Haidilao "crossover"

Author| Zhang Chao Editor| Luo Lijuan

The epidemic has suspended offline catering, but it has not stopped the pace of Haidilao employee Fan Peng running.

In mid-March, Fan Peng was ready to stay at the store with his colleagues. As the manager of Haidilao Shanghai Sande Plaza store, in the face of the epidemic, his first solution was the problem of eating for 80 or 90 employees of the whole store.

Serving the emergency squad in an extraordinary period, the preparer, chef, driver, warehouse manager, customer service, no one can be less. After Fan Peng made simple preparations, he set up a "logistics support group."

From the initial delivery of meals to store employees, to serving volunteers and security groups around the store, to meeting takeaway orders in the community, Fan Peng led a team of 7 people to open up a box lunch and fake vegetable business in addition to the hot pot business, and continuously extended the boundaries of Haidilao.

Just when Fan Peng was running around the various communities to transport hot pots and box lunches, the Haidilao Zhengzhou Jianye Triumph Square store, which was more than 900 kilometers away from him, caused heated discussions because of the sale of breakfast. This is also another "cross-border" move of the store after testing the water box lunch.

Hot pot has always been the main business of Haidilao. Whether it is an offline hot pot store, an online hot pot takeaway, or a self-heating hot pot retail, they are all doing business around the "hot pot" catering category, supplemented by warm and thoughtful service.

When Haidilao jumped out of the comfort zone and explored Chinese catering other than hot pot, it not only appeared to be a bit "not doing business", but also invisibly created pressure on similar enterprises.

The ever-changing Haidilao, "cross-border" catering is a whim, or is there a greater ambition? How much profit can innovation in the epidemic create for it, and how big a market can it seize?

01

Unexpected "crossover"

At first, the "logistics support group" led by Fan Peng was only ready to deliver hot food to store employees.

According to his plan, 1 chef is responsible for cooking, 1 warehouse manager is responsible for picking up and dropping off goods, leaving 2 preparers and 2 customer servicemen. In order to ensure the food of all employees in the store, this group of 7 people eats and lives in the Haidilao store, and only goes out to deliver box lunches at meal points.

"When we delivered the meal, we found that the security guard in the community also had a need for meals, so we would send two meals to the security guard." Fan Peng originally thought that this was just a "show of hands", but did not want to lead to a new market - many community security guards reported that some residents in the building can not cook, or even have the conditions to cook, can only rely on instant food such as instant noodles to fill their stomachs; if some affordable light meals are introduced, it should be able to solve their eating problems to a large extent.

Fan Peng, who reacted to it, immediately applied to the company and started a box lunch business.

As a hot pot catering leader, Haidilao has a strong supply chain system, and its supply chain company Shuhai has undertaken all the material supply services of the store during the epidemic.

For Fan Peng, the box lunch does not need to be cooked on the spot in the front-end store, all is transferred by the supply chain, and all he has to do is to heat the meal with his colleagues and distribute it to various communities. In extraordinary times, this is undoubtedly a good business to maintain the revenue of the store.

From security guards to volunteers, from loose orders to fixed delivery, Fan Peng now needs to supply dozens of box lunches for security guards every day; every few days, he will also supply volunteers with box lunches on a large scale, supplying nearly two thousand at a time.

Next, he also plans to launch a series of fake dishes. After all, in terms of ingredients and methods, fake dishes have great similarities with hot pot; but compared with hot pots, fake dishes are more frequent consumption, which can meet the daily dining needs of guests.

"Box lunches are mainly provided to the community, and fake dishes are sold to ordinary customers. In the case of OK capacity, we have to do some impostors and box lunches to let the guests unfreeze and beat the teeth festival, which complements the hot pot. Fan Peng said.

However, the current order volume of fake vegetables in the store is not stable, sometimes it can sell forty or fifty orders a day, sometimes the sales volume is relatively low, and the overall is still in the adaptation stage.

Chen Kaiqiang, who is also in Shanghai, is the manager of Haidilao's Shanghai Jinyulan Plaza store, and his store currently has an 11-person "temporary working group" responsible for all employee meals and daily takeaway orders.

