Outside is the antique Beijing style and charm, inside is the daily fiery fireworks; the door is a bustling, bustling scene of cars and horses, and the hall is full of high-level friends and cups and cups.
Hu Da Restaurant, located in Beijing's landmark food street, Guijie Street, has been a lively scene for more than 20 years.
Today, "Beijing crayfish, Guijie Street to find Hu Da" word of mouth, Hu Da has not only the name of several hotels, but has become the most representative catering brand on this Beijing food flavor street, beijing supper on the river and lake like a "myth".
"Not out of this street, no franchise store"! Opening 5 shops on one street, what makes Hu Da, who is famous in Beijing and famous all over the country, only love Gui Street? What made Hu Da firm in his lofty ideal of "ingenuity to make catering, delicious for a hundred years"?
01
All encounters are timely
The story of Sun Yuzhen, the founder of Huda, has long been familiar to people who know Huda.
If you turn the clock back to 1999, 23 years ago. That year, After half a century of glorious history, New China ushered in her 50th birthday, and 500,000 soldiers and civilians of all nationalities celebrated this grand festival of the great motherland with a grand military parade and mass parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
That year, the world's first wireless Internet laptop iBook was born, and to this day some people may still remember when Jobs walked through the stage with the iBook in his hand, and opened the computer web page at the same time, causing a burst of cheers from the audience.
That year, Beijing's Guijie Street was not as lively as it is now, and it was just the "Dongzhimen Inner Street" where vendors sold miscellaneous vegetables and fruits, and Sun Yuzhen, as a supplier of aquatic products on Guijie Street, could not continue the aquatic products business for various reasons, so he planned to open his own shop in Guijie.
In this way, the road to catering entrepreneurship began with a small shop of only seven tables of 64 square meters. From the initial trial and error to sell hot pot, to the correction of mistakes to sell fried sauce noodles, red braised lamb, stir-fried vegetables, crayfish, etc., especially with spicy crayfish to make the majority of diners remember deeply.
When the restaurants on Gui Street changed stubble after stubble, the area of Hu Da Restaurant grew day by day, and gradually became the representative of crayfish in people's hearts.
In 2007, Ms. Sun Yuzhen bravely retreated from the current and handed the baton to her 24-year-old son-in-law Guo Dong. As the helmsman of the "second generation", Guo Dong inherits the spirit of sun yuzhen, the first generation of leaders, such as hard-working and forge ahead, but also has the spirit of exploration of contemporary young people to keep pace with the times, not to mention the unswerving innovative practice and crisis awareness of the new generation of entrepreneurs.
Today's Huda, after more than 20 years of efforts of two generations, has gone from the initial crayfish supplier to the "Imperial Must Eat" Guijie food business card; from the initial 7 tables, to a street 5 branches, and hatched the sub-brand Red Alley;
From the spicy crayfish of "Guijie Original", to the "Ten Must-Orders" of Hu Da, the spicy beauty hoof, and the mountain city mao blood wang... Come to Gui Street, eat Hu Da, delicious not only crayfish.
02
Extreme pickiness under the "delicious is the last word"
Entering the World of Chinese Food, on the one hand, indulging in fun and lingering, on the other hand, it is too heavy. Although our diet has a long history and is full of life, the people's rice bowl is always only the most ordinary food.
In Guo Dong's eyes, a restaurant can attract people, "delicious" is the focus, so Hu Da always insists on crayfish and new Sichuan cuisine as the features, returning to the essence of catering "delicious is the last word".
However, it is not easy to say that "delicious" is easy to make, and the first thing is that the ingredients are authentic. For Hu Da, on the one hand, it inherits the supplier gene and strictly controls the ingredients; on the other hand, it is constantly discovering new and good ingredients.
The management team with Guo Dong as the core will go out every year and go deep into the place of origin to find the right ingredients for Hu Damen store.
For example, the core seasonings of chili pepper and pepper, Hu Da will send someone to spend more than half a month every year to buy one by one in farmers' homes; as well as Scallops in Dalian and abalone in Yantai, huda procurement is personally at the venue to find high-quality food suppliers.
Among the suppliers, Huda is known for its rigors, and the specifications must meet the specified standards. For example, shrimp meat is not good, size is not enough, shrimp black is not lake shrimp are not wanted; pork belly fat can not be thin, must have five layers and so on.
HuDa stipulates the corresponding specifications of each raw material, and the supplier will select it again before delivery each time, and then screen and eliminate it again when it arrives at the scene. In addition, an agreement must be signed, and if the requirements are not met many times, they will be replaced.
Taking crayfish as an example, in order to ensure quality, about 8,000 pounds of crayfish per day will be sent to the sorting office early in the morning, and 20 shrimp pickers will rotate in two batches, from 8 a.m. to more than 8 p.m.
