Text/Wu Chenguang, Cui Zhilei
Haidilao, who is about to enter the "year of establishment", suffers from "anxiety disorder".
On the evening of March 1, Haidilao issued a management appointment announcement, and the 52-year-old founder Daniel Zhang stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Yang Lijuan, the former deputy ceo and chief operating officer, 43 years old.
At the same time, the new appointments also include two post-"80s", namely Li Yu, who is the chief operating officer of the Chinese mainland, and Wang Jinping, who is the chief operating officer of Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas regions, who will help Yang Lijuan improve the operational efficiency of different regions of the group.
After taking office, Yang Lijuan will be responsible for overseeing the management and strategic development of the Group, and continue to promote the "Woodpecker Plan", which is a move launched by Haidilao in November 2021 to strengthen internal management and shrink business expansion in order to reverse the decline in performance caused by blind expansion. Yang Lijuan is the person in charge of the "Woodpecker Project".
This personnel change is a follow-up to Haidilao's release of a 2021 financial warning, obviously, the radical era of Daniel Zhang has passed, and Haidilao, whose performance has begun to decline, has entered a period of anxiety from the growth period.
Although the management team of the successor is young, in the eyes of experts, it is nothing more than the meaning of "new bottles of old wine", Haidilao only pays attention to the problem of expansion and non-expansion, and does not seem to have thought about the price increase and food safety issues that consumers are concerned about.
In addition, after just experiencing the "labeling consumers" incident, Haidilao, which has always regarded itself as a high-end service, has been discredited. At a time when market competition is becoming increasingly fierce and the homogenization of hot pot enterprises is becoming more and more obvious, once Haidilao loses its service threshold, what cards can it play?
Perhaps Yang Lijuan's Haidilao, for a long time in the future, the "anxiety disorder" is not easy to solve.
early retirement Daniel Zhang
According to the announcement, Daniel Zhang will continue to serve as the chairman of the board of directors and executive director after leaving office, although he will also work with the company's senior management to supervise the operation of Haidilao and participate in the formulation of Haidilao's long-term strategy, but it is clear that Daniel Zhang who have retreated "behind the scenes" can retire early.
In fact, as early as 2020, Daniel Zhang revealed his retirement plan, and he once said through the company's internal email that he would retire in the next 10 to 15 years. But reality is not friendly to Daniel Zhang: admitting that the situation of misjudgment is blindly expanding, closing more than 300 stores in 2021, and warning of a net loss of about 3.8 billion yuan to 4.5 billion yuan in 2021.
All kinds of signs seem to indicate that Daniel Zhang really "can't move".
Once upon a time, since 1994, when the first Haidilao hot pot was created in Jianyang, Sichuan Province, Daniel Zhang "pulled" Haidilao "pulled" big with "extreme service", cultivated it to go to the whole country and overseas, and was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2018.
The Daniel Zhang during the listing period were full of spirits
The clichéd "customer is God" has been Daniel Zhang truly transformed into the core competitiveness of Haidilao. From the customer's entry to the departure of the entire process, there are throughout Haidilao's meticulous free service items: free fruit snacks when queuing for seats, greetings and thoughtful operations from the waiter with a smile during the meal, and free shoe shine, nail art and other services after the meal.
Although these various projects increase the cost of time and money to serve a single customer, Daniel Zhang believes that the popularity accumulated by using special services can replace the brand with greater returns. Sure enough, Haidilao became famous for its highly humanized service, ranked among the ranks of high-end service hot pots, and quickly grew into a phenomenon-level chain enterprise.
After the successful listing of Haidilao, Daniel Zhang, driven by the concept of "opening Haidilao all over the world", has made a rapid expansion development strategy and expanded the restaurant network around the world, with the intention of further improving the density and coverage of Haidilao's restaurants.
This strategy led to Haidilao's revenue growth in the early stages. In 2019, Haidilao opened 308 new restaurants, the number of global stores increased from 466 at the end of 2018 to 768 at the end of 2019, the annual revenue was 26.556 billion yuan, an increase of 56.5% year-on-year, and the net profit was 2.347 billion yuan, an increase of 42.3% year-on-year.
In 2020, when the offline stores were affected by the epidemic and closed, Haidilao expand Daniel Zhang ed against the trend, and in this year, Haidilao opened 544 new stores, and the number of global stores reached 1298. In this regard, Daniel Zhang believed at the time that the decline in rents was a good time for Haidilao to "bottom out".
In 2020, Haidilao's annual revenue was 28.614 billion yuan, an increase of 7.8% year-on-year, but the net profit fell by 86.8% to 310 million yuan, and the drawbacks of the rapid expansion strategy began to appear. However, due to the epidemic situation at that time became the main reason for the decline in business performance, Haidilao did not pay attention to the hidden dangers of the existing operation and management model.
As of June 30, 2021, the number of Haidilao stores worldwide has reached 1597. But also in this year, Haidilao began to realize the crisis behind blind expansion.
In November 2021, Haidilao suddenly announced that it would adjust its rapid expansion plan and would close more than 300 problem stores in large quantities by the end of the year. At the same time, in order to improve business performance, Yang Lijuan, executive director and deputy chief executive officer, led the "Woodpecker Program" for internal adjustment.
