Reporter | Wu Rong
Edit | Ya Han Xiang
On the evening of March 23, Jiumaojiu International Holdings Limited (hereinafter referred to as "Jiumaojiu") announced its 2021 financial report. During the reporting period, the company's revenue was about 4.18 billion yuan (the same below), an increase of 54.0% year-on-year, and the net profit reached 340 million yuan, an increase of 169.7% year-on-year.
Jiumaojiu attributed the growth in performance to the significant expansion of stores, especially Tai'er Sauerkraut Fish, which expanded from 233 restaurants in 2020 to 350 restaurants in 2021. In addition, the total number of restaurant days open in 2021 increased compared to 2020.
Taier sauerkraut fish brand was launched in 2015, the store location is mostly located in the high traffic of commercial shopping malls, for the young people shopping, while using "more than four people to eat do not receive", "only sell 100 fish a day", "do not share the table and do not add seats" and other marketing methods.
In recent years, Tai'er has also gradually replaced jiumaojiu northwest cuisine as the company's main source of income. In 2021, Taier's revenue was 3.215 billion yuan, accounting for about 78% of the total revenue; the number of 900 northwest cuisine stores shrank to 83, with revenue of only 759 million yuan.
In addition to Jiumaojiu Northwest Cuisine and Tai'er, in recent years, it has also launched Brands such as Cantonese cuisine "That Uncle Is a Chef", that is, "Two Egg Pancakes" that can be bought and taken away, but the number of stores is not much. (Image source: 2021 financial report of 9021)
A catering industry insider in the Guangdong market analyzed the interface news that Tai'er recovered rapidly in the post-epidemic period, in addition to conforming to the trend of segmentation of China's catering industry in recent years, it is also related to its expansion strategy and "light social" model. As a subdivision of Sichuan cuisine, sauerkraut fish is easy to attract diners because of its spicy and sour taste, and the main ingredient category is also because of the high degree of standardization of the material package, which makes the meal fast, and the expansion speed of Tai'er's stores is also easy to ensure.
As early as the beginning of the listing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Jiumaojiu had said that the future store opening plan was concentrated in Taier, and would focus on the first-tier, new first-tier, and provincial capital cities to expand stores; in 2020, Tai'er began to enter Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Liaoning, Gansu, Guangxi and other provinces; in 2021, it will continue to focus on seizing high-tier cities and existing crypto cities, while taking into account the blank market.
In the view of the above-mentioned analysts, Tai'er's "maximum four people per table" rule is equivalent to standardizing the number of customers in a single batch of meals. Compared with the catering brands that focus on social networking, the social attributes are further diluted, and the faster dining speed and shorter residence time of customers are conducive to achieving business recovery during the epidemic period of Tai'er.
However, with the deepening of segmentation of China's catering industry, the consumption cycle changes more rapidly, and the segmented category market is gradually crowded, and the same is true in the field of sauerkraut fish. In addition to "Tai'er", the sauerkraut fish brands on the market also include "Fish You Together", "JiangYu'er" and "Yan Kitchen Laotan Sauerkraut Fish".
In the innovation of sauerkraut fish, the possibility of being able to extend is not large enough, such as adding some excipients to the soup base, or adding some less competitive snacks.
In addition, as stores open more and more, the passenger flow agglomeration effect will also be diluted, and "Tai'er" may no longer be able to enjoy the dividends of the early store opening. What needs to be more vigilant is that the financial report shows that from 2018 to 2021, the overturning rate of Tai'er sauerkraut fish is 4.9, 4.8, 3.8 and 3.4 respectively, and the overturning rate in 2021 is down a quarter from the peak in 2018.
Image source: 2021 financial report of Jiumaojiu
This means that the bet cannot be fully focused on the single category of sauerkraut fish.
In addition to Tai'er, Jiumaojiu began to look for new explosive brands, launching the hot pot brand "Qi Chongqing Hot Pot Factory" (hereinafter referred to as "Qi hot pot") and the grilled fish brand "Lai Mei Li Pepper Grilled Fish" (hereinafter referred to as "Lai Mei") in 2020 and 2021 respectively, and tried to copy the past experience to them.
Focus on catering categories, dish SKUs are not much, store decoration design also continues the Taier style, but the tone from black and white to orange, yellow and other bright colors; the store "rules" are also similar to Taier, set up a self-service tea brewing area, tea seats, paper towels and spices do not charge. Such a setting is easy to link with the original brand, and it can also bring consumers a relatively unified brand mark. In addition, the practice of translating past experience to the new brand also facilitates the shaping and subsequent expansion of the new brand.
As of December 31, 2021, the number of hot pot and Lai Meili stores was 9 and 2 respectively. According to Guan Yihong, chairman of Jiumaojiu, "After successfully finding the second growth curve of Tai'er, the hot pot will run out of the third growth curve." ”
The above-mentioned catering analysts said that multi-brand operations are very common in the catering industry, including Haidilao, Zhen Kung Fu and Xibei, who are all using the development of sub-brands to find new profit growth points. However, the choice of a single category to create including, the operator needs to have a prior and accurate grasp of the catering trend, and the selected category is also easy to achieve standardization and replicability.
Brands that start with a single-category strategy are often difficult to avoid the challenges brought about by changes in the catering outlet.
In the context of the influence of social networks and the increasing disloyalty of young people, the trend of catering categories has become more and more elusive as fast fashion, the life cycle is also shortening, and the elimination period of shopping mall catering has been shortened from 5 years to 3 years (some even as short as 1 year). In addition, such catering brands are also easily limited by the impact of a relatively single supply chain. That is to say, the follow-up will continue to test the ability of Jiumaojiu in supply chain management and meticulous operation.