#精品长文创作季#
Altruism is good, altruism is upward. Shu Congxuan's body still exudes the temperament of a soldier - hard work, real skills.
Author: Yin Yadan Editor: Lv Xinyi
出品：零售商业财经 ID：Retail-Finance
It is not easy for an egg to break into a chicken, and it is even more difficult to grow into a "material".
"Retail Business Finance" believes that the countryman's chicken bundle is worthy of every chicken.
To be the first, what is needed more is courage and confidence, but this time the countryman chicken chose to make a conspicuous bag.
On April 8, Lao Xiang Chicken announced the "Dish Traceability Report" of more than 200,000 words on Weibo, revealing that the proportion of restaurants made is 70.6%, the proportion of semi-prefabricated is 27.7%, and the proportion of reheating is 1.7%.
The report represents that the hometown chicken should face the "pre-made dishes" controversy after the "315".
Such a frank approach made the hometown chicken stand out in the crowd of doubts, and netizens couldn't help but sigh that "in the end, it is the hometown chicken that looks up to the countryman".
Afterwards, Shu Congxuan, the founder of Laoxiang Chicken, said in an exclusive interview with the media that he was completely unaware of the public dish traceability report, and it was all the self-assertion of young people.
Whether it's marketing or the truth. The brand with this name has used slightly "unexpected" means to seize the traffic again and again, and has swiped wave after wave of network presence. From the 20th anniversary of the 20th anniversary of the total Shu free banquet to customers, gift gifts, to now the hometown chicken's family background is made public, what the hometown chicken wants is not to bury its good popularity in the catering industry.
The brand, founded in 2003, has grown into a national chain brand covering 8 provinces and thousands of stores 20 years later.
Now that the catering winter is coming, the hometown chicken, which has not yet broken through the eternal proposition of "the first share of Chinese chain catering", is trying to seek a new breakthrough with a new offensive.
01 Old man and old hen
Lao Xiang Chicken has a strong local color, and its predecessor is a well-known local catering brand in Anhui - Feixi Old Hen.
Source: Brand
As a native of Feixi, Anhui Province, Shu Congxuan, who retired from the army in 1979, returned to his hometown to start a business of breeding local chickens. At this time, he had not yet set foot in the downstream catering industry.
At that time, the white-feathered chicken, which had a growth cycle of only 45 days, quickly became popular in the breeding industry, and farmers flocked to it. The market share of the local breed of Feixi old hen has shrunk rapidly.
Although the market size has tightened, as long as the quality is done, it can still survive.
Shu Congxuan thought about it several times, but decided to raise chickens as a long-term career, and the old hen of Feixi with a six-month breeding cycle became the first choice, and you get what you pay for.
Soon, Shu Congxuan bought a thousand chickens with 1,800 yuan of wedding money, and cultivated them in the chicken shed himself. Forty years of experience in raising chickens has made Shu Congxuan the person who knows the most about chickens in the catering industry. He once recalled that if he was blindfolded and placed in a strange chicken coop, he could quickly detect the food and clothing of the chickens.
In the following seven years, Shu Congxuan, who studied breeding and incubation, went from a retail household to a professional breeding household and a demonstration household.
Source: Brand
The market direction is always unpredictable, just a few years when Shu Congxuan concentrated on raising chickens, the east wind of consumption upgrading blew, and the local chickens turned into a popular among diners.
Shu Congxuan's breeding scale ranks in the front row of Anhui, and since then there has been a basic plate at the production end.
Bigger and stronger Shu Congxuan is keenly aware of the pain points of the chicken industry subject to the market, once the cost of breeding rises, the decline in profit margins will directly limit the development space, and the real profit margins are not in the hands of farmers, but to the downstream catering processors.
The topic of industrial profits has to make Shu Congxuan think about how to make a fuss about "chicken" for a long time.
Exploring the chicken by-product business is Shu Congxuan's first attempt, but whether it is selling air-dried chicken or bagged chicken, the market response is mediocre.
It wasn't until 1999 that the story took a turn. At that time, Shu Congxuan was unexpectedly invited to fast food franchise training, and after many investigations, Shu Congxuan anchored the Chinese chain fast food track, intending to build a whole industry chain of chicken products, and then form a vertical supply chain from production to consumption.
So in 2003, the first "Feixi Old Hen Shop" opened in Shucheng Road, Hefei.
Source: Internet
Chicken connoisseurs do fast food business, and the quality alone is a dimensionality reduction blow to peers.
