After a ten-year cycle, Tanyu launched a global development strategy

At the 10th anniversary press conference of the brand, while announcing the global development strategy, Tanyu also upgraded several major measures to support partners - increasing the annual investment in brand promotion, building 25 directly operated benchmark stores in core representative cities, and co-investing with excellent partners to build franchise benchmark stores in important cities.

In 2013, a restaurant called "Tanyu" opened in Nanshan Coastal City, Shenzhen, a catering brand that brought grilled fish into large shopping malls, and suddenly emerged in Shenzhen, with a daily turnover rate of 16 rounds.

In the past ten years, Tanyu has covered more than 80 cities across the country, with stores outside Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, a total of 5 regions outside Chinese mainland.

In recent years, the chain rate of mainland catering brands has increased year by year. According to the big data of red meals, the restaurant chain rate will reach 19% in 2022, compared with only 12% during 2018. Although the new Chinese catering has ushered in various development opportunities, in the fierce competition pattern, if the brand does not have core barriers and is limited to traffic, even if the valuation is high, it is only a false fire. Moreover, some of the top new consumer brands have provided a lesson from the past, which have successfully attracted traffic and capital, but have never been able to capture the market at scale.

From driving the "grilled fish boom" to leading the market share of the grilled fish category in the country, Tanyu has come to a milestone moment after ten years of development.

On December 12, 2023, Tanyu held its 10th anniversary press conference. Leaders from the China Cuisine Association and the Shenzhen Cuisine Association came to the scene to affirm the achievements of fish exploration and put forward new expectations. Standing at the starting point of the cycle, Tanyu launched a new strategic plan for global development. Why does a Chinese grilled fish restaurant adopt a globalization strategy, what are the risks and challenges, and what opportunities and values does it mean?

A grilled fish brand that challenges the Guinness Book of Records

Compared with eye-catching marketing methods such as "magic spell serving" and "subject 3" short video live broadcast, Tanyu hopes to form consumers' brand awareness through the product power of meals.

In October this year, the first brand "Douhua Festival" held by Tanyu set a Guinness World Record. In the Foshan Creative Industry Park, Tanyu has set up a number of ready-made "bean curd stalls", and consumers can check in offline to enjoy Tanyu's handmade fresh bean curd unlimitedly. Within one day, Tanyu broke the world record of "the most bean curd delivered in 8 hours". During the event, combined promotional methods such as "Unlimited Continuation of Fish Exploration Douhua" and "Grilled Fish Coupon for Douhua Stallholders" also brought a large number of consumers to the Tanyu store.

"Chongqing Grilled Fish with Bean Curd" is the first signature dish launched by Tanyu in the early days of the brand, and it is also a symbol of Tanyu's product differentiation compared with brands in the same category. Wang Lijia, the founder of Tanyu, told 36Kr: "Tanyu's bean curd is freshly made in the store, including the entire process of soaking beans, grinding beans, boiling soy milk, and ordering bean curd, which not only gives consumers a sense of ritual, but also can get consumer feedback at the first time and then adjust our products." ”

"In order to allow our customers to eat the best bean curd, we have given up the method of making it in a mature SOP factory and transporting it to the store. The water content of tofu is very high, and in the process of transportation, the water content of tofu will decrease due to the bumps and shaking of the car, which will affect the taste of tofu. In the end, we decided to make it in the store, which was higher than the cost of factory production, but won the reputation of customers. Wang Liga said.

In addition to the classic dish "Chongqing Grilled Fish with Bean Curd" in the early days of the brand's establishment, Tanyu also launched another signature explosive product, "Fresh Green Pepper Grilled Fish", which set a record of more than 50% of the turnover contributed by a single product.

At the press conference of the brand's 10th anniversary, Frost & Sullivan, a consulting agency, awarded the "Pioneer of Fresh Green Pepper Flavor" certification to Tanyu, which once again confirmed the industry-leading role of the Tanyu brand in product taste.

In the ten years since the establishment of the brand, Tanyu has continuously adjusted and enriched the product categories of the store, and innovated the flavor type, side dishes, and raw materials of grilled fish. As of March 2023, there are more than 120 flavors and flavors in Tanyu's product library, grilled fish alone, and other categories of food have also been developed with rich research and development results.

In 2023, Tanyu will successively launch sweet, spicy, braised and spicy flavors, and add grilled fish items such as "spicy braised grilled fish" and "curry grilled fish". At the same time, the new product "Grilled Fish with Fresh Green Peppers and Green Onions" has formed a "explosive effect" in 7 days on the market, and the sales volume of new grilled fish products increased by 105% compared with the same period last year.

During the launch of "Grilled Fish with Fresh Green Peppers and Onions", Tanyu chose to cross-border linkage with "Super Plants", where consumers who buy new grilled fish can receive a "Green Onion Seed Card" that can grow shallots, and then obtain a limited co-branded product "Canned Green Onions" through online interaction, allowing users to realize emotional value while eating fish.

To maintain consumers' memory of Tanyu in terms of taste, Tanyu insists on exploring mainstream user groups and their needs, and continues to create scenario-based brand moments in which users actively participate.

In the process of accelerating the reshuffle of chain restaurants, eating has evolved into a kind of scene consumption and cultural consumption. In terms of offline consumption scenarios, Tanyu has gradually launched new store types such as "LAB stores", "POP stores" and "RICH stores", which represent service experience scenes, supper party scenes and game experience scenes. It not only caters to the "appearance consumption" of young people, but also meets their social needs.

