I, outside the system, did a camping business in the county and earned more than 600,000 yuan in 5 months

Source of this article: Times Finance Author: Zhou Yi

Editor's note: The Spring Festival is a great migration of the Chinese population from cities to towns. Farewell to the prosperity and return to the homeland, the small town that lingers with the local sound has changed its appearance again, there are new formats, new models and new scenes of commerce, and there are also people and sophistication that make us feel warm. On the occasion of the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon, Times Weekly, Times Finance and Consumer Reports jointly launched a series of reports on "Big Year in a Small Town", focusing on the big business in the small town, the changes and warmth of the small town.

During the Spring Festival of another year, the "strangeness" of my homeland town has deepened again, just like a game with a new map waiting for me to refresh my experience points.

Pizza Hut, KFC, Luckin Coffee, Michelle Bingcheng, Shanghai Auntie, Cudi Coffee... With the arrival of cutting-edge popular catering brands, this remote town in Gansu has also begun to welcome these consumption desires to "return" from big cities.

And the entrepreneurs who can catch these consumer needs are the most up-to-date young people in the local area.

Like many counties and towns across the country, in the small city of Gansu, if there is no entry into the government, schools, state-owned enterprises, hospitals and other institutions, "doing business" is almost the only way for local young people to achieve corner overtaking.

Last summer, my friend Zhang Qi (not his real name) opened a campground with a friend in our small town.

When lifestyle content and information flood the entire Internet, even if he is far away in the northwest, Zhang Qi can learn about the most advanced and fashionable things from platforms like Xiaohongshu and Douyin for the first time, and outdoor camping is obviously a hot word on social platforms in the past two years.

A campsite opened by Zhang Qi. Image source: Courtesy of the interviewee

In fact, the small city is not suitable for outdoor camping in terms of geography, there is only very little green vegetation here, there are vast loess farmlands, and the picture of leisurely camping in the green city parks like Shanghai and Guangzhou does not appear here.

But the town has its own "outdoor" tradition, which is to open up a barren field in the outskirts, and set up some simple pavilions or tents on the edge of the field, which is a good place for summer pastime. Although Gansu has an arid climate, it has the advantage of four distinct seasons, especially in summer, with long daylight hours, little rain, and a climate that is not hot. In this way, outdoor camping seems to have hope again.

Compared with developed coastal cities, Gansu does not have many places to purchase professional outdoor equipment such as tents and chairs for camping, and choosing to shop online means that the shipping cost is even more expensive than many of the equipment itself.

After the camp opened, Zhang Qi initially hoped to attract young people who liked to check in and take photos and consume "trendy places", but later he lowered the requirements for "sophistication" and "high-end" in terms of food selection and camp background music, and added simple food from his hometown and pop songs that could be sung together.

Zhang Qi's camp was open from May to October in the first year, and in late October, the climate in Gansu was no longer suitable for spending long periods of time outdoors. The turnover in those five months was about 1.7 million yuan, excluding the cost and the shares of other partners, Zhang Qi earned more than 600,000 yuan.

Within two weeks of Zhang Qi opening the campsite, there were three or four similar places in the vicinity. Zhang Qi summed up an entrepreneurial experience, "All the businesses copied from big cities, there will always be people who start with you, it doesn't matter whether it is the first one, whether it can be combined with the local customs is the key." Zhang Qi told me that there is a campsite nearby, which is more expensive and more refined, more like a real "Little Red Book" template, but there is very little traffic.

In order to create more consumption, some common "youth cultural and creative markets" in big cities have also been opened here, but they are extremely deserted, and the so-called "youth cultural and creative markets" are only the business of selling flowers, which is a rough copy of the most "unsuitable" in the local area.

After October, Zhang Qi was looking for another project while preparing for his wedding, and he needed to open a new business in the winter, and he thought that catering might be the way to go.

Northwest food is dominated by all kinds of noodles and beef and mutton, and the most numerous restaurants in my hometown are beef noodle restaurants, hand-grabbed mutton or shabu mutton, and the eating habits of local people cannot be changed by reading one or two lifestyle bloggers' articles, so there is no room for food such as salads, light food, and Japanese food.

Zhang Qi told me that he has been to Chengdu, Chongqing and other places to investigate, many chain restaurants are very popular, but there are many "routines", such as joining must open two stores at one time, so as to become a local franchise agent, which also means that only subordinate towns and towns are willing to join, in order to make money.

"Once I went to a very popular restaurant, and then I talked to the owner and felt that the dishes and tastes could be upgraded. As a result, the boss said that they were not selling food, but brands. This puzzled Zhang Qi, but after seeing several Chongqing hot pot restaurants suddenly popping up in his hometown and closing them within a month, Zhang Qi realized that the catering logic of those tourist Internet celebrity cities supported by a large number of people could not be replicated here.

After all, Pizza Hut has disappeared after a month of queuing, and it is impossible for Luckin Coffee to change the local people's habit of drinking tea. All the first-line catering brands that are trying to open the sinking market have enjoyed a short period of dividends, and I am afraid that they will fall into a long-term "fierce war" period with local restaurants.

During the investigation of the project, Zhang Qi considered a nail salon, but after seeing that there was already a Japanese-style nail salon opened by his sister who had returned from studying in Japan, and it was said that all the materials were imported from Japan, and the fee was only in the early 100s, he gave up.

Livehouse was also one of his choices, but it was difficult to find a resident singer at a livehouse in his hometown. Zhang Qi complained, "In Chengdu, bars are everywhere, even if Sichuan Yin comes to sing, it is only two or three hundred and one nights, and I can't find a suitable one for five hundred here." "Most livehouses end up being just plain taverns.

In addition, I suggested to him to start a video business, but Zhang Qi was not cold, "making a number" is no longer a broad road, it is even higher than the cost of opening a restaurant, Zhang Qi, who was born and raised in his hometown, believes that it is still necessary to do "industry".

As the Lunar New Year holiday draws to a close, Mr. Zhang, who has been resting for half a year, plans to wait for the hotter weather to upgrade the camp, but at the same time, he also knows that competition will be more fierce this summer.