From the 36,000 stores of Mixue Bingcheng, to the 18,000 stores of Luckin Coffee, and then to the brands of Tea Baidao, Shanghai Auntie, Tianlala, Shuyiyao Xiancao, Gu Ming and other brands have successively marched to 10,000 stores, the beverage track with standardization and retail genes has become the track with the most 10,000 store genes in catering.
But even so, at a time when the market continues to accelerate the reshuffle, it is not easy for any beverage brand to truly achieve 10,000 stores. So, what should beverage brands do?
On March 28th, at the 2024 China Wandian Chain Conference held by the Catering O2O Joint Prefabricated Dish Ingredients Home, What's Worth Joining, China Ingredients E-commerce Festival, and Zhongtou Alliance, at the roundtable salon hosted by Luo Huashan, the CFO of Yihetang, Zeng Lei, the general operation of Wuyin Liangpin, Ling Jing, the general manager of Grandpa Bucha Operations, and Hu Xuhao, vice president of Nova Coffee, jointly conducted an in-depth discussion on issues related to the "10,000 store path of beverages".
The following is the transcript of this roundtable forum, organized by catering O2O.
01■
The 10,000-store gene of beverages
Moderator (Catering O2O Luo Huashan): We deliberately put drinks at the end for the finale roundtable forum, because drinks are the track with the most 10,000 restaurant genes in the current catering. Why do you say that? I personally summarize three characteristics: small stores, large chains, and quasi-retail. As a beverage practitioner, you stand in the industry, why do you think the tea and coffee beverage track has such a strong Wandian gene, and what are its category characteristics?
Yihetang Wang Xiaomin: Yihetang sounds like a pharmacy, but in fact, we are a milk tea chain brand, the brand headquarters is in Wuhan, very low-key and pragmatic. Born in 2012, Yihetang was a campus store at the beginning, and then gradually entered the market, polishing a variety of store models, such as community stores, business district stores, etc., and currently has 7,000 contracted stores.
As one of the representative brands of the current new tea drink waist, in our opinion, the reason why the gene of 10,000 stores in the tea and coffee track is so strong is that it itself is subdivided into China's huge beverage consumption track. As one of the retail categories, China's beverage track has more than 10,000 channels, or even millions. Although many of them are not the brand's own stores, but into convenience stores, supermarkets and other channel stores, their channel model itself represents a huge market.
After the beverage track, there is tea, and then there is freshly made tea. As a 100 billion track cut from the trillion beverage track, the ready-made tea beverage track has the potential of 10,000 stores only from the scale of the industry; at the same time, from the perspective of customers, tea drink, as a thousand-year-old Chinese food tradition, itself has a strong mass base. Moreover, sweetness is a popular taste for human beings, and it is generally high, so it has a natural appeal to consumers.
Finally, from the perspective of delivery and fulfillment, the tea itself has a retail-like nature, and the delivery speed is very fast, in other words, the turnover rate is very high, and the revenue ceiling is very high. Moreover, the store investment scale is small and reproducible, so it has the opportunity to incubate multiple 10,000-store brands and realize the coexistence of multi-brand and 10,000-store.
Zeng Lei: Wuyin Liangpin is the earliest local new tea brand in Wuhan, mainly engaged in fruit tea, with 2,500 stores. In fact, in 2019, Wuyin Liangpin has exceeded 2,000 stores, and the reason why the follow-up development is so slow is that the management of franchisees is the biggest shortcoming of the brand.
After all, from the current brand research of more than 5,000 new tea drinks, we can find that brands such as Shuyi Yao Xiancao, Shanghai Auntie, and Tea Baidao basically have more than 1,000 stores in one or more regions, which is the "base" of the brand's key layout.
At the same time, in my opinion, there are the following reasons why tea drinks are easy to be stored: First, weak regionalization. Second, addictiveness, the taste of sweet is not only memorable, but also pleasant, very addictive; third, tea products are highly standardized. Fourth, the supply chain has a high degree of standardization. Grandpa does not make tea Ling Jing: Grandpa does not make tea is a rising star in the current Wuhan tea industry, especially last year Wuhan became a favorite citywalk destination for college students, grandpa does not make tea took this opportunity to directly become a favorite Internet celebrity brand of college students, and the number of brand stores soared directly to about 500.