Taking Tanyu's "RICH Store" in Foshan as an example, referring to the successful operation experience of the previous LAB store and POP store, the store has built a scene of dining in the "Entertainment City", evoked the "memory killing" of young people, reproduced the board games of their childhood, and integrated virtual game elements such as gold coins, money villages, stations, and airports into the dining scene;

The "K-shaped differentiation" of the 100 billion scale grilled fish market

According to iiMedia Consulting data, in 2018, the market size of China's grilled fish has reached 103.47 billion yuan, and it is expected that the market size will exceed 130 billion yuan in 2023. Between 2015 and 2021, the number of registered fish companies in China also doubled, from 27,526 to 48,737.

Tanyu, which was established ten years ago, has "bet" on a track of continuous growth, but the pattern of "K-shaped differentiation" has also quietly emerged, that is, with the increasing number of registered enterprises in grilled fish, the competition in the grilled fish catering category is fierce, forming a differentiation trend of one end reaching upwards and one end falling downwards.

As an upward extension of the brand, the secret of Tanyu's journey through the cycle includes in-depth support and support for partners, in addition to higher differentiated requirements for SKUs, tastes, and store experience.

Up to now, Tanyu has more than 300 stores across the country, including more than 150 directly operated stores, covering 26 provinces and more than 80 cities across the country. At the 10th anniversary press conference of the brand, Tanyu introduced that at the franchise level, Tanyu benchmarked against international restaurant chain giants, adhered to the integration of direct franchise, and brought no difference in customer experience.

After years of repeated polishing and verification, Tanyu has formed a variety of single-store models, including three models: benchmark project stores, third- and fourth-line sinking market stores and small stores. The size of the final store is based on Tanyu's calculation of the city's consumption level, the number of people in the business district, and the user portrait. In addition, in order to improve the adaptability of the taste of grilled fish, Tanyu also provides regional menus for local stores. Tanyu provides partners with comprehensive support for site selection, design, engineering, talent, operation, digital intelligence system, etc.

Tanyu has a complete store management system, and the intelligent management boundary extends to finance, goods, operations, information, products, and brand management. Taking the financial management system as an example, based on years of store operation experience, Tanyu has precipitated a scientific and effective financial management system to help partners quickly grasp the business dynamics in the whole process.

According to the relevant data of Tanyu, under the combination of soft and hard power in the past ten years, the second store rate of its partners has exceeded 40%, and the store closure rate is only 3.8%, which is far lower than the industry average.

At the 10th anniversary conference of the brand, while announcing the global development strategy, Tanyu also upgraded several major measures to support partners - increasing the annual brand promotion investment, building 25 directly operated benchmark stores in core representative cities, jointly investing with excellent partners to build franchise benchmark stores in important cities, completing store site evaluation within 72 hours, completing store design within 15 days, 4 on-site engineering support services, and 6-8 times a month for headquarters to visit the store.

Ten years later, a new cycle is ushered in

In the face of the current situation of accelerating the reshuffle of new consumer brands, Tanyu has also experienced a "climbing period" of the brand in the ten years since its establishment.

Wang Lijia, founder of Tanyu, told 36Kr: "In 2019, the entire grilled fish category entered a short downhill period, and we hired a top consulting company at that time, spending more than 50 million yuan but no obvious effect. After that, Wang Lijia and his team began the exploration process of "seeking inward".

Wang Lijia said: "After 3,000 hours of meetings, I found that the solution to the problem must return to the store and to the needs of consumers."

Based on the insight of consumers, in 2019, Tanyu established the brand positioning of "Shuangma Infinite Happy Eating Fish". In addition to cross-brand co-branding, it is also constantly developing new consumption scenarios, such as camping season and pet month, with the aim of attracting young consumers from different interest circles.

According to market research, 80% of consumers are most concerned about the food safety of fish ingredients. Tanyu chooses to build its own tidal living water self-breeding base to control the source of products, and has established a full-chain supply chain integrating "production, supply and marketing".

Tanyu's supply chain base in Nansha has a total construction area of 52,000 square meters, with 2 factories and 1 comprehensive building, with a total investment of about 220 million yuan. At present, Tanyu's supply chain system includes 1 central factory, 5 cities and distribution centers. At present, it has fully realized the export supply of Melbourne, Singapore, Malaysia and other countries, and achieved a unified distribution rate of more than 95%.

For the supply chain base built with huge investment, Wang Lijia said that it can support the supply and operation of nearly 2,000 stores, matching our overall strategic needs for high-quality and rapid store expansion around the world. ”

Grilled fish, like the hot pot category, has long broken through the limitations of geography. Many years ago, restaurants with "grilled fish" as their signboard or main feature have spread all over the country, but the market size of the hot pot category has reached 500 billion yuan in 2021, compared with the grilled fish category with a scale of about 140 billion yuan, there is still more room for breakthrough.

"Chain restaurants are not the longest board, but must develop in a comprehensive and balanced way in order to continue to walk in the market. The goal of Tanyu is to develop in an all-round way, whether it is marketing promotion, digital operation, talent development, or products, services, environment, site selection and even supply chain construction, we must achieve above the industry average. Wang Liga further explained.