In 2023, Tustin Burger, which has been deeply involved in the market for five years, will usher in a splash of wealth, doubling the number of stores in one year, and also giving birth to the track of new Chinese burgers.
Subsequently, a number of brands appeared, and Xibei, which has always wanted to deepen the cultivation of fast food for many years, launched the brand "Jia Guolong China Fort" in an attempt to enter the Chinese burger game. But to the surprise of consumers, Jia Guolong's Chinafort, which is backed by Xibei, could not be done in less than a year.
Under the label of new Chinese style, the lack of creativity in content, serious homogenization and other problems have become the problems of Jia Guolong's Chinabao, and have also become the common pain points of all new Chinese brands.
Xibei Mian Village announced to the outside world that it had explored a path of its own, and Jia Guolong Chinabao was upgraded to Longbao and opened its first store in Hohhot.
According to the data released by Xibei, in 2023, the overall revenue of Xibei Catering Group will be 6.2 billion yuan, a record high, and the number of Dianping's "five-star stores" will increase from 95 to 149, serving a total of 60 million customers throughout the year, of which more than 6.4 million children will enter the store.
In 2023, Xibei will make efforts to "Xibei quality takeaway" and achieve annual sales of 2 billion yuan. In November 2023, Jia Guolong small pot beef was launched, supplementing Xibei's market space for casual lunch at a unit price of 60-80 yuan.
As the leader of the Chinese food industry, Xibei has been looking for the second growth curve, and the direction of exploration includes two aspects, one is the standardization of products, such as China Fort, small pot beef, and the other is new markets, such as children's meals, quality takeaway. At present, except for high-quality takeaways, it cannot change the existing income pattern of Northwest Noodle Village.
1
Xibei is difficult to enter, and the new Chinese burger that can't be sold
There is an episode in "Wulin Gaiden", the plot is that the money shopkeeper asked the chef Li Dazui to order moon cakes, but in order to innovate, Li Dazui made new "moon cakes" such as pizza and hamburgers.
He also specially named the burger "McD's", which made the audience laugh at the same time as the comedic effect was full. In the context of the Ming Dynasty in the play, the audience jokingly called this "the world's first hamburger".
Although it is a comedy, in real life, the "Chinese-style hamburger" belonging to the Chinese has long appeared, but life is not as good as the two major Western fast food giants.
In the past few months, the "Jia Guolong China Fort" under Xibei Xiaomian has been shut down, some stores have closed down, and some stores have changed their catering business to small pot beef, completing the great leap from Western style to Chinese style.
In just one year, this plan has opened 300 to 500 stores across the country, and the China Fort brand, which has opened 53 stores in Beijing, has completely no follow-up.
In this regard, Jia Guolong China Fort said that this is a new exploration of the brand, and the brand has been renamed "Dragon Fort", and will use Hohhot as a pilot to explore the sinking market. It is worth mentioning that at present, Longbao has opened a store in Hohhot, and the price is also comparable to Jia Guolong's Chinaburger, which is another attempt by Xibei in the field of fast food, and it is also another attempt at a new Chinese burger.
Tustin is the leader of Jia Guolong's China Fort, or rather, Tustin is the leader of all China Forts. In 2023, with a high cost performance of about 20 yuan per capita, Tustin will come out of the circle, break out of the encirclement in the fast food track, and successfully build its own label into a Chinese-style burger, winning the hearts of many Chinese consumers.
In this context, Xibei entered the game, and for its founder Jia Guolong, fast food is a track that Xibei must try. Jia Guolong also said in an interview: Only by making fast food can Xibei become an international brand.
This is Xibei's eighth attempt in the fast food field, but this time it took less than a year from the attempt to the closure, which is surprising.
Before the China Fort, Xibei sold "Jia Guolong Air Bun", and from the air bun to the China Fort, it seems that only a name has been changed. According to official information, Jia Guolong's hamburger skin technique of "special snack wine stuffed steamed buns from Tonglu, Zhejiang" is almost the same as air buns.
In terms of content, there are also rich varieties such as tender egg grandmother vegetable burger, stir-fried yellow beef burger and braised pork burger with wine. Although it has its own characteristics, it is very different from the hamburger that people remember.
In the eyes of consumers, Xibei's operation is a little too "localized", resulting in the appearance of Chinese burgers, almost no different from traditional meat buns, but with a mid-range positioning price, consumers have no problem trying it, and it seems not easy to continue to buy it.
Even Tustin, the industry leader, was formerly a pizza maker, and Tustin's burgers are still Western-style fast food, and the best seller is "fried chicken burgers". This also makes people wonder whether those innovative new Chinese burgers are really Chinese, or just stay at the theoretical level.
2
The maturity is low, and the industry outlet cannot be urged
The wind of the new Chinese style is blowing, and Tustin is the greatest. In 2018, Tustin claimed to "redefine hamburgers", and in five years, Tustin had more than 3,500 stores nationwide, mostly concentrated in second- and third-tier cities.
