The 25 yuan bowl of Hefu Lao noodles is finally here.
At the recent brand press conference, Hefu Lao Mian put forward the concept of "health and inclusiveness" for the first time, and launched a new menu after the 2.0 upgrade, including 25 yuan for Angelica pork bone soup and bamboo shoot noodles, and the baby tomato noodle package containing tomato soup noodles, soft-boiled eggs and golden potato snacks is only 26 yuan. While improving product quality, the price stratification strategy of Hefu Lao Mian has established a product matrix covering an ultra-wide price band of 25-108 yuan, and increased the proportion of products of 25-29 yuan, which can also be described as "unique" among many noodle restaurant brands.
The global penetration of the price band is an action that many consumer brands have been carrying out since the beginning of this year. Heytea has already expanded the price to the price range of 20 yuan, and soy sauce wine below 400 yuan is becoming the mainstream of new product sales, and Haidilao has also launched a cheap sub-brand "Hi Lao Hot Pot" this year.
Whether it is pasta, hot pot or tea, they are essentially mass consumer goods, and the brand carries out the layout of the global price and penetrates into different consumer circles, which to a certain extent has the right to speak on the product pricing system. The right to speak on price determines its initiative in the future market competition.
At the moment when the catering track continues to roll in, will Hefu Lao Mian be able to exert its accumulated skills after entering the 25-29 yuan price band, and what imagination space will it bring to the industry?
With the recovery of catering, how should brands break through in the "involution"?
With the recovery of the catering industry, players in this industry have begun to accelerate their "rolling" again.
From the perspective of consumption, according to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to November this year, the national catering revenue was 4,748.5 billion yuan, an increase of 19.4% year-on-year, and the growth rate of catering revenue was 12.2 percentage points ahead of the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods. According to the incomplete statistics of Jiemian News, in November, the catering track became hot again, with 14 investment and financing events.
An institutional investor said in an interview with Jiemian News that the catering chain brands they invested in have performed well this year, and the chain catering track still has the underlying logic to support it, and it still has room for imagination, "On the whole, everyone's confidence is back." He said.
In the catering track, the growth of Chinese fast food has strong certainty and can have the resilience to pass through the cycle. According to data from Zhiyan Consulting, the size of China's Chinese fast food market reached 774.4 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 115.4 billion yuan from 2020, and is expected to reach 1,268.5 billion yuan in 2025, accounting for 70.11% of the market size of the fast food industry, with a compound growth rate of 13.13%.
It can be seen that the potential of the Chinese chain restaurant track is still there, so how to grasp the opportunity is the key to breaking the game for each player.
In the logic of traditional Chinese catering, the first way to seize the market is to expand and open stores. However, the new catering brands that emerged subsequently did not completely rely on such a simple and crude method, but found their own market through refined operation and precise positioning.
For example, Hefu Lao Mein, which is now already the head brand of the subdivision track, successfully stuck in the price range of 40 yuan to 45 yuan when entering the market, and opened the consumption upgrade of Chinese noodle soup with high-quality raw soup base and product innovation, as well as a store experience with new Chinese aesthetics. This model has subsequently led entrepreneurs in other vertical fields, such as rice noodles, rice noodles, beef noodles and other subdivisions.
When Hefu Lao Mian has gained a firm foothold in this price band, it is a wise way to penetrate into different price bands through refined operation.
On the one hand, the establishment of a global price band allows consumers to have a variety of choices, and at the same time can reach a wider range of consumer groups, so as to have more initiative in the competition. On the other hand, Hefu Lao Mian can use the brand reputation, product innovation experience and high-quality raw materials that have been established earlier in the price of 25-29 yuan. These R&D experience and supply chain advantages are insurmountable competitive barriers for other brands in the same price band in the short term.
Price, scale and taste, the proposition of impossible triangle?
The establishment of a global price band is actually a test for a brand. Because it has to find a balance between price, scale and taste.
