In recent years, the catering industry has become the object of many giants competing for cross-border. Can they do it well?
Is the story of the giants' "overnight fame" so easy to tell?
Article highlights:
What about the restaurants/drink shops opened by the giants today?
What is the logic behind cross-border entry catering?
What are the lessons for traditional caterers?
Lately, post office coffee has been on fire.
In Xiamen Guomao, on the opening day, Xiti Weibo hot search, a week to become the first place in the local café hot list, the current business popularity is not lost to the Internet red shop: an average of 2 hours to order, a day out of more than 600 cups.
How long can it be fired? Can Post Office Coffee Make a Brand?
At present, it is really difficult to say, because the opening time is too short, it is uncertain whether the current hot scene is out of the curiosity of consumers, and whether it can become a professional strength player in the next business war.
But there is no doubt that its resources are too good!
For example, it has a large number of high-quality locations, as well as a warehousing and logistics supply chain covering the whole country in minutes, of course, it also has soft resources such as high visibility and high exposure that other cutting-edge coffee brands do not have.
And can this make a successful food and beverage brand? The observer jun decided to find out the truth from history, took stock of the catering projects done by the giants in the past, and got a glimpse of the real situation of the giants' cross-border catering.
△ Image source: Post Office Coffee official public number
Among these cross-border giants, there are both traditional entity predators who "personally" open stores to grab traffic; there are Internet tycoons who invest in shares and only want to pick fruits, and there are food companies with deep pockets that underestimate the difficulty of catering and join the harvest; of course, there are also celebrities who start a business for the second time or realize the traffic of celebrities.
Let's take a look at how the restaurants of these giants are doing now, can they really do a good job of catering with their own aura?
1
What about the dining/tea shops opened by the giants today?
Observing the "catering complex" of those giants who crossed the border, he found that they especially like to drink coffee and milk tea.
Of course, in the final analysis, the giants still look at the broad market prospects for coffee and new tea. So, we start with these areas.
(1) PetroChina Kunlun Hospitality Coffee
Freshly ground coffee shops reached 120+
In 2018, the Kunlun Hospitality Coffee Project was established, and PetroChina began to lay freshly ground coffee in its Kunlun Hospitality Convenience Store. Many people are optimistic about this coffee brand that was born with a "golden key", after all, PetroChina has 20,000 convenience stores.
Unlike regular convenience store coffee, Hospitality Coffee is an independent brand with a configuration like a "boutique": with its own bar and trained baristas, as well as a custom-made version of the grinder, which is the top of the convenience coffee.
Products have semi-automatic production and fully automatic production series, including black coffee, milk coffee, milk tea and other popular categories, the price ranges from 12 to 24 yuan, more grounded.
△ Image source: PetroChina official public account
According to the convenience store scene in different regions, Hospitality Coffee expands its store according to the random combination of multiple product lines of "freshly ground coffee + self-service coffee machine + ready-to-drink coffee + freeze-dried coffee".
According to the "Coffee Gate" report, there are currently more than 120 stores of PetroChina Kunlun Hospitality Coffee, while PetroChina has more than 8,000 stores with retail coffee, and the total sales of PetroChina's coffee products will exceed 100 million in 2021. During the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger, when the whole people called the Winter Olympics, a hospitality coffee in the Yanqing Competition Area caught fire, and the number of cups increased by 60%.
Hospitality Coffee also understands that it is difficult for gas station coffee to have a fixed customer base, because refueling is a random behavior. So this is a business that cannot be rushed, and the key to what can be done lies in the awakening of national coffee consumption and the increase in the number of coffee cups per capita. Since it is difficult to succeed quickly in the existing market, let's try the curve to take the retail route first.
(2) Sinopec EasyJet coffee
There are only 21 stores, which is too far from the goal of "3000 stores in 3 years"
In 2019, Sinopec launched its own brand "EasyJet Coffee", in order to fit the gas station scene, "EasyJet Coffee" launched three series in one fell swoop: 92# (black and white coffee), 95# (fashion special drink), 98# (boutique series), which was ridiculed by netizens as "oil coffee".
