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"Rollover" constantly, no sweetness
Written/Starry Night
Editor/Chen Dengxin
In the past six months, the news of "overturning" in Mi xue ice city has appeared frequently. There have been cases of illegal use of child labor, and there have been food safety problems in many stores.
Mixue Ice City, which intends to be listed on the A-share market and impact the "second share of new tea drinks", was not long ago a well-deserved Internet celebrity brand, but in the blink of an eye, it has been punished one after another. Therefore, the franchise model and management system behind it have also begun to be questioned.
Since its inception, Michelle Ice City has expanded rapidly with low-cost routes and franchise models, and has now become a large brand with more than 20,000 stores. In addition to continuously seizing the market, Michelle Ice City has also successively ventured into the coffee field and the investment field, trying to draw a large map.
But in fact, the frequently exposed food safety problems are eroding consumers' trust in Michelle Ice City, and the voice of "low price and don't exchange quality for quality" is endless. If The Snow Ice City has not been able to have an effective improvement plan, then it may be difficult for the Snow King to continue to be sweet.
Joining non-stop, "rollover" continuously
"You love me, I love you, Honey Snow Ice City Sweet Honey." Last summer, the theme song of Michelle Ice City was on fire, and its simple brainwashing melody and lyrics quickly resounded through the streets. On the B station, the two theme song MV videos released by the official account of Michelle Ice City have received 5.39 million and 19.71 million plays respectively, and many UP owners have re-created the MV, launching the national version, foreign language version, dark version and so on.
MV of the theme song of Michelle Ice City
In addition to achieving a wave of cultural bombardment, Michelle Ice City also launched an event: as long as customers go to the department's designated stores to sing the theme song of Michelle Ice City, they can get a free glass of lemonade or ice cream. This activity not only brought traffic to the offline stores of Michelle Ice City, but also continued to expand the brand influence due to the short videos spontaneously taken by customers.
At that time, Mi Xue Ice City was enjoying a huge aura. By October 2021, the number of stores in Michelle Ice City exceeded 20,000, while in June 2020, the number of stores in Michelle Ice City was only nearly 10,000. In more than a year, Michelle Ice City has completed the total number of stores opened in the first twenty years, and it has been in the limelight for a while.
Unfortunately, while the spotlight is concentrated, the shadow hidden behind the high-speed rush of The Ice City is exposed.
According to news materials, in 2019, the Wanda Plaza store in Shijiazhuang, a snow ice city, was revealed that the clerk threw a rag into the tea barrel to brush it, hid hair in the ice cream machine, and used expired raw materials to make milk tea;
In May 2020, there were food safety problems in the stores of Zhengzhou, Jinan, Wuhan and other stores in Mixue Ice City, including tampering with the date labels of Kaifeng ingredients, and illegally using overnight ice cream milk syrup, tea soup, milk tea and other ingredients;
In August of the same year, when the Fuzhou Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau inspected the Michelle Bingcheng store, it found moldy lemons, and the concocted syrup and dairy products were stored in sealed refrigeration without sealing.
In April this year, a Michelle Ice City store in Zhejiang Province was exposed for illegal use of child labor. In May, a store in Guangxi Province was punished for using expired raw materials...
The illegal operation of the Michelle Ice City store is almost as frequent as "menstrual stickers" on the hot search, and the incident often ends with an official response to an apology, and the store is closed for rectification and payment of fines. However, with the continuous occurrence of food safety problems, the loopholes in the management of Mi xue ice city have become more and more obvious.
In addition to the problem stores that have been exposed, Zinc Scale also saw from the black cat complaints that there were as many as 2545 complaints about Michelle Ice City, of which the vast majority of user complaints involved food hygiene and safety issues.
"Bought two cups of lemonade and brown sugar bubble tea in the afternoon, went home and drank two mouthfuls and found bugs", "There was a black hair in the four seasons of the peach purchased", "There was a flocculent precipitate at the bottom of the spring tea of the four seasons, and there was diarrhea after drinking the lychee", "Drinking the staple needle in the milk tea, drinking the worm was diarrhea at most, which is fatal"... Complaints like these are too numerous to utter.
