It is an Italian restaurant born in 1973.
Its restaurants in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are full for 20 yuan, 30 yuan for good food, and 50 yuan for running on the wall.
It has not increased in price for many years, even if the price increase is once in ten years, and the price increase you can't feel at all.
It never does takeaway, does not do publicity, does not do franchise, and does not play TikTok....
During the first recession (1992-1999), it bucked the trend from 20 stores to 500 stores.
In the second recession period (2020-2022), its annual revenue grew against the market and exceeded 10 billion yuan.
What kind of existence does it have? What is the secret of its success?
01 Who it is
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Saria Italian restaurant
Saria is called "Saria Italian Restaurant", but it is a Western food brand born in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, which has more than 1,500 stores worldwide since its opening in 1973.
Figure 1: Saria was born in Chiba Prefecture, Japan in 1973
Figure 2: A Saria store in Chiba Prefecture, Japan
In May 1973, the Saria store was opened;
In April 1981, the first shopping center store was opened;
In March 1987, the first station building store was opened;
In September 1989, the first roadside store was opened;
In July 1994, Saria opened her 100th store;
In July 1999, Saria was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange;
In July 2000, a subsidiary was established in Australia;
In October 2001, the 500th store was opened;
In June 2003, China's first store was opened in Shanghai;
In November 2007, Guangzhou subsidiary was established;
In June 2011, the 1,000th store opened;
In 2015, there were 100 stores in Shanghai and Guangzhou;
In July 2019, the 1,500th store opened;
In 2021, the annual operating income will be 7.72 billion yuan;
In 2022, the annual revenue will exceed 10 billion yuan.
Saria went through two economic shock cycles, one was from 1992 to 1999, Japan experienced a serious economic crisis, the economy continued to be sluggish, Saria just ushered in its take-off decade; One is 2020-2022, the impact of the global epidemic, which grew against the market and once again proved its strong vitality.
Figure 3: Comparison of Q2 performance of selected brands in FY2022 (Tabulation: 36Kr)
According to Saria in fiscal year 2022 (the first three quarters), there are currently 1,547 stores, all in Asia, including 1,069 in Japan and 449 in China (371 in the mainland, 58 in Hong Kong and 20 in Taiwan). According to existing financial reports, its revenue in 2022 will exceed 10 billion yuan, and its gross profit margin has been stable at a level of about 60% in recent years. Such a high gross profit is enough to reflect its ability to manage costs.
With such a low selling price, but a gross profit of up to 60%, what is its secret?
02 How cheap it is
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30 yuan to eat a good Western meal
On the Internet, there are many articles about Saria's price, and all the common vocabulary is: cheap.
Let's look at two menus, one is an early menu (probably around 1985), the price is about 1-5 yuan people; A current domestic menu, a pasta ranges from 10-15 yuan, sausage platters do not exceed 16 yuan, and the most expensive steak is only 45 yuan.
Figure 4: Early menu at Saria store
Figure 5: Saria Menu 1 (from the official website)
Figure 6: Saria Menu 2 (from the official website)
Figure 7: Saria Menu 3 (from the official website)
Figure 8: Saria consumption receipt (less than 50 yuan per meal, one side and one bread)
In other words, in Saria you can easily achieve "Western food freedom", order casually with your eyes closed, and there is no pressure.
A little common sense, we all know that the price of Western food is generally expensive, a meal per person can not come under 150-200 yuan, taking Shanghai 19 years of Internet celebrity American restaurants as an example, a salad in its store mostly needs 80-90 yuan.
However, this American restaurant called New Elements fell on December 20, 2022.
Figure 9: New Elements Menu
So, how did Saria achieve such a low selling price?
03 What is the trick to its operation
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The ultimate cost structure system
From a commercial point of view, any brand can not only stay in the evaluation of Meituan and public reviews, nor can it only be judged by whether the dishes are delicious or not, and whether the environment is elegant or not, these are the perspectives of diners, and there will be huge misunderstandings in business judgment. Instead, we must return to the essence of business and restore the core logic of operation from the cost structure.
For a catering brand, especially a catering brand with so many stores, we must disassemble it from the dimensions of site selection, supply chain, standardized process, and labor, so as to relatively accurately grasp the core of its operation.
NO.1 | Buddha-nature sitution
From the beginning of the opening of the first Saria, founder Yasuhiko Masagaki made a clear business purpose: not to choose a prime location.
In Japan, Saria is located according to population, that is, how many tens of thousands of people cover a store.
In China, Saria selects locations according to business districts, and is basically a shopping mall store with dense traffic (there are also non-core business district stores).
However, the location of the Saria Mall store is interesting, usually in the corner (Saria near my house is just around the corner on the second floor), and there are other stores that are on the verge of closure.
The shop that took over did not do too much decoration, did not pursue unified decoration, and even used the tables and chairs and related equipment of the previous house.
NO.2 | Direct procurement from the central factory
Saria has established a complete supply system from field to table, and even the seeds at the forefront must be involved to establish planting and breeding bases. At the same time, lettuce is directly harvested in Japan, meat comes from Australia's own pastures, and red wine comes from Italy's own wineries.