The tea drink track has become a red sea with extremely serious involution, however, when we look at the consumption scene, tea is still solving the problem of young people wanting to drink a cup. The target customer group of grandpa who does not make tea is more inclined to young groups such as the post-90s and post-00s, which meets their desire to buy a cup of tea and at the same time be able to make a card by the way. Therefore, even if the competition for new tea drinks is so fierce at the moment, in our opinion, grandpa does not make tea is still competitive.
What we need to do in the future is to drill the category of new tea drinks, and then do a solid job of operating a solid foundation, take care of consumers, help franchisees manage their own stores, and strive to win thousands of stores.
Nova Coffee Hu Xuhao: Nova Coffee is a chain coffee brand that has grown through the three-year cycle of the epidemic, and has opened more than 1,800 stores in 140 provinces and cities across the country. In 2023, the brand will open to the fourth-tier sinking market, and the stores will achieve explosive growth.
In my opinion, the core of why coffee can grow in 10,000 stores is actually to meet a demand, that is, the demand of consumers who want to drink a cup. Young people have the need to drink a cup whether they get up early/party/or company afternoon tea time, the difference is only in drinking coffee, or drinking milk tea/fruit tea, etc. In the past 30 years, the development history of Chinese tea and coffee has actually undergone three evolutions. In the past ten years, the iterative process of tea and coffee is to replace water, because the space for store opening is limited, and the number of consumers is also limited.
In the past two years, consumers' functional and scenario-based substitution of beverages is gradually emerging. First, functionality. Despite its addictive nature, caffeine is the healthiest alternative to all refreshing drinks. The difference is only in which brand consumers choose, and convenience, packaging, and price may all account for part of the decision. Second, scenario-based. Whether it's a party, a meeting, a business trip or even on an airplane, there are different choices for different teas and coffees in various scenarios. In my opinion, because the demand for drinks is large enough, the coffee track is enough to support the basic scale of 10,000 stores. What the brand needs to do is to make efforts in products, innovation, culture and other advantages, and embark on the path of 10,000 stores.
02■
How to become the next Michelle Ice City?
Moderator: Among the representatives of tea and coffee brands here, each of them seems to be responsible for different modules. So, please start from the modules you are in charge of, and talk in detail about what preparations you have made for the brand to sprint to 10,000 stores? How does the brand plan to become the next "Honey Snow Bingcheng" or "Luckin Coffee"?Yihetang Wang Xiaomin: As the person in charge of finance, in my opinion, the brand must be a hexagonal warrior in order to realize 10,000 stores. What is a hexagon? That is, no plate can have shortcomings, and it is necessary to constantly overcome the brand defects, and it cannot be allowed to restrict the speed of brand development.
From the perspective of products, the current young consumers have high-frequency and changeable needs for the appearance, function and freshness of tea products, which requires the brand's products to be extremely hexagonal, with high enough appearance, high cost performance, good taste, and must make consumers feel fresh.
From the perspective of franchisees, if a brand wants to achieve 10,000 stores, it is not the brand that opens 10,000 stores by itself, but the franchisee supports the brand to open 10,000 stores, and the development of the brand needs the full support of the franchisee. Therefore, on the way to sprint to 10,000 stores, the brand needs to do a good job in the internal strength of the franchisee, so that the franchisee has enough profit space and can make money. Zeng Lei: From an operational point of view, in the past two years, we have been constantly optimizing the task section of the operation port and doing work segmentation.
First, we began to do hierarchical management and empowerment of franchisees. The head franchisee with good profitability, good store management and development willingness will help it expand the store, the waist franchisee will help it improve its profitability, and the tail franchisee will clean up according to the situation.