The milk tea brand, which has been established for 25 years, has completed a series A financing of 2 billion yuan in 2021 alone, which is indeed slow compared with the financing process of other new tea brands. However, the 20,000 stores across the country are the franchisees standing behind The Ice City.
And now the stores are blooming everywhere, but there are not a few "overturned", even if The Honey Snow Ice City wants to strictly manage it, it is inevitable that the whip will not be able to reach.
It is worth mentioning that Zinc Scale saw the franchisees of Mi Xue Ice City on the social platform and complained, "The address selected by the new franchisee is often rejected, but this address will be opened by the old franchisee after a period of time." In addition, some franchisees said that the regional protection of Michelle Ice City is not as good as before, which further aggravates the difficulty of survival.
Whether it is the dissatisfaction of consumers or the complaints of franchisees, they are gradually tearing apart the contradictions under the glossy surface of The Honey Snow Ice City.
After "rolling" tea, the Snow King wants to build a new consumption empire?
In fact, although Michelle Ice City has been established for 25 years, it has really caught up with the wave of new tea drinks in the past two years. In addition to expanding the brand's stores and increasing visibility nationwide, Michelle Ice City is now frequently crossing borders, trying to replicate the next Michelle Ice City.
In the sinking market of new tea drinks, in terms of scale and popularity, Michelle Ice City is the second, and almost no one dares to call the first. But to go a step further, it is not enough to continue to "roll" on price. Therefore, in 2018, Michelle Ice City also tried to open up a high-end route, launching a brand M+, focusing on freshly brewed tea and specially blended milk and other drinks, and the price exceeded the threshold of 20 yuan.
However, the second-generation brand born with a golden spoon did not receive the corresponding attention, because the original customer base of Mi xue ice city was difficult to transfuse blood to M+, and its products were less creative than the new tea brand at the same price, so it soon disappeared.
At the same time, the "2021 New Tea Beverage Research Report" released by the China Chain Store and Franchise Association shows that the mainland new tea market continues to expand, and it is expected that the market size will reach 142.8 billion yuan by 2023, but the market growth rate will decline to about 20%. Based on this situation, the new tea brands that "have no volume" are facing growth problems.
Crossing over to a more popular track has almost become the number one choice for brands. Michelle Ice City chose to walk on two legs while investing in brands on other tracks. At present, Michelle Ice City has shot twice, the first time in October 2021, investing in a new tea brand "Huicha", which is positioned in the mid-range market, to make up for the shortcomings. Next, on April 21 this year, Snow King Investment Co., Ltd. became a shareholder of Henan Chicken Packing Catering Enterprise Management Co., Ltd., an affiliate of "Chicken Packing", which is a fried chicken brand focusing on young consumer groups.
Not long ago, the relevant person in charge of Michelle Ice City told the media, "The focus of Honey Snow Ice City's investment is mainly food and beverages. "Compared with re-creating a new brand, perhaps investment is a matter of half the effort for Michelle Ice City."
However, on the other hand, Michelle Ice City also restarted the "Lucky Coffee" project, continuing the playing style in the milk tea track, the price is very close to the people, freshly ground American 5 yuan / cup, light milk latte 5 yuan / cup, cappuccino 8 yuan / cup, hand pound ice lemon coffee 5 yuan / cup. The location is also consistent with the positioning of Michelle Ice City, according to the residential door restaurant eye, the number of stores in the third-tier cities and second-tier cities is 35.68% and 28.41% of the total number of stores, respectively.
Lucky coffee products
After many reforms, Lucky Cafe has finally exceeded 500 stores and opened the first store in Shanghai in a first-tier city. However, it may not be easy to use lucky coffee to feed Honey Snow Ice City, and even some people in the industry believe that Lucky Coffee and Honey Snow Ice City may rob each other of traffic due to their extremely similar positioning.
In addition, Michelle Ice City's ice cream brand "Ji Lattu" began to play a high-end route and benchmark DQ. However, in recent times, it has also released the dynamic of price reduction in the entire menu series, and the decline in explosive items is as high as 57%. The location has also changed from the original focus on opening shopping mall stores, adding new street store types.