On February 21, 2022, Haidilao issued a profit warning in advance, expecting a net loss of about 3.8 billion yuan to 4.5 billion yuan in 2021. This is the first loss since Haidilao's listing, and the amount of loss is the highest or even more than the net profit of the previous three years.
In this regard, Daniel Zhang reflected on the blind expansion strategy, saying that "the current bitter fruit can only be swallowed by ourselves."
From going out of Sichuan to all over the country to going global, Daniel Zhang is a banner of Haidilao. But at the age of 52, he did not, like Ren Zhengfei, Zong Qinghou, Cao Dewang and other entrepreneurs of the older generation, either still sticking to his post, or starting to hand over in his 70s; nor did he retire at the peak of Haidilao, but "quit" in this way, which is inevitable to be a little sad.
In this regard, Zhang Yi, CEO of Ai Media Consulting, said in an interview with Zinc Finance that the founders have retreated to the second line, and the new organizational structure adjustment may be a good thing for Haidilao. Judging from the operating data of the past year, the overall operating data of Haidilao is not bright, and some new stores have very poor operating effects, resulting in early warning losses of billions, which is very closely related to the degree of care of the top management team without the entrepreneurial period. Since the listing for a period of time, the founding shareholders have begun to cash out in large quantities, and in fact, they are already in a state of pension.
Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, told Zinc Finance that the replacement of the founder will have a certain impact on a company's business, executives and partners in the early stage, but it also depends on what state the founder is in, and whether the corresponding arrangements are made to reduce these risks.
So, is Haidilao all arranged?
Yang Lijuan is not new
Yang Lijuan's takeover as CEO of Haidilao actually had a premonition. On November 5, 2021, Haidilao issued a voluntary announcement, in addition to announcing the mass closure of stores that did not meet the standards, it also revealed that it would take the "Woodpecker Plan" to remedy it, and Yang Lijuan was the main person in charge of the plan.
According to the appointment announcement, Yang Lijuan was transferred as the chief executive officer, responsible for overseeing the management and strategic development of the group, and continued to be responsible for the implementation and promotion of the "Woodpecker Plan", screening and eliminating stores and management personnel according to the results of financial assessment.
Who is Yang Lijuan?
It is reported that Haidilao brand was founded 28 years ago, Yang Lijuan has been working in Haidilao for more than 27 years, as a veteran, Yang Lijuan started from a waiter, followed the Daniel Zhang all the way to Work hard for Haidilao, and has always played an important role in operation and management.
At that time, in order to help her family pay off her debts, Yang Lijuan dropped out of school and went to Jianyang County and became a waiter. Because of the machine Chilean, the Daniel Zhang who came to eat at the door took a look at it and offered a salary of 160 yuan to dig her, which was much higher than her salary of 120 yuan at that time. Faced with the promise of high salary, Yang Lijuan did not accept it until the restaurant owner who used to work went to other cities to develop, and then joined Haidilao. At that time, Haidilao had just been established for one year.
In the first year of joining Haidilao, Yang Lijuan's family encountered creditors to force debts, and after Daniel Zhang knew, they directly allocated 800 yuan to help her break the siege. "Since then, I have taken Haidilao as my home, and whoever wants to harm the interests of the company, I dare to fight with whom!" Yang Lijuan once said.
At the age of 21, Yang Lijuan was sent to Xi'an by the Daniel Zhang to independently run the first cross-regional store operated by Haidilao. This year, in order to maintain Haidilao's storefront in Xi'an, she was less than 160 tall and led employees to confront more than 60 troublemakers holding equipment in the middle of the night.
At that time, Haidilao, who had just entered Xi'an, was still unknown, and Yang Lijuan grabbed customers table by table by table, so that Haidilao had a firm foothold in the Xi'an market, laying the foundation for going out of Sichuan and achieving cross-regional operation. It can be said that Yang Lijuan is a key figure in Haidilao's going out of Sichuan and opening up the national market.
In 2018, Yang Lijuan was transferred to be a non-executive director of Sichuan Haidilao, and as COO, she sounded the gong of Haidilao's listing with Daniel Zhang.
Daniel Zhang and Yang Lijuan (right) strike the gong together
Although Yang Lijuan is only 43 years old this year, she is already an out-and-out veteran of Haidilao. Coupled with 36-year-old Li Yu and 38-year-old Wang Jinping, Haidilao is undoubtedly releasing a signal of rejuvenation this time.
However, in the eyes of industry insiders, these three are "old people" who have achieved management from front-line grass-roots positions, and some "new bottles of old wine" can lead Haidilao to break through the bottleneck period is unknown.
"I'm not very bullish on the new CEO." Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, told Zinc Finance that "the personnel change is an adjustment plan based on the continuous decline in the performance, profits and stock prices of Haidilao as a whole." However, the new CEO is still a veteran employee of Haidilao, and the current problem of Haidilao is the aging of the brand, the aging of the scene, the aging of the service system, the aging of the menu, and the aging of the entire system mechanism. Therefore, the old man's ascension to the throne may not play much role in the change of the current status quo of the entire Haidilao. Although there will be some new initiatives, the overall effect needs to be further observed. ”
In addition to releasing the signal of rejuvenation, Haidilao's current development focuses on optimizing the company's organizational structure and improving the efficiency of operation and management. These are actually the pits dug for themselves after filling the blind expansion.
