Sports Big Business No. 2854, welcome to pay attention to the leading sports industry information platform
Wen | Lin Yuan
Sports big business reporter
On March 29, Internet celebrity chef Burak Ozdemir announced that he would join hands with C Luo to open a restaurant in London, which stirred up thousands of waves. The two have a combined social media fan base of 500 million people, and the restaurant has earned enough attention before it opened.
From endorsements to store openings, competition among stars is shifting from the stadium to the catering industry. The sports crowd is a consumer group that cannot be ignored by catering enterprises, and the star effect of athletes can directly drive the flow of restaurant customers. What's more, food is an essential supply for sports competitions and spectators, and restaurants are the social traffic entrance for watching ball parties, and sports and food are a two-way rush.
C Luo opened an internet celebrity restaurant and Jandu competed for pizza supremacy
Which is stronger for stars to invest in catering?
This is not Ronaldo's first foray into the catering industry. Captain Portugal's first restaurant was called Casa Aveiro, and the menu was inspired by his hometown of Madeira and run by his mother and sister. Since then, C Luo has endorsed the takeaway platform tablat to further expand the food map.
In the restaurant industry for the second time, C Luo chose to partner with internet celebrity chef Burak Ozdemir, who is now 28 years old and a social celebrity of Turkish cuisine, with three restaurants in Istanbul.
C Luo and Burak are both the top streams on social media, and C Luo has 400 million followers on Instagram, ranking second in the world after the official Instagram account. The Portuguese star is also the first Ins owner in the world to have 400 million followers. Burak has more than 57 million followers on Tiktok and 32 million on Instagram.
Considering that both parties have some experience in the catering industry and have a large number of followers, the strong combination of the two will achieve a win-win situation. It is understood that C Luo's internet celebrity restaurant will officially open in November.
Ronaldo expands the catering landscape
Compared with C Ronaldo, Messi is more close to the people in the catering industry. In 2016, he and his brother founded a cheap restaurant in Barcelona called The Beautiful Garden of the North, which specializes in Mediterranean and South American fusion cuisine, and has built a mini football bar for fans.
At first, the restaurant became one of the hottest restaurants in the area due to extensive media coverage, but after two years of operation, Messi finally decided to close the restaurant's public business and convert it to private gatherings and business meetings.
However, Messi has not given up on his presence in the mass catering industry, and in June 2021 he became a brand ambassador for Hard Rock, a restaurant entertainment and hospitality brand.
At the beginning of March this year, Macy's and Hard Rock Restaurant partnered to launch the "Macy's Burger". Inspired by his own favourite flavours, this double-layer beef burger contains ten delicious and enticing ingredients, including porfello cheese, spicy sausage slices, caramelized red onions, spicy smoked sauce and grilled burger bread served with shredded lettuce and naturally cooked tomatoes. Consumers can also try Macy's favorite way of eating and add an omelette to the top of the burger.
Messi's approach to collecting endorsement fees in partnership with restaurant groups may be more worry-free than running restaurants himself, after all, his Instagram followers have also exceeded the 300 million mark, which can make Hard Rock's sales go up to a new level.
Hard Rock's Macy-inspired licensed merchandise also performed well in the market, with Messi's career-related symbols on them, including lions, no. 10s, and more.
Messi Burger
James and Durant, on the other hand, are secretly competing in the pizza space.
In 2012, James and Carter acquired about 10 percent of Blaze Pizza for less than $1 million and managed to boost revenue from $800,000 to $5 million in one year. In the time since, James has increased his stake in the company, making Blaze Pizza the fastest growing restaurant chain in the United States, not only expanding hundreds of stores, but also opening to Canada, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries, and the revenue has shown a geometric growth.
By 2019, Blaze Pizza's revenue had reached $400 million, and Blaze Pizza's CEO publicly praised James for helping to increase brand awareness.
James took to the streets to promote his pizza
Blaze Pizza does not have a store in China. A few years ago, there was a counterfeit restaurant called Breez Pizza in Hangzhou, but according to the public review network, the relevant stores have been closed after 2018.
Perhaps inspired by James, in 2017, Durant and his business partner Rich Kleiman also invested in a pizza chain, Pieology, and also won part of the franchise of Pieology, expanding the business footprint into the restaurant industry.
Pieology, like Blaze Pizza, also adopts a customized, fast-food assembly line model, and the participation of popular athletes has greatly increased the popularity of the restaurant.
It is worth mentioning that Pieology is a Chinese sports gene of the deep catering brand, founded in 2011 by zhang Junpei, the brother and coach of Chinese legend and French Open men's singles champion Zhang Depei. Zhang Junpei once said that the opportunity for his pieology pizza was to share food with family and friends and enhance the relationship between the community and neighbors.
While Durant claims that his investment in Pieology has nothing to do with James, he clearly wants to do better than James in the catering space.
