In 2011, the brand of Wen Heyou Lao Changsha Fried Society was established
In 2012, Wen Heyou Lao Chang Salon Shrimp House was established
In 2013, Wen Wo Tomo Sausage was established
In 2014, the flagship store of Wen Heyou Lao Chang Salon Shrimp House was opened
In 2015, the trademark "Wen Heyou" Chinese registered
In May 2018, Wen Heyou Changsha Hisense Plaza store opened
In October 2018, Wen Heyou Lobster House Dufu Jiangge store closed
In July 2020, Guangzhou Wen Heyou opened
In April 2021, Shenzhen Wen Heyou opened
I have to say that Wen Heyou spares no effort in brand marketing and promotion, a brand that has been established for about ten years is so frequent to be comparable to the "Musk" in the catering industry, and today, Wen Heyou has fallen into an extremely embarrassing situation, and the Waterloo in Guangzhou and Shenzhen makes Wen Heyou have to slow down.
Super Wen Heyou who left the "foot capital" is no longer super, orange born in Huainan is orange, born in Huaibei is feng, not only Wen Heyou, Internet celebrity brands seem to have fallen into a quagmire after leaving the halo charm of Changsha, an Internet celebrity city.
Super Wen and friends out of the circle
In 2018, Wen Heyou created a food complex rich in the nostalgic street style of Changsha in the 80s in a 7-storey space with an area of 20,000 square meters, local folk snacks integrated into retro trend culture, and through the nostalgic marketing network, "Super Wen Heyou" was born.
The "Super Wen Heyou" quickly set a number of new highs: an average of 20,000 people per day, sales of more than 100 million, an average queue time of 3 hours, a turnover rate of 8.5 tables a day, and a comprehensive profit margin of 40%. Various celebrities flocked to the board, including Yu Liang, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Vanke, Taikoo Hui Guangzhou and Jack Ma.
Subsequently, Wen Heyou shouted the slogan "Create the Disney of the food world" and opened the road to southward expansion. From 2020 to 2021, Wen Heyou successively entered Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and declared that "20 cities will be opened in 5 years", and Chongqing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing and other cities are within the scope of Wen Heyou's expansion plan.
The ideal is beautiful, the reality is cruel. The Guangzhou store and the Shenzhen store experienced a rapid downturn after the initial check-in fever, and the reputation continued to decline, and the unpalatable and expensive price became a hot spot for complaints, and then the door was snubbed, and a large number of merchants withdrew.
At the end of 2021, Guangzhou's "Super Wen Heyou" became "Guangzhou Wen Heyou". Shenzhen Wen Heyou was rarely cared for more than a year later, and had to be renamed "Laojie Oyster Market". Wen Heyou of the two places both fell to the altar after several months of glory, and Wen Heyou, who left Changsha, suffered from a problem of unyielding water and soil.
A good dock, sells for money
In addition to its own characteristics, Wen Heyou's popularity also has the help from top cities, and Lu Liang, the founder of Chayan Yueshi, once felt that "a good pier, is sold for money", backed by the traffic password of Changsha, a large number of Internet celebrity brands came into being.
Changsha's economy is underdeveloped, its fiscal and per capita income is relatively weak, its industrial base in the central region is not as comprehensive as Wuhan's, and its political status is only an ordinary provincial capital, and there will not be much resource tilt.
However, the people of Hunan do not believe in evil, and with the spirit of "daring to be the first in the world", with the blessing of the skill of "just the right hardship and patience is boring and tyrannical", they forged a way to industrialize culture and entertainment, and promoted the "Hunan dialect" to the world.
"Harry Oil opened a foot-washing city, the location is in the Golden Basin Ridge, the golden basin to wash your feet, let you have a foot addiction..." In the 90s of last century, Changsha song hall culture was prevalent, and the soldiers of Qizhi used a broken Changsha Mandarin to perform skits and say crosstalk, and the audience watched the sketches while drinking tea, laughter, applause continuously...
Although the cabaret culture is not a Changsha patent, the domineering Hunan people have found a different way to walk out of the entertainment industry with unique Hunan characteristics from the song hall culture, bar culture and foot-washing culture derived from life, and Hunan Radio and Television is the biggest promoter.