Chicken-based dishes and nutritious and delicious chicken soup allowed Shu Congxuan to break the "blockade" of foreign fast food in one fell swoop and detonate the market.
The performance is there, but what is in front of Shu Congxuan is a loss dilemma.
Knowing that he was not strong enough in the professional latitude of catering, Shu Congxuan invited professional managers to take care of the store operation, and at this time, the cost of Feixi Old Hen's dishes was raised to an astonishing 70% by Shu Congxuan, while the cost of dishes of generally mature catering brands accounted for 50%.
Source: Baidu Encyclopedia
After the drastic adjustment, Shu Congxuan, who was born with mud legs, began to grow into an insider in the catering industry, and the old hen of Feixi also began to turn to a standardized upgrade.
In order to find out the appropriate business standards, Shu Congxuan personally recorded the operation of the store, wrote down the operation guide, including uniforms, masks, hair nets and other details, standardized training and standardization for employees, and soon made major adjustments to the internal and external image of the brand, readjusted the selling price, replaced the door, strengthened publicity, and implemented economic management.
A series of actions, by the "rest assured chicken" marketing point, Feixi old hen is popular again, the speed of store expansion continues to accelerate, at the end of 2012, Feixi old hen Anhui store exceeded 100.
Gradually, Shu Congxuan's ambitions were not satisfied with regional brands, and the dream of a national chain began to grow wildly. Shu Congxuan is determined to leave Beijing, Shanghai and other first-tier cities.
Source: Screenshot of the official website of Lao Xiang Chicken
However, the cruel reality made Shu Congxuan fail as a matter of course.
Shu Congxuan found the consulting company Trout and paid a consulting fee of four million, and the first answer Trout gave was to change the door and replace the signboard that had been around for decades, and the risks were self-evident.
This time, Shu Congxuan still trusted his instincts. Only by deciding to take off the coat of local specialties can we truly become a chain restaurant brand that can be based in all cities.
Overnight, the words "hometown chicken" were officially launched.
Source: Brand
Facts have proved that Shu Congxuan once again successfully bet on the treasure, and the renamed hometown chicken has gained a lot of media attention, and the brand has become more and more stable.
In 2016, the scale of Laoxiang Chicken's directly-operated stores exceeded 400 and entered Nanjing and Wuhan, and in 2019, Laoxiang Chicken's direct-operated stores in Nanjing and Wuhan exceeded 100, and the number of directly-operated chain stores nationwide exceeded 800. According to the prospectus of Lao Xiang Chicken, as of December 31, 2021, Lao Xiang Chicken had 991 directly-operated stores nationwide.
From a retail investor who bent down to breed to win the "No. 1 brand of Chinese fast food in the country", he has been in business for decades, and has hit a wall several times.
02 From the hometown chicken to the old "flower" chicken
Changing the ID is the first step in the turning of the hometown chicken brand, and the key to getting out of the circle lies in Shu Congxuan's accurate grasp of "high-frequency rigid demand".
Creating a taste-first full-product industrial chain is the first moat created by Shu Congxuan for the hometown chicken.
Raising chickens is easy for Shu Congxuan, but how to achieve the scale of local chickens is a difficult hurdle that the chain brand hometown chicken must overcome.
According to statistics, since 2017, more than 800 hometown chickens have linked food processing plants, agricultural and animal husbandry enterprises, cooperatives, family farms, professional farmers, etc., and the two tricks of "whole process + traceability" have made hometown chickens a well-deserved high-quality chicken.
Secondly, Shu Congxuan broke through from the price, with "human touch" and "new Chinese style" as the brand labels, and accelerated the layout to capture the consumption minds of white-collar workers.
Source: Screenshot of Hometown Chicken Weibo
Subsequently, Shu Congxuan once again captured the trend of young people eating out, and then created the concept of "family kitchen", simple and warm lighting, steaming meals, and people sitting around the table, "fireworks + human touch" has become another label on the hometown chicken.
During this period, Superimposed Shu Congxuan personally went out to do marketing, and the "simple" chairman "tore the staff joint letter", "annual strategic meeting" and other self-contained traffic heat, and suddenly gained the favor of a large number of visitors. Whether it is the layout of Douyin or the takeaway platform, Lao Xiang Chicken has built different live broadcast scenes, and continuously strengthened the new Chinese concept of Lao Xiang Chicken through normalized discounts, celebrity co-branding, and Lao Xiang interaction. According to statistics, after only four months of joining Douyin Life Service, the monthly sales of Lao Xiang Chicken exceeded 10 million.
