Can the tip hero who has taken more than two billion yuan of financing recreate the "Luckin myth"?

Text | Red Food Network, author | Chen Mo

Lu Zhengyao, who single-handedly shaped Luckin, is still constantly looking for the next Luckin in the catering industry.

Lu Zhengyao was placed on the enforcement list by the court in June 2021, with an enforcement amount of more than 1.2 billion yuan.

The 52-year-old entrepreneur, who has led at least two successful ventures, seems to be in urgent need of turning over, both financially and financially. And dry catering became his choice.

Although the catering industry has been greatly affected by the epidemic, it is still the largest and most direct demand of the people. Perhaps it is precisely because of the long-term potential of the industry that after Luckin, Lu Zhengyao's three ventures have focused on the catering sector.

Repeated defeats and battles, Lu Zhengyao "died" catering

Less than a year after officially leaving Luckin, Lu Zhengyao began his second venture in the restaurant circle, this time he looked at the once popular Chongqing small noodle track, and the brand he created was called "Fun Small Noodles".

Lu Zhengyao has said that entering the small noodle track is his last battle before retirement, and he seems to be full of hope and confidence in fun small noodles.

In August 2021, two stores in Beijing and Chongqing opened at the same time, focusing on eight series of various small noodles, ready-made brine, dessert drinks, and special cold dishes, and expanded in many parts of the country.

△Image source: "Fun Noodles"

Not long after that, a search for Fun Noodles stores on meituan showed that there were 106 stores, of which 81 were still waiting to open. At this time, some media and sources revealed that Fun Xiaomian is seeking financing of 100 million yuan, with a valuation of about 1 billion yuan.

Operating financing so quickly, and with a large amount of financing, is almost unimaginable to put on other catering projects. But on Lu Zhengyao, it seems to be a routine operation, and Shenzhou and Luckin at that time were all rapid financing and rapid expansion to win the market.

However, this time, Lu Zhengyao did not continue the myth of Luckin, and everyone did not wait for the news of the success of the financing of Fun Xiaomian, but waited for the news of the name change of Fun Xiaomian.

In October 2021, only 2 months after opening, the quirk noodles were renamed "Fun Bayu", and the main products were changed from classic bench noodles and changeable topping noodles to Sichuan-Chongqing pots such as fat intestine duck blood pot and beef brisket chicken claw pot. To the naked eye, Lu Zhengyao wants to expand the track, extending from small noodle categories to larger Sichuan-Chongqing dishes.

△ Dishes of Qu Bayu, picture source: Qu Bayu official bo

However, the development of Qu Bayu is not smooth, and its category expansion does not directly hit the core pain points of brand products and tastes, and its performance in many competitors is not prominent.

According to the Red Restaurant Network, the number of stores in Qu Bayu has been circling around in 20 or 30, and by February this year, the number of Stores in Qu Bayu in the country was only 8, and the public account of Qu Bayu also stopped updating after January 18.

At the time of the "crumbling" of Qu Bayu, in December last year, Lu Zhengyao launched a new project called "Tip of the Tongue Workshop", focusing on prefabricated ingredients and quick cooking dishes, and announced the rapid expansion of the "only franchise, no direct operation" model, which was later renamed "Tongue Tip Hero".

The expansion idea of the tip of the tongue hero is the same as Lu Zhengyao's creation of Luckin Coffee in the past.

The first is the large-scale spending of money marketing, starting in January this year, the advertising campaign of the tip of the tongue hero is in full swing. Actor Liu Yiwei, as a spokesperson, appeared in a variety of advertising scenes such as high-speed rail, elevators, and information flow with a tongue-tip hero. In addition, its ads also cover online channels such as Douyin, Today's Headlines, and Watermelon Video.

△ Image source: Tongue Tip Hero official website

The second is the familiar fission promotion, in the new, the tip of the tongue hero continues to use Luckin Coffee's method of "inviting friends to get rewards".

Tongue Hero has been in the limelight this year, and there are media reports that since its launch, Tongue Hero has signed 6,000 stores in 3 months and obtained 1.6 billion yuan in financing. It is reported that it also plans to land another 3,000 stores within 5 months.

It seems that Lu Zhengyao is about to recreate a Luckin myth. But things may not be so simple.

Fun Noodles did not succeed, and the tongue-tip hero may not be able to replicate the Ruixing myth

Can the tongue hero replicate Ruixing's "myth"? Maybe it still has to start with fun noodles and fun bayu.

Although everyone says "catering", there is actually a big difference between "meal" and "drink". Ruixing is "drinking", and the fun noodles and fun Bayu after that belong to the "meal".

From the operation point of view, "drink" compared to "meal" or simple mode, whether milk tea or coffee, take-out no threshold, stores can be large or small, the kitchen, raw materials are not complicated, can be made into a light model, but also suitable for rapid expansion.

I have to say that Lu Zhengyao is indeed a "good wind chaser".

When Luckin started, brands such as Xicha, Neixue, and Michelle Ice City were stirring up the "drinking" track, while in the coffee track where the public almost only knew Starbucks, the chain coffee brand was basically in a vacuum, which was a real outlet that was often ignored or dared not try. Lu Zhengyao dried up, and in the simplest and most brutal way he looked, succeeded.

