Reducing the burden and slimming down has become the top priority of catering people

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | Red Meal Network, author | Zou Tong

To withstand the tempering of the epidemic and become a "new species" in a bad environment, catering operators must learn to reduce their burden and learn to lose weight.

Not long ago, the manager of a store in Banu, Beijing, "accidentally" posted his work diary to the customer base, which caused a huge controversy.

In this work diary, there is a description that "the epidemic has hit small shops particularly hard, big brands can still hold up, and many small shops can't hold up and close their doors", which has resonated with many restaurant people.

Yes, this is indeed the current situation of restaurant people under the epidemic: small shops can't resist, and big brands are struggling to support. In such a big environment, trying to survive has become the consensus of the industry.

How to survive?

Not long ago, I was in "Live to Have Hope!" Catering people need to have these "anti-fragile capabilities", shared some of their own thinking, today, I want to talk about the survival of catering people from the level of "reducing burden and slimming down"!

If we want to withstand the tempering of the epidemic and become a "new species" in a bad environment, we must learn to reduce our burden and learn to lose weight! Only when we are "light" can we more flexibly face the "storm" of the epidemic.

01 Reduce the burden of costs, not to be "trapped" by costs

Many people think that the operating costs of catering only include fixed costs (labor, raw materials and rent), in fact, there are many variable costs in the actual operating costs of catering, such as customer acquisition costs, marketing costs, transaction costs, etc.

Fixed cost is the monthly fixed cost paid by catering operators, which determines the stability of store operations; variable costs are variable costs in addition to fixed costs, which affect the continuity of store operations. The so-called cost reduction is to reduce the hard and soft costs and use resources in the most scarce places to alleviate the pressure of operation.

1. Reduce fixed costs

Reduce rent costs. Rents have always accounted for a large part of the cost of restaurant companies. In the past two years, under the influence of the epidemic, this pressure has increased unabated. At present, the cost composition of the entire catering has shown a trend of "343", and the cost of rent, raw materials and labor accounts for 30%, 40% and 30% respectively.

For many restaurants, the rent problem can be a near-unsolvable problem. To solve this problem, there are only two ways, one is the relevant departments or enterprises to help. For example, the central and local governments have previously introduced rent reduction policies for small and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households, and Huawei and other enterprises have also responded to the call for rent reduction and rent exemption, but in general, the relevant policies have benefited relatively few catering merchants.

Most of the catering operators who cannot enjoy the benefits can only take the second way: try to negotiate with the landlord, move with affection, understand the reason, and actively strive to reduce the rent or change the payment cycle, such as negotiating to temporarily change the payment cycle from annual payment and semi-annual payment to quarterly or monthly payment.

Of course, the rent reduction of the house is not the obligation of the landlord, and if the negotiation is fruitless, we can only respect the landlord's decision and think of other laws.

Reduce labor costs. Catering is a labor-intensive industry, and the heavy labor costs need not be repeated. Under the epidemic, many well-known restaurant companies insist on not laying off employees and not cutting wages, which is indeed commendable, but the vast majority of enterprises struggling on the line of life and death may not have such courage.

For the catering industry, 6 months of cash flow is the safety line, 3 months of cash flow is the life and death line, if the cash reserve is less than 3 months, then we must start to consider optimizing the personnel structure.

The first is to lay off employees, optimize store personnel, remove some positions that can be saved or less important, and strengthen training management for the core team to retain the backbone. To this step, I believe that many bosses are also helpless, after all, the original recruitment also spent a lot of effort, some are still with their own old employees for many years, but there is no way, the skin will not be hairy will be attached? Special measures under special periods, if you are not bad for employees, employees can generally understand.

In addition to streamlining people, you can also try to change the single employment model. For example, the combination of full-time employees and hourly employees, like McDonald's's hourly work model, not only allows restaurants to save the cost of working hours during non-meal periods, but also saves social insurance, provident fund, accommodation and other welfare expenses.

In addition, if the employees are idle, enterprises can also try to "share employees", negotiate and cooperate with supermarkets or other enterprises around them, and let those employees who want to make money and do not want to be idle go out to work for a short time, so as to alleviate the talent cost of the restaurant and the economic pressure of employees.

Previously, Yunhai Cuisine, Xibei and other enterprises temporarily transported their employees to Hema stores that encountered a "labor shortage" to "work". During the epidemic in Suzhou in March, a company that did wedding catering services cooperated with another company to temporarily open a "second career" for employees who volunteered and wanted to earn more income.

Reduce raw material costs. There are two ways to reduce the cost of raw materials, the first is to adjust the product line and optimize the product structure.

Under the epidemic situation, the restaurant business elasticity is too large, if the product line is too long, it will disperse the order rate of dishes, and the process of preparing dishes and preparing ingredients in the back kitchen will be much more complicated, resulting in an increase in the cost of ingredients and labor costs.

Adjusting the menu, streamlining the dishes, eliminating those dishes that are not selling well, and building a new product structure with a combination of a few main dishes + other dishes can enhance the hematopoietic ability of the restaurant.

Adjust the product line, you can also consider adding cost-effective dishes. After the epidemic, consumers have tightened their wallets, and stores can appropriately reduce high-priced dishes and increase just-needed dishes and dishes with high gross profit and high order rate.

Secondly, it is necessary to optimize all aspects of raw material procurement, storage and other related links to reduce losses. For example, when purchasing, it is necessary to predict the sales volume, regular inventory, and avoid excessive procurement; when making dishes, it is necessary to weigh according to the amount and use standardized recipes to avoid improper control of raw materials; when raw materials are stored, it is necessary to control the temperature; regularly clean the dirt and water in the refrigerator to avoid the deterioration of raw materials...