In February 2024, the number of Tustin stores nationwide will double to 7,000. Under its leadership, Chu Zheng China Burger, Limburgburg, Maisburg, Oddington Burger and other brands have intensively established and opened stores, and have successively obtained financing.
Tustin has become a classic case of the rise of "Chinese fast food". On Douyin's promotion, a single meal of a hamburger and a glass of Coke in Tustin only costs 9 yuan 9, a double package is only 32.8 yuan, and 35 yuan can buy 5 spicy chicken leg burgers.
This price is much cheaper than KFC McDonald's, and the low-priced Tustin has also won the hearts of many workers. After capturing a large number of consumers, Tustin has also become more and more online, opening multiple accounts so that consumers can stock up on coupons through multiple channels and spend at any time.
In 2023, Tustin will rank among the top five on Douyin's local life group buying list for five consecutive months, with the highest monthly sales exceeding 7 million. Tustin, who is out of the circle, has brought fire to Chinese burgers, and on Xiaohongshu, there are tens of thousands of promotion notes on the topic of "Chinese hamburgers", and tens of millions of views on Douyin.
Price is the main reason for Tustin's rise, data shows that in 2022, seven of China's top ten Western-style fast food brands have an average consumption of more than 28 yuan per capita, and top brands such as KFC and McDonald's are more expensive. In this context, affordable Western-style fast food is naturally more favored by consumers.
Tustin, which seized the blank, had a per capita consumption of only 19.76 yuan. Coupled with Tustin's own "Chinese-style gene" packaging, as well as the blessing of various Internet celebrity marketing methods, it is logical to get out of the circle.
However, under the siege of major mature brands, it is easy for the new Chinese style to get out of the circle, but it is a challenge for a long time. At present, McDonald's is a direct model, KFC is a partial direct franchise model, and Tustin has always adopted a franchise model.
According to the data on the official website, the investment of the standard store of 65 square meters in Tustin is more than 450,000 yuan, and the cost of joining a Tustin store may exceed 700,000 yuan. For franchisees, on the one hand, it is a higher franchise fee, and on the other hand, it is the main strategy of changing the market at a low price, and it is not easy for such a business to make money.
Many Tustin franchisees reported that the 10-yuan group purchase coupon was the hottest, but the profit was extremely low, and they were often in a state of being busy all day. In other words, Tustin's biggest advantage at the moment is simply the low price.
In addition, compared to Western-style burgers, which have been in operation for more than 30 years, the degree of standardization of Chinese-style burgers is also different, and Tustin's freshly baked crust will change in taste due to differences in staff proficiency and processing procedures. The speed of its meal is also slower than that of Western-style burgers.
For consumers, the core of fast food is "fast", and Tustin is a bit of putting the cart before the horse. In addition, there are too many franchise stores, and Tustin's management of the store will also be untimely, the stores are not uniform, the standard is different, and the sanitary conditions of Tustin have been exposed at the 315 party, and the problems of repeated use of black oil and overdue sales of ingredients exist.
3
Marketing eyeballs, new Chinese style is just a tool to collect money?
In this way, the new Chinese burger seems to have become a pseudo-concept, and the product of "cake and vegetables" is more like meat buns than burgers. With just a price war to attract consumers without enough innovation in content, will Chinese burgers end up being a virtual fire like other new Chinese brands?
In recent years, many new Chinese-style noodle restaurants and baking brands have left the scene, among which the main Chinese pastry Tiger Head Bureau is one of the representatives, the initial use of Internet celebrity thinking to package themselves, after excessive marketing, Tiger Head Bureau capital chain is overstretched, and then there is a default on the payment of raw material suppliers, resulting in the interruption of supply by suppliers and arrears of employee wages, and finally the thunderstorm shut down.
However, the departure of the Tiger Head Bureau did not prevent the new Chinese style from sweeping the catering industry, but intensified. Hamburgers, tea, coffee, steamed buns, catering brands have almost been made all over by the new Chinese style.
At the end of last year, Bawang Tea announced that the number of stores worldwide exceeded 3,000, becoming the new top Chinese tea drink. The annual sales of its classic product "Boya Juexian" have exceeded 100 million cups.
However, there are very few brands that can develop and expand smoothly like Tustin and Bawang Chaji, and even the former high-end ice cream brand Zhongxuegao has been abandoned by consumers and capital, falling into a crisis of arrears of wages, and its business situation is worrying.
The new Chinese noodle restaurants such as Hefu Lao Noodles, Chen Xianggui and Wuye Mixed Noodles, which are very popular, have collectively hit the streets, or their development has slowed down, or they have directly withdrawn from the market.
This is also the common pain point of all brands that use "new Chinese" thinking to package themselves, in the early stage, they relied on financing to