After forming a more and more distinct brand positioning, Lao Xiang Ji expanded the office buildings and shopping malls of the store, and moved the store to the office place where white-collar workers gathered. Chinese fast food with an average customer unit price of less than 30 yuan, but you can drink a bowl of hearty chicken soup, and the hometown chicken with full emotional value makes white-collar fans come.
Although there is no shortage of marketing actions for Lao Xiang Chicken, looking at the marketing methods of Lao Xiang Chicken, it is really a must.
Source: Brand Love Meal
In 2018, Lao Xiang Chicken announced that all restaurants in Wuhan would have free lunch on the same day, in October 2019, Lao Xiang Chicken hosted a banquet to celebrate its own brand topping the national list of Chinese fast food, during a special period, Shu Congxuan publicly expressed that he would provide loving meals for medical staff on the front line, and in 2024, Lao Xiang Chicken Anniversary Celebration, all its stores will once again feast the whole country.
As a result, Lao Xiang Chicken has been recognized by the World Records Official Certification Agency (WRCA) as "the Chinese fast food brand with the largest number of free diners".
Banquets, in essence, are to lose money and make money, and eat repeat customers. Shu Congxuan has reason to believe that the hometown chicken has the ability to retain a large number of spectators who come to join in the fun.
This Chinese story about "human touch" is attracting a large number of consumers who regard emotional resonance as a rigid need.
03 "Backstab" pre-made dishes
As a complete service industry, the long-termism of catering must be based on altruism.
Under the premise of the fast-paced social environment and the white-hot involution of catering, if you want to realize the expansion of the variety of dishes and profit margins, you can't avoid the controversial topic of prefabricated dishes to a certain extent, and the key point lies in transparency and recognition.
Source: Screenshot of the WeChat public of Lao Xiang Chicken
This means that the high-quality and low-cost consumer filter originally created through unequal information difference is broken, and when the dish needs to face consumers with a real side, it is obvious that it cannot be sold at a high price.
But there are always people who have to stand up, and the transparency of the catering industry in the future must go to the end, just as Lao Xiang Chicken has insisted on transparent kitchens since 2016.
It's just that now, it's not just the kitchen that's transparent, there are the core supplier resources of the country's chicken, and food safety.
The confidence of this table-lifting is hidden in such a traceability report.
Source: "Hometown Chicken Dish Traceability Report"
This 677-page 200,000-word "Lao Xiang Chicken Dish Traceability Report" covers all 1,218 stores of Lao Xiang Chicken, and has made a comprehensive and systematic combing of 226 SKUs, 873 kinds of raw materials and 305 suppliers.
For the entire industry, this is the most bold and avant-garde way to dispel the doubts of prefabricated dishes, and it is also a wonderful hand that can quickly develop beyond the times.
From Sanlu poisoned milk powder to today's Laotan sauerkraut and plum cabbage button meat, every exposure means that the brand is discolored and displaced in the hearts of consumers, and even years of painstaking management will be burned.
Rather than being listed as the object of suspicion of pre-made dishes, it is better to take the lead in clearing the suspicion, jump out of the prisoner's dilemma that is unpredictable, and continue to strengthen the reputation.
Of course, the hometown chicken actually has more careful thoughts.
Source: "Hometown Chicken Dish Traceability Report"
In the traceability report, Lao Xiang Chicken has been exposed many times, and the chicken ingredients are different, and the differences in regional distribution are specific to the quantification, so that everyone has a more accurate understanding of the pain points of catering, and the side highlights the strict quality control standards of Lao Xiang Chicken.
The report repeatedly mentions Lao Xiang Chicken's measures to explore and optimize the supply chain in the future, such as the use of new chilled preservation technology to extend Feixi old hens, etc., which is a self-improving corporate attitude. At the same time, it also shows that the breadth and width of the future development of the supply chain are very sexy, and the value of the hometown chicken is far more than that.
Consumer-friendly measures such as transparent kitchens, digging deep into the supply chain, and blowing up the ugliness of the house have made this earthy name a leader in Chinese fast food.
Altruism is ultimately self-interested.
Perhaps starting from the four million renamed hometown chickens, Shu Congxuan has firmly set the corporate values of standing on the side of consumers. Who would have thought that when he woke up, it would not be Musk who opened the source, but Shu Congxuan.
04 Conclusion
Detonating Internet traffic again and again, Shu Congxuan's marketing has always been quality.
At least Lao Xiang Chicken proves that the opening up of the catering industry can also bring extraordinary prosperity and common prosperity.