△ Image source: Sinopec official public number
In December 2020, Sinopec EasyJet once again announced the establishment of a joint venture with the Internet coffee brand "Lian Coffee", and the two sides jointly established an operation team with both coffee professional capabilities and Internet innovation capabilities, responsible for the overall operation of "EasyJet Coffee". At the same time, the "Easy Jet Coffee" store settled in Beijing for the first time and officially opened at the Beijing Longyu Yuquan Gas Station.
More than two years have passed, and the observer Jun found through inquiries that as of now, Suzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities have Sinopec easyJet coffee distribution.
Distribution of easyJet Coffee's Beijing stores
△ Image source: EasyJet Coffee official public number
According to its official account information, as of November 2021, easyJet Coffee has 54 stores in Beijing, Suzhou, Hefei, Nanjing and Changzhou that have been or are about to open. However, it is clearly far from the ambitious goal of "opening 3,000 stores in three years".
In addition to coffee, Sinopec has also tried to "sell vegetables" and sell snail powder.
When the epidemic first broke out, in February 2020, Beijing Petroleum, a subsidiary of Sinopec, expanded the "one-click to car" service content and launched the "buy vegetables with peace of mind" business, taking advantage of the convenience of many gas station outlets and fast supply channels to provide fresh vegetables for Beijing consumers.
At the beginning of last year, Sinopec Guangxi Petroleum also launched its own brand "Yi Sister Snail Powder", which lasted 6 months from the formation of the team to the launch of the product. According to the Sinopec News Network, as of the end of October 2021, only nine months after the listing, the sales of Yijie sister snail powder have exceeded 15 million yuan. At present, Yijie sister snail powder has officially entered Thailand and Cambodia for sale. But in the Taobao flagship store, Guanjun saw the highest-selling "Yi Sister" product, with only 13 monthly sales.
(3) Wahaha Milk Tea Shop
Development was not as expected
In July 2020, when Wahaha's first direct milk tea store opened in Guangzhou Wushan Business District, Wahaha founder Zong Qinghou flew from Hangzhou to Guangzhou and personally stood for the store.
According to the official website, Wahaha Milk Tea Shop began to prepare in May 2019, entered the preparation in November, and began to attract investment nationwide in December. In the more than half a year before the opening of its first store in Guangzhou, Wahaha has opened more than 300 stores across the country.
But two years later, data from the Red Food Brand Research Institute shows that Wahaha Milk Tea currently has 320+ stores, concentrated in Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang and other provinces. There was no substantial increase in stores.
At first, in the eyes of mass consumers and franchisees, the two brands of "Wahaha Milk Tea" and "Wahaha" were directly related. However, on May 15, 2020, "Wahaha" posted a clarification message on the official Weibo, "The milk tea project is not directly operated, but is authorized to a partner (Guangzhou Wahaha) in operation."
The turning point comes in the second half of 2021. At that time, there were many media reports that the franchisees of Wahaha milk tea shops generally lost money and were collectively accused by franchisees. In the related report of "Connect Insight", a franchisee mentioned that "the loss of more than 900,000 yuan in 11 months after opening a store" and "70% of the stores in the country are in a serious loss state".
After interviewing a number of franchisees, the Red Restaurant Network found that the operation of Wahaha Milk Tea almost did not exist, there were many problems such as old products, slow pushing new, expensive logistics, expensive materials, etc., and the traffic star endorsement promised when joining was not realized.
△ Image source: Wahaha Milk Tea Official Micro
However, recently, the observer Jun found that the main body of the public account of "Wahaha Milk Tea" has been replaced by "Zhejiang Wahaha Health Management Co., Ltd.", which is 100% owned by Wahaha Commercial Co., Ltd. This means that more than two years after the launch of "Wahaha Milk Tea", the model of authorized operation may change.
However, from the perspective of the entire tea market, the dividend of market development has disappeared from the past, and the head brand and regional brands have contracted. And the image of "Wahaha Milk Tea" has been damaged, and now wahaha is personally down, is there still a chance to restart? We'll see.
(4) 1828 Wang Laoji
Store expansion has been slow
In 2017, Wang Laoji launched the "1828 Wang Laoji" offline tea brand, focusing on "herbal new tea". In 2019, it announced that its plan for the next 3-5 years is to expand the size of stores to 3,000 to 5,000.
