25 years of Sichuan cuisine brand, under the epidemic to create a new business model, supermarkets open vegetable stations, live broadcast goods, build their own supply chain, become a leader in the exploration of new retail in catering.
CCTV News Network once used a 3 and a half minutes long clip to make a large report on catering enterprises that were actively surviving during the epidemic. The report said: "In the face of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, there is such a catering company, not only chose to continue to open its doors during the epidemic, but also blazed a new path in new difficulties. ”
▲ Screenshot of the news network
This catering enterprise is Meizhou Dongpo.
A sudden epidemic obviously disrupted everyone's steps, just more than 2 months before the report, Meizhou Dongpo was also facing a test of life and death: more than 10,000 tables of reserved tables were cancelled one after another, the Spring Festival raw materials worth tens of millions of yuan had to be lost, all dine-in income was close to 0, and the monthly cost was nearly 100 million yuan! If we continue to maintain such a status quo of high cost expenditure and zero income, the eastern slope of Meizhou can only last for 3~6 months at most.
How to turn the crisis into an opportunity, Meizhou Dongpo's innovative epidemic measures have become a breakthrough weapon, opening up new opportunities for development in a new form, and also attracting the attention and reports of CCTV. What exactly did it do right? How did you turn a crisis into an opportunity?
Meishan, known as Meizhou in ancient times, is located on the southwest edge of the Sichuan Basin and has a history of more than 1,400 years. Meizhou has abundant products and talents. Su Xun, Su Shi, and Su Zhi, father and son, who are listed as the "Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties", are all from Meizhou. Among them, the great writer Su Dongpo is also a gourmet, because of his pioneering Dongpo cuisine and elegant food style, is a valuable heritage of Chinese food culture, as famous as his literary talent.
▲ Wang Gang, chairman of Meizhou Dongpo Group
Beijing is the home of Sichuan cuisine brand Meizhou Dongpo. Mr. Wang Gang, the founder of Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant, entered Beijing at the age of 16 to learn cooking skills, and was the true biography of Master Gan Guoqing, who was known as the "presidential chef". After years of honing and painstaking research, he has cultivated excellent cooking skills, and has done a lot of sorting, research and innovation work in inheriting Dongpo food culture, forming a set of Meizhou Dongpo Sichuan cuisine with Dongpo culture as the foundation.
Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant Group is an influential catering group in Beijing and even the whole country, with an annual turnover of up to billions of yuan, and its brands such as Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant, Meizhou Snacks, Wangjiadu Hot Pot and other brands, covering restaurants, hot pot, snack formats and categories, and successively opening stores in overseas markets such as the United States.
▲ The picture comes from the official Dongpo of Meizhou
It is worth mentioning that in the entire field of formal meals, Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant was in the Beijing high-potential energy market at the beginning, more famous than Xibei, with the rapid rise of Xibei and the various topic effects of "Jia Zong Toss", it gradually replaced the position of Meizhou Dongpo in the field of formal meals.
Since 2008, Meizhou Dongpo has tried to build a "three-in-one" system, that is, agricultural company, central kitchen, food processing plant, three production lines work together, from the source to processing production, and then to the output of finished products.
▲ The picture comes from the official Dongpo of Meizhou
Today, Meizhou Dongpo Group not only has a complete central kitchen-style factory integrating R&D, food sorting and processing, centralized procurement and distribution, and learning experience, but also has a comprehensive base for the whole industry chain of Sichuan cuisine with a huge scale and rich formats, further consolidating its position in the industry.
Its supply chain has provided services to many catering customers such as Family Mart, Master Kong's Beef Noodles, Teacher Tian's Braised Pork, and Hefu Lao Noodles. In terms of terminal channels, the products cover Sam's Club, Ito-Yokado, Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Family Mart, Lawson, 7-11 and many other offline retail channels, and online JD.com, Tmall, Pinduoduo have flagship stores, leading the development of the industry from different dimensions.
▲ Meizhou Dongpo Cai Station
During the epidemic, Meizhou Dongpo entered the supermarket, opened a stall of less than 20 square meters in the supermarket, and realized the retailization of catering by selling semi-finished products such as buns, side dishes, and marinated vegetables. Sausages, chili peppers, peppercorns, bean paste, and other products are also produced in the food factory in Dongpo, Meizhou, and can be sent from the factory to restaurants in the United States and all over the country.
These are inseparable from the past in the supply chain. To put it bluntly, with the supply chain, we can realize the national layout of new retail and catering foodization of supermarkets.