Looking at China's catering industry, in the past, it was usually hot pot brands that were able to balance this issue well. Because hot pot focuses more on the base and ingredients, it does not need to be cooked too much, so it can be expanded quickly with a stable supply chain. Fast food chains such as fried rice and noodles are difficult to find solutions in this "impossible triangle".
The fast-food chain brand Laoxiang Chicken has more than 1,000 stores, but it is still stuck in the Anhui market. When it was time to expand, it needed to start doing its homework and establish a production base in Shanghai to cover the East China market.
The reason why it is difficult to break the situation is that the chain restaurant business is actually quite complicated. Behind the food you and I eat in the restaurant is a stacked combination of many business models and logics - which involves product development, supply chain discourse, store operation, etc., each of which affects the final taste presentation.
This is why, when the 2.0 upgraded Hefu Lao Mian broke into the 25-29 yuan price band, catering people and even some consumers who know something about this track have raised such questions, how did it do it?
In fact, the establishment of this global price band is the embodiment of the right to speak in the supply chain of Hefu Lao noodles.
In terms of supply chains, Hefu Lao Mian has established a competitive barrier. With the construction of a modern food industrial park of nearly 100,000 square meters in 2022 and the existing 15,000 square meters of central kitchen, its supply chain system can support the basic operation of thousands of stores in the future and the demand for cold chain distribution nationwide. In addition, nearly 100 million yuan of investment in digital intelligence construction, 2 billion tag data, and more than 6,000 data touchpoints are directly connected to the headquarters. Such a supply chain and digital and intelligent layout allow Hefu Lao Mian to ensure that the product quality can be extended to the capillaries of scale. This also supports the quantifiable production of Hefu Lao Mein, which is carefully developed by professional chefs.
The supply chain can ensure the scale to a certain extent, but it may not guarantee the taste, and the reason why Hefu Lao Mian can be taken into account is that it has quite strict requirements for quality.
In terms of product research and development, the new product after the upgrade of Hefu Lao Mian 2.0 focuses on health, taking angelica pork bone soup as an example, the formula contains 18 flavors of herbs, and is paired with traceable pork barrel bones, and the first soup is extracted by simmering slowly. The optimization of every detail and the adjustment of each process require repeated testing by the R&D team and continuous innovation of the cooking process.
In the selection of ingredients, Li Xuelin, the founder of Hefu Lao Noodles, once said: "As a practitioner in the catering industry for ten years, we strictly control every product and every detail, as small as eggs, we must use sterile eggs, rice must use Wuchang rice, and oil must use high-quality non-GMO oil. ”
Another detail is that the company's pursuit of quality has taken on the meaning of "dead" - since 2019, Hefu Lao Mian has cooperated with universities and universities to carry out in-depth research in formula processing technology, noodle making technology, freezing technology, taste testing and other related fields to continuously improve the taste and quality of noodles.
Professor Zhu Kexue of the School of Food Science of Jiangnan University once said: "The staple food team of Jiangnan University has carried out close cooperation with the R&D team and production team of Hefu on the preservation of fresh noodles, foam resistance and taste restoration, and has achieved good results from small, medium, and large tests to large-scale production. At present, Hefu's noodle products have reached the domestic first-class level and have become the leader in the industry. ”
These quality details, coupled with the maturity of the supply chain, can ensure the stability of food taste in large-scale production.
In addition, there is also a killer feature of the Japanese government, which is the standardization system. Hefu Lao Mian has established an information-based traceability system to maintain transparent and stable quality, so as to achieve "standardization of product production process, food safety management, hygiene management, and service", and strictly follow the process parameters for food production.
At the same time, Hefu Lao Mian also reduces costs and increases efficiency through digitalization, and "picks wool" from its own supply chain.
Specifically, the informatization and digitalization of Hefu Lao Mian can better realize the standardization of the whole link from procurement to factory production, logistics and transportation, so as to reduce costs and improve efficiency between the production links of the supply chain, ensure that customers get a high-quality taste bud experience, and at the same time provide delicious food to consumers at a reasonable price.
It can be seen that in the impossible triangle of scale, taste and price, Hefu Lao Mian has found a solution through scale, digitalization and standardization.