It is worth mentioning that whether it is Michelle Ice City or Lucky Coffee and Polar chart, they have now opened up to join, and revealed that the franchise method is an important development means to expand the market scale and improve brand power. In this regard, Li Zenghui, the founder of Jilatu, also talked about the corresponding point of view in an interview with Jiamen, "Jilattu first beats the price down, exchanges price for volume, takes the cost-effective route, does large-scale, and in turn does supply chain reshaping."
For Michelle Ice City, the goal of going out of the circle and scale has been basically achieved, but how to put eggs into more baskets and how to open up a business line based on the high-end market is still a big problem. In the face of the market prospect of slowing growth, the solutions of brands to these problems will directly affect the long-term development of the future.
After acceleration, how to stabilize the basic disk?
Looking at today's new tea track, Naixue's tea, which bears the title of "the first share of new tea drinking", broke on the same day of listing, and the 2021 annual report showed that the net profit loss for that year reached 145 million yuan. Coupled with the many "overturns" in food safety and advertising, Nesher's tea was once called "awkward tea".
Based on this situation, the demand for listing of Xicha, which is also a head brand, began to weaken, although it raised funds in full swing, but turned around as a VC, invested in brands such as wild plants, peach peaches, WAT cocktails, and wild cuishan, and gradually built a commercial map based on tea drinks and expanding into new consumption areas.
The main force competing for the "second share of new tea drinks" is actually the second echelon of brands. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Cha Bai Dao and Gu Ming have successively reported that they will carry out Hong Kong IPOs as early as 2022. At the same time, Michelle Ice City also reported the news of the proposed IPO on the A-share market.
A new street shop type has been added to Polar chart
More than half a year has passed, and it is still uncertain who will spend the crown of the "second share of new tea drinking", but these competitors have been exposed many times. From the perspective of mode, Michelle Ice City, Chabaidao and Guming all use the "direct operation + franchise" method to expand, especially the crazy influx of franchisees, which directly presses the acceleration button for the development of the brand.
However, with the passage of time, the drawbacks of the franchise model have also begun to appear. For example, the aforementioned incident of illegal use of child labor in a store in Mi Xue Bingcheng is a store behavior, but it is still the brand side that is more affected. In the face of more than 20,000 stores, it is undoubtedly difficult to carry out compliance management in every detail, but the lack of management will directly hurt the brand image. How to grasp the balance is the next problem that Mi Xue Ice City has to think about.
Speaking of more important food safety issues, although Nai Xue's tea and Hey tea, which has always insisted on taking the self-operated route, have also been exposed to related problems. However, in comparison, the situation is less, and the rectification efforts are larger, and the exposure news of Michelle Ice City is updated almost monthly, repeatedly touching the bottom line of consumers, and now the reputation has not been as good as before. The emergence of this problem is naturally related to the large number of franchised stores and the lack of management of Michelle Ice City.
All kinds of indications show that although the expansion map has to be done, if The Honey Snow Ice City cannot strictly control the quality and strictly supervise the franchisees, then it will only be a matter of time before consumers leave.
Zinc Scale understands that in fact, most of the brands that open to franchisees will play a certain constraint and management of franchisees through the management mechanism of regular spot checks, but fast-moving foods such as milk tea are still industries with high error rates and low fault tolerance rates, and the imperfection of industry standards and low access thresholds make the production process ununified and the production standards uneven. Coupled with the uncontrollable factors of the franchise model, the "rollover" situation is more difficult to avoid.
An industry insider revealed to Zinc Scale, "In fact, strictly speaking, brands such as Michelle Ice City do not belong to the category of new tea drinks, and joining this asset-light way is more conducive to the rapid profitability of the brand as a whole." However, the actual revenue pressure of a single store is spread to the franchisees, so it is difficult to avoid the situation of 'rollover'. ”
Before impacting ipos and expanding the new territory, the "Mi Xue Ice City" should build a supply chain to reduce costs and improve internal management and quality internal control systems. The two-pronged approach not only protects the profit margins of franchisees but also enables them to strictly abide by the system, so that better brand building is possible. When the basic disk is stable, everything is a matter of course.
END
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