Saria has 4~5 factories in Japan, each factory bears the supply of 300~500 stores, if all of them operate at full capacity, they can afford 2,000 stores, apparently Saria has left 800 surpluses for her local expansion.
Figure 10: Saria's supply chain system
Saria is also extraordinary in terms of procurement methods. For example, if you order to purchase 10 acres of cabbage, if the mu produces 7,000 catties, the most common purchase is 70,000 catties of cabbage to negotiate a discounted price, and then change the price every year according to the market. But Saria's way is like this: I contract these 10 acres of land, the purchase period is 3-5 years, after negotiating the price, regardless of the harvest or the bad harvest, every year according to a fixed amount of 70,000 jin. (This information is from Friend @albumin)
The advantage of this is not affected by the fluctuation of agricultural prices, and the second is that it is conducive to Saria controlling this fixed cost and amplifying revenue from elsewhere.
Figure 11: Saria Supply System
Figure 12: Saria Japan Factory
NO.3 | No chef outlets
Why can Saria maintain low prices and achieve higher profits? The secret is the flexible use of lean management in the central kitchen. Saria has always sought to operate efficiently, and the longest cooking time is only 8 minutes.
Saria has central kitchens in Fukushima, Saitama, Kanagawa, and Hyogo prefectures, and branches generally do not perform cooking operations. Put the program that can be pre-operated into the factory to customize the operation, operate on a large scale, and move the kitchen operation of the branch to the factory to solve. So, what Saria can often show off to the outside world is: "There is not a kitchen knife in the kitchen", and in Saria's work, there are two key words, namely "ease" and "speed".
Figure 13: Centralized supply of prepared dishes
At Saria's processing plant, all salads have been cut into bags for 6 people and packed. Some dishes require cooking ingredients that are divided in small packages for one person in advance. In this way, not only can the taste of the products in each branch be consistent, but also the preparation of cutting materials and portions is eliminated during the preparation process, and the processing time is greatly shortened.
NO.4 | Part-time is the main part-time, full-time supplement
Part-time employment is mainly adopted, supplemented by full-time, which reduces labor costs, improves work efficiency, and improves revenue margins by controlling the number of employees.
The chef-free stores mentioned above greatly reduce the labor costs occupied by chefs and reduce the operational instability caused by chefs.
Japan's labor costs are more than five times that of domestic workers, and high labor costs have derived a variety of flexible employment methods, such as contract workers, temporary workers, part-time workers, etc. In order to control labor costs, Saria implements a full-time + part-time employment model, in addition to regular employees, recruits part-time jobs for inexperienced groups such as employees, students, and housewives, and taps the value of temporary workers.
According to the official website of Guangzhou Saria Catering Co., Ltd., only 1,300 of the current 3,300 employees are regular employees, and the remaining 2,000 are hourly workers, with a full-time and part-time ratio of 1:2.
Figure 14: Systematic and streamlined employee services
NO.5 | Efficiency first
Saria has a department that specializes in how to work scientifically, eliminate time waste, and save money. The department has developed a series of tips for working efficiently to improve human performance.
Saria pays great attention to improving the efficiency of her employees and maximizes the utilization rate of employees. Different from the commonly used performance appraisal of many restaurants in China, Saria focuses on the assessment of "human hour turnover" (human hour turnover = total turnover ÷total working hours), that is, the turnover that an employee can achieve in one hour, paying attention to the labor efficiency per unit time, so as to achieve less manpower to maintain operation and reduce labor costs.
Efficiency 1: Mop with automatic water outflow
Saria internally stipulates that the mop passes through different places in a "U-shape" when mopping, so as to achieve the purpose of improving efficiency and shortening working hours. The mops used in Saria stores have an automatic water discharge function, so that when cleaning the area of the beverage machine that is easy to stain, you can directly press the button on the mop, eliminating the need for water spilling.
Figure 15: U-mop
Efficiency 2: No tray serving
Saria found through internal experiments that when using trays, waiters cannot hold multiple trays at the same time, and will spend more time serving dishes. The waiter in the store also made a demonstration on the spot, and the waiter who did not use the tray took only 18.2 seconds to clean up the cups and saucers on the table, while another waiter who used the tray took 26.8 seconds to complete the entire workflow.
Figure 16: Serving without a tray
Efficiency 3: Salad dressing without shaking
If it takes 3 seconds to shake the salad dressing to make a dish, then these 3 seconds are wasted, 3 seconds may seem short, but if you produce 100 dishes a day, 300 seconds will be wasted, which is 5 minutes, and for Saria, these 5 minutes can do a lot.
Saria has specially developed a special salad dressing that does not separate, eliminating the need for shaking, and there are some small holes in the cap containing the salad dressing, so that the vegetables can be drizzled with sauce without opening the cap.
Figure 17: Direct squeeze salad dressing
Figure 18: Tomato slicer
The core secrets of Saria's contrarian growth can be summarized as: reasonable rent costs, standardized products, standardized processes, and reasonable labor cost structure.