Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Investor (ID: touzijias), author | Lin Tianming
The "spicy hot first strand" is coming!
Recently, Yang Guofu has submitted relevant materials to the China Securities Regulatory Commission for the approval of overseas initial public offering of shares. Once accepted, it means that Yang Guofu has obtained a "small road strip" or quickly submitted a prospectus on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The progress tracking shows that Yang Guofu's spicy IPO journey has just begun, and only the first step of "receiving materials" has been completed, and there may be many links such as "acceptance notice", "written feedback", "written reply" and even "administrative licensing decision letter" in the follow-up.
It is worth mentioning that before and after the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, the domestic catering track is very lively, and a number of catering brands have successively spread IPO news, including many familiar Xibei, Laoxiang Chicken, and Fulao Noodles, etc. In the increasingly crowded IPO track, can Yang Guofu get what he wants?
One
Founded in 2003, Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Brand is a large-scale national restaurant chain management enterprise integrating brand management, food research and development, formula development, raw material supply, franchise training and franchising.
Yang Guofu spicy hot using Chinese grass bone broth as the soup base, while providing seasonal vegetables, meat and other products, and equipped with dozens of small ingredients. Mainly through offline stores to provide users with catering services, while providing online booking and home delivery and other services.
After nearly 20 years of development, Yang Guofu spicy hot has become a dazzling sign in China's spicy hot world. According to the information on the official website, Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Has more than 6,000 franchise stores in 5 overseas countries and 31 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions in China.
In the past two years, the catering track has won the enthusiasm of capital, and the spicy hot has also become the darling of capital. In fact, it is not difficult to understand that the capital selection of spicy hot is nothing more than spicy hot similar to fried chicken and hamburgers, and is the most likely category to be made into a chain of ten thousand stores.
Investment bankers' evaluation of spicy hot is: "First, its product genes and category cognition are strong enough; second, the small store husband and wife file has a strong enough store replication force; third, its entire supply chain is easy to standardize; fourth, it has enough audience in the sinking market." ”
When a track is highly recognized by capital, the brands that run at the front are often the most eye-catching. But what is surprising is that since its establishment, Yang Guofu has not experienced financing.
In fact, several head institutions have been in contact with Yang Guofu spicy hot, but without exception have eaten the "closed door soup", the main reason is that Yang Guofu spicy hot has always focused on "silently doing franchise, muffled and making a fortune", the company is not bad money at all.
As a spicy hot brand under the franchise system, the franchise fee is a lot of income. At present, opening a Yang Guofu spicy scalding in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen requires a franchise fee of 27,900 yuan / year, and other prefecture-level cities and municipalities directly under the central government are 23,900 yuan / year.
According to the current scale of operation, Yang Guofu Spicy Hot receives hundreds of millions of yuan in franchise fees every year. However, the company does not rely too much on franchise fees, but has a more profitable business, that is, through its own research and development factories to deliver raw materials to each franchise store.
In 2019, Yang Guofu said in an interview with the media that the company's revenue is expected to reach 1.3 billion yuan in 2019, while the franchise fee only accounts for 20%, and most of the income comes from the business module, such as the sale of seasonings, ingredients, kitchen equipment, restaurant furniture, etc. to franchisees.
In 2020, despite the impact of the epidemic factor, the turnover of Yang Guofu's spicy and hot stores still reached 6 billion to 7 billion yuan, and the revenue of Yang Guofu Group also exceeded 1.2 billion yuan.
Yang Guofu spicy hot money is rich, the capital turned to the new generation of spicy hot brand, and quite crazy. On June 7, 2021, the spicy hot brand Xiao Man Pepper announced the completion of a round of financing of 10 million yuan, and the investor of this round is Qifu Capital.
Prior to this, Xiao Man Pepper has completed two rounds of financing, the investors are Tomato Capital, Absolute Taste Food and Ele.me jointly launched the Absolute Fund, the investor can be described as a big deal.
Founded in Shanghai in 2015, Xiao Man Pepper opened the spicy hot market with takeaway as the incision, and gradually developed the "dine-in + takeaway" dual-channel operation in the later stage, which is a typical representative of the new generation of spicy hot brands, and it is expected to obtain continuous bets from capital.
However, in 2021, Yang Guofu has made a number of corporate-level changes, the most important of which is to change the type of enterprise from a limited liability company to a joint-stock limited company, which is regarded by the outside world as a precursor to the company's preparation for an IPO.
Nowadays, Yang Guofu's spicy hot IPO has been on the string, and it seems that it is only a matter of time before it lands. If the company is successfully listed, it may win the crown of "spicy hot first share" in the capital market.
Two
In the Chinese dining industry, when the name of spicy hot is mentioned, almost everyone knows it. But what is less known is that this spicy food, which originated in Sichuan, has spread all over the country under the leadership of northeasterners.
Behind Yang Guofu's spicy hot IPO is the story of a northeastern couple joining hands to start a business. The hour hand is turned back to more than 20 years ago, Yang Guofu and his wife are still a small pair of small traders who make a living by setting up a stall, and the couple is very diligent, but the income is average.
In 2000, Yang Guofu and his wife met spicy hot on the street, and since then they have formed an indissoluble relationship with this spicy food that originated in Sichuan. In that year, Yang Guofu and his wife opened the first spicy hot shop in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, called Yang Ji Spicy Hot.
