This "affordable" attitude is also reflected in the new pick-up coupons added by Xiaomeiyuan for Chinese New Year's Eve meals this year. It is understood that if the consumer who purchases the package cannot be withdrawn in time for some reason, he can redeem it at any time after that, and the coupon period is permanently valid. (Some dishes may be changed due to seasonal reasons).
When asked about "how to choose Chinese New Year's Eve food", Pu Wenming bluntly said that the core meaning of Chinese New Year's Eve meal is "reunion", so the dishes are more inclined to tradition and stability, and should not be too novel. For example, among its three sets, "hard dishes" such as Babao duck, walking oil hoof, and Dongpo meat, and traditional staple foods such as Babao rice and small dumplings are still the protagonists. At the same time, taking into account the tastes of young people at the party, Xiaomeiyuan also added two of the best products sold in daily sales- sauerkraut fish and boiled meat slices to take care of it.
"Our core idea is to choose the most difficult ones to prepare among these dishes, such as eight treasure ducks and walking oil hooves, so as to save more time and energy and allow consumers to live with their families." Pu Wenming explained.
"Bright Company" learned in the interview that according to its Chinese New Year's Eve rice stock this year and the actual price, all sales will easily exceed 10 million yuan.
Recently, its R&D team is in a "discussion" with several Michelin chefs in Shanghai to try to develop "Michelin pre-made dishes".
However, according to the positioning of Xiaomeiyuan, the main goal of the above dishes is to "hope to bring Michelin flavor to the ordinary table, rather than creating a high-end series", so the price will not be very high, and it will still fall into the previous price band range.
"Preemptive Consumption Minds of Prepared Dishes"
Recently, in the year-end report, the sales team of Xiaomeiyuan reacted to one of the most changes was that "offline shopping guides generally feel that it is much easier to sell goods now than 1 year ago."
Not only that, in the past year, due to changes in raw materials and supply chains, Xiaomeiyuan has fine-tuned the price twice. However, the price increase of "last resort" has not affected its sales.
"The improvement of brand power is the main factor," Pu Wenming believes. Based on the previous channel laying, Xiaomeiyuan began to invest a lot of energy in brand upgrading in the second half of last year, including logo renewal, packaging design, peripheral development, etc.
In the upper right corner is the latest logo of Xiaomeiyuan (Source: Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan)
As early as March 2021, Pu Wenming revealed in a conversation with "Financial Graffiti" that it was redesigning the packaging of Xiaomeiyuan.
After nearly 1 year of "hard work", the new packaging has now completed the design update - the upgraded brand image is very different from the previous one, and it is more "advanced". It is expected that at the sugar and wine fair this spring, Xiaomeiyuan will debut for the first time with a unified new packaging and new image.
"If a company will only sell goods and be unknown, then in the long run, the disadvantages will become more and more obvious with the development of the company." Pu Wenming said frankly. "In the early days, we wanted to survive first, so we focused on building channels. That goal has now been achieved. Our next issue is the need to think about how to form consumer cognition in order to 'live better'. ”
A few days ago, Xiaomeiyuan has just completed a B+ round of financing of 100 million yuan, led by Baidu Venture Capital, and followed by Dingxiang Capital and old shareholder Zero One Venture Capital. In the use of funds, in addition to product research and development, the financing obtained will also cover brand upgrading and market promotion.
Xiao Meiyuan, who has always advocated "not spending money indiscriminately and playing steadily", believes that "at present, the track of prefabricated dishes has not yet appeared as a head brand, which is the best time to seize the minds of the crowd." At the same time, because "product sales have also entered a virtuous circle", it is also the best node to strengthen the brand at this time.
As far as the brand image is concerned, Xiaomeiyuan hopes to refine the connotation and image of "new Chinese" while having the brand gene of the long-established attribute, in order to become a new generation of semi-finished products/prefabricated vegetable brand representatives in the hearts of target users.
In dealing with the characteristics of "differentiation", following the principle of "developing difficult dishes", Xiaomeiyuan's newly launched advertisements this time did not focus on labels such as "delicious" and "healthy", but took "easy to cook dishes" as its Slogan, focusing on the concept of "convenience, time saving and labor saving". In its subsequent Chinese New Year's Eve rice promotion content, "Chinese New Year's Eve rice is easy to do" is also the core label.
"On the basis of convenience and health, our 'human design' in the scene has always been more restrained - hoping to 'add a dish' to each meal of consumers, rather than greed for perfection and occupy the entire table." Pu Wenming admits that because eating is an extremely frequent and just-needed scene, it is more important than hoping to change consumers' cooking habits in a short period of time, giving users more choices, and cultivating with convenience.
After entering 2022, the prepared dishes that have experienced last year's "fermentation period" are ushering in another "small climax".
