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Wen 丨 those things about the Internet
Near the Mid-Autumn Festival, the company's administration cleaned up the refrigerator once, threw away the Zongzi that had not yet been eaten, all of which were the Dragon Boat Festival Zongzi gift boxes sent by the brand received 3 months ago, and then put the mooncake gift boxes received this year into it.
Mooncakes have become more powerful in recent years, from luxurious packaging to hunting tastes, from KOLs planting grass to self-made topic stories... In order not to become a hoard, mooncake manufacturers work extra hard.
With the changes in the consumer population, this year's "mooncake war" has also blown up a wave of new consumption. Whether it is a traditional brand or a cross-border brand, the new consumer elements such as mooncake blind box, health mooncake, cultural and creative co-branding, and dim sum mooncake play 666 to fly.
After years of being criticized for over-packaging, mooncakes began to be "saved" by new consumption. Are mooncakes used for eating or gifting? Brands are over-premium, why do consumers pay?
<h2>First, the mooncake war in the 20 billion market</h2>
According to the "2021 China Mooncake Market and Consumption Trend Survey Report" released by Ai Media Consulting, China's mooncake sales climbed from 13.18 billion yuan in 2015 to 20.52 billion yuan in 2020.
One of the impacts of the epidemic is that the people are paying more and more attention to traditional festivals, and it is expected that the sales scale of Chinese mooncakes will reach 21.8 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 6.34% year-on-year.
Behind this are nearly 20,000 traditional mooncake manufacturers and countless handmade pastry workshops scattered across the country.
Mooncake is the most threshold-free holiday consumer goods, I believe there will be no doubts.
Whether it is the traditional old brands such as Huamei, Daoxiangcun and Wufangzhai, the derivatives of Guangzhou restaurants and Maxim's restaurant tycoons, or the cross-border new species of Starbucks, Xicha, Häagen-Dazs, and even almost all chain bakeries such as Hollylais and 85 degrees C, they have gone to the sea early to rush for gold.
But the mooncake track is easy to get into the industry and difficult to do.
First of all, the traditional mooncake inner roll was forced to go on the fast track.
The traditional brand Daoxiangcun originated in 1773, Guangzhou Restaurant was founded in 1935, Maxim's mooncake was born in 1956, brand recognition has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and mooncake is their main product for many years, but also the brand's main source of revenue.
However, the emergence of cross-border brands has still brought impact to some traditional brands.
According to the financial report data of Yuanzu shares, in recent years, the company's total sales of mooncakes have shown a downward trend, 2017-2019 were 4.3502 million, 3.2888 million, 3.3 million boxes, according to the financial report, 2020 mooncake sales compared to 2019 has not increased significantly.
In order to break the impact of cross-border brands, traditional mooncake brands have also realized the "Internet +" trend early on and laid out online channels to expand market share.
Up to now, the traditional brands Daoxiangcun, Huamei and Wufangzhai online sales share, online flagship store sales share are ranked in the top three, from tmall sales data, consumers for traditional brands are still enthusiastic.
Traditional brands are bent on change, and cross-border Internet celebrity mooncakes are worried that there is no moat.
New consumption has made more new players in the mooncake market, not only well-known coffee and tea brands such as Xicha, Starbucks, yuanqi forest, snack brands such as good shops and three squirrels, and Internet brands such as millet and NetEase Cloud Music.
The way to play cross-border Internet celebrities is IP linkage, which is the most convenient and effective.
Baicaowei jointly named "National Treasure", and Liangpin Shop cooperated with Dunhuang to launch a joint gift box. After Nai Xue Tea joined forces with the Forbidden City IP "朕之心" in 2020, this year it will carry out the national tide to the end and launch two national tide mooncake gift boxes, priced at 288 yuan and 368 yuan respectively.
Players are pouring in not only because they see the blue ocean of profitability in the mooncake market, but also because they want to take advantage of the Mid-Autumn Festival to "rub the heat".
However, compared with the deep cultivation of traditional brands, cross-border brands are less "professional".
Since 2008, enterprises producing mooncakes must obtain QS qualifications, and QS qualifications have made requirements for the scale, plant area, equipment, etc. of mooncake production enterprises, but many cross-border brands do not have this qualification, and OEM has become the first choice.
