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How to interpret long-termism
Written/Starry Night
Editor/Wei Xu
I still remember that the interim food trend in 2021 has swept the hearts of young people, and the "consumption upgrade" that can be enjoyed at a low price has become the biggest selling point of the industry.
However, this year's young people are characterized by "faster on the top and faster on the bottom", and as their enthusiasm for the food in the future fades, the snack collection store quietly takes over the baton and becomes the darling. Some people even joke that nowadays, snack collection stores are about to become the standard on the edge of universities across the country like spicy hot and milk tea.
The sense of smell in the capital market is more sensitive, and in the past 2021, brands such as snacks are loud, snacks are busy, and snack girls have obtained financing. At the same time, franchise stores all over the country have also sprung up.
However, "old and difficult" issues such as food safety and consumption routines have begun to hit the reputation of this new track.
Food safety problems occur frequently, and it is difficult for consumers to say "true fragrance" again
Chen Yuqi, a college student, recently found that within a kilometer of the school, three snack collection stores suddenly appeared, and from the outside to the inside, the furnishings were similar to the types of goods, but the business was still good.
At the invitation of her classmates, Chen Yuqi decided to enter the store to explore. As soon as she entered the store, Chen Yuqi realized that this may be a "really fragrant" place, with a variety of snacks, and it is estimated that there are thousands of kinds. The bulk snack food category is more abundant, and can be mixed wholesale according to different price divisions, and most importantly, the price of almost all snacks and beverages is lower than the price of supermarkets and convenience stores.
"Although the façade is not very large, in fact, the types of snacks are particularly rich, such as sandwich seaweed rolls, which are divided into barrels, bags, bulk, and meat fluffy, crisp shrimp and other flavors. And the portion size is relatively small, even if one person wants to try various flavors and varieties, you can also mix and match. Since this experience, Chen Yuqi and her classmates have not visited the food stores around the school or bought snacks online.
The prices of goods in snack collection stores are usually lower than those of ordinary supermarkets
College students like Chen Yuqi, although there is not a lot of pocket money in their hands, and occasionally they can get some additional income through part-time jobs and internships, but the daily consumption of eating and drinking is still a big expense. "In recent years, snacks have become more and more fancy, and the price has also risen, especially the net red products, which are even more premium." Although the price of the temporary food is also very good, I think it is more worthwhile to eat snacks with fresh dates at the wholesale price. ”
It is not difficult to see that the two characteristics of rich categories and affordable prices have become an important reason for the current snack collection stores to attract consumers. But because of this, the difficulty of controlling the quality of goods has also increased geometrically.
Zinc scale from the black cat complaints, including "snacks are very busy", "seated snack snack shop", "wife adult", "good happiness global snack collection store" and other chain stores have appeared a number of complaints, and the content of the complaints are mostly related to food hygiene and safety.
"I bought a copy of "Licheng Corn Jun Ham Sausage" in a store where snacks are very busy, and after eating two sticks, I found that the third one had a very obvious foreign body, and then there was a stomachache and diarrhea. After reflecting to the merchant, the other party only promised to pay ten times the goods or 3 times the whole order, up to 134 yuan. And the merchant does not admit that there is a problem with the product, let us test it ourselves. One consumer described his experience this way.
This is not an isolated case, because snack collection stores have a wide variety of food, large and small manufacturers, so there are often such food safety problems. During the "3.15" period, netizen "Na Yi a touch of new green" also posted on Weibo that he had a fried foreign body in the rice cake film bought by "Wife Lord". Just below this Weibo, many netizens also said that they had bought snacks with hair, bags that had been bitten by rats, pork shops with stones...
Under the trend of food safety alarm bells ringing, such negative news not only affects the development prospects of the entire industry, but also nakedly exposes the fatal injuries of this high-speed track. Only by solving these problems can we plan a longer-term development path.
A brand that is popular with capital, it is good at creating beautiful dreams for franchisees
The enthusiasm injected by consumers in the short term quickly attracted many entrants. Capital scrambled to throw olive branches and seize the high ground. 2021 can be said to be an important year for the brand of snack collection chain stores to usher in capital boosting.
According to Aiqicha, in April, August and November 2021, "Snack Youming" completed a strategic investment of 10 million yuan and a pre-A and A round of financing of tens of millions of yuan respectively; in May, "Snacks are busy" obtained a round of A financing of 240 million yuan; "WHIKO Mystery Creature" completed pre-A and A round financing in June and August; "Snack Girl" completed a round of A financing of 10 million yuan in December 2021...
Up and down are snacks have a sound, snacks are very busy financing progress Source: Love Qicha
The injection of capital has given brands the courage to continue to expand. In August 2021, the number of "snacks is busy" exceeded 800 national stores; "snacks with sounds" opened more than 100 stores in Guizhou, Chongqing, Chengdu and other places; and "Wife Adult" exceeded 1,000 stores nationwide.
Snacks are busy in the store
Such a speed of development is inseparable from the strength brought by franchisees behind them.
At present, there are two main ways to join snack collection brands, one is to help the brand expand its influence in the country and the main purpose, do not charge franchise fees, and give corresponding support.