According to Chen Kaiqiang, at present, the main business of the store is in addition to self-heating small hot pot and hot pot dishes, which are people's livelihood dishes, that is, fruits and vegetables that many people say. Within the several hundred fan groups he has built, it is filled with various consumer demands every day, and the biggest demand during the epidemic is vegetables and fruits.

"Before the tenth (April), our supply chain can directly match some packages, and the logistics are directly sent to the door of the community to the head of the group. When there are materials in the store, we can open the group with our own set menus, such as five pounds of potatoes and six pounds of spinach. However, this is only the situation when logistics and distribution were tight in the early days, Chen Kaiqiang revealed that now after the group purchase channel is opened, the store still returns to hot pot, box lunch and fake vegetable products.

If it is said that fake dishes and box lunches are still testing the water around the change of dish practices, then the Zhengzhou Haidilao store has completely stepped out of the category of "hot dishes" and begun to test the breakfast porridge industry.

Haidilao breakfast menu

Since April 13, haidilao Zhengzhou Jianye Triumph Square store, breakfast will be sold every day. In the same way as the box lunch sales model, Haidilao breakfast is sold per portion, and each serving is sold for 6 yuan.

From the network information point of view, the 6 yuan breakfast is very rich, not only meat buns, bean paste buns, roasted wheat, tea eggs, as well as small cold dishes and porridge, the packaging is also very exquisite, netizens directly called "the most affordable and happy carb protein breakfast".

02

"Survival" according to local conditions

In the matter of "cross-border", Haidilao is not unfamiliar. From hot pot to milk tea, from catering to nail art, from offline to online, Haidilao has always played "cross-border" with great fun.

Different from the sale of milk tea, the design of nail art and other types of brand service capabilities, "cross-border" breakfast, box lunch, impostor is an expansion of catering coverage categories, once it becomes a "fixed menu" of Haidilao to promote nationwide, it symbolizes a business transformation and upgrading.

This is not only related to the production and operation of a company in Haidilao, but also a challenge to similar catering enterprises in the relevant track. It is inevitable that the outside world will wonder whether Haidilao has a more far-reaching plan for this "cross-border"?

In this regard, Haidilao's explanation is that this belongs to the service of "adapting to local conditions" under the epidemic situation.

Under the epidemic, people's lifestyles and consumption forms are in dynamic changes, and Haidilao stores are based on the prevention and control requirements of their locations, market people's livelihood and consumer demand, and through the integration of Haidilao Group's resources, give full play to the advantages of Shuhai, Yihai and other food supply chains, seasonings and convenience food affiliates, carry out convenient services according to local conditions, and provide more choices and convenience for the diversified consumer demand and supply demand of the market. The company will also make corresponding adjustments and planning according to the actual needs of the market, providing more rich and high-quality choices.

Fan Peng also told All-Weather Technology that the business of box lunch was not initially developed by Haidilao independent innovation, "it was the needs of security that we explored and reported to the company before deciding to make this product."

According to him, Haidilao store managers have certain autonomy, and in the long-term operation and management, the accumulated awareness of user demand mining and personal adaptability have contributed to such innovations. There is also a "golden idea plan" within the company, as long as the company evaluates that there is no food safety risk in the innovative business, the general store can adjust the sales strategy according to the actual situation and temporarily put the product on the shelves.

The "Golden Idea Program" has a long history in Haidilao, and it is reported that the company has also set up an innovation management committee to encourage employees to put forward new ideas on service methods and skills, dish styles, etc.

These new ideas are first reported to the store manager, and if they are promoted in the store, they can get rewards ranging from a few hundred yuan. After the store screening, it is then reported to the company's innovation management committee, which will review and decide whether to promote in all stores or regional stores, and give bonuses + naming rights to employees who propose new ideas according to the economic benefits generated.

New ideas are generally discovered and proposed by front-line employees, covering innovative research and development in technology, services, products and other aspects. In order to encourage more employees to put forward ideas that are conducive to the development and service improvement of the company, the "Golden Idea Ranking List" will be set up internally and posted in the store office. Haidilao's often mentioned "sea exhaust air purification system", "automatic pot dispensing machine" and other technical products are independent innovation and research and development of Haidilao employees.