△ Image source: brand official Weibo
At that time, many people valued Wang Laoji's brand awareness and massive consumer groups, and joined its offline tea shop brand.
However, the reality is not satisfactory, and many franchisees find that the development of the store is not as good as expected after a few months of operation.
In fact, in the 4 years after the advent of the "1828 Wang Laoji" tea brand, it has also been carrying out self-help operations. First, the slogan was changed from the original "freshly brewed herbal tea" to "herbal new tea", and milk tea was also sold.
Shortly after changing the positioning, "1828 Wang LaoJi Herbal New Tea" carried out the largest expansion since its birth, opening 22 new stores in many places, but there has been no obvious action since then.
According to data from the Red Food Brand Research Institute, as of February 2022, "1828 Wang Laoji" has more than 70 stores, which are still a few less than a year ago, and all five stores in Shenzhen are closed. Searching for platforms such as Dianping, Meituan, and Xiaohongshu found that comments about "1828 Wang Laoji" were difficult to drink and refused to buy back.
In addition to the tea shop, Wang Laoji also "followed the trend" in the new retail field of hot ingredients supermarket.
In October 2020, Wang Laoji launched the hot pot barbecue ingredient brand - "1828 Wang Laoji Xiaoji Pot Pie". It is understood that this food supermarket was jointly initiated by Wang Laoji Catering Company under The Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group and Xiaoji Pot Pie Food Co., Ltd., and is headquartered in Zhengzhou.
Observation Jun inquiry found that at present, the brand only has 2 stores in Xinyang, Henan, and there is no review on a review website so far, and its true operating conditions are unknown.
△ Image source: Xiao Ji Pot Pie public number
(5) Tongrentang Tuicao Drink & Coffee Brand
The latter runs faster
At the end of 2017, Tianjin Tongrentang Group, a three-hundred-year-old traditional Chinese medicine enterprise, joined hands with Shanghai Motel Workshop Group to open its first offline physical store "Yanyueshan" at Shanghai Jing'an Kerry Centre, officially announcing its entry into the tea market.
Yanyueshan incorporates traditional herbs into drinks and adds health elements, targeting white-collar workers over the age of 25 who pay attention to health, so its stores choose to open in the business district.
In terms of products, it has five series: Kampo herbal drink, health grain, herbal fresh fruit tea, herbal fresh milk tea and nourishing stew. The product price is in the range of 25 to 35 yuan.
Founder and CEO Hu Kaiji said that the tea used in the current new tea drink is only a small part of the herbal material, and the production process is easy to copy. Many herbs, such as ginseng, goji berries, dried jade bamboo, etc., are difficult to get the favor of new tea because of the high requirements of taste, manufacturing process and supply chain.
Perhaps because the supply chain is more complex and there are no mature suppliers to rely on, Yanyueshan's store expansion is very slow. In 2018, it had 5 directly operated stores, and now it is still 5, and all of them are in Shanghai, and the previous Suzhou and Nanjing stores have been closed.
It is worth noting that the brand name of the new store on Changshou Road in Shanghai recently shows "Yanyueshan Tea Drinking Pineapple Bun", while the previous store name was "Yanyue Mountain Herbal Drink", which may represent its increase in bakery products.
The first store in Suzhou has now been closed
△ Image source: brand WeChat public account
Following the health drinks, in June 2019, Tongrentang launched the coffee shop brand "Zhima Health", which also played the health card.
The specialty coffee varieties here include goji berry lattes, licorice lattes, motherwort rose lattes, cassia lattes, hawthorn tangerine peel American, etc. The price list shows that the price of a latte in Zhima Health is 32 yuan, which is comparable to the pricing of Starbucks. The products that integrate medicine and coffee have attracted many consumers to come to "punch the clock".
It is understood that in order to launch coffee drinks, Tongrentang also introduced Starbucks professionals and formed a special team to develop products. In addition to coffee, the store also provides non-coffee drinks such as lung tea and Traditional Chinese medicine tonic soup.
According to the data of the Red Food Brand Research Institute, Zhima Health Coffee has 10 stores in Beijing, of which 3 have not yet opened, in addition to Zhima Health, Traditional Chinese Medicine Physiotherapy / Anti-Aging Center / Psychological Counseling related stores.