Zhuang Shuai pointed out: "Every company has management and management level problems, Haidilao's problems are not only caused by rapid expansion, its catering industry itself has the characteristics of rapid competition change, manpower-intensive, as well as consumption habits, consumer demand changes quickly, which require Haidilao to make changes to adapt to the new competitive state and adapt to new consumption habits, to meet new consumer demand." ”
Zhang Yi's worry is that whether the new management team can have the same intentions as the start-up team, there are usually some differences, the key is whether the entire operation and management of the enterprise has reached a mature stage.
Internal and external anxiety is not easy to solve
After the focus of the new team's work came out, the next step for the industry to pay attention to was to see the effect. But the reality is that under the increasingly fierce market competition, what are the chances of Haidilao reversing the situation?
"Haidilao's current loss situation, whether it can be reversed this year, may be a problem, even if it is reversed, I am afraid it will be after the third quarter." Zhang Yi said frankly.
According to the data released by Ai Media Consulting, the market size of China's hot pot industry reached 529.5 billion yuan in 2019, and it is expected that the market size will reach 641.3 billion yuan in 2024.
But in the face of the huge market cake, fierce market competition has also accelerated the survival of the fittest. The data shows that the failure rate of hot pot catering enterprises established in 2016 and 2019 is about 50% and 30% respectively, about half of the hot pot catering enterprises can not live for 5 years, and about 30% of hot pot catering enterprises have closed down within two years.
Ai Media Consulting believes that the reason for the high failure rate of hot pot catering enterprises is that many hot pot catering companies have not conducted systematic research, failed to find their own brand positioning and lack of innovation when investing and expanding, and the blindness of the company's establishment is high, and the future development of hot pot catering enterprises should be developed in an innovative and sustainable path.
In this way, the threshold of Haidilao, the main service, is not necessarily higher than that of the opponent, and the future road is still very grim in today's increasingly homogeneous hot pot enterprises.
Zhuang Shuai believes that for Haidilao, there are two strategies for the horizontal development of multiple formats and the vertical development of single formats. The horizontal expansion of multiple formats means that in addition to hot pot, you can operate noodle restaurants, barbecues, etc. A single format is based on the hot pot to derive upstream and downstream products, such as: instant hot pot, single hot pot, hot pot products, etc. At present, Haidilao has made some efforts in the vertical development of a single format, and multiple formats have not yet been tried.
In addition to market competition, Haidilao also has to face its own problems. On February 24, Haidilao was exposed to privately label consumers and give consumer notes according to their appearance and personality. In this regard, Haidilao's customer service responded with "internal system, inconvenient to disclose to the outside world", but such a statement obviously could not get the satisfaction of consumers, and its proud quality service collapsed instantly.
All along, the most criticized by consumers is the price of dishes and food safety.
It is reported that since the outbreak of the epidemic, Haidilao has made many price increases. So much so that some consumers complained that Haidilao's original pricing was higher than that of general hot pot restaurants, and if the price was secretly increased because of the decline in profits, it would be too ugly to "eat the picture".
In addition to price increases, there is also food safety.
In November 2021, a Haidilao company in Shanghai was fined 20,000 yuan for expiring bean blossoms during a sampling test; in December of the same year, a consumer in Nanchang ate suspected spoiled pork belly while consuming in Haidilao, causing vomiting and diarrhea to go to the hospital for treatment.
In the face of many food safety problems that have been exposed, although Haidilao has apologized and rectified, it has not completely eliminated the crux of the problem. As a well-known restaurant, this is not in line with its high-end positioning in the minds of consumers.
What will the new management team deploy and improve this year for consumers' pricing and food safety concerns? Zinc Finance asked Haidilao about this issue, but as of press time, there was no response.
Perhaps, the new management team is still anxious about how to solve the problem of shrinkage and expansion, but the food safety problem can no longer be ignored.
According to a report released by Ai Media Consulting, consumers' primary concern when choosing a hot pot restaurant is food freshness and store hygiene. Establishing a transparent kitchen, actively announcing the safety and health status, and food freshness status are conducive to enhancing the trust of hot pot catering consumers in the hot pot brand, thereby increasing user stickiness.
"The problem haidilao faces is that the competition in the entire hot pot market is extremely fierce, and the dishes and prices that consumers care about exist in the comparison with competitors." This limits Haidilao's competitive advantage in terms of services, and if it wants to break through, it must work product and business model innovation. Zhang Yi told Zinc Finance, "In addition, Haidilao should recognize clearly from top to bottom that in addition to its own shortcomings, it is an indisputable fact that others run fast." ”
It is easy to fight in the country, but it is difficult to defend the country. Haidilao for 28 years, it is difficult to make hot pot, and it is difficult to make a famous old hot pot.