Image source @ Visual China
Text | Moment Business, author | Wen Qiang, Editor | Zhou Ye
On the evening of January 16, at Li Jiaqi's New Year Festival, the opening food section was occupied by fast food, from Mo Xiaoxian's self-heating "pot rice" to Akuan's convenient fans, as well as the new product of the old fast food brand - fast food Guilin rice noodles, and the new self-heating troop hot pot of Korean food brand CJ.
Under the "stay-at-home economy" spawned by the epidemic, the fast food track is changing rapidly. From the earliest instant noodles, more flavors and categories have been extended, on the one hand, the veteran giants Master Kang, Unification, Jinmalang, etc. are facing growth difficulties and have begun to develop and promote products in line with the Z era. On the other hand, more Internet celebrity brands with capital support have emerged and developed rapidly, from Akuan Food, Zi Hi Pot to Ramen Noodles, etc., becoming regular customers in live broadcast rooms and seizing young people's wallets.
Popular posts recommend a variety of fast food, picture /little red book
Among them, in the 15 years since its establishment, Akuan Food has become a new Internet celebrity and has become the "rations" that many young people have stored at home. Recently, Ah Kuan submitted a prospectus to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to compete for the "first share of fast food" with the veteran fast food Jinmalang.
Emerging brands continue to emerge, and some mature brands have begun to deepen the supply chain and refine the product line. The old brand should hold the camp, increase sales and brand awareness, and in the new year, the fast food track is destined to be more inward-volume.
1, a year to sell 1 billion, fast food new brand rush
After the epidemic, the home-based economy has spawned all kinds of fast food. The main players of the fast food track are mainly divided into four categories, one is the "cutting-edge brand" of the self-hi pot, Mo Xiaoxian, Akuan food, etc.; the second is the traditional catering brand such as Haidilao; the third is the traditional instant noodle enterprises such as Master Kang, Unification; the fourth is the internet red leisure snack giant, such as the taste of herbs, three squirrels launched by the convenience fast food products.
Among them, the rapid rise of cutting-edge brand awareness is also favored by capital, and the self-hi pot, which focuses on "self-heating hot pot", has completed 5 rounds of financing in 3 years, and the latest round of C++ financing is close to 100 million yuan. Three self-heating food companies, Akuan Food, Cannibal and Mo Xiaoxian, also successfully completed financing, and the investors included Hillhouse Capital, Matrix Partners China, Jinding Capital and other well-known investment institutions.
Behind this, the new brand has also handed over a satisfactory report card - according to the Akuan prospectus, sales in 2020 will exceed 1 billion yuan, and only a single product of dough skin will generate sales of 400 million.
Photo: Bai Jia Akuan's official Weibo
At the same time, Ramen, which was established in 2016, said that sales reached 900 million yuan in 2020; the self-hi pot that was launched in 2018 exceeded 1 billion yuan in sales in 2020; and Mo Xiaoxian, which was established in 2017, achieved sales of 800 million yuan in 2020.
The single taste and category of traditional instant noodle products are difficult to meet the market demand. According to the statistics of the Noodle Products Branch of the Chinese Society of Food Science and Technology, the main business income of the all-instant noodle industry in 2020 totaled about 81.38 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 2.9%, which shows that the growth of the industry has fallen into a bottleneck.
Behind this, fast food gradually got rid of the basic needs of the earliest "belly" and became part of the "exquisite and lazy" lifestyle of young people.
According to the crowd portrait analysis of the "2021 Convenience Fast Food Industry Insight Report" released by the CbN Commercial Data Center, Generation Z and small-town youth are the two fast food consumer groups with the highest proportion, and they eat healthy, delicious and convenient food as an extension of the "one-person food" scenario.
As a result, the fast food industry is also constantly intensifying the "inner volume", and has begun to tell new stories in all aspects of products, industrial chains, and marketing.
On the one hand, the product category has expanded from the earliest instant noodles and convenient vermicelli to the introduction of gourmet snacks from all over the world, such as the hottest snail powder, rice noodles, and small noodles, and then expanded to more and more complex ingredients, such as the small hot pot of the self-hi pot. When it came to brands such as Ramen, we began to target higher groups of people, using exquisite bone broth ramen and chicken soup to make fast food with higher cooking standards.
Akuan's different products, photo/Akuan prospectus
On the other hand, more players from different backgrounds join the competition, enriching the choice of fast food products.
Traditional catering brands such as Haidilao and Xiaolongkan have launched their convenient hot pot products, and leisure food companies such as Good Shop and Three Squirrels have also actively laid out self-heating fast food. Convenient fast food has become the primary channel for catering enterprises to enter the new retail market.
