"Whatever, I'm afraid it's the simplest and most esoteric answer in the world. ”
At the beginning of the first theme short film "The Man Who Chooses a Restaurant" of "Douyin Heartbeat Restaurant Selection", Nicholas Tse, as the initiator of Douyin Life Service, broke the truth of "casual": People who are unwilling to choose restaurants are not without standards, but have not yet established standards, or in other words, have not yet waited for trustworthy standards.
On December 18, the list of "Douyin Heartbeat Selected Restaurants" released by Douyin Life Service for the first time is also doing this "simplest and most profound" thing.
The list includes 175 restaurants, covering 14 first-tier and new first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Hangzhou, including both "time-honored brands" that continue to work in the catering industry, as well as "new forces" that are developing rapidly. On the day of the release, not only did more than 7.5 million people wait for the release of the list online, but the number of #抖音心动甄选餐厅榜单 topics also reached 89.864 million times, which proves the attention and influence of the new list.
More importantly, based on this list, the search for taste can be very simple, whether you want to choose a restaurant or not, you can "close your eyes and choose casually"; the search for taste can also be very profound, how does the "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant" establish a set of trustworthy standards? How to take into account the cost performance and emotional value on the basis of deliciousness, and accommodate the current hot spots and future trends? How to make the restaurant not only a place to "eat and drink well", but also a scene where taste buds and stories are connected and exciting?
These reflections can be traced back to three basic questions about the new list: why is the new list needed? How did it come about? Is being selected for the list the end?
01 Why does the F&B industry need a new list? Evolution begins with change
How long has it been since there has been a new list in the catering industry, and whether the evaluation criteria of catering are in line with the current consumption environment?
According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to November 2023, the national catering revenue was 4,748.5 billion yuan, an increase of 19.4% year-on-year, which has exceeded the annual revenue in 2022, and the annual catering revenue is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan. While accelerating the recovery and expansion of the catering industry, it is also ushering in a "reshuffle moment". According to the "2023-2024 China Catering Entrepreneur Survey Report", the number of new catering registrations from January to October was as high as 3.501 million, and the cumulative sales volume was 1.056 million, while the annual sales volume in 2022 was only 519,000. For merchants, the more brutal the competition, the more they must break through.
A new list that is willing to open up its minds is not only to give merchants one more way to go, but also to work with merchants to go to the road that consumers need, change with the times, and advance due to changes.
As early as July this year, Douyin Life Service has started to promote the selection of "Douyin Heartbeat Selected Restaurants", announcing the four selection criteria of "New Boutique Catering": excellent production, value for money, aesthetic experience and unique innovation.
As a food and beverage list, "excellent production" is the threshold, and "Douyin Xindong Selected Restaurants" takes delicious food as the foundation, and attaches importance to the texture, taste and technique of the dishes. The "new boutique" is relatively concentrated in the other three dimensions, which is more like the "quality question" on behalf of consumers, merchants and the industry - "value for money" means that consumers point to the cost performance, and whether the dishes, services, atmosphere, and positioning really match the per capita; "aesthetic experience" represents the merchant asking himself whether the cuisine, vision, and cultural aesthetics carried by the dishes, restaurants and managers can shape the style and create emotional value; and "unique innovation" represents the industry to ask the bottom as the "Douyin heartbeat selection restaurant" Whether R&D and operation run through the sense of innovation and whether it can conform to the development direction of the industry.
Born and evolved in the midst of change, this new "Douyin Heartbeat Selection of Restaurants" selection starts from the needs of the industry and ends on the needs of consumers. In the list release ceremony, the "Douyin New Boutique Catering White Paper" was released at the same time, which can find that young people eat out to the frequency of normalization, experience rituals, consumption innovation and online decision-making.
"Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant" has completed the "new" and "meaning", and it is not difficult to understand why there are more than 90% of the "new power" restaurants on the final list. It's not that there are a lot of new restaurants opened this year, and it's not that the previous restaurants are careless, but because of the lack of clear, sound and enforceable selection criteria before, which has led to the continuous strengthening of "strong and strong", and "people who choose restaurants" and "people who open restaurants" have been suffering for a long time. In the "Salute to New Discoveries of Deliciousness - Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant Release Ceremony", as the initiator, Li Wei, vice president of Douyin Life Service's in-store business, said, "We hope to carefully select those good restaurants for users that are truly worth going to and can afford. We hope to find more businesses that operate with heart, so that they can be swiped, seen, and eaten by more users. ”
02 What is used to prove the credibility of the new list?
What kind of process did the new boutique restaurant new forces and old players go through to determine 175 of them on the list?
First of all, the "Douyin Heartbeat Selection of Restaurants" is not a simple manual selection, and the overall selection is based on user consumption and business operation data analysis. Backed by the rich content ecology of Douyin life services, users' evaluation of restaurants is as large as the location and decoration, as small as the aesthetics of utensils, not just one meal at a time, but penetrates into all aspects, in other words, it is a large amount of real data that has completed the preliminary nomination of the list.
On this basis, Douyin Life Service began to set up the "XD Organizing Committee", which is composed of the "XD Council" and the "Anonymous Jury". This year's members include Owen, Executive Producer of the Chinese/English Edition of Time Out Beijing, Yan Qiao, Founder of Epicure, Zhang Xinyu and Liang Hong, Top Ten Chinese Celebrity Chefs Sun Lixin, and "Please Refrigerator" Guest chef Ahn Hyun-min, senior food creator An Qiujin, senior food creator Special Wulala, senior food creator Tang Ye (true detective Tang Renjie), etc., provide a variety of professional perspectives. After the 500 shortlisted restaurants were determined by the "Heartbeat Council", food experts, food experts, food media and senior foodies formed an "anonymous judging panel" to score them as mystery visitors.