(6) Country Garden Robot Restaurant
Business is obviously not as good as the business of mass production machines
On June 22, 2020, the FOODOM Tianfall Food Kingdom Robot Restaurant built by Country Garden's "Qianxi Group" settled in Nanping Road, Shunde (Beijiao), Guangdong Province.
The restaurant has three divisions, namely the Chinese food area, the hot pot area, and the fast food area, all of which are ordered, stir-fried, and delivered by robots. For example, in the Chinese food area, after the guest scans the code and orders, the system will automatically issue instructions; the robot arm and the machine wok will cook; the finished dishes will be delivered by the AGV food delivery car and transmitted to the user's position on the cloud rail on the ceiling.
△ Image source: Qianxi Robot Group WeChat public account
In fact, Country Garden announced its entry into the field of robotics in July 2018 and established qianxi robot catering group in May 2019.
There is no doubt that letting automated and intelligent robots replace the completion of repetitive and complex catering work can help restaurant companies reduce costs and improve efficiency, and be safer and healthier. Country Garden has also announced that it plans to build 1,000 robot restaurants.
So, let's take a look at how well such restaurants are accepted in the market?
Observation Jun inquiry learned that at present, the first store of this robot restaurant in Shunde has scored 4.2 points in public reviews, becoming the eighth place in Foshan's creative cuisine. In addition, shunde also has a robot fast food restaurant (new wing square store), with a score of only 3.7 points.
At country garden Bozhilin headquarters, the robot restaurant as an employee canteen is also very popular. But there are no robot restaurants shaded by headquarters, and many are in business difficulties. The only two stores in Guangzhou, Huachenghui and Baixin Plaza, were empty half a year ago.
However, the opening of robot restaurants is obviously not the focus of Qianxi Group, and selling intelligent robots to catering businesses is.
It is understood that Qianxi Robot has its own 85,000 square meters of intelligent factory, and its 14 semi-automated production lines can produce 60,000 sets of various types of catering robots per year. Including the "Mengleduo" robot, service robot, coffee robot, robot four series, covering Chinese food, hot pot, pot rice, flour noodles, spicy hot and other categories of machine production equipment.
The unmanned smart restaurant that has attracted much attention during the Winter Olympics has intelligent and automatic catering equipment from Qianxi Robot Group. "Cooking a burger in 10 seconds, making a cup of ice cream in 30 seconds..." Chinese and foreign media have been punching in the clock.
△ Image source: Screenshot of CCTV financial channel program
Official data show that Qianxi robot has been widely used in scenic spots, exhibition halls and transportation hub scenes in 30 provinces and cities across the country, and has laid out a number of chain robot restaurants in the Pearl River Delta region.
Judging from this move, Country Garden's opening of a robot restaurant is quite drunk. However, it is still worthwhile to use the robot restaurant to promote the sales of robots.
(7) Cross-border catering of luxury brands
Maintain the luxury characteristics, only this one
Regarding the cross-border of luxury brands, there was once a passage like this: go to mercedes-benz 4S store to taste wine, go to Chanel to eat desserts, drink coffee in Burberry, go to Versace to stay in a hotel, and live in an apartment in Armani. As you can see, luxury brands like to open restaurants.
As early as 2017, Mercedes-Benz began to launch mercedes me restaurant, the first store landed in Beijing Sanlitun, and the following year opened another one on the Bund in Shanghai. However, at present, these two stores have closed down, and now only a Mercedes me fashion restaurant in Shenzhen China Resources City is left, with a per capita of 455 yuan, the current rating is 4.5 points, the reputation is OK, but the traffic is average, and recently even in the push of 3-5 discount second sale packages.
In 2020, Burberry Asia's first café opened in Shenzhen's "Burberry Space", focusing on the natural theme of "Jungle Impression", with an average of 370+ yuan per capita. At present, there is still only this one store, with a dianping score of 4.6, which has been rated as the first place in Shenzhen's luxury hot list.
At the end of 2020, Hermès also entered the new tea market, and the world's first "Shangxia Tea Event" co-founded by SHANG XIA opened in Chengdu Ocean Taikoo Li, with an average of 130 yuan per capita. But the overall score is currently less than 4, and many consumers have commented that the tea is very general.