△Image source: Luckin Coffee official WeChat

When it comes to fun noodles and fun bayu, from "drinking" to "meal", the operating model has actually undergone essential changes.

Compared with chain coffee shops, "meal" is to really sit down to eat, the store area, store operation, kitchen, etc. there are many more professional requirements, the model is heavier, the cost is higher, and the expansion requires more funds and cash flow cycles. Chain coffee chains can replicate the simple way of operation of milk tea shops and expand rapidly, but "meals" cannot.

In the early stage of Fun Small Noodles and Fun Bayu, before the store model was finely polished, it began to use the Method of Luckin to expand rapidly, and the country was deployed to open more than ten stores. But for these more than ten stores, people inside and outside the industry mostly evaluate it as gimmick elements rather than products and services, and the latter two are the two most important elements of catering.

As an industry insider said, "To do Luckin, Lu Zhengyao is doing customers, big data, online, platform, and the contact point is coffee." To start dabbling in rent, employees, decoration, equipment, management and other asset-heavy models, his advantages in customer experience and online big data have been erased by these. Lu Zhengyao buried himself deep in the pit of catering."

△ Fun noodle store, photo: Hao Shrimp Chuan Jiang Yi

Although Qu Bayu has expanded the business scope and audience of Qu Xiao Mian, the core of the operation has not changed, and as a result, Lu Zhengyao has still not been able to solve the problem.

After all this, Lu Zhengyao probably realized that he was circling in the pit of catering, so he aimed his eyes at the pre-made dishes, launched a more light mode of tongue hero, and returned to his own area of expertise.

Pre-made dishes do not require dine-in, factory supply, store operation, operation is also very simple, looks very similar to Luckin, can also apply luckin's development model.

The principle of "only joining, not directly operating", the minimum use of franchise stores is only 8 square meters, which is laying the foundation for rapid expansion. 6,000 stores in a month and a half seem to be telling everyone that the tip of the tongue hero may be the next Luckin myth.

But after all, the meal is still different from coffee, the meal is still a "meal", from raw material procurement, research and development, production, to transportation, distribution, secondary processing, consumer requirements for them, tolerance is also different. You can accept that coffee is not difficult to drink, but you can't accept meals in general, especially meals that are not cheap and need to be done by yourself.

As far as the current consumer feedback is concerned, the cost performance of the tip hero is not high, and there is no obvious competitive advantage in taste and efficiency.

The more than 100 products of the tip of the tongue hero are not very many in the prefabricated vegetable track, these products are purchased and produced by third-party raw materials, and then transported to the C-end by the outsourced cold chain.

In general, the tip of the tongue hero does not really control a certain link, and relying on cooperation with third parties will inevitably increase the loss of intermediate links, and the high cost of procurement, transportation, and storage loss can only be passed on to C-end consumers in the end. At the same time, complex outsourced supply chains increase quality control risks.

The pre-made food track is very hot, but many entrants are either the original catering To B suppliers, with research and development, production experience, or catering companies, know the first-hand consumer needs, as well as brand endorsement and sales channels. The current tip of the tongue hero, rather than saying that it is a prefabricated dish company, it is more likely to be a packaging factory, and the core competitiveness is probably that it can be quickly copied and quickly enlarged.

In such a model, the tip of the tongue hero has to consider another issue: the future of prepared dishes.

According to Ai Media Consulting data, the size of China's prefabricated vegetable market is estimated to be 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, and it is expected that China's prefabricated vegetable market will maintain a rapid growth rate of about 20%. Although the market is hot, but the prospect is not very clear, everyone knows that it has a future, but when this "future" arrives, in fact, it is not yet accurate.

As far as the current sales situation and consumer feedback are concerned, the taste of prepared dishes is uneven, as well as nutrition and health problems, consumers are still in the throat.

In terms of taste, many new quick-frozen snacks, as well as many reheat products such as some Chinese New Year's Eve meals, pastries, the evaluation is also seriously polarized, some can do and the current production is not much different, some are far from the taste, taste, so that many consumers dare not easily start with the reheat type of prepared dishes.

In addition, consumers' greater concerns still come from nutrition and food safety. For sauce packs, semi-finished prefabricated vegetable bags, or products on the production line, many consumers are still not very receptive, feeling that they are full of industrial flavor. When these products begin to try to further penetrate into the Home Diet of chinese people, nutrition and health issues will inevitably become the focus of attention again.

At worst, once a prefabricated vegetable company does not play its cards according to the convention, resulting in food safety problems, then the entire prefabricated vegetable market is likely to be dragged into the water. At that time, the tip of the tongue hero will probably only become cannon fodder for the market.

As some industry insiders said, "there is still a long cultivation period in the prefabricated vegetable market, the overall product taste and cost performance are not very ideal, and this track is still in the process of optimization."

The uncertainty of the prefabricated vegetable track itself, coupled with the professionalism and complexity of front-end research and development, production supply chain, transportation, distribution chain, and franchisee profitability, is still a huge challenge for the tongue-tip hero who is known for his fastness and Lu Zhengyao, who has not yet truly entered the threshold of catering.