2. Reduce variable costs

Reduce customer acquisition costs. Before the epidemic, in order to obtain customer flow, many restaurants did not hesitate to invest heavily in "buying" traffic, such as buying traffic from takeaway platforms, improving store rankings, and obtaining sales; buying traffic from social platforms, letting Internet celebrity anchors explore stores and obtain customers; buying traffic from competitors, low-price temptation, increasing marketing publicity, and attracting customers to choose themselves.

Under the epidemic, catering operators can no longer spend money like this, and they must find ways to reduce the cost of obtaining customers and save their lives. For example, the offline traffic and platform traffic (Meituan, Douyin) are imported into WeChat, operated, and emotional links are established to reduce subsequent marketing costs and increase the repurchase rate; the store is opened into the community, closer to the target consumer, and the marketing cost is reduced.

Reduce transaction costs. Transaction cost is the cost of commodities in the transaction process, we can reduce transaction costs through a series of methods, such as establishing a community + mini program + electronic menu, shortening the purchase path, reducing the cost of customer action, stimulating purchases; optimizing the core interest points of the menu, optimizing the menu design, increasing attractiveness, and improving the conversion rate.

02 Reduce the burden of the pattern and not be "tired" by the bulky mode

The model of many brands and restaurants is too "bulky", and it is difficult to return blood under the epidemic, let alone growth. At this time, we need to subtract and outsource these factors that are unfavorable to our development from the model.

The first is to streamline stores. Some stores with poor performance or poor competitiveness should be cut and closed! In the past, everyone did not have a sense of worry, as soon as they had money, they expanded, and they rushed to open stores, and the more the number of stores, the more they had a sense of achievement, laying down various hidden dangers.

In the current environment, if the restaurant owner continues to play like this rough way in the past, no matter the profit and loss of crazy store opening, it means that it will have to carry more rental properties and artificial water and electricity pressure, then the post-epidemic era will not be too good.

At the same time, if you are still clinging to some unprofitable and unhealthy stores for the sake of face, then the final result may be only one - being dragged down! Cut down those stores whose performance has been half-dead, or even loss-making, sell what can be sold in the store, and realize it! Don't worry about the sunk costs of decoration costs, deposits, manpower and material resources that you have already paid, you will lose more if you don't close.

Second, consider making the store smaller. In the past, many catering people liked to open large stores, thinking that the larger the store area, the more domineering the more face, the more seats the higher the revenue. Under the epidemic situation, it is forbidden to eat together in various places, and such large stores are the most affected. Coupled with the large investment of large stores and the complexity of daily operation and management, it is not easy to change the bow of the ship. On the contrary, some small restaurants have transformed their takeaway, fast food, semi-finished products and other businesses in a timely manner and survived.

Third, in the past, stores that were purely directly operated could consider ways such as partnership, joint venture and franchise to diversify risks. In the past, there was a wordless chain of contempt in the catering industry, thinking that doing direct operation was better than doing a partnership, and doing partnership was better than joining a senior, in fact, the model did not have the distinction between superior and inferior, and it was king to use it well and develop well.

Partnership model, the brand to the store to manage the management, partners enjoy the benefits; franchise model, the brand will be good products, models output to franchisees, and franchisees together to fight the world; joint venture model, the brand and the joint venture parties to perform their duties, joint operation. Either mode is lighter and more flexible than the pure direct model.

03 Reduce the burden of risk and not be "harmed" by risk

There are two main types of potential risks in catering operations, one is experience risk and the other is business risk.

Reducing the risk of experience aims to allow catering operators to get rid of the dependence on experience and achieve efficient and stable operation; to reduce business risks, it is to allow catering operators to change a single business model and improve the flexibility of stores.

Reduce empirical risk. Many food and beverage operators rely on experience or the ability of a chef and employee, and such stores are actually unstable in both the pre-epidemic and post-epidemic era, and it is difficult to operate once they encounter some kind of change, such as the epidemic or the departure of the head chef.

It is wise to reduce the dependence on people and experience, and to methodize experience, standardize methods, standardize standards step by step, and standardize standard manuals.

KFC will be French fries this action to refine, quantify and process, and form a unified standard, written into the standard manual, no matter which position the store employees will look at, with this standard, employees rarely make mistakes. Among them, how much temperature is controlled by the oil temperature, how many seconds are fried, and how many minutes of oil control are empirical methodization; the quantitative indicators of 168 degrees Celsius, 180 seconds, and 30 seconds are the method standardization; the first, second, and third are standard steps; the steps, quantitative indicators, and methods are written into the document and PPT is the standard manual.

In fact, many aspects of catering operations can be standardized, such as products, services, personnel training, business methods, etc., spend some time and energy, ponder the standardization, when the uncertainty comes, brand management will not be too passive.

Reduce single business risk. When a single business faces market volatility, it can easily suffer a fatal blow. After the epidemic, the profits of many restaurants have been damaged, and a big reason is that the business is too single, either only dine-in or only takeaway.

In an uncertain environment, restaurant companies must cultivate diversified business models in order to develop steadily. In the past, those who only did dine-in could introduce takeaways; those who only did offline marketing could try private domains and short videos.

For catering operators, it is necessary to spend a lot of time to explore and study the profit model of the store, continuously evolve, and improve the "elasticity" of their own model to adapt to the changing market. When we understand this, we will understand why Haidilao will "reduce its own value" to make takeaway and sell breakfast; why the founder of Xibei has been constantly tossing; why Jiumaojiu not only makes Northwest cuisine and sauerkraut fish, but also makes hot pot, skewers and grilled fish.

04 Summary

The epidemic has made the catering business environment more confusing and disrupted the rhythm of catering people. Catering people who do not want to "lie flat" try their best to break through and seek development.

If your store is now facing survival problems, you may wish to try the method in the article, reduce your burden, slim down, and then re-start "new".