△ Image source: SHANGXIA up and down the brand official public name
In 2017, Tiffany opened its first coffee shop, Blue Box Cafe, at the fifth avenue flagship store in New York, and when "Tiffany's Breakfast" came to life, it was expected to swipe the social network. The world's third Tiffany restaurant was settled in Shanghai at the end of 2019, this store in Huaihai Middle Road, providing Filey steak, afternoon tea set, blue box cake and other Western meals, per capita 450 + yuan.
At present, there is still only one domestic Tiffany restaurant, but the praise is very high, and the public review score is 4.7. However, it is not difficult to see from the comments that the vast majority of consumers are rushing to the environment to punch the clock, because the restaurant ranks second in the Huaihai Road Western Food Environment List.
In 2015, GUCCI opened the world's first Full-Service restaurant in Shanghai, named "1921 GUCCI" after the year of its establishment, and became a punch card for many fashion bloggers at the beginning of its opening. But now the store is closed.
Judging from the development of the stores of the above luxury brands, most of the luxury brand restaurants are poorly managed, and they can only be beautiful for a while due to various reasons such as high per capita or substandard food taste. It can be seen that if luxury brands really want to do catering, it is difficult to continue to hold only the mentality of playing tickets.
(8) Internet giants cross-border catering
Prefer the way to buy shares
In recent years, the wind of the Internet has blown offline, offline catering has become a popular track, as an indispensable part of new consumption, the Internet giants represented by Tencent have made sufficient efforts in the layout of the catering industry.
Compared with the above-mentioned big-name "hands-on" cross-border restaurants, Internet giants like to invest in shares.
In February 2022, Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital Co., Ltd. acquired a stake in Ma Jiyong, an emerging ramen brand. Prior to this, Tencent had participated in two consecutive rounds of investment in Hefulao noodles in 2020 and 2021.
In addition to the field of pasta, in the field of tea, in July 2021, Tencent participated in Xicha, with a total amount of 3.308 billion yuan; the new coffee projects include "Tims China" and "Algebraist Generation Mathematician"; in addition, Tencent also invested in the hot halogen brand Sheng Xiangting Hot Brine. According to incomplete statistics from the Red Food Brand Research Institute, Tencent has made a total of 8 shots in the new consumption field, of which 7 are concentrated in 2021.
In addition to the two coffee brands, the other new consumer brands are familiar to everyone. For example, Tims (full name Tim Hortons) was founded in 1964 in hamilton town near Toronto, is a warm food café made to order. In 2019, the world's 4850th Tims Café was located in China. At present, it has more than 400 stores in China.
Foshan Shunlian Park store.
△ Image source: Tims Coffee official public number
Algebraist Algebraist Coffee was founded in 2015 to position itself as a Chinese boutique trend coffee, formerly known as MATRIX Coffee, which was upgraded to its current brand name in 2019. Up to now, it has nearly 100 directly operated stores, most of which are located in Suzhou, and the rest are concentrated in first- and second-tier cities in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.
As can be seen from the above table, Tencent prefers to choose chain brands and head projects, from the category point of view, coffee, new tea, noodles are the hottest track in the past two years, and there are 10,000 stores of genes, easy to scale, which also means that Tencent has the expectation of "10,000 stores brand" for the projects it has invested.
In addition to Tencent, in the investment of the catering industry, the giants are racking their brains to try to get out of the circle.
According to CVSource investment data, Meituan has invested in chain brands such as Xicha, Michelle Ice City, Guming, Manner Coffee, and Momo Dim Sum Bureau through its Dragon Ball Capital.
The first three are the heads of the new tea industry, of which Michelle Ice City is preparing for an A-share listing. Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau is currently the hottest brand in the new Chinese pastry track, developing very rapidly, and has opened nearly 60 stores in less than 2 years after its establishment.
Manner Coffee, founded in Shanghai in 2015, started from a 2-square-meter stall and currently has nearly 400 stores and a valuation of up to 2.8 billion. Manner Coffee has also developed rapidly, and not long ago its official public account issued a document saying that "200+ new stores in ten cities across the country are open". A popular phrase among coffee lovers reveals Manner's positioning: post-80s drink Starbucks, post-90s drink Luckin, and post-00s drink Manner.
