Quanjude was once the pinnacle representative of Beijing's catering industry and Premier Zhou's first choice for receiving foreign guests.
For old Beijingers, it is too authentic to be able to eat an authentic Quanjude roast duck.
However, this time-honored brand, which has been tempered for more than 100 years, has now lost 700 million yuan for three consecutive years, and its stock price has been falling.
Why is no one paying for this once top brand?
The information in this article comes from (surging news) 2022/4/13, in order to improve the readability of the article, the details may be polished, please read sensibly, for reference only!
Authentic Quanjude
Beijing's Qianmen is a bustling place, with its century-old Quanjude main store, but the bustling crowd in front of it is a stark contrast to the few diners inside.
After a closer look, I found that Quanjude has become a place for people to check in and take pictures, the enthusiasm of diners is no longer there, and Beijing locals are shaking their heads at it.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Quanjude was also the strongest representative of Peking duck, with a turnover of 350 million in the first half of 2001.
To achieve this kind of achievement, it is certainly not only the old customers in Beijing, but also countless tourists from other regions and even foreign friends.
In 2007, the Quanjude brand successfully raised 380 million yuan, becoming the first time-honored brand listed in the catering industry.
Until 2012, it was still a food mecca in people's hearts, and people from other places came to Beijing to order a taste of anything, not only for tasting, but also to experience the ritual sense of old Beijing.
Unfortunately, these glorious histories have become a thing of the past, and in recent years, Quanjude's business situation has plummeted, and even lost money year after year.
Although there was a slight improvement in the first half of this year, achieving a net profit of more than 20 million, not all of these profits came from Quanjude's roast duck business, most of them were other investment income and financial support from the government.
What mistake did Quanjude make? Could it be that consumers' tastes have changed too quickly?
The decline of Quanjude
The beginning of the decline of Quanjude began in 2014, the year when Quanjude suddenly became infamous.
The turmoil originated from a netizen in Beijing, who took customers from other places to Quanjude to experience the flavor of Beijing.
He posted his bill on the Internet, perhaps wanting to complain, but he didn't expect it to resonate with countless netizens.
We can see that on the bill posted by this netizen, it doesn't look very rich, just a set of roast duck plus a few vegetarian dishes and drinks, which actually reached 837 yuan, and there are more than 80 service fees, which is almost 1,000 yuan for a roast duck meal.
And what's more abstract is that this set of ducks is clearly divided, even the green onions and sauce have to be charged, and a bundle of watermelon juice can be sold for 170!
With the complaints of countless netizens, Quanjude's reputation plummeted.
Some people said that the current price of Quanjude has far exceeded that of its counterparts who make roast duck, and three or four people will have at least 1,000 yuan for a meal, and they may not even be full.
In addition to the disgust and complaints caused by diners in terms of price, the service attitude in the Quanjude store is also indescribable.
Many netizens reported that when eating in Quanjude, the waiter always looked arrogant, and when the soup was served, the bowl was also knocked on the tinkling, even if it was splashed on the customer's clothes, he had an indifferent expression.
And with such a quality of service, Quanjude also charges the so-called service fee, which makes the diners angry.
The most complaining thing for customers is the taste of Quanjude.
As a former palace meal, Quanjude does have two brushes, their hanging oven roast duck is fat but not greasy, thin but not firewood, and eating a bite makes people have endless aftertaste.
However, after Quanjude went public in 2007, in order to expand rapidly, it lost the hanging furnace technology passed down from its ancestors and began to study the operation of the oven through a computer.
Although Quanjude believes that this is the progress of industrialization and will not change the taste, the reality is that the taste of Quanjude roast duck does not have the previous taste.
This has led to those who were once willing to pay a premium for the taste of Quanjude to switch to other restaurants.
This year, Quanjude has become synonymous with high prices and poor reputation from a once popular national brand.
This 159-year-old brand is facing an unprecedented crisis, what kind of strategy will they adopt?
Quanjude strategy
It is impossible to save yourself, and Quanjude chose to ignore the tide of bad reviews on the Internet.
In the eyes of Quanjude, he is a century-old brand, the palace is delicious, there is no need to please customers, and it is natural for those people to eat.
Even Quanjude began to play the ancient method of propaganda, discussing how complicated the roast duck is, requiring 31 processes, etc., as if he wanted to take a lofty route.
However, Quanjude ignores the fact that roast duck is not a food with a high threshold, and in Beijing, there are countless people who make roast duck, and they are usually sold for twenty or thirty prices, and each has its own taste.
If you want to enjoy the dining ceremony or pursue a high-end place, then the Four Seasons Minfu and Yongle Restaurant are also rising, and they will provide better service and more reasonable prices.
Of course, in order to change this status quo, in 2019, Zhou Yanlong parachuted into Quanjude as the general manager, ready to show his skills and save Quanjude from danger.
It is worth mentioning that Zhou Yanlong was the general manager of another time-honored brand, Donglaishun, and these two are still brother companies.
After Zhou Yanlong came to Quanjude, he began to choose to listen to the opinions of some netizens, and he decisively canceled the service fee and lowered the overall price of dishes by 10%.
At the same time, Zhou Yanlong also knows that he can't always stick to the old dishes, he stipulates that new dishes must be launched every year, and in order to seize the huge consumer market of young people, he has also created several casual snacks.
What's more creative is that in 2021, Quanjude will also play linkage and cooperate with Universal Studios Beijing, where you can eat roast duck while playing.
However, this did not reverse the decline of Quanjude, and Quanjude still lost money in 2021, but it was better than in 2020.
This exposes that there are more than these problems in Quanjude, and the reputation cannot be reversed in a while.
Nowadays, with transparent social information, diners know exactly how much a duck costs, and they know that making a duck is not that complicated.
Therefore, many diners who are good at this bite are no longer blindly pursuing time-honored brands, but they prefer those small restaurants with good reputation and full of taste.
For this phenomenon, Quanjude also felt helpless, so he could only find another way to invest in other industries, but Quanjude engaged in it back and forth, and the sales volume was not high, so it could only end hastily.
The plight of the time-honored brands
Once, Quanjude, like many time-honored brands, was also done little by little.
Yang Quanren, the founder of Quanjude, is just a small vendor selling ducks, and his lifelong dream is to open a shop so that he and others can eat.
After decades of hard work, Yang Quanren finally has a store of his own, and operates it with heart, painstakingly studying the method of roast duck, and only then does the brand and reputation grow little by little.
However, now after more than 100 years of ups and downs, Quanjude is getting worse day by day.
According to the survey, among the more than 1,600 Chinese time-honored brands, 20% have been losing money for a long time, and some have even disappeared, while 70% are barely surviving, and only 10% are operating well.
These data all show that the once time-honored stores also need to innovate and adapt to the development of the times, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve more long-term development.