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- Author/Brand Officer
Introduction: In 2024, the wave of reshuffle in the baking track will intensify further, and this time, someone is really leaving the table.
2021 is the highlight year of the baking track, according to the statistics of the Red Meal Industry Research Institute, a total of 21 financings have been completed this year, of which 6 are new Chinese baking.
Among them, the most outstanding performance is Momo Dim Sum Bureau and Tiger Head Bureau Standard Chartered Cake Shop, two brands that have led the "new Chinese baking trend", and have been in the limelight for a while, and even won multiple rounds of financing within a year.
It's just that when the capital cools down and consumers are disenchanted, the new Chinese baking track has to face an industry reshuffle, and by 2023, there will only be 3 financings in the new Chinese baking track.
From 2021 to 2023, it will be reduced from a new Chinese bakery brand that integrates capital and consumers' love to today's losses, store closures, and bankruptcies.
This dramatic three years can be described as a vivid interpretation of "seeing him rise a tall building, seeing his building collapse".
01. Once a store was valued at 100 million, and the tiger head game came to an end
Tianyancha APP shows that on January 24, Shanghai Wanwuxiang Catering Management Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of Hutou Bureau Standard Chartered Cake Store (hereinafter referred to as "Hutou Bureau"), added a bankruptcy review case.
The applicant applied to the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court for bankruptcy liquidation of the company on the grounds that the company could not pay off its debts due and obviously lacked solvency, and the case was filed.
According to the risk information, the company also has a number of information on the person subject to execution, and the total amount of execution exceeds 5.33 million yuan.
The Tiger Head Bureau, which was established in 2019, will be bankrupt and liquidated in 2024, but it will be in such a situation in just five years, which can't help but make people sigh.
Up to now, there are only 8 stores left in the operation of Hutou Bureau, including 1 in Changsha and 7 in Wuhan, which has shrunk by nearly 9% compared with the 80 stores at its peak.
The only 8 remaining stores are struggling to support, and the outcome can be imagined.
Back then, Tiger Head Bureau was also a smash hit Internet celebrity brand.
In September 2019, the first store of Hutou Bureau was officially opened in Changsha, with a distinct national charm, and as soon as it debuted, it took advantage of the "national tide" to rise and firmly grasp the preferences of young people, and became an instant hit since its opening.
According to Hu Ting, the founder of Hutou Bureau, the revenue of this 53-square-meter space was as high as 300,000 yuan in two months after its opening, and even set an astonishing revenue performance of 1.27 million yuan in a single month.
Relying on the soaring popularity, the Tiger Head Bureau, which had only been established for two years at that time, had less than 10 stores, and completed two rounds of financing in one year in 2021.
Due to the limelight, some people estimated at that time that after the completion of the A round of financing of 50 million US dollars, the valuation of Hutou Bureau exceeded 2 billion yuan, which means that its single store was valued at nearly 100 million yuan.
Under the planting of Xiaohongshu and Dianping's "tap water", when Hutou Bureau entered the Shanghai market, it also set a feat of queuing for 3 hours in Shanghai stores, and was once known as "Shanghai's new queuing king".
In less than three years, it went from overcrowded to deserted
Long queues, photo check-ins, and social media ...... There is no doubt that Tiger Head Bureau has the standard elements of "Internet celebrity store".
However, at present, the word Internet celebrity has evolved into a derogatory term, and in the constantly updated and iterative baking market, the fate of Internet celebrity brands cannot escape the curse of five years, and obviously the tiger head game is no exception.
The turning point of the troubled situation is in 2023, after getting a "life-saving money" at the beginning of the year, there is no more financing news from the Tiger Head Bureau, and there are frequent negative news such as bankruptcies, layoffs, debts, rent arrears, and collective rights protection of employees.
In fact, as early as the end of 2022, rumors about "the capital chain of the Tiger Head Bureau is broken and hundreds of millions of yuan in debt" are rampant.
It wasn't until March 30 last year that the Tiger Head Bureau was once again pushed to the forefront.
On the social platform, an internal employee revealed that the Tiger Head Bureau was in bankruptcy liquidation and owed 200 million yuan in debt, and the company went bankrupt, but it was officially denied, leaving a sentence "There will be external communication later, give us some time to work hard." ”
But on the other side, the situation of store closures, arrears of wages and arrears, and complaints has almost reached its peak, and the tiger head bureau can be said to be a chicken feather.
In the months when the funds of the Tiger Head Bureau were broken, Hu Ting, the founder of the Tiger Head Bureau, never thought of giving up, or wanted to struggle again, and now it is helpless to go to the road of "bankruptcy liquidation".
The negativity-ridden new Chinese baking brand also includes Momo Dim Sum Bureau, which is known as the "New Chinese Baking Twin Stars" together with Hutou Bureau, and it has also been revealed that all stores outside the province have been closed.
02, Momo Dim Sum Bureau retreated to Hunan
Recently, according to Tianyancha's App, Momo Dim Sum Bureau has changed its business status in Wuhan from existence to cancellation.
In addition, all 15 branches of Momo Dim Sum Bureau in Wuhan have been cancelled.