From the launch of the selection to the release of the list, which lasted for 5 months, the "Douyin Xindong Selection Restaurant" went through a seven-step selection process of preliminary nomination, interest declaration, qualification review, anonymous evaluation, data analysis, final review of the list and confirmation by third-party scrutineers, so as to achieve justice and ensure fairness and justice.
On the one hand, by clarifying the selection criteria, adhering to process justice, strengthening data capabilities, and enriching the lineup of the organizing committee, "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant" has built its own credibility, and on the other hand, as a new list, it is also actively carrying out diversified cooperation, seeking to break the circle, promote itself into the eyes of more consumers, and truly shape its credibility through the practice test of users.
Douyin Life Service invited Nicholas Tse, who won the industry award as a "gourmet", to serve as the "heartbeat initiator" and co-create the theme short film "The Man Who Chooses the Restaurant", which helped the list to be announced, promoted at all levels, and boosted the public's favorability. From the daily dialogue of "what to eat casually", the short film provides insight into the real pain points of the public when choosing a restaurant: "It is difficult to choose a restaurant with a good dining atmosphere and delicious appearance from the mixed reviews", which arouses emotional resonance, and then leads the public to further think about "why are people willing to choose restaurants despite such difficulties".
At the same time, "Douyin Heartbeat Restaurant" took the lead in Beijing and Shanghai to create a "Heartbeat Experience Day", selecting nearly 20 restaurants on the list to meet users first and enhance the public's sense of experience. The event not only helped merchants in the region to "make their group debut" with the help of Citywalk's hand-drawn map, but also helped merchants select packages online, test market reactions in advance, dynamically optimize group products and discounts, and grasp exposure opportunities in real interactions with users.
Starting from the evaluation mechanism and public awareness, the "Douyin Heartbeat Selection of Restaurants" transforms the credibility shaping process of the list into a detailed and scientific process announcement and concept display, helping merchants intuitively understand the specific connotation of the "new boutique catering vane", promoting the optimization of restaurant products, and bringing a new standard for boutique restaurants to the industry.
03 What is more important than being on the list? Manage it with your heart and continue to be on the list
At the launch ceremony of "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant", there is a word that is frequently mentioned: "heart".
"The details are more effortless, attentive, is the best response to the user's reputation, we believe that the era of attentive operators is coming. On the same day, this sentence was transferred to social media by many F&B practitioners, who said that too many events emphasize opportunity and innovation, and no one has mentioned intentions for a long time. And this also confirms another unique feature of the list of "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurants" - it is important to be on the list, but more important than being on the list is to grasp the volume of the head, manage it carefully, and then continue to be on the list.
After the announcement of the "Douyin Heartbeat Selection of Restaurants", Douyin Life Service has set up a matrix activity to help catering businesses operate in the future. At the short-term level, we quickly linked up with Nicholas Tse and the top Douyin experts to launch a 14-city store exploration plan, creating a check-in experience craze and boosting the penetration of the restaurants on the list among the local population. At the end of the year and other important consumption nodes, consumers are encouraged to check in at the store, share stories, efficiently accumulate the content of the first round of consumer experience after being listed, and drive the follow-up communication heat;
For the simple selection of the list, the peak exposure often appears at the "moment of the list", and the list also becomes a static result, and how to transform it into the actual customer flow to the store is a difficult problem in the minds of many businesses. However, with the help of the Douyin platform's interest dissemination, content planting, and consumption transaction capabilities, the "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant" has made the list have a dynamic effect, which can actively reach potential customers, not only with volume, but also with traffic, and more retention. Douyin Life Service will also build an "Interest Content Dissemination Matrix" to connect good merchants, good talents, and good guests, and help merchants and users complete the whole process transformation of "from planting grass to consumption, and then to word-of-mouth savings" more conveniently through platform traffic support. At present, more and more merchants have chosen to operate on the platform, and Douyin Life Service will also provide nine traffic rights and interests for "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant" for a long time, including live broadcast, search, same-city recommendation, etc., so that "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant" is not only a logo and identity, but also an entrance and traffic.
"Douyin Xindong Restaurant Selection" helps businesses that operate with heart to reach the target on the list, obtain business growth, and then accumulate more resources for R&D and innovation, and gradually drive the formation of a positive business cycle in the catering industry. And this is also the "butterfly effect" that a new list hopes to achieve.
Let's look back at the three basic questions at the beginning.
Why do we need this new list? Because the changing industry environment and consumption trends require new selection criteria, and delicious food is just the foundation.
How did the new list come about? Through the improvement of the evaluation mechanism and the establishment of public awareness, the list will be evaluated and the credibility will be shaped.
Is being included in the list the end? It may have been in the past, but in the "Douyin Heartbeat Selection Restaurant", the value of the list can only be truly reflected by careful management.
Based on massive data, over a period of 5 months, more than 30 anonymous judges ate 14 cities and selected 175 high-quality restaurants. Douyin Life Service is always looking forward to setting foot in more cities with constantly updated selection criteria, discovering more restaurants based on delicious food and polishing their characteristics, and also looking forward to working with more restaurant managers with ideas to promote the continuous development of the entire Chinese catering industry in the direction of refinement and high quality.