For example, Meizhou Dongpo will be Dongpo buckle meat, black bamboo shoot roast beef and other restaurant classic dishes into a convenient fast dish, sold in the online store, KFC launched snail powder, chicken soup noodles, Japanese fried rice and other convenient fast food, directly in the store sales. In 2021, Tmall's single category also added frozen products and preset dishes (semi-finished products) to the fast food category, becoming a hot new track.
At the same time, the new brand is more adept at working marketing and channels to cater to the preferences of young people. From the early offline sales, it has changed to multi-channel promotion and planting of douyin, kuaishou and xiaohongshu, and constantly invested money in the live broadcast room of the head anchor to promote the goods.
On the other hand, new brands also often "appear" as "golden fathers" in major variety shows and dramas to obtain maximum exposure. For example, the implantation of the self-hi pot in "China's New Rap", "Children of Tomorrow", and "High-energy Youth League" has made many people "enter the pit"; Ah Kuan has also been implanted in the World Cup and talent shows and gained new users.
In addition to capturing the psychology of young people, new consumer brands also pay attention to IP, blockbusters and stories. For example, plum snail powder soon became the "top stream" of the snail powder category after being on the shelves, which is difficult to separate from the big IP effect of Li Ziqi himself. "Ramen said" 30 yuan a bowl of instant noodles, through the Little Red Book to shoot exquisite "one person food" post, so that many single young people were planted.
Celebrity endorsements are also an indispensable gripper for fast food brands. Top-notch Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo respectively endorsed fast food brands such as Laiyifen and Chopsticks Kitchen. On the one hand, it can quickly attract a wave of "kryptonite consumption" in the rice circle to increase sales, on the other hand, it can also enhance the visibility of young users through the exposure of celebrities.
Emerging forces have attracted attention in all aspects, now open Taobao Jingdong, enter "fast food", the first thing that comes into view is a wide dough skin, open a small stove fast food chaos, Cai Linji hot dry noodles, instant chicken soup, etc., and instant noodles have a much weaker sense of existence.
2. Is Master Kang and Unity old?
Behind the fast food inner roll, the price war that the fast food giants once had entered history has long been in history.
In the 1960s, Japanese overseas Chinese Tadaofuku and Tadafuku Ando invented instant noodles. However, the instant noodles can burst into flames in China, or from players such as Master Kong and Unification.
After the 1990s, instant noodles + ham sausage were once synonymous with domestic convenience foods. Master Kang, Unity, and Imabari Lang became the king of fast food.
However, the competition of fast food giants is mainly focused on the price war, around 2015, in order to seize the market, Master Kong and unified opened a price war, the price of the two once dropped to 2.5 yuan / bag, and at that time the cost of a pack of instant noodles was also 1.2 yuan, in addition to the middleman, the final profit of a package of noodles is only a few cents, extremely low profits and vicious low-price competition, so that most of the fast food giants are in the embarrassing situation of small profit competition. While indulging in competition, they also missed the window of opportunity to upgrade their products and launch new products for young audiences.
Therefore, for young people, between 3 yuan of instant noodles and 30 yuan of takeaway, there is a huge price and category gap that needs to be bridged. The new fast food track was born. The person in charge of Tmall's fast food category once said in an interview that most of the fast food products are within this price range, and the higher the price, the more it means that it is well-made or unique in taste, and it has more growth potential.
This challenged Master Kong and Unity, who were stuck in a huge market share.
According to the financial report, in the first half of 2021, Master Kong's instant noodle business achieved revenue of 12.722 billion yuan, down 14.67% year-on-year, and net profit of 890 million yuan, down nearly 50% year-on-year; unified data shows that in the first half of 2021, the core instant noodle business revenue was 4.39 billion yuan, compared with 5 billion yuan in the same period last year.
Master Kong's sales in 2019 and 2020, Photo/Master Kong's financial report
Among them, Master Kong attributed the main reason to the excessive increase in the price of raw material palm oil, which brought cost pressure and reduced the gross profit margin by 2 percentage points. At the same time, according to the research report of Hong Kong China Merchants Securities, another reason is that the over-optimism in the first quarter of 2021 led to the accumulation of inventory in the industry, which subsequently led to the widespread implementation of discount activities in the industry to clear inventory.
With the widening of the fast food track, the public no longer only loves "instant noodles", and Master Kong and the unified basic disk began to be threatened. Judging from the two half-year financial reports of 2021, beverage sales accounted for more than 69% of total sales, and replacing instant noodles became the focus of making money.