"We are now recruiting three model stores into the blank market as a model window for the company's image. Free of franchise fee, free of brand fee, minimum monthly rent subsidy of 1200 yuan. Update 20-30 products per month, with a maximum of five points and a minimum of three points of year-end rebate. A merchant manager of the "snack site" brand said to Zinc Scale.
The investment manager clearly mentioned, "The fees we charge are mainly the payment for the goods." Subsequently, he described to Zinc Scale the strength of the parent company behind his brand, "Hunan Tiansheng Hongyuan Industrial Co., Ltd." It is understood that this is an integrated service enterprise with the development of leisure food, supply chain management and marketing as the main body, integrating offline and Internet business models and new retail.
In other words, the profit model of the company is mainly to attract franchisees through the advantage of 0 franchise fees, and then achieve profitability through the supply chain.
"The price we give to franchisees, whether it is the purchase price or the selling price, is lower than the local market, and it is a price war." The investment manager said.
In the case of price bottoming, commodity quality is still a link that needs to be strictly controlled.
However, zinc scale was learned on the official website of the Chongqing Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau that recently, the blueberry flavored plum fruit produced by Shantou Chenghai District Golden Chopsticks Food Co., Ltd. sold by HuiduoduoDuo Vice Food Store in Kaizhou District, Chongqing, did not meet the requirements of national food safety standards.
There is also a type of brand franchise method that requires more investment in the early stage. According to zinc scale, a 10㎡ store with "Snacks youming" needs to invest a total of 55,500 yuan to 83,700 yuan, including franchise fees, security deposits, decoration fees, operating equipment fees, and the first batch of purchase fees; a store of about 100 square meters of "Good Happiness" needs to invest a total of 407,400 yuan including brand authorization fees, security deposits, design fees, brand management fees, shelf/prop fees, and the first batch of payments.
Up and down are good happiness and snacks have a sound of joining fees
Despite investing more, such brands tend to emphasize their own level of profitability. The investment manager of "Good Happiness" provided a piece of information to Zinc Scale, which showed that a 190㎡ store in its Putian Zhengrong Fortune Store had an average monthly profit of 78,075 yuan.
But in this regard, some insiders said, "The profit of the snack store is really not high, the surface profit is not really the money in the pocket, and most of the data that the brand can show you is also beautified." "The real reality is that although the brand side has given a fixed source of goods, the flow is not as high as imagined.
One of the important reasons is that snack vendor collection stores need a large number of stores, and there are many types, and the purchase cost is very high. However, the goods that sell well and have a high turnover rate are actually very limited, and the balance between pressure and profit is difficult to grasp.
"The loss of snack shops is often not too large, but it is not a minority that insists on taking small profits." The above-mentioned industry insiders talked about zinc scale.
The front of the brand is hard, only the price war?
Under the epidemic, the scale of the leisure and entertainment snack market has ushered in rapid growth. According to data from the China Business Industry Research Institute, the market size of China's leisure food industry has increased from 822.4 billion yuan to 1,298.4 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.09%. According to Frost & Sullivan data and estimates, the proportion of online sales of leisure snacks increased from 3% in 2013 to 18% in 2020, and the proportion increased year by year.
At the same time, with the pursuit of health, convenience and quality by young consumers, the development trend of leisure and zero food has also begun to show the characteristics of health, freshness, convenient fast food, and crowd scene segmentation.
Various factors have contributed to the "overnight popularity" of snack collection stores.
Snack collection shop display
However, the track is not completely blank. The head snack brand three squirrels, good shops, and herbs that started online have long been laid out offline.
According to interface reports, as of June 2021, Baicaowei has been stationed in 500,000 small stores, covering 20 provinces across the country; the offline channel expansion of the three squirrels, including directly operated feeding stores and franchised alliance small stores, the former focusing on urban stores, the latter undertaking the function of offline expansion of the market of three squirrels, improving the density of offline stores and expanding the coverage of consumer groups. As of the end of June 2021, the three squirrels have opened a total of 1104 offline stores; as of September 30, 2021, the number of offline stores of the good shop has reached 2770.
With the brand voice and channel resources accumulated over the years, such Internet snack brands may be more attractive to consumers.
In addition, food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng has publicly stated, "At present, the entire leisure food industry has the problems of product homogenization, channel homogenization, promotion method homogenization and homogenization of communication content." ”
Under the premise of insufficient product strength, brand power can exert greater advantages. Therefore, although many snack mass store brands currently attract franchisees with a 0 threshold or low threshold strategy and accelerate the pace of layout, this low threshold business model is easy to be imitated by competitors, and its store size and supply chain level cannot constitute a brand moat in the short term.
More importantly, under multiple factors, the competition between brands can easily lead to price wars, which often lead to the bad development of the entire industry.
In fact, the large number of consumer complaints that are now emerging has illustrated a certain problem. After the mixture of low-priced small brand goods, although it can reduce the price of goods and enhance consumers' desire to buy, once the quality is a problem, the damage to the store and the brand of the snack collection store is irreversible.
For these young brands, the next step should be to think about, perhaps, how to interpret long-termism.
END
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