However, the characteristics of Sichuan spicy hot and spicy are not suitable for the appetite of northerners, so Yang Guofu decided to develop a spicy hot soup base suitable for the taste of northerners, but the research and development process was not smooth.
Yang Guofu recalled this experience and said: "At that time, the learning peers bought back the spices and put them in the pot to fry, and even tried to use the watercress sauce to develop the base, although there was a profit, but the customer's evaluation was not good, so they decided to close the store and wait for the successful research to open." ”
After that, Yang Guofu and his wife kept looking for spices, trying to match various substrates, trial and error in taste, collecting feedback from diners, and experiencing several openings and closures before developing a unique substrate formula in the process of exploration.
This exclusive formula has become the magic weapon of Yang Guofu's spicy hot scalding, and has also become the foundation for the rapid development and growth of Yang Guofu's spicy hot. Years later, Yang Guofu proudly said: "The spicy hot soup that can be drunk started from us." ”
Subsequently, Yang Ji Spicy Hot officially changed its name to Yang Guofu Spicy Hot and opened to the outside world to join, and Yang Guofu Spicy Hot has embarked on a rapid expansion path since then.
In 2010, Yang Guofu Spicy Hot has 1,000 franchise stores; in 2017, the total number of Franchised Stores of Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Exceeded 5,000; in 2020, the number of Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Franchise Stores further exceeded 6,000.
It is worth noting that since 2017, Yang Guofu Spicy Hot has taken a step towards overseas expansion. There are public reports that as of 2020, Yang Guofu's spicy hot sauce has covered 5 countries: Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
But Yang Guofu is not satisfied with this, at the end of 2019, Yang Guofu revealed in an interview that within five years, the company plans to expand the number of overseas stores to 1,000, the number of domestic stores to 9,000, and the overall revenue of the group reached 10 billion yuan.
Seeing that the spicy hot business is so hot, Yang Guofu's relatives and friends also see business opportunities from it, and have joined the entrepreneurial team of spicy hot, and gradually derived some new brands, such as Yang Guofu's brother who started a business to make Yue Yue spicy hot.
In the northeast spicy hot entrepreneurial army, it is Zhang Liang's spicy hot that can be compared with Yang Guofu's spicy hot. Zhang Liang Spicy Hot was founded in 2008, and yang Guofu Spicy Hot is almost the same name, and there is a lot of speculation about the relationship between the two founders.
In this regard, Zhang Liang once clarified in an interview with the outside world that the two are indeed related, Yang Guofu is the cousin-in-law of Zhang Liang's aunt's family, and the two are not related by blood. At the same time, Zhang Liang admitted that his entry into the spicy hot industry was indeed influenced by Yang Guofu.
Also originating in the northeast region, Zhang Liang's spicy hot and Yang Guofu's spicy hot "love and kill" for many years. Nowadays, Yang Guofu Spicy Hot rushed to the capital market IPO one step ahead, and the pattern of "double male competition" in the spicy hot river and lake may be broken in the near future.
Three
After years of layout, Yang Guofu's spicy hot has become the top stream in the circle, from the north to Guangzhou, Shenzhen to the third and fourth line small cities, you can see his figure everywhere. Beneath the glossy surface, controversy follows, the most serious of which is food safety.
In March 2017, some media reported that on a takeaway platform, there were 27 Yang Guofu spicy scalding problems in Beijing, of which 13 did not obtain food business licenses, and the remaining 14 stores had problems such as untimely information updates and incomplete publicity, and the Beijing Municipal Food and Drug Administration intervened in the investigation.
In 2018, Yang Guofu's spicy hot Guangzhou store was exposed to employees putting their feet on the cutting board when cutting meat.
In July 2021, a video blogger lurked in Yang Guofu's spicy and hot kitchen, photographed the ingredients in the warehouse that were still used after being bitten by rats, the kitchen rag was both washing vegetables and shoes, and the pig lungs were not cleaned and boiled directly, directly sending Yang Guofu spicy hot to the hot search.
In this regard, Yang Guofu responded that the company recently paid attention to the reports on the food safety of individual franchise stores on the Internet and set up a project team to investigate. At present, the store involved has been closed for rectification, and the company has sent staff to supervise, while reiterating food safety and standard operating procedures to the store. The company will increase the number of monthly killings in stores across the country and continue to increase the intensity of killing. Failure to follow the management of individual stores will be taken as a warning, and such behavior will not be tolerated or tolerated.
In September 2021, the Beijing Consumer Association released a report entitled "Fat Brothers, Yang Guofu and many other catering stores have been fined, how many have you eaten?" article. According to the article, Yang Guofu's spicy hot many stores were ordered to rectify and given warnings and punishments according to law.
In addition, on the Sina Black Cat complaint platform, a large number of consumers complained about eating at Yang Guofu's spicy hot meal, eating foreign bodies such as hair, plastic, cockroaches, and even some consumers accused Yang Guofu of spicy scalding and eating gastroenteritis.
Some insiders pointed out that the operating model of the brand franchise chain implemented by Yang Guofu Spicy Hot is doomed to make the food safety of each store difficult to control, especially with the surge in the number of stores, food safety and hygiene, process standardization and other issues will be more prominent.
Food safety is no small matter, and it may even affect the outcome of this IPO. Perhaps, while Yang Guofu is sprinting all out for the IPO, part of the energy should be allocated to ensure food safety.