Based on the recent statistics of the China Frozen and Refrigerated Food Professional Committee that "the average consumption of prepared vegetables in Chinese in 2020 is at the level of Japan in 1970", another recently exposed latest report shows that the current stock of the mainland prepared vegetable market is about 300 billion yuan, calculated according to the compound growth rate of 20% per year, "the long-term scale is expected to exceed 3 trillion".
At the same time, there are reports that the Tip of the Tongue Technology Group, founded by Luckin founder Lu Zhengyao, is also incubating a new prefabricated dish project called "Tip of the Tongue Workshop"; Aunt Qian has also launched the prefabricated dish project "Chef Qian". In addition, food groups including Yasui, Sanquan, Longda, etc. have already "gone down" early to test the water of semi-finished dishes.
"Race only with yourself"
Previously, "Financial Graffiti" had reported in the article "Pu Wenming, the founder of Zhenwei Xiaomeiyuan: Running in small steps, you can live well without losing money", and before the end of last year, Xiaomeiyuan planned to expand nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Ningbo outside Shanghai.
Today, its coverage has expanded to 12 cities, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Changsha, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hefei, Guangzhou, Ningbo and so on. Among them, Chengdu, Wuhan, Shenzhen and other places have set up Xiaomeiyuan branch. "Last year we mainly conquered the Yangtze River Delta, and this year, when the brand renewal is completed, it will quickly go to the whole country."
While offline continues to cultivate deeply, recently, Xiaomeiyuan is also making adjustments in online operations - increasing investment in live broadcast platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, including live broadcasts with a relatively large proportion of talents and a slightly smaller proportion of its own live broadcasts.
"There is a big difference between online and offline logical operations." Pu Wenming told "Bright Company" that compared with the offline focus on "shop", online is more inclined to focus on "single products" and "explosive models". "Usually, new brands that can quickly get out of the circle will often take the way of selecting blank areas and accurately cutting in, grasping the concentrated impulse of a single product, establishing the brand mentality in the consumer group, and then gradually expanding the category."
Not only that, but "addictive" products tend to sell better in online channels, such as sauerkraut fish and boiled meat slices. Due to the lower age group of online groups, young people will be more receptive to sour and spicy, while offline channels are mainly family scenes, so home-cooked food based on tastes sells better.
Official statistics show that on January 12, in the special live broadcast of the New Year Goods Festival held by Xiaomeiyuan and Jia Nailiang, only one single product of "Golden Soup Sauerkraut Fish" exceeded 1.5 million yuan, the transaction volume exceeded 20,000 pieces, and the total number of visitors reached 157,000.
According to the "28 Principle", which is commonly applied in product sales, that is, "about 80% of sales come from about 20% of products", at present, the overall sales of Xiaomeiyuan are mainly derived from about 60% of the basic products (about 30 dishes) in the overall SKU. Among the more than 50 products that have been put on the shelves, the category has fully covered scenes such as breakfast, Chinese food, and dinner.
However, Xiaomeiyuan is still extremely active in product development ideas. In addition to the aforementioned "Michelin" series being developed at home and abroad, "differentiated" products are also the areas where the current team hopes to test the waters. For example, the bullfrog prepared dish is currently popular.
"As a pre-made dish, bullfrog products are relatively difficult to develop, requiring liquid nitrogen freezing technology of -140 degrees Celsius to lock in nutrition and ensure taste." Pu Wenming revealed that at present, its team has reached an agreement with supply chain manufacturers with such technologies, and it is expected that new products will be launched soon.
It is worth noting that in the three Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages launched this time, the "Yangtze River Delta" flavor is still the protagonist, such as walking oil hoof, eight treasure rice, old duck soup, small dumplings and so on.
Pu Wenming admitted that this year's Chinese New Year's Eve meal package is indeed still designed in East China as the main market, especially in the Yangtze River Delta and Shanghai regions. This coincides with the strategy of "deep ploughing a city and running through the model" adopted by Xiaomeiyuan in the channel.
"In terms of urban expansion, blindly seeking speed and seeking more is not a good policy. We hope to first study the sample of Shanghai as a city thoroughly and do a solid job. Since Shanghai itself is more complex as a first-class city, once the model runs through, expanding other cities will take many detours and be more efficient. ”
At present, Shanghai No. 1 Department Store, Huijin Department Store, Department Store Huilian and other large shopping malls have set up Xiaomeiyuan goods counters, and recently unified on the shelves of Chinese New Year's Eve meal packages.
However, despite the entry of long-established brands and new brands, the two-year-old Xiaomeiyuan still only chooses to "race with himself".
"The outbreak of pre-made dishes has not really arrived. Xiaomeiyuan pays more attention to the huge prospects and basic plates of the prefabricated dish category in the consumption upgrade, so it is more important to pay attention to its own iteration, lead the track, and do the most difficult things well first than to benchmark other brands. Pu Wenming told "Bright Company".