After screening the crayfish one by one, more than 2,000 kilograms will be screened out, and the suppliers will not meet the standard. There are some defective products, such as some empty shell shrimp, green shrimp, black shrimp and the like, as well as those that die during transportation, will be picked out, and Hu Da even subdivides to the same price of male shrimp than the female shrimp 4 to 5 grams more.
After the selection, it will enter the cleaning process, in order to ensure that customers can eat clean crayfish, Huda crayfish cleaning also has detailed steps.
"In general, the lobster selected is prepared first, and the shrimp is only cleaned when the shops want it, because after the crayfish is cleaned, it is equivalent to cleaning the inside of the gills, and it is easy to die after being put for a long time." Guo Dong said.
In terms of cleaning methods, Hu Da borrowed from the southern factory and independently transformed the cleaning equipment, accelerated the breathing of the gills through oxygen cleaning, and let the sludge inside the crayfish gills naturally drain out.
Manual cleaning, such as high-pressure water guns, can usually only clean the surface, which is why some consumers will feel fishy when they eat crayfish in other homes, usually because they are not cleaned.
In addition, another aspect of "delicious" is continuous dish development and innovation. Hu Da inherits the characteristics of Sichuan cuisine that is good at absorption and innovation, and continues to innovate products, within Hu Da, "tasting dishes" is almost a weekly work, and updating the menu every six months is also Hu Da's insistence for more than 20 years.
In terms of dishes, the taste of crayfish alone has launched innovative flavors such as thirteen spices, curry, minced garlic, spring shoots and other innovative flavors, as well as spicy scallops, huda boiled fish, secret spicy crab, spicy beauty hoof, hungry frog boy and other innovative dishes are also mandatory for customers.
03
Small innovation, iterative innovation, everyone innovation
Innovation is an eternal topic in modern society. Throughout the history of the world, human beings continue to prosper, and there is a very important factor here, that is, innovation.
In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, we have made great achievements, looking forward to the next 40 years, only by continuous value creation and innovation and change, can we have a future.
Similarly, the survival secret of most of the world's longevity companies is to constantly change to adapt to the environment and maintain the ability to constantly innovate.
Therefore, innovation is the source of inexhaustible life power for enterprises, and it is also one of the secrets of Huda's root in Guijie Street and fire for more than 20 years.
As we all know, the catering industry looks at the low threshold, but it is not easy to do well. Someone once used four keywords to summarize the complexity of the restaurant industry: chain, retail, service, manufacturing; previously, there were also several shows that the closure rate of the restaurant industry was as high as 70%, and the average life of restaurants was 507 days.
Therefore, it is not easy for a catering brand to survive for more than 20 years, and it is even more difficult to achieve normal "fire", but Hu Da has achieved more than 20 years of domination of the "Imperial Capital Must Eat" Guijie Food List.
The reason is that HuDa always has its own insistence, that is, based on crisis thinking, on-site thinking, like the new and dislike the old thinking, "redesign" thinking, to encourage small innovation, iterative innovation, everyone innovation.
First, crisis thinking.
Why are companies that continue to lead strong? Because they are always trembling, and there is no good day.
Ren Zhengfei said that what he had been thinking about every day for more than a decade was failure and had not succeeded; Bill Gates often said that Microsoft was always only 180 days away from bankruptcy; Zhang Ruimin said that he was always trembling and walking on thin ice...
When the speed of development of the enterprise reaches a stable speed, growth becomes the norm, and it seems that everything is smooth, it is precisely when it is necessary to be more alert. For organizations that continue to grow and expand, a keen sense of observation and the consequent sense of crisis are important.
In Guo Dong's view, if an organization wants to survive and want to become better, it must have enough sense of crisis, and no sense of crisis is the biggest crisis, which is also what Hu Da has insisted on for more than 20 years.
From the transformation of aquatic product suppliers to selling crayfish in self-opened restaurants, from spicy crayfish to the top ten must-haves, from 70% of the sales of crayfish to product diversification, and to create a sustainable learning organization, etc., whether it is product innovation or organizational construction, Huda always lets the team always maintain the sensitivity of external stimulation, maintain a vigilant and critical state, so as to achieve "young and energetic".
Second, live thinking.
For Hu Da, behind the high turnover rate is the efficient kitchen under the on-site thinking, which is really based on reality, finding problems and solving problems.
In particular, through the oil-water isolation system, the track conveyor belt, the food ladder layered vegetable transmission and the intelligent control of time-fired shrimp, the saving of manpower and material resources has greatly improved the operation efficiency.