With more than 20 TV channels at the peak of a second-tier city, Hunan Radio and Television has single-handedly turned Changsha, an inland city, into a bridgehead for China's entertainment, and its rich TV entertainment resources have become an assistant to stimulate consumption. Although the mobile Internet has changed the entire media and song hall industry, the characteristics of entertainment to death have long been implanted in the bodies of Changsha people.
In the 2020 Top 10 Cities with Night Economic Influence in China, Changsha ranked among the top three!
In terms of urban night economic communication, Changsha and Chongqing both scored 9.5 points, tied for the first place!
Back to the essence of catering
Xiao Li once ran a barbecue restaurant in Wen Heyou in Guangzhou, and commented online about her shop "There are only 20 crayfish in 199, it is better to go to a roadside stall, it is expensive and not delicious." For the complaints of netizens, she is also very helpless.
"Wen Heyou and we are a cooperative method of revenue sharing, although there is no rent or property fee, but in the end, nearly half of the income must be paid." The high operating expenses forced her to abandon it.
Wen Heyou received his first financing in February 2020, and Guangzhou Wen Heyou opened five months later, with a staggering rocket-like speed.
In Guangzhou, where food is everywhere, Wen Heyou's taste and pricing are not appealing. For locals, they will not go to a nostalgic place built later to nostalgia, morning tea and tea restaurants are the first choice.
Did the manager spend time pondering the introduction of brands and flavors before opening the store, whether the focus was on attracting locals or a large number of Hunan people? If you just focus on scene creation and lose the essence of catering, it is undoubtedly a way to abandon the basics.
In China, there is no industry more involuted than catering. Relevant data show that the average lifespan of newly opened restaurants in China is only 508 days; 1 in 20 of China's 1.4 billion people are engaged in food/beverage-related occupations.
The core of catering is the first and foremost need to eat, and the experience scene and atmosphere are the icing on the cake. If the basic catering taste cannot satisfy the taste buds of consumers, then the scene creation can only be a mirror.
Scenario-based marketing is not a one-size-fits-all deal
Wen Heyou's immersive dining environment gives consumers a very novel and fun experience: small shops on the street, discotheques, billiard halls, photo studios, audio-visual halls, crosstalk halls, and retro "marriage certificates", from signboards to lamps, etc., all restore the feeling of the year, and the taste of memory comes to the face.
Speaking of hotel scene marketing, Changsha West Lake Building is a predecessor, this so-called Changsha version of the Forbidden City covers an area of 40,000 square meters, can accommodate more than 4,500 people at the same time. The building adopts an antique style, with four areas: Hunan cuisine area, palace dining area, Cantonese cuisine area, West Lake Street snack area, as well as their own exclusive kitchens, and the decoration style is different.
The so-called largest restaurant in China, established in 2004, has always been rooted in Malanshan, and has no interest in opening branches and going out of Changsha, and has also become a scene of Malanshan, except for Hunan Radio and Television.
When we eat hot pot, it is natural to choose Wang Laoji to solve the spicy; When we are looking for a quiet place to sit alone, Starbucks or a milk tea shop will be a good choice. In addition to the core values of the brand, continuous creative activities can create "sensory stimulation" for consumers and maintain the freshness of the brand for a long time.
Therefore, this immersive experience needs to be constantly updated to attract customers to repurchase, or it is a hammer sale, and the freshness is boring. Playing the emotional card visually, you may get good results at first, but over time it is inevitable that people will go to empty buildings.
Brands that once brushed the screen such as breakup flower shops and funeral tea culture that suddenly exploded by creativity are no longer interested, why do we stop paying attention to what we once discussed wildly? Even if there are no food safety problems, can Internet celebrity restaurants go far with creativity and emotion alone?
Freshness is easy to perish, and brand value is difficult to achieve. "Expensive" and "commercial" have become the labels of Wen Heyou, and Internet celebrity restaurants are not just as simple as patting their heads, nor can they have feelings. The success of Changshawen Heyou lies not only in the innovation of market culture, but also in the long-term brand precipitation.
When you walk out of the base camp and want to continue to light up in the name of "feelings", it is difficult for the market to buy it. Only by forming brand value, supplemented by marketing activities to stimulate freshness, is the long-term way of marketing of Internet celebrity restaurants.