The mooncake of Heytea is the OEM of Guangzhou Restaurant, and Heytea is mainly responsible for controlling the taste of the filling. And OEM will inevitably bring about food safety problems. As early as 2005, Xinhua Newspaper Network reported that there was a problem of live insects in Starbucks mooncakes.
Traditional brands actively seek change, and internet celebrity mooncakes need a moat, so can big brands grow in the mooncake long-tail market?
In addition to traditional brands and internet celebrity mooncakes, local flavors of mooncakes are also capturing the stomachs of young people.
The content related to "mooncakes" on the Little Red Book has soared since August, and many of the evaluation notes are crazy Amway for local mooncakes.
From the data point of view, the 50% market share of Cantonese mooncakes is the most popular, followed by Su-style mooncakes (36.1%) and Beijing-style mooncakes (34.7%).
Inner Mongolia milk skin mooncake, Minnan taro pureed potato mooncake, Henan crispy mooncake... Not to mention more.
The CBNData consumption station summarized the local mooncakes with the highest voice and found that the taste, size and process that are different from the conventional mooncakes can become the reasons for the local mooncakes to go out of the circle. At the same time, the blessing of new retail channels, live broadcasts, short videos and other channels is also a powerful driver.
Take Changsha net red mooncake "mooncake brother" as an example. In the short video released by the "Mooncake Brother" Douyin account, it shows the production scenes such as fresh bags, fresh baking, and fresh sale, as well as the tempting close-up of the newly baked mooncake cutting display, because of the onlookers and orders.
Feigua data shows that the mooncake brother Douyin small shop averages nearly 10 hours of live broadcasting every day, with a sales conversion rate of 10.17%, while the conversion rate of the traditional brand Daoxiangcun is 6.09%, and the Guangzhou restaurant is 3.79%.
The mooncake market, which is being rolled up, is gradually blossoming with new consumption.
<h2>Second, the "mooncake business experience" under the new consumption</h2>
Everyone is making mooncakes, do mooncakes really make money?
Ai Media Consulting data shows that compared with 2020, consumers' 2021 mooncake consumption budget accounted for the highest proportion of 100-199 yuan, an increase of 7.4% to 27.5%; the proportion between 200-299 yuan reached 33.3%, an increase of 6.5%; while the proportion of the budget within 99 yuan fell to 12.8%.
The increase in budget will continue to drive the growth of the mooncake market, and also push back the price of mooncakes to become more and more expensive.
In the Guangzhou Restaurant Tmall store, a 393-gram milk yellow flow heart mooncake costs 128 yuan at 0.25 yuan per gram; Doraemon 300 grams of flow heart co-branded package costs 208 yuan, 0.59 yuan per gram, which is 2.36 times that of the ordinary model; the 390 grams of milk yellow flow heart Pikachu jointly branded with Pokémon is priced at 198 yuan, which is 0.43 yuan per gram, which is 1.72 times that of the ordinary model.
Not only traditional brands, but also the premium of Internet celebrity brands is not low, and the 360-gram joint gift box of Heytea and Seesaw is priced at 288 yuan, which is equivalent to 0.8 yuan per gram, far exceeding the same type of products.
The product logic of "not expensive is not a new consumption" has also been reproduced in the mooncake.
The increase in the price makes the profit more impressive.
According to the daily economic news report, the gross profit margin of the general mooncake is more than 20%, and the high-end mooncake is a little more than 30%.
The gross profit margin of the mooncake with brand value is very high, the gross profit margin of the Guangzhou restaurant mooncake is as high as 62.27%, and the gross profit margin of the mooncake of Yuanzu shares is 65.85%, which can be called the "printing machine of the dim sum world".
Traditional mooncake brands have an independent production system, which has more advantages in smoothing costs and profitability. For influencer brands that lack a supply chain, profits are far less high than traditional brands.
If they want to get greater profit margins, they can only increase the price of products, but it also leads to the phenomenon of "sky-high mooncakes".