At present, Pieology has more than 200 stores in the United States, and its business is spread throughout Mexico, Spain and other countries. The company hired Former Tim Hortons U.S. President Shawn Thompson as CEO early in the year to accelerate growth.
In 2019, Pieology entered the Chinese market in partnership with TZG Capital, becoming the first pizza brand in the Chinese market to focus on customization. In January 2022, Jeremy Lin was officially announced to be the co-founder and spokesperson of Palladi China. At present, Pieology has opened stores in Shanghai, Chengdu and other cities, and recruits franchisees nationwide.
Durant's Pieology enters the Chinese market
Pieology has innovated on its menu to cater to the taste preferences of Chinese diners. For example, the first store in southwest Chengdu has launched new flavors such as rattan pepper crayfish pizza and spicy beef pizza. Each store also has a children's pizza cooking classroom, where each child can experience the fun of hand-making pizza.
If you look at the number of stores, Durant's score in the Chinese catering market is temporarily ahead of James. Perhaps Durant frequently likes Gu Ailing on social media also has commercial considerations, "Frog Princess" has not signed any catering endorsements except Ruixing.
What else is there to imagine in sports cross-border catering?
"In the future, when you are hungry, don't call your mother, just call it Black Mamba." Once, Kobe Bryant endorsed Hungry Mo as a cross-border classic of sports X catering by netizens. With the development of the sports industry, more and more sports-catering cross-border cooperation has emerged, and the most mature and widely used is the sports theme restaurant.
In recent years, brands such as KFC, McDonald's, Dicos, quanjude and other brands have opened sports-themed restaurants such as "three balls" and ice and snow throughout the country, so that sports can be further integrated into the three meals a day of the Chinese people.
In May 2020, KFC opened the country's first volleyball-themed restaurant in Tianjin, the "City of Volleyball". Because the storefront is located in a prime location in the city, the decoration style highlights the volleyball elements, and also adds a "volleyball knowledge garden" and volleyball interactive games, which has quickly become a "net red punch card".
KFC volleyball themed restaurant
As the awarding unit of "Tianjin Youth Volleyball Cultural Exchange Center", this restaurant will also become a base for popularizing and promoting volleyball sports and volleyball culture. Tianjin Volleyball Management Center and Tianjin Volleyball Association will cooperate with KFC to organize volleyball knowledge training and volleyball culture promotion.
The huge basketball mass base in the mainland has also allowed basketball-themed restaurants to be fully rolled out. For example, KFC's three-person basketball-themed restaurant showcases national team uniforms, and Dicos' basketball vitality theme store aims to combine basketball's enthusiasm with the concept of healthy eating, further entering the young market and passing on positive and positive values to consumers.
Dicos basketball theme store
In terms of football, KFC has launched the Dalian Fan Theme Restaurant in Dalian, the "Football City" in September 2020, and the store decoration display includes the front page file of dalian team successfully rushing into the first league newspaper in 1984, and the 8 championship trophies of Dalian team, condensing the history of Dalian football development in the past 100 years.
Dalian fan restaurant
McDonald's even painted the red storefront green for Guoan. At that time, McDonald's launched a fan cheering interactive activity, as long as the number of participants exceeded 3 million, the three restaurants of Beijing Gongti North, Tuanjie Lake and Dongdaqiao would be transformed into Beijing Sinobo Guoan theme restaurants.
McDonald's Guoan themed restaurant
In terms of the rejuvenation of long-established brands, Quanjude launched an ice and snow sports theme private room and 15 creative dishes this year. Among them, the private room is named after the host city of the previous ice and snow competition. The 15 ice-and-snow-themed creative dishes include cold, hot and pastries.
At the Quanjude Olympic Village Store, the Chamonix Hall is decorated with ice hockey and sleigh elements, the furnishings and watercolor background paintings in the Private Room of the Nagano Hall are all themed over snowboarding, and the Salt Lake City Hall pays tribute to the "breakthrough of zero" in China's short track speed skating. The Turin And Vancouver Rooms feature freestyle skiing aerial techniques and figure skating respectively.
Another long-established dian Dude has recently become the annual partner of the Guangzhou TTG King Glory Team, and will use offline theme stores to attract more young people to understand and try tea drinking and e-sports, so that the public can see a new solution to the regionalization of e-sports.
Dot Dude TTG should help the store
It can be seen that the form of the sports-themed restaurant not only plays the urban sports culture card, but also triggers the emotional resonance of young fans. While sticking more young users through geographical advantages, it can help expand the sports social circle and inject new development vitality into sports.
"The people eat for heaven." The market for catering is bound to exist, and the optional projects in the sports industry are also quite rich, in this context, the deep integration of sports and catering industry in the future will enter the normalization.
Note: The images used in this article are from the Internet