36Kr learned that the barbecue chain brand "Lamb Kebabs A Long Ago" has recently completed nearly 100 million yuan of Series B financing, which is exclusively invested by Black Ant Capital.
Founded in 2008, Lamb Kebabs (hereinafter referred to as "A Long Time Ago") is a smoky-free barbecue experience with a selection of high-quality lamb as the main item. By the end of 2019, lamb kebabs had opened 59 stores in Beijing, Shanghai and other places a long time ago.
The 12-year-old restaurant chain wants to be the "Haidilao of the barbecue world". In terms of specific details, the company's consumption upgrade of the Chinese barbecue industry is reflected in various dimensions such as products, brands, stores, and services.
In terms of products, "lamb skewers" were selected as the main product a long time ago, and the main ingredient of lamb can be traced back to the Hulunbuir grassland. According to reports, lamb has the attribute of "futures", centralized slaughter from August to November every year, and then enters the cold chain transportation link. Therefore, from the grassland to the table, nearly 100 treatment processes were developed for lamb kebabs a long time ago, and it was guaranteed that each skewer of lamb had both fat, lean and lamb chops.
Lamb kebab stores a long time ago
Similar to hot pot, barbecue is also a catering category with a high frequency of service contact, and the impact of service quality on the consumer experience is also greater. A long time ago, service quality was taken as the central line of store operations: on the one hand, to build a customer value evaluation system; on the other hand, to standardize and iterate on the service process, and to link it with employee performance.
A long time ago, lamb kebabs wanted to convey such a sense of brand - "barbecue is the first delicacy eaten by humans", and visualized it through "time tunnel" store design.
As Haidilao, Jiumaojiu and other catering chain enterprises have performed well in the capital market, the catering investment boom has begun to appear. From the perspective of standardization, barbecue has the characteristics of easy standardization of the supply chain, stable consumer taste preferences, and no dependence on chefs, and there is potential for large-scale development.
A picture of lamb kebab products from a long time ago
Whether it is hot pot, crayfish or barbecue, in recent years, the catering industry has seen a trend from a comprehensive cuisine brand to a category brand. The reason is that the upstream supply chain is more controllable and the scale capacity is stronger.
But on the other hand, the single category ceiling determines how far the brand can go in the future. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail consumption of China's catering industry in 2019 has reached 4.67 trillion yuan, corresponding to the size of the Chinese barbecue market in 2019 is about 220 billion, about 40% of the hot pot market size.
Speaking of investment logic, Zhang Peiyuan, managing partner of Black Ant Capital, told 36Kr that the founding team of lamb kebabs a long time ago had a strong underlying thinking and consumer insight ability, and all the thinking revolved around whether it could provide enough value to consumers and have the courage to continue to do subtraction. At the industry level, all links of the catering industry chain have gradually formed a social crowdsourcing system, and the "negative effect of scale" has been broken, providing an opportunity for the development of chain brands.
"Under this general trend, we believe that barbecue has a greater probability of being born a "traffic destination" level restaurant chain brand because of its "intimate social" attribute." Zhang Peiyuan said.