It used to sell 1 billion a year, but now no one cares! The food that was "blocked" by the high-speed rail was ruined by self-satisfaction

The times abandon you will not say hello, but Weibo hot search will.

When a product begins to be disliked by most consumers, the hot search list will always tell you as soon as possible.

#年轻人不爱吃鸭脖#, #一碗30元的网红面馆卖不动了#, #年轻人为什么不肯为李维斯买单了#, hot searches are like barometers, reflecting consumer preferences.

During this time, #Why did the self-heating pot fall out of favor #的话题多次登上微博热搜, which resonated with everyone again.

Two years ago, self-heating hot pot was still known as the "new outlet of the times", and the bigwigs rushed into the game to invest money.

The news on the self-heating pot is also "5 million barrels sold in 10 minutes", "1 billion sold in a year", "4 years and 5 rounds of financing valuation of 7 billion" and other explosive phenomena.

Nowadays, news such as "safety issues", "marketing penalties", "bad taste, too expensive" and other news are always bound to the self-heating pot, and the industry's No. 1 self-hi pot was rejected last year.

The self-congratulatory pot that created the myth of the hit, why is it now out of favor?

The Internet celebrity picked up by the "lazy man",

Good luck ran out

In the eyes of many Chinese, there is also a chain of contempt for eating, and the main meal > fast food> takeaway> fast food.

Instant foods such as instant noodles have always been at the bottom of the chain of contempt and are junk food in the eyes of parents.

But the self-heating hot pot is different, since its birth is like the possession of the European emperor, all the way to the gods.

In 2015, hot pot exploded on the Internet, and hot pot takeaway, portable hot pot and other eating methods also appeared, and self-heating hot pot also came into being.

The advantages of self-heating hot pot are not limited to scenes, 10 minutes to eat hot pot, and there is no need to wash dishes, coupled with the boost of micro-business in the circle of friends, directly captured a large number of early adopters.

In 2017, Dalongyi, Dezhuang, Xiaolongkan, Haidilao and other hot pot veterans have launched self-heating hot pot, which has directly become a popular category.

According to Toubao data, on Double 11 in 2017, self-heating hot pot sold millions of copies on Tmall, and its status once soared above instant noodles.

In 2018, Cai Hongliang, the founder of Baicaowei, founded Zihai Pot, and he learned from the experience of founding "Baicaowei" and came up to add a wave of "star buffs" to the self-heating pot.

Cai Hongliang took out 50 million from 80 million yuan of entrepreneurial capital to advertise, invited many Internet celebrities and traffic stars to endorse, and almost half of the entertainment industry is eating from the pot.

This wave of operations directly transformed Zihi Pot from a fast food to an Internet celebrity, and various celebrities with the same pot have their own social attributes, which is a must-have item for X.

On the day of Double 11 in 2018, the sales volume of self-heating hot pot on the whole network exceeded 4.5 million copies, which was twice as many as last year.

In the second half of 2019, Zihai Pot was robbed twice.

On the day of Double 12, Simba's live broadcast room sold half a billion sales in 10 minutes, and even because of the urgency of product inventory, all products were removed from the Tmall flagship store.

This is not the end, the European emperor attribute of the self-heating pot will be in full swing in 2020.

Due to the epidemic in 2020, the price of variety shows has plunged, and many businesses are reluctant to vote, and Zihai Pot "picks up leaks" at one time, and all of them are in 6 variety shows.

In the context of watching variety shows at home, the labels of self-heating hot pot "lazy economy" and "one-person food" directly put it on the altar, and self-heating pot became the most popular category that year, and its status once surpassed takeaway and fast food.

This gamble not only won from the hot pot, but also ushered in a climax in the entire self-heating hot pot industry.

In the Kuaishou live broadcast, 300,000 boxes can be sold in 2 minutes, and Mo Xiaoxian and Zihi Pot sold 1 billion against the trend.

The self-heating pot on social platforms has become a traffic password, and there are more than 2 million videos related to station B alone.

The self-heating pot track not only attracted traditional giants such as Uni-President and Master Kong, but also Three Squirrels, BESTORE and Weilong have all entered the game.

The self-heating pot has become the darling of capital, and many people queue up to send money, and the number of cases in 2021 alone is as high as 26.

However, in the past two years, the self-heating pot seems to have run out of good luck.

The self-heating pot began to face the problems of consumers not paying, brands being removed from the shelves, and capital retreating.

Some offline supermarket owners said that the self-heating pots on the shelves are difficult to sell, and many of them have accumulated dust.

The self-heating pot, which has lost its favor, once again falls back to the very bottom of the chain of contempt.

From a valuation of 10 billion to no one cares,

The self-heating pot suffered two losses

The self-heating pot brand that has fallen from the altar faces a huge problem: not making money.

Zihai Pot's revenue in 2022 will be 820 million yuan, with a revenue decline of nearly 20%.

Kai Xiaozao was named in the annual report: self-heating rice did not bring outstanding results, and self-heating hot pot was directly abandoned.

Uni-President will remove the "Cooking Time" self-heating hot pot from the shelves in 2022.

From a darling to an outcast, Internet celebrities have suffered two losses from self-heating pots.

First, it suffered a loss of low cost performance

Cai Hongliang, the founder of Zihai Pot, once said that we are taking the high-end route, because the product uses freeze-dried ingredients, the price of raw materials and consumables are very expensive, and it is essentially the "Hermes of the fast food industry".