For example, in response to the problem of sichuan vegetable oil and water, kitchen waste disposal is difficult, Huda's team of engineers developed an oil-water isolation system, which isolates the waste oil and then hands it over to a special waste oil recycling agency to deal with, effectively reducing the waste of resources, reducing the pressure of kitchen waste disposal, and saving expenses and even generating income for the company.
In addition, in view of the common problems in the industry such as slow serving in the back kitchen, unreasonable moving line, and space occupation, Hu Da designed a conveyor belt in the back kitchen, which not only alleviated the pressure of serving, but also left 5 labors, and most importantly, saved more than ten square meters of back kitchen space.
At the same time, there are food ladder layered dishes, which can pass more than a dozen dishes at a time than the traditional method, which can achieve maximum heat preservation and save manual shortening of the serving time; and the equipment for frying crayfish has also achieved intelligent standardized operation, and a person can control 6-8 pots at the same time, saving manpower and greatly improving efficiency.
Third, like the new and tired of the old thinking.
That is, not satisfied with the good of the past. Guo Dong said that today's good does not mean that tomorrow is good, so we must always maintain an "empty cup" or "half a cup" mentality, that is, the cup cannot be filled, if it is full, it can no longer be filled, only in this way can we attract new things in.
For example, the gloves that must be used to eat crayfish, in the past, were casually placed on the table, which was not good to look at but also easy to cause waste, so Hu Da thought of designing a crayfish glove box that took into account the beauty, convenience and hygiene, that is, the triangular packaging seen today, hu da also applied for a packaging patent for this.
Fourth, redesign thinking.
According to Guo Dong, Huda's shrimp washing equipment, shrimp peeling services, intelligent conveyor belts, etc., are all inspired by other industries or factories, how to convert and apply technology in other fields to Huda, serving restaurants, is something that all Hu darens have been exploring.
"In fact, a lot of innovation is not our own imagination, but some equipment or ideas that are already in use in some other fields, and we use secondary innovations by borrowing or transforming them, and then use them in restaurants." Guo Dong said.
04
The persistence of the insistence of the abandonment of the abandonment
Supper, do not have to go out to eat, in the takeaway at the moment, many people habitually pick up the mobile phone, want to eat food can be delivered to the doorstep within the agreed time. But for the takeaway matter, Guo Dong has his own understanding: "We don't do takeaway"!
The normalization of the epidemic is a topic that no catering company can avoid in the past two years. During the epidemic, takeaway has become a life-saving straw for many catering enterprises, and in the face of customers who cannot arrive at the store, Hu Da also began to try takeaway, but it was quickly stopped.
"The reason why we don't do takeaway is that on the one hand, we want customers to go to the store to consume, not only to eat fresh food, but also to enjoy the service of the store and enjoy the comprehensive experience of Coming to Huda; on the other hand, takeaway will more or less affect the quality of food."
Guo Dong said that Hu Da wants to be a local brand and does not want to distort the customer's perception of the brand because of takeaway. Even if there will be explosive growth in takeaway in a short period of time, in the long run, it is not conducive to the realization of the century-old brand.
In addition to giving up takeaway, Hu Da also refused to do a single product store, although many people think that crayfish is a very suitable category for single product stores.
In Guo Dong's view, single-product stores have indeed been very popular in the past two years, and many entrepreneurial new catering brands are considering making single products. Behind the single product store, there are actually a series of problems such as operating model, brand positioning, customer unit price, and customer experience.
"From the perspective of commercial operation, single-product stores have low supply costs, are easy to manage, can be copied quickly, and make money quickly, but this is not our original intention." Our vision is to be a century-old store, and behind the rapid expansion, it is product standardization and factory, the control of ingredients, the taste of dishes, is bound to have an impact, this is not what we pursue. Guo Dong said.
Guo Dong said that Huda has developed to today, more than 20 years, and has its own successful genes and precipitation. "All along, we have been taking the direction of product diversification, and bring customers a full range of dining experience through multiple dimensions such as service, dining environment and atmosphere. Single-product stores have a single product structure, low repurchase rate, and short overall life cycle. ”
In Guo Dong's cognition, single-product stores need high customer orders, but Hu Da is only civilian pricing. "The crayfish in our shop are actually very profitable, and it is possible to make up the difference through other dishes, but once the crayfish single product store is opened, the price is bound to be very high, which is not in line with the civilian pricing that Hu Da has always had." Guo Dong said so.
Both persistence, but also know how to give up, there is a sacrifice to get, this may be the difference between Hu Da!
True entrepreneurship comes from innovation, creativity and risk-taking. Schumpeter believes that innovation must add a new element to innovation, that is, entrepreneurs with sufficient willingness and ability, at present, Hu Da basically has such conditions, and looks forward to Hu Da! Hu Da, come on!
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