Taking the mooncake gift box launched by Starbucks in 2020 as an example, 4 are packed with 248 yuan and 6 are 358 yuan, with an average price of more than 50 yuan per mooncake, which is complained by consumers as the "lowest cost performance" mooncake.
Scalpers fry coupons, stage empty gloves white wolves.
Among the economic passages of mooncakes, there is one of the most famous: the manufacturer first prints a mooncake ticket with a face value of 100 yuan, sells it to the dealer for 60 yuan, and then sells it to boss A for 75 yuan, and boss A gives the mooncake ticket to the employee or customer B. B did not like to eat mooncakes, directly sold the ticket 40 yuan to the scalper, and finally the manufacturer bought the mooncake ticket from the scalper for 50 yuan below the face price.
There is no physical exchange in the whole process, but the money flows into the pockets of many parties: the manufacturer earns 10 yuan through printing, the dealer earns 15 yuan, the scalper earns 10 yuan, and B earns 40 yuan. Boss A has received the gratitude of customers or employees.
In fact, this is not a paragraph, but a real thing.
The scalper business of buying and selling mooncake coupons generally starts about a month before the festival every year, mainly for the acquisition of popular products under well-known brands, and the mooncakes of Brands such as Guangzhou Restaurant, Starbucks, and Xinghualou are the most popular.
The recycling price of different brands of mooncake coupons is also different. Häagen-Dazs' ice cream mooncake coupons are recycled at a 6.5% discount, and Guangzhou Restaurant and Starbucks' mooncake coupons are 30% off and 10% off, respectively.
Mooncake has formed a mature industrial chain.
<h2>Third, the taste is young, conquer the picky young people</h2>
For consumers, the taste of the mooncake is the ultimate need to care.
Fruit mooncakes, black truffle mooncakes, durian mooncakes, multigrain mooncakes... Today's mooncakes are more and more rich in taste, inseparable from the new generation of consumers: Generation Z, who grew up in the wave of Internet development, has gradually become the main consumer force, they pursue new and interesting experiences, advocate "appearance", and also care about health. So low-sugar and low-fat healthy mooncakes, blind box mooncakes... It becomes the product of the inner roll of the mooncake.
For example, this year's hottest "Shanghai Mental Health Center" mooncake, 100 yuan mooncake fried at a sky-high price of 1288. Cake is no longer a moon cake, but the most cattle social currency of the year, open the purchasing page to take a look, only to see that the "spirit cake" several big words have been juxtaposed with Hermès, Bulgari, Dior.
Guizhou province medical mooncake is also famous, and the people of Guizhou droole to regard it as a spiritual totem. Even registered the name of "Shengyi Mooncake", and specially started the sale of mooncakes.
Snail powder mooncake, crayfish mooncake, chrysanthemum Pu'er mooncake... The popularity of various hunting filling mooncakes has even spawned a new type of profession, which is called
Creative taste designer of mooncakes.
At the same time, young people who pay attention to health care are daunting for high-sugar mooncakes, and low-sugar and low-fat have become the must-have for every brand.
Young people's consumption demand for "0 fat 0 sugar 0 card" has driven the popularity of low-calorie mooncakes, Guangzhou restaurants, Maxim's and so on have launched low-fat and low-sugar products on the basis of traditional tastes, Xinghualou and Nestlé jointly launched plant meat mooncakes, and Suzhou Daoxiangcun launched 5 main low-sugar mooncakes.
But this kind of change is also risky, a few days ago a large factory because of the addiction to sugar reduction and the "big V invitation" accident, has been a lesson for everyone to taste.
In any case, the mooncakes that are constantly rolled up have begun to pay less attention to packaging, but more attention to the taste itself, so that young people can eat delicious mooncakes, which is itself the progress of the industry.
Mooncake consumption is on the rise, and the mooncake market is becoming more and more diverse. With the intensive entry of new players, the seemingly traditional market of mooncakes has also been injected with new blood.
Around the mooncake can derive a huge industrial chain, a wealth of innovative products, and even a gift certificate industry chain far beyond the food category. A new generation of consumers are looking for personalized demands on taste, and merchants are digging for greater profit margins on mooncakes.
In short, the mooncake is a box, and anything can be put into it.