△ Image source: brand official public account
Alibaba itself doesn't invest in many restaurant brands, but its associated Yunfeng Fund invests in Naixue's tea.
In addition to creating a local life and opening up the heartbeat takeaway, ByteDance also invested in Manner coffee, and last year it also invested in the hot hand-play lemon tea brand Lemon Season. In January this year, it was added again, and the shareholding increased to 12%. Compared with Tencent, Byte is more focused on catering and retail.
Video platform Station B also entered the catering industry, first investing in a specialty coffee chain brand Yingji Coffee in June 2021. In July, he took a stake in Charlie's Pink Burger, a Shanghai internet celebrity burger. Both of these are local brands in Shanghai with a concentration of young consumer groups and strong spending power. Eagle Set Coffee currently has 4 stores and Pink Burger has 17 stores.
Why do Internet companies attach so much importance to the catering industry? The answer, of course, is the user.
The rigid demand for young people in the catering industry and today's development model are difficult for most enterprises to reach. Internet giants can reach young people more deeply by investing in catering brands, and making money through new consumption of catering is not what they value most in the short term, while the catering industry also hopes to use capital to complete their own expansion, and both sides take what they need.
(9) The big guy "second entrepreneurship" dry catering
Success in other areas is hard to replicate
In addition to some strong capital forces, there are many industry leaders and celebrities who are also catering across borders.
As a former figure in the real estate circle, Mao Daqing, former vice president of Vanke and founder of Ucommune Workshop, opened a bun shop. In September 2021, "Mao Daqing Bun Shop" quietly opened in the food city on the first floor of Beijing Guomao 5L, focusing on "buns + coffee" and focusing on white-collar workers in office buildings.
At first, the bun shop didn't attract attention. Later, with Mao Daqing repeatedly calling for this bun shop on Weibo, and attaching an address and link, the bun shop was able to slowly become popular, and this bun shop also started a breakfast group buying business.
On February 11, 2022, Mao Daqing posted a bun shop dining scene on Weibo, with the text "Today's sales hit a record high". At present, five months have passed since the opening of the first store, and the bun shop has not yet opened a second store.
△ Image source: Mao Daqing Weibo
The capital tycoon "re-entrepreneurship" is involved in the catering industry, and Mao Daqing is not the first person to eat crabs.
In August 2021, after founding Shenzhou Car Rental and Luckin Coffee, Lu Zhengyao once again conquered the catering industry and established "Fun Noodles". Fun Noodles was launched with a high profile, and more than 60 stores were opened in 14 cities such as Beijing, Chongqing and Shenyang.
It is reported that Lu Zhengyao's goal is to open 500 small noodle restaurants across the country, and in the future, it will expand to snack brands and gradually upgrade into an online food APP.
But the reality is very cruel, the market's feedback on the interesting small side is not good, many punch card customers' spit points are concentrated in "no features", and the comments are also a singing voice. After three months of operation, "Fun Noodles" was renamed "Fun Bayu", and the store also added fake vegetables and Bayu hot pot pot.
△ Image source: The official public account of the Qu Bayu brand
However, changing the name to Jia cai did not turn the situation around, and in January this year, many people found that the first store in Beijing had closed less than half a year after it opened. The relevant platforms show that There are still 32 stores in Qu bayu.
Just when everyone was speculating about where Qu Xiaomian would go next, Lu Zhengyao turned his eyes to the pre-made dish that was "in the limelight".
According to the news, the Tip of the Tongue Technology Group, founded by Lu Zhengyao, is incubating a new project of prefabricated dishes called "Tip of the Tongue Workshop". The initial goal is to develop 3,000 stores by 2022.
Although the prefabricated dishes are on the cusp, but the track has begun to crowd, not only the layout of restaurant companies such as Xibei and Haidilao, Hema Fresh, Yonghui Supermarket, etc. are also involved in it, and the tip of the tongue workshop wants to set off a storm in the prefabricated vegetable market, and its difficulty is not necessarily smaller than "selling noodles and selling coffee".
In addition, there are many celebrities who also prefer to open cross-border restaurants, especially like to open hot pot restaurants, because the hot pot category fire, good copy, and high customer list have become the best choice for celebrities to quickly realize traffic.
