Reporter | Lu Yibei
Edit | Ya Han Xiang
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Michelle Ice City recently invested in a fried chicken shop. According to the Tianyancha App, on April 14, Henan Chicken Packing Catering Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Chicken Packing") underwent industrial and commercial changes, and shareholders added Xuewang Investment Co., Ltd., while the company's registered capital increased from 1 million yuan to about 1.4286 million yuan.
Snow King Investment is a venture capital company established by Michelle Ice City on September 13, 2021, wholly owned by Michelle Ice City Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 50 million yuan, and its business scope includes venture capital investment (limited to investing in unlisted enterprises) and engaging in investment activities with its own funds. At present, Snow King Investment holds a 30% stake in chicken packing company.
Mi Xue Ice City told Interface News that the above matters are normal corporate investment actions.
Founded in 2014, Chicken Crate was originally a brand that focused on Korean fried chicken, coinciding with the boom in hallyu at the end of 2013, the TV series "You from the Stars" made people fall in love with the way fried chicken with beer, and chicken crate soon became a local restaurant with a certain reputation in Zhengzhou. However, in the later period, as the popularity of the Korean Wave in China decreased, chicken boxing also underwent a series of localization adaptations.
In terms of products, chicken packing mainly features Korean snacks such as fried chicken cola cups, turkey noodles, kimchi fried rice, etc., and has also launched special snacks and staple foods such as typhoon shelter fried chicken, avocado chicken rolls, fried chicken pasta, etc., with a unit price of about 25 yuan. In terms of stores, chicken packing in the early days of the use of industrial style container elements for store design, orange, black as the main color, the store type has a focus on customer experience, visual communication of large stores, there are also the main buy and go small shops.
Image source: Weibo @ Chicken Box Fried Chicken
According to its public account information, by May 2021, Chicken Packing will have 12 stores in Henan, of which about 9 are laid out in Zhengzhou, which is regionally strong. However, affected by the epidemic, public reviews show that there are only two stores left in Zhengzhou, and the brand also announced on the public account that at the end of 2021, it will try to sell pre-packaged products such as "cold fried chicken" and crispy chicken skin, mainly sold in the Tmall channel, and its signature product cold fried chicken 400g is priced at 63.9 yuan, and the current monthly sales of Tmall flagship stores exceed 300 copies.
Image source: Weibo @ Chicken Box Fried Chicken
Chicken crate is the second public foreign investment since the establishment of Snow King Company.
On October 13, 2021, Xuewang Company invested in a milk tea brand in Guangdong called "HuiCha". Similar to chicken boxing, in Guangdong, Huicha does not belong to the most famous milk tea brands, and in terms of scale alone, it is difficult to compare Huicha or chicken boxing with Mixue Ice City, which already has nearly 20,000 stores, and the two are not an order of magnitude at all. What Michelle Ice City really looks at may be the business model of these brands, and their experience in products, teams, markets and so on accumulated over the years in their own tracks.
Since its inception, Michelle Ice City has positioned its own brand as the food and beverages that students love, such as the early shaved ice, 1 yuan ice cream tube, etc. More than 20 years later, Michelle Ice City, which has about 20,000 stores, seems to still want to exhaust these snack products.
2021
On September 29, 2009, Michelle Ice City announced the opening of the first experience store in Henan Guomao
The experience store with an area of 268 square meters is divided into two parts, half of which is a eating area that provides tea, coffee, ice cream desserts, baking, fried skewers, cake DIY and other stalls, and the price is still about 10 yuan, so that half of it is used to sell dolls and other Snow King IP peripherals and retail products such as tea bags. The investment in chicken boxing may also be expected to supplement Michelle Ice City's own product line.
Chuang And Youze Investment, in today's tea industry has become an increasingly common initiative, once relying on the rapid expansion of capital scale of the head brands, and turned into investors. For example, Xi Tea invests in specialty coffee Seesaw, and Tea Yan Yue Color invests in juice brand Guo Ya. With the continuous development of new domestic tea brands, competition has long been not limited to product research and development or scale, traffic, but includes profitability, supply chain construction, innovative marketing and other comprehensive strength of the long-term competition. Under the surface of seemingly "not doing business", it is the initiative of tea brands to strive to find differentiated and innovative points.