In Beijing's Wangjing office area, all restaurants are for migrant workers. From Jinding Xuan to the Super Bowl, Convenience Bee to Shaxian, no matter the occasion or price, anyone can find their own pre-made dishes. But when the temperature drops to 13 degrees, when overtime works appear on my face in the form of acne marks on fire - I still chose Malatang. It seems that since seven or eight years ago, Malatang has changed. It was weighed by the pound, the average price of meat and vegetables, and once I didn't hold it steady, I actually ate 45 yuan. Since that time, I have avoided the noodles and meatballs on the scale, and have eaten vegetables and soy products as the staple food, but even if I control it, the total price is about 30 yuan. 10 years ago, this price might have made people want to go to the police station to report the crime, but in 2023, it has become the norm in first- and second-tier cities. Eating such a bowl of spicy tang, a sense of powerlessness spreads in the body. I hated myself, why did I come in when I knew I couldn't get enough to eat? I can't understand it at all, "a small handful of artemisia stalks, enoki mushrooms, two pieces of frozen tofu, three or four quail eggs and a few hot pot noodles", how can it be 30 yuan?
It is as if it is entangled in an indescribable business trap, whether it is forward or backward, it is a huge pit. Text | Mei Shanshan
Malatang, why is it so expensive?
When I got home, I made a careful calculation.
Based on the price of Meituan on November 1, 2023, it is 0.55 yuan (per 50 grams) for artemisia stalks and 0.35 yuan (per 50 grams) for enoki mushrooms. A box of tofu is 4.5 yuan, which is converted into about 16 pieces of Yang Guofu's size, 5 cents (2 small pieces). Shelled quail eggs are 10.8 yuan a piece of 24 pieces, that is 1.8 yuan (4 pieces), and the average price of hot pot noodles is 5 yuan a bag, and my portion will not exceed 5 cents.
With this cognition, I opened the takeaway APP, and the "business ingenuity" after the cloud gradually became clear.
On the mobile phone takeaway side, Yang Guofu's artemisia rod is priced at 4.98 yuan (about 50g) and enoki mushroom is 4.98 yuan (about 50g). Frozen tofu is 4.98 yuan (4 pieces), quail eggs are 4.98 yuan (4 pieces), and hot pot noodles are expensive for one dollar, 5.98 yuan (about 50g) - each of which is nearly ten times more than the daily price of dishes!
Stills from "Falling in Love with You".
According to Yang Guofu's self-sharing in the 2022 prospectus, such a "weighing by catty" pricing method is the first for Yang Guofu in Malatang. After developing thousands of chain stores, Yang Guofu realized that even if the traditional Malatang bowl rose from 3 yuan to 8 yuan, it was still impossible to sell at a high price, and if he wanted to make money, he must put the pricing power and choice in the hands of consumers, so that consumers could feel that they could "eat more and spend more, eat less and spend less, and eat what they like".
Of course, it's just the "feeling" of being in control.
The business world calls this pricing strategy "fuzzy pricing", and the core of it is that Daifuku increases the time and energy cost of consumers' "price comparison", so that you can consciously give up because your brain cannot work quickly.
For example, everyone has a baked cake shop downstairs. If you bought 3 biscuits for 1 yuan when you were a child, then 20 years later, as long as the size of the biscuits has not changed, the boss has not changed, and people have a clear cognitive boundary of the magnitude of price increases, you will only accept one dollar at most, and no matter how expensive it is, you will change stores. The price reference over the years has given us the confidence that we know how it should be and what it shouldn't be - this is a quick price comparison.
Suppose one day, the owner of the pancake shop changes. Still sell baked cakes, but set the taste you are familiar with since childhood as "original", add a variety of flavors such as plum dried vegetable meat, scallion oil, black sesame sugar, and even snail noodles, and change the baked cakes to the size of the palm of your hand, and the external price is 8 yuan a catty to choose at will. At this time, the price reference over the years will fall to the ground like a building with a directional blast. You're forced to rethink: Is $8 expensive? It doesn't seem to be expensive. How many can you buy for $8? I don't seem to know. When you're in the mood and buy two of each flavor, the price of 24 yuan will be displayed on the screen. The pancake that used to be expensive for a dollar may make you pay obediently at this time. This is fuzzy pricing.
Stills from "A Piece of Wood".
When Yang Guofu decided to sell meat and vegetables at an average price by the pound, what was broken was our basic common sense of Malatang. Especially in supermarkets everywhere, mobile phones are brushed to deliver food to home today, how much does 50 grams weigh, how much can a pound buy, young people really have no concept at all.
In Jing'an Temple, Shanghai, a light food store has taken this pricing strategy to the extreme. They make mashed potatoes and pasta into the shape of desserts, and the weight of each is far more than half a catty, but the price is presented in 100 grams. Vegetable salad is 23.8 yuan/100 grams, and few people really calculate that a pound actually costs 119 yuan. When the young man passed by, he first thought that he had seen a beautiful and cost-effective delicacies, and when he opened his mouth to weigh it, he found that two slices of thin-cut beef were already 100 grams. However, the plastic box is dirty, the waiter is in place, and it seems that he can't save face if he doesn't buy it hard, "a few vegetable leaves and a few pasta sticks and a lump of potatoes cost more than 100 pieces, and you can't eat enough at all", which has become another reason why people complain about the price of Shanghai.