However, as more and more celebrities open restaurants, there are more and more problems, some star restaurants are closed because of poor management, and some star restaurants have been exposed to wild franchises to harvest leeks and discredited. In this context, celebrity restaurants are meant to attract people with high exposure of celebrities, and the result may become a restriction of restaurants, and many consumers will unconsciously think that these restaurants are illusory and not worth going.
Moreover, with the advent of the epidemic, star catering is not easy to do, in some of the brands combed by the above table, only Xianhezhuang and Huofengxiang opened more stores, but last year, Xianhezhuang also significantly slowed down, the number of stores opened is only one-third of 2020, and the closure rate is relatively high.
All this proves once again that catering is not a low-threshold industry, and it is not necessarily feasible to have money and popularity.
2
The logic behind the giants doing catering
Through the combing of the cross-border catering cases of the giants, the observation jun found that from the original intention of each family, it is not the same, and there are probably several types.
(1) Cross-border for traffic
For example, Tongrentang opened a café, which can be seen from the store layout that selling coffee is only an introduction, but it is actually a drainage for the physiotherapy area and the treatment area. Taking the Beijing Shuangjing R&F City branch as an example, the entire store is divided into two floors, the first floor is a retail area, selling coffee and soup, and the second floor is a Traditional Chinese medicine consultation and medicine collection area.
△ Image source: Zhima Health official public account
Moreover, the official name of "Tongrentang Cafe" is "Zhima Health", which belongs to the new retail business of Tongrentang Health. The official made such an introduction: committed to the use of digital technology, with the diversified dimensions of people, goods and fields as the core of continuous innovation, through the combination of offline super experience stores and online business, focus on the new proposition of national tide health, give full play to the advantages of traditional time-honored brands, and provide users with accurate health full-cycle integration solutions.
Jin Zhijie, manager of the new retail business of Zhima Health, said in an interview with the media that with the endorsement of the golden sign of "Tongrentang", "Tongrentang Health Coffee" will be difficult to be copied. "However, selling coffee is not the purpose, but to drain and sell the concept of 'TCM health care'."
If you want to attract people, maybe a cup of coffee is not enough. But embracing change and keeping up with the times is never a bad thing for any business. Tongrentang's subversive innovation and reshaping of historical and cultural values have indeed made the old brand "young".
(2) Cross-border for transformation and upgrading
Founded in 1992, Country Garden is a well-known domestic comprehensive enterprise group with real estate as its main business, covering construction, decoration, property management and other industries, and is also one of the top ten real estate enterprises in China.
In recent years, with the intensive release of real estate regulation and control policies, the real estate industry has continued to be under pressure. However, Country Garden's ability to maintain revenue growth, reduced liabilities, and a more stable development trend is inseparable from its strategic deployment of diversifying its industrial layout and optimizing its industrial structure several years ago.
Country Garden focuses on the layout of high-tech real estate ecological chain, involved in robots, modern agriculture and other diversified businesses. The opening of robot restaurants and mass production of catering robots are only part of its layout.
Bach experiences at the Smart Restaurant in the Olympic Village
△ Image source: Qianxi Robot Group official public number
In addition, in terms of real estate development, intelligent construction is carried out through Bozhilin robots to create an intelligent construction system; agricultural products produced by modern agriculture are sold through Biyouyou, while providing raw materials for the central kitchen, and then the robot restaurant delivers the finished food to consumers, achieving full coverage from the source to the terminal. These businesses have also formed a good synergy with the main real estate business.
(3) Cross borders in order to rob profits
More typical is That Wang Laoji and Wahaha make tea. New tea drinking in these two years is too hot, no capital and no resources to share a piece of the pie, not to mention the rich and powerful food enterprises, cross-border seems to be a natural thing, itself are beverage companies, products should have a greater advantage, and brand awareness is higher, it is not difficult to do a tea brand.
But the reality is that they are punching in the face, their tea brands have fallen into the "quick move" vortex, tea brands have not done it, but also hurt the reputation and reputation of the main brand.
Careful analysis is not difficult to find that they all regard catering as too simple, especially ignoring the degree of involution in the tea industry. For example, for tea brands, because of the serious homogenization of the industry, explosive products have become the elixir of life of each family. But neither of them has produced explosive products, and the speed of pushing new products is slow and the quality is low.