From the perspective of brand promotion, in fact, Meizhou Dongpo can be recognized by the mainstream media this time, the most important point is that its affordable vegetable station and other initiatives and the image of serving the public are highly consistent with the "mass line". This seems like a fortuitous event, but it quite reflects the style of this restaurant company in Dongpo, Meizhou, close to the masses.
▲ Meizhou Dongpo Cai Station
So how do the stations and mini shops that are praised by the news network work?
1. Rely on the store to sell the backlog of existing ingredients
On 1/26/20, the "Convenient and Affordable Vegetable Station" was launched. Using the company's own food reserves and resource supply chain, we provide affordable melons and fruits, vegetables, seasonings, fresh food, finished products, semi-finished products, etc. from Sichuan, and lead employees to sell vegetables in front of their stores.
2. The vegetable station mini program is online, and delicious ingredients and semi-finished products are freshly delivered to customers' homes
During the epidemic, in order to meet the needs of customers who could not go out, the Meizhou Dongpo team quickly launched a vegetable station mini program, from fresh Sichuan specialty vegetables to the breakfast staple kitchen, as well as a variety of seasonings and convenience foods, which were deeply loved by customers.
3. Starting from the offline vegetable station, the Meizhou Dongpo Supermarket mini store is derived
In February last year, Meizhou Dongpo opened four stores at the same time in the supermarkets of Beijing Wumeitongzhou Liyuan store, Changping Xiguan store, Yufengqiao store and Xinjiekou store. This kind of supermarket mini vegetable station, covering an area of 20~30 square meters, from ready-to-eat products to semi-finished products to products that can be hoarded, everything is available here, and brand catering stalls in supermarkets attract a lot of people.
▲ Meizhou Dongpo Cai Station
Facts have proved that this series of actions is very timely, and the relevant procedures of the supermarket mini store have been obtained, and the sales have been quickly increased with low-frequency and high-frequency measures. Achieved revenue of 80 million in 2 months, making the company more powerful to tide over the epidemic.
According to the "China Catering Category and Brand Development Report 2021" released by the World Federation of Catering Industry, in 2020, among the number of stores in the full category of Chinese formal cuisine, Sichuan cuisine as the third largest cuisine has the largest number of stores, but in the "2020 Top 100 Chinese Catering Brands", Sichuan cuisine has only 3 brands on the list: Meizhou Dongpo, Qiujiangnan, and Da Rong, which is not a small gap compared with Cantonese cuisine and Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine.
▲ The picture comes from the official Dongpo of Meizhou
Promoting large-scale operation through standardization has always been a direction for the catering industry. Sichuan cuisine is characterized by a variety of flavors, including 24 flavors such as fish aroma, homemade, spicy, red oil, strange taste, etc., "one dish and one dish, 100 dishes and 100 flavors"; There are 38 cooking methods, such as stir-frying, frying, soaking, and popping. Such diversification has led to a doubling of the difficulty of standardization of Sichuan cuisine. Supply chain standardization has become an important foundation for the development of Sichuan cuisine, and it is also an important symbol of whether the brand can go far.
Meizhou Dongpo's exclusive standardization is similar in thinking. It is understood that Meizhou Dongpo subdivides the chef into cold chef, snack chef, hot dish chef, etc., and is responsible for cold dishes, hot dishes and snacks in all stores. Some specialties, such as shredded fish and meat, are made by traditional masters from Sichuan folk and improved by masters from Dongpo in Meizhou. If a dish is made too casually to ensure the same delicious taste in each store, Meizhou Dongpo will not introduce it.
▲ The picture comes from the official Dongpo of Meizhou
After years of innovation and integration in the exploration of standardization, the source of Sichuan cuisine, the main Sichuan cuisine, now the dishes of Meizhou Dongpo do not look like a piece of red oil, but a fusion of other cuisines, techniques and plates, etc., changing the old impression that Sichuan cuisine is not exquisite in the past. In addition, due to the gradual realization of the programmed operation of dishes, it also lays the foundation for the production of semi-finished dishes and foods.
Meizhou Dongpo can stand up in the adverse trend, relying on the valuable experience summed up in the face of every difficulty in the past 25 years, relying on the team that has been cultivated in thousands of days of military use, and relying on the idea of trying to innovate and change again and again in the face of crisis.
Crises are both dangers and opportunities. When you're complaining at home, you might as well think about how to break the game, because the shuffle button is already on and can't be paused.