The same is a bowl of noodles, the cutting-edge brand to make this bowl of noodles more valuable, more high-end, but also more commercial value. In 2021, the new brand Jinmiantang completed tens of millions of yuan B+ round of emerging brands, and continued to strengthen marketing and deepen the supply chain after obtaining financing. The instant pasta brand "Fengwei Pie" was only established in 2021, and soon appeared in the Via live broadcast room on March 7, with a turnover of more than 10 million yuan on the same day.
As a result, traditional enterprises have transformed, and the most obvious point is that "high-end" has become a word repeatedly mentioned in the financial report for instant noodles, and it has also begun to rapidly expand new brands and SKUs. In order to cater to the characteristics of young people's "exquisite and poor", the price has risen, and the way to eat it has also changed from the original simple and fast seasoning package + hot water brewing to the ritualistic under the pot of boiled noodles.
In the process of transformation, the main practice of traditional brands is to develop high-end brands, enhance online marketing and strengthen marketing promotion through various channels.
It has unified the launch of high-end series brands such as "Tang Da Ren", "Man Han Da Da" and "Open Small Stove", and has opened an official flagship store separately. Launch a special program for young and high-end groups to accurately and efficiently find matching consumers.
Master Kong launched high-end line brands such as "Suda Noodle Restaurant", endorsing it with the original platform and expanding users.
Legacy brands can also start using endorsements and collaborations to tell new stories. For example, Unification proposed in the financial report that "Tang Daren" and "Kai XiaoZao" respectively chose Wang Junkai and Xiao Zhan as spokesmen to highlight different consumption propositions. Master Kong also mentioned that the instant noodle business cooperates with IP such as Qibao, Kung Fu Panda, and Douluo Continent to make the brand younger.
At the end of 2021, the unified launch of a new product - the main self-heating rice "open a small stove", and invited Xiao Zhan as a spokesperson, brushed a wave of presence on social networking sites.
This means that Master Kong and Unity no longer focus on the competition of "flour noodles" and actively try more diversified and high-priced products. Under the rising bubble ceiling, they are competing for people with higher consumption levels.
3, the new brand is still attacking, who can shake the basic disk of "Master Kong"?
In the prospectus, Ah Kuan regarded the instant noodle giant Imabari Lang, who is also preparing to go public, as one of the main competitors. This further reflects the ambition of new consumer brands, not only to become an internet celebrity brand, but also to become a large-scale fast food brand.
However, the volume of the two is still very different, in 2020, the revenue of Jinmalang is 24.043 billion yuan, and chairman Fan Xianguo also proposed a revenue target of 100 billion yuan in 2017. According to the revenue of 2020 (1.11 billion yuan), the market share of Akuan Food is 1.36%.
According to the 2021 semi-annual report, Master Kong still occupies 40% of the instant noodle market, and Unification still occupies nearly 20% of the share. The basic plate of the old fast food industry has not changed much.
Unified financial reporting revenue ratio, figure/unified financial reporting
Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in china's food industry, said in an interview with Beijing Business Daily that from the perspective of sales alone, traditional instant noodle companies such as Master Kong, Unity and Baixiang have occupied 90% of the mainstream instant noodle market, but if we say that from the perspective of subdivision categories, the old brands do not have a monopolistic advantage over new convenience foods.
New consumer brands are still on the run, and they are also facing problems such as low retention rates, low repurchase rates, and safety and quality.
New fast food brands are already starting to fall behind.
It is reported that ramen said that after experiencing a wave of rapid growth, it began to experience a decline in the second half of 2021. In the first round of pre-sales of Double 11, sales were close to the waist compared to last year, and the ranking in the fast food field also fell from fourth to tenth last year. Ramen said that the price was 20 yuan +, but after marketing, it also suffered from a decline in word of mouth and difficulty in re-purchasing.
Photo / Cicada mother Tmall double eleven data
The shortcomings of the cutting-edge brands are gradually exposed, and due to the handing over of production to foundries and the emphasis on marketing, the quality control problems are serious.
However, at present, new consumer brands still have time to deepen the industry with the support of investors and the blessing of market dividends.
Under the condition of multiple rounds of financing and upcoming IPOs, Ah Kuan will no longer face the previous dilemma of not having money to build a factory. And it also has time and funds to expand SKUs, build supply chain systems, and cultivate internal strength.
The speed track is currently developing rapidly, and new players are constantly running into the field, how much market share can old players hold? How many dark horses will appear in the market? What new ways will listed companies launch? The answers to these questions will gradually emerge in the hustle and bustle of the industry in the past two years.