"1828 Wang Laoji" mainly promotes Wang Laoji's classic herbal tea, and there is no obvious difference between the name and its canned products, so that the pricing price of 24 yuan is difficult to convince consumers. The main product of "Wahaha Milk Tea", "Strawberry Calcium Lactate Milk", has not been prominently performed in the tea drinking track for the time being.
Some insiders commented that the two have some commonalities in that the brand personality is vague and the sense of existence is low. The store planning and brand recognition are not sophisticated enough. Especially when the store model is excellent or not, it is open to join, and the brand side is tired of follow-up work such as store operation, and the problem is sooner or later.
Once Wahaha and milk tea shop "demarcation line"
△ Image source Wahaha official Weibo
(4) In order to use their own advantages to earn more income
Like China Post, PetroChina, and Sinopec, they all look at the market prospects of new tea and coffee, and they have more matching resources, and they do not dry and do not dry.
For example, they all have a large number of ready-made shops in high-quality locations, hundreds of thousands of business outlets across the country, and this cost advantage alone beats most of their peers.
Take China Post as an example, there are 54,000 business outlets, 400,000 cooperative outlets, to know that Starbucks in China only more than 5,000, Luckin more than 6,000, these two proper Chinese coffee boss two, the scale is 1/10 of the postal outlets.
Moreover, places such as gas stations have a certain amount of passenger flow, and drivers also have the need to refresh. Some people in the industry believe that as long as their products pass, with the increasing popularity of coffee, making money is a matter of high probability.
In addition, like China Post, having a mature warehousing and logistics system covering the whole country is also a rare resource advantage.
They also have a large number of ready-made labor. Because for state-owned enterprises and central enterprises, employee redundancy is a common problem, if tea shops and coffee shops are opened, they can naturally provide more jobs.
However, this is only from the perspective of outsiders to look at this matter, as to whether China Post Coffee can be done, it remains to be followed up.
(5) In order to be closer to the user
Luxury brands cross border mostly for this purpose. Unlike the previous brand stores, which are sales-oriented, the opening of restaurants, cafes, dessert shops, etc., can break the indifferent shell of luxury goods, and is part of the luxury brand's contact with consumers, gathering popularity, and selling lifestyles.
More importantly, these restaurants may become alternative offline experience stores for brands, and may also be combined with smart terminals in the future to promote brand sales and lead business model changes.
It's just that because it doesn't operate well, most of the luxury catering stores are in the form and fail to really play their due role. However, it should not be ignored that food has become an indispensable social language for young people, and high-end brands are forming a trend of communication with consumers through catering.
Of course, some brands may have both these factors, just like Tencent, Meituan and other Internet giants, their cross-border catering is not only to reach young users, but also to make money, the investment of catering projects can be copied on a large scale, naturally also in order to maximize the income.
brief summary
Judging from the cross-border cases sorted out in this article, it can be said that failure and success coexist, and for giants, it is also like people drinking water cold and warm self-knowledge.
From this, we also realized again that although the giant has its own aura, it has the most scarce exposure and customer recognition of others, but it may not be successful, and the money for catering is not as easy to earn as imagined.
Catering is an industry that needs to be explored and polished for a long time, and if you want to hold high and then form a large-scale, "overnight fame" is difficult to achieve in the catering industry, and the capital story of catering is not so easy to tell.
From another point of view, the giant cross-border soup catering industry has intensified the competition in the industry. The reshuffle of competition will accelerate the iteration and elimination of brands. Cross-border catering enterprises have their own unique advantages, good operation will also achieve the effect of "1 + 1>2", traditional thinking of catering people if they still stand in the "same place" to think about the problem, will also be eliminated by cross-border catering.
Han Ming, president of the China Hotel Association, has publicly stated that the future catering industry is not only as simple as traditional eating and drinking, but also more likely to be a platform-based industry with the basic function of catering services + theme culture + consumer experience, and cross-border cooperation and cross-border development will become a common practice.
(Note: Unless otherwise specified, the currency units in this article are all in Renminbi.) ）
Source | Food & Beverage Brand Observation
Author | Red Food Brand Research Institute
Design | Huang Lihui