But this Hermes gives consumers only one word: expensive.

A few slices of meat rolls + lotus root slices, potatoes and other vegetarian dishes, there is really no advantage compared with Malatang.

It stands to reason that this price can't make people eat something good?

I'm sorry for the cost allowed, all kinds of marketing expenses and channel fees have accounted for the majority of the cost, leaving little room for ingredients to play.

Taking the investment of Zihai pot as an example, 2 billion yuan to build a factory, an average annual marketing fee of 300 million, freeze-drying + self-heating black technology, selling for 10-30 yuan is not expensive.

Of course, there are also cheap self-heating pots on the market, like some Internet celebrity live broadcast rooms that take away three boxes for 12 yuan, but their taste and safety are really not cost-effective.

What's more, many catering brands have launched "small hot pot for single rice", such as Haidilao launched "hot pot dishes for dinner", Nanchengxiang "meat 19.9 yuan" and "vegetable 9.9 yuan" self-service small hot pot, which is a fierce impact on the selling point and cost performance of self-heating hot pot "one-person hot pot".

Second, I suffered the loss of the scene

Many people say that the self-heating pot itself is meant to be eaten in special situations and cannot be compared with normal dine-in.

With the end of the epidemic, the home economy is no longer the mainstream, and the "lazy economy" and "home economy" that are the main ones of self-heating pots have gradually lost their advantages.

The popularity of prefabricated dishes in the past two years has given a heavy blow to self-heating hot pot.

Those who can accept pre-made dishes will choose pre-made dishes with richer flavors to eat at home, and those who do not accept pre-made dishes will also be beaten into the cold palace by the way.

Some media revealed that the rice in the self-heating hot pot is not real rice, but "technology and ruthless goods", which makes many people blacklist the self-heating pot.

This is not the most disadvantaged, because the heat generated by the self-heating hot pot will trigger the smoke alarm of the high-speed rail, and most of the high-speed trains are no longer allowed to eat self-heating hot pot.

The self-heating pot once again verifies that it is not necessarily the opponent who defeats you, but also the crossover and the era.

Internet celebrities are easy to become popular, but super categories are difficult to do

In order to regain popularity over the years, self-heating hot pot brands are also quite involuted.

In terms of taste and form, only you can't think of it, and there is nothing they can't do.

The self-heating pot has long been separated from the hot pot and expanded to rice, noodles, noodles, vegetables, lo-mei, etc.

Cai Hongliang said that the goal of Zihai Pot is to replicate all offline meals online.

In terms of categories, self-heating pots are also subdivided into various scenarios such as dinner, breakfast, supper, work, and games.

In the past two years, outdoor sports have exploded, and in order to help users save backpack space, Zihi Pot has even launched Zihi Bag.

In terms of the supply chain, Zihai Guo and the government have invested more than 2 billion yuan and established 15 factories.

But even so, the self-heating pot still can't escape the fate of Internet celebrity products: the first year to eat the dividends, two years of stable development, three years of difficult support.

It all boils down to the fact that it's too self-congratulatory.

Zihai Pot once released an advertising slogan: Not all self-heating pots are called Zihi Pot.

This is reminiscent of Jeep's sentence back then: "Not all Jeeps, all Jeeps are called Jeeps".

This sentence structure successfully blocked the category, fully demonstrating the uniqueness and exclusivity, so that the opponents had no chance to take advantage of it.

It can be seen from this sentence that the original intention of Zihai Pot is to create a super category.

However, the birth of super categories is usually inseparable from three conditions: new technologies, new channels and new supply chains.

New technologies are easy to give birth to new brands, such as the internal combustion engine gave birth to Mercedes-Benz, the assembly line gave birth to Ford, and then drove the automobile category, CDMA technology gave birth to Motorola, updated the mobile phone category, and the new automotive battery technology gave birth to Tesla, and then the electric vehicle category exploded.

But the self-heating pot itself does not have too high product barriers.

The essence of the self-heating pot is compound rice + prefabricated dishes + heating bags, which is a standard industrialized fast food, and most self-heating convenience foods belong to a typical "assembly plant".

In order to reduce the upfront cost in the early stage, most emerging fast food brands basically choose the OEM model, where the OEM completes the production and initial packaging, and the brand completes the subsequent packaging.

Although this model greatly reduces the cost pressure of the brand's early development, it also brings the problem of serious product homogeneity and even similar taste.

What is more representative is that the self-heating hot pot of Baicaowei and Three Squirrels is made by Sichuan Baijia Food.

New consumer explosions such as self-heating pots rely more on the innovation and integration of channels and supply chains.

From the outbreak in 2015 to the peak in 2021, the core advantages of the self-heating pot are all relying on the huge traffic of Internet celebrities + self-media.

But now that traffic is getting more and more expensive, the early dividends are no longer there, and the days of self-heating food being popular all over the network have passed, and it is difficult to continue to "boil".

Why is instant noodles, the predecessor of self-heating pots, listed as one of the greatest inventions of mankind in the 20th century?

It is because it has achieved disruptive innovation in convenience and has maintained the basic plate of cost performance.

On the other hand, the self-heating pot has not yet achieved the ultimate in any value point, although it has created a new category, but it has brought continuous stimulation and satisfaction to consumers.

As a "lazy hot model", the convenient, cost-effective, and delicious city wall must at least hold one side.

The picture comes from the Internet, please contact to delete the infringement