Products that keep pace with the times, hidden traffic passwords
Many people may not have noticed that there is also a "traffic password" buff superposition in the process of upgrading and fighting monsters in the catering industry, that is, its explosive effect.
Since its establishment, Hefu Lao Mian has successfully created many popular products with consumer reputation. For example, the herbal tomato cartilage noodles that fans have been leaving messages asking for the return of Wofu Lao Mein's various social media interactive areas, which is a popular classic product of Hefu Lao Mein – it has since returned, and the herbal health noodle soup series has sold more than 70 million bowls since 2017.
Another hidden popular attribute of Hefu Lao Mian is "health". In recent years, from disdain for health preservation, to attention to health preservation, and then to love health preservation, young people's health blood has awakened rapidly. Hefu Lao Mian has accumulated more than 10 years of experience in the field of health preservation, and the newly launched "Four Treasures of Health" in this 2.0 upgrade - herbal soup, coarse grain noodles, longevity dishes, and health tea are also stepping on the rhythm of the trend, which not only improves the quality of the product, but also finds the right balance between "price, deliciousness, and health". With such a quality and cost-effective advantage, there is a good chance to run out of the health department.
Obviously, the importance of popular products for a brand is self-evident, it can bring stronger brand awareness, enhance consumer stickiness, and thus enhance brand competitiveness.
The secret weapon of Luckin Coffee's "turnaround" from the financial fraud incident is its big hit "raw coconut latte" - in the year after its launch, the cumulative sales exceeded 100 million cups, which also allowed the brand to continue to open stores and become the coffee brand with the largest number of stores in China.
If you are worried that the explosion is just a flash in the pan surrounded by the traffic effect, then look at McDonald's "Big Mac" has become a classic product of this brand, which not only proves the success of a certain product, but also highlights the brand's position in the global catering market.
In fact, whether it is a classic or a new product, Hefu Lao Mian is not a product of the market to follow the trend, but closely follows the taste buds of consumers, and most of them have dozens or even hundreds of product iterations behind it. In addition to the product development and supply chain advantages that have been mentioned, the speed and quality of product updates and iterations also reflect the basic plate of Hefu to create explosive models. It is reported that Hefu Lao Mian has updated at least 217 versions of the product menu since its establishment, reaching a refresh rate of twice a month.
"Hefu's product iteration is, on the one hand, to improve the recipe based on long-term market feedback, and on the other hand, to optimize and innovate based on the cooking process and the ingredients themselves. However, unlike the launch of new products, iterating existing products will not make consumers notice them immediately, but it can continuously strengthen consumer awareness and accumulate long-term reputation. This kind of classic style is often a potential hit. Industry insiders said.
Today's consumers may pay for freshness, but it's the continued recognition that is the value of product quality and flavor innovation. The food concept of herbal health, the insistence on quality in the cooking process, and the breakthrough and innovation of rapid iteration of products have made Hefu Lao Mian's products a classic, and then precipitated into the competitiveness of the brand - this is where its traffic password lies.
According to the "Blue Book of China's Noodle Industry" released by Frost & Sullivan, as of September 2023, in the domestic noodle market, Hefu Lao Noodle has the largest direct sales income, and the growth rate of direct sales revenue and the number of directly operated stores are leading the industry. According to the Hefu Lao Noodle press conference, its directly operated stores have exceeded 500, and the number of members has exceeded 20 million, doubling year-on-year, and Frost & Sullivan awarded it the title of "No. 1 Brand of Chinese Noodle Restaurant".
Under the acceleration of scale, the new health products of Hefu Lao Mian have been filled with future imagination after the layout of the full price band.
The new health products not only reflect the strength of Hefu Lao Mian in product research and development and supply chain discourse, but also have the product gene of accelerated iteration, which is likely to become a health explosion in different price bands, thus forming the influence of the brand Hefu Lao Mian in different price bands, and further consolidating the head position of Hefu Lao Mian in the noodle track - this makes Hefu Lao Mian have won the first-mover advantage when China's catering accelerates the "involution".