So far, more than 10 stores of Momo Dim Sum Bureau outside Hunan Province have all been closed, and they have truly become Hunan "specialties".
Founded in Changsha in June 2020, Momo Dim Sum Bureau has received 4 rounds of financing in less than a year since its establishment, including well-known institutions such as Today Capital, Meituan Longzhu, and Qingliu Capital, with a cumulative financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan.
In the early days of its establishment, Momo Dim Sum Bureau's store opening strategy was to drink tea next to the Internet celebrity, so that a sales combination of "tea + dim sum" was formed, and everyone would buy a bag of dim sum to take away while buying drinks.
Wang Yuxiao, the founder of Momo Dim Sum Bureau, once worked as a director of Hunan Radio and Television, and also founded her own business and opened a tea shop.
As a director of Hunan Radio and Television, she is also better at storytelling and marketing, and has launched content on a large scale on platforms with the most young people, including Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo, Dianping and other channels.
And this kind of promotion of spreading a net everywhere is also very gratifying, coupled with the positioning of "national tide", attracting groups of young people to visit the store and take photos and check in.
As a result, this boom has also attracted the attention of capital, with the help of capital, Momo Dim Sum Bureau gradually out of Changsha, open up positions outside Hunan, according to the red meal big data, the peak period Momo Dim Sum Bureau has more than 60 stores across the country.
As a result, I didn't expect the tide to recede so quickly, and in 2022, Momo Dim Sum Bureau will successively withdraw its stores in Beijing, Hangzhou, and Wuhan.
"We told ourselves that we couldn't afford to lose our main ground by playing outside. I always believe that if the Hunan model is done well and can be replicated, it can be done anywhere in the future. Wang Yuxiao said bluntly in an interview with the Economic Observer.
At the same time, he also generously admitted that there had been problems in cross-regional management before, which were not properly handled, and said that the core of the future is to continue to build product barriers.
It seems that after experiencing a capital cooling period, Momo Dim Sum Bureau has no money to burn, but it finally stopped the loss in time and sent a signal to rein in the precipice after running blindfolded.
Although all kinds of signs are very similar to the Tiger Head Bureau, but in this wave, the Momo Dim Sum Bureau, which is submerged to the chest, at least has a chance to breathe at the moment, and can struggle for a while, and fight again, in case the bicycle becomes a motorcycle, next, let's see where the Momo Dim Sum Bureau will go.
03, Internet celebrity baking, it is inevitable to escape the "flash in the pan"
Hutou Bureau and Momo Dim Sum Bureau have gone from becoming popular to falling off the altar, which is just a microcosm of new consumer brands in the current crazy involution of dim sum baking track.
Although it is a pity, it is not surprising that a flash in the pan is the fate of most Internet celebrity brands.
Brands burn money for marketing and promotion, find Internet celebrity bloggers to take photos and evaluate, and frantically lay grass content, but the traffic brought by these is temporary after all.
If an online celebrity brand forms its own moat, it can also retain customers. From "traffic" to "retention", it still depends on word of mouth.
For example, Chef Bao, the "first generation of Internet celebrity" in the pastry industry, has become popular so far with an innovative meat floss scallop, which is highly respected for its unique taste and production process, and even attracted a large number of Hong Kong customers to reverse purchasing on behalf of others, once again setting off a buying frenzy.
According to the big data of red meals, as of October 2023, 120,100 bakery stores have been closed.
Behind this data is the cruel reality of the collapse of baking brands one by one.
"Zhong Su Bureau", which also focuses on new Chinese dim sum, was also revealed to have closed its store, and it has only survived for more than half a year since it opened in Hangzhou in September 2021.
The popularity of Chinese pastries in 2021 has made many people enter the game, and in some places there is even a store in ten steps.
According to a report by the Metropolis Express, a clerk at a new Chinese bakery once revealed to him, "The two dim sum shops on the side were opened a few months ago, and when they first opened, many young people came to buy them, and they lined up in front of our store, and now there are no customers, and one seems to have closed down." ”
How vigorous the opening of the store, how deserted the closing of the store, and the market gradually fell silent after returning to rationality.
And the menus of these new Chinese bakery brands are like copy-paste, almost every brand has mochi, panta, tiger skin rolls, and scallop cakes......
For young consumers who like the new and hate the old, if the brand cannot maintain the speed of product iteration, the consumer's curiosity period will pass, and the brand's attention will naturally become low.
If the taste is similar, it will be even more difficult to retain customers. As they say, "It feels like all mochi is one taste".
The defeat of the Tiger Head Game and the Momo Dim Sum Game also gave a wake-up call to the players who remained in the new Chinese baking track: if the brand wants to turn from an "Internet celebrity" to a "long-term red", cultivating internal skills should be the first priority.
The ambition of expansion should also focus on product differentiation and stabilize the brand foundation on the premise of doing a good job in baking, otherwise blind confidence expansion will only become the next "tiger head game" or "Momo dim sum game".
Have you ever eaten the tiger head game? What do you think about this? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss, express your opinions or opinions, thank you.
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