When the brain can't quickly build up the sensitivity to the price, the initiative falls into the hands of the boss, especially if they continue to use the familiar unit of measurement (catties/grams) when we buy groceries, and our brain strikes.
Stills from "Ode to Joy".
The power of one person can bring wealth to the entire industry
Malatang originated on the banks of the Min River in Sichuan Province and was originally the diet of boatmen and slender men. In the 90s of the last century, they appeared in the form of roadside stalls all over Sichuan, and the spicy soup base was the soul. In this province where the master of braised spices per capita, what is the ratio of fresh chopped pepper and bean paste, how to add pepper, cardamom, grass and angelica, each family has its own secret recipe, and outsiders don't know.
At that time, people rarely ate out, so Malatang chose to open at the bus stop or at the entrance of the community. Adults riding 28 bars, going to work from the assembly line, picking up children who have just come home from school, will smell the hot aroma wafting in the air. There is actually dinner at home, but there are also times when I can't help it. At this time, adults and children look at each other and smile, everything is in plain sight: bean skin and potatoes play the outpost, green leafy vegetables float gently, sprinkled with chili noodles and monosodium glutamate, pepper oil and red oil double ingredients, salty, fresh and spicy all eat into the kelp knot, oily green leafy vegetables can not stop in the spicy package, even if you eat to support, it is only 3~5 yuan, which is our original memory of Malatang.
It's just that Yang Guofu Zhang Liang, who is now chained all over the world, has nothing to do with Sichuan.
Stills from "The Rag Girl Has Spring Too".
At the end of the 90s, Yang Guofu, who was in his twenties, saw Malatang for the first time in Harbin. "In 2000, when I was still setting up a stall to grill squid, I saw that there was a very good business selling Sichuan Malatang next to me, so I began to study how to make a Malatang business." In an interview with Caijing magazine, Yang Guofu recalled. However, Northeast people are not good at eating spicy, even if Sichuan Malatang, which is popular in Northeast China, it is necessary to reduce the spiciness and increase some sesame sauce and garlic lamp seasoning that Northeast people like. A group of young people represented by Yang Guofu simply changed the soup base to a light bone broth, and the seasoning was all posterior, sesame sauce, garlic, chili, vinegar, coriander, and people added what they wanted to eat.
The time coincides with the end of the wave of layoffs in the Northeast, and a large number of middle-aged people who have bought out their seniority and bring their families are trying to find a way out of the second half of their lives. Yang Guofu saw the future of Malatang in the franchise, "In 2009, I collected two or three million franchise fees a year", so he began to focus on self-replication. Another person who sees this future is Yang Guofu's 15-year-old cousin-in-law Zhang Liang.
The two main forces of this family tacitly began to rule over China Malatang.
As of April 2023, there are 494 Malatang brands in the country, but except for Zhang Liang Malatang (6,020) and Yang Guofu Malatang (5,380), the number of stores of other brands has not exceeded 1,000. In other words, more than 65% of the Malatang chain stores in China are from this family in Harbin, northeast China.
When they decided to change the pricing rules of Malatang, what changed was the price of Malatang in China.
Stills from "My Physical Education Teacher".
Why can't I resist eating Malatang?
It's no problem, I can choose not to go. But why, I didn't? I thought about it and found that the answer was not as simple as I thought.
As children raised by Chinese parents, we are born with a shackle mantra. Even if you are away from home and away from your parents, when you eat several meals irregularly in a row, when your body is out of shape, your skin is on fire and uncomfortable, your head will automatically enter the voice of "Look at you, are you eating too few vegetables" and "You have been eating too much recently", echoing in my brain like PTSD.
Yes, eat more vegetables, eat three meals regularly, and be responsible for yourself... In the face of the voice in our heads, we accept it one by one. However, do we really have time to cook our own vegetables?
No.
Stills from "The True Story of Hot Mom".
I got off work around half past eight, and when I came back from my empty home after a long journey, I just wanted to lie in bed and do nothing. Even if you have the heart to plan a recipe on the weekend, you will find that you can't just buy 50g of enoki mushrooms in the real world, and the premise of free shipping is to make up 49 yuan. When I scrape together and receive a lot of fresh melons and fruits, most of them will rot in the refrigerator in the various lives and social interactions of the coming week.
We were forced to choose to eat out, and we found those diets that still had fresh vitamins and dietary fibre in the pre-made dishes.
Perhaps there is some natural prejudice against Western food, or perhaps Western food has not yet found the perfect solution for "fuzzy pricing" in China, spending 30 yuan to buy a salad will always give the stomach and stomach accustomed to the taste of China a sense of uncivilized food. Malatang is at least cooked in Chinese broth, baptized by the seasoning of Chinese dining wisdom, and has undoubted advantages over salads.
So, even if it is so expensive that it is not enough to eat at 30 per capita, it still enters the Malatang chain. We are trapped in the double trap of self and the world, unable to move.
Stills from "The True Story of Hot Mom".
#Malatang is so expensive that you can't eat enough for 40 yuan#