So after working in Haidilao for several years and in charge of more than 20 stores, Fan Peng never thought that one day he would deliver box lunches and fake dishes; but when this day really came, he was not surprised at all.

No matter how innovative the store business is, enterprises must eventually return to the business level and transform market demand into sustainable business models. Although Fan Peng said that the store manager does not understand the revenue and profit, the Haidilao Group Headquarters will account for this.

Taking the one meat and one vegetarian box lunch being sold in the store as an example, the current price of 15 yuan / serving only covers the cost price. Whether the price will be adjusted in the future, and whether it will develop this business for a long time, I am afraid that Haidilao Group will need to make a detailed financial bill.

03

Can you "save yourself"?

A series of operational strategies such as business expansion, on-demand supply, and capital preservation operation all reflect Haidilao's full "desire to survive" when its offline stores are closed.

In the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2020, offline catering stores were once pressed the pause button, and the high-growth Haidilao was also caught off guard.

The 46-day store closure and untimely expansion have caused Haidilao to encounter a big business crisis:

In 2020, Haidilao opened 544 new stores, far more than in 2018 (262) and 2019 (302), once expanding the number of global stores to 1298; but the annual revenue of 28.6 billion yuan, an increase of only 7.8% year-on-year, down about 49 percentage points from the same period last year (56.5%); net profit of 309.3 million yuan, down 86.8% compared with the net profit of 2.345 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year; the turnover rate also decreased from 5 times / day in 2018 to 3.5 times / in 2020 / days, a decrease of 0.8 times/day compared to 2019.

Although Haidilao has tried to save the store passenger flow by launching a takeaway business to reduce the crisis, it is obvious that the company that mainly plays offline hot pot is a drop in the bucket. According to the financial report, its takeaway business revenue in 2020 was 718 million yuan, an increase of 60% year-on-year, but the contribution to revenue was only 2.5%.

Haidilao's revenue composition from 2020 to 2021

The excessively fierce sprint quickly caused the haidilao, who had not yet gained a foothold, to fall heavily. In November 2021, Haidilao issued an announcement that it would gradually close about 300 stores that did not meet expectations by the end of the year.

It can also be seen from the revenue situation that in 2021, Haidilao's revenue reached 41.112 billion yuan, an increase of 43.7% year-on-year, but it generated a loss of 4.16 billion yuan, which is also the company's first annual loss since the landing port in 2018.

After the road of staking the road is not feasible, Haidilao has returned to the business itself, starting from products and services to retain users.

On the one hand, Haidilao proposed a new tasting meeting at the end of 2021, and promised to innovate in an all-round way such as pot bottom, dishes, snacks and experiences to maintain the new rhythm of the country at least once a year; on the other hand, Yang Lijuan was transferred as the CEO of the company and continued to implement the "Woodpecker Plan" to strengthen internal management and improve operational services with the system of "connecting interests and locking management".

According to the research report of Everbright Securities, haidilao's turnover rate in January 2022 increased from December 2021 to 106% of the same period in 2021, and the turnover rate of comparable stores was basically flat compared with December and last year.

Landing on the grass-roots personnel, Fan Peng obviously felt that the company was paying more and more attention to service. "Haidilao has been operating in Shanghai for more than ten years, and basically everyone has eaten Haidilao and is our customer. In special periods, as long as everyone has needs and raises them in the group, we will help solve them. In addition to selling box lunches, Fan Peng said that in the early days, when customers had difficulties in purchasing alcohol and daily necessities, the store also helped everyone solve it, and everything started for the purpose of ensuring supply and public welfare.

Under the epidemic, the catering industry has ushered in a fierce "spring cold", and enterprises can only find new ways to survive in "self-help" and "shuffle".

Haidilao, which has experienced the crisis in 2020, chose to change its posture this time, by discovering the needs and relying on users to "live". Whether the new way can finally sweep away the haze and help Haidilao win the "battle" still needs time to give an answer.

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