Second, cut the work subdivision of the operation team. For example, supervision, in addition to daily store patrol work, also needs to do store turnover improvement actions. At the same time, we are also trying to let the operation management personnel and merchants form a team, and the operation will do the multi-store expansion work, and some results have been achieved. Last year, 67% of the new stores came from the expansion of old stores, and this year, 74% of the old franchisees opened new stores. Grandpa doesn't make tea Ling Jing: Our brand opens stores very quickly, but whether it is a sprint to thousands of stores or 10,000 stores, when we go to a strange city, it takes a long time to build a brand. So, from an operational point of view, we are doing the following things: First, select the right regional branch leaders. When a brand lays out stores in a new area, if it has a division leader whose values can resonate with the brand, the development speed is very fast. Of course, the layout of brand stores should not be too scattered, but a region by region. Second, do a good job in zoning empowerment training. What the headquarters needs is to do a good job in the construction of the division, empower the division company through training and development, and then let the person in charge of the division do a good job in the rapid expansion of the divisional stores. At the same time, at the level of online operation, we will follow up on various evaluations on the network in a timely manner, find problems, solve problems, and firmly grasp young people.
In short, the core of grandpa not making tea at the moment is to do a good job of internal strength and lay a good foundation for the follow-up of thousands of stores. Nova Coffee Hu Xuhao: If you want to achieve 10,000 stores, you must make franchisees profitable, and if you want to make franchisees profitable, from a marketing point of view, you can't avoid one word, competition. There is competition in any track or category, and the new coffee and tea drink is the king of involution, and the industry has set off a price war since last year, and all kinds of 3 yuan, 5 yuan, and 9 yuan coffee have made the competition of the whole track white-hot. But Nova Coffee's choice is not to enter the price war and take differentiation. Any consumer who chooses a related brand or product wants nothing more than the following three things: first, the value behind the product, second, the value of service overflow, and third, the service and emotional value enjoyed by the space. Nova Coffee is based on these three perspectives to differentiate its products, so as to ensure that the brand price is not interrupted by competitors.
Of course, Nova Coffee also does price drainage, such as Douyin live broadcast, which is the trend of the entire industry.
At the same time, we also found that today's young consumers' focus on coffee is also changing, and they are biased towards health, low calorie, low sugar or even no sugar. Nova Coffee announced a new brand positioning at the end of 2023, rejecting high calories, not only delicious, but also lower calories, and is the first coffee brand in the industry to shout a similar slogan. At the same time, it also lays a good foundation for Nova product research and development, service overflow and brand promotion in the future.
When the problem of marketing differentiation is solved, the investment threshold of 10,000 brand stores will drop a lot. Nova Coffee has a lot of investment strategies, in addition to the regular old franchisees to bring new, to participate in the franchise exhibition, with the increase in the proportion of young entrepreneurs, we have also opened new channels such as investment promotion and franchise live broadcast. What I want to say to franchise investors is that the value of wealth that the brand can bring to you is more at the marketing level.
Moderator: I remember that Nova used the flop model in the early days of the store, can you talk about this model?
Hu Xuhao of Nova Coffee: Yes, after Nova was established in 2019, the initial choice was this flop model, that is, to bring a store to join, which is a relatively clever store expansion model. Because coffee needs market education, people are used to Starbucks' specialty coffee of 30-40 yuan in the early days. Nova has been able to test the market well through turnarounds and shop-in-shop models. At that time, with these two models alone, Nova opened nearly 1,000 stores and points across the country. However, this model is also very limited, and the place chosen must be a mature market like Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. Therefore, today's Nova Coffee has begun to adopt a new model to join and expand its stores.
At last:
A new round of the era of 10,000 stores is coming, this time, the main battlefield is in China! It also announces that China's catering has officially entered the era of 10,000 store chains!
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Based on this, catering O2O cooperated with 50+ brands and industry experts and mentors to successfully hold the China Wandian Chain Conference (Wuhan Station) and the 2nd Meal Intelligent Equipment Summit in Wuhan on March 28-29.
From April 24th to 25th, catering O2O will hold the 2024 China Wandian Chain Conference (Shenzhen Station) and the Catering Overseas Summit Forum to discuss the underlying logic of the Wandian chain, how to build the supply chain and organizational force behind it, how to create a new growth curve for catering to go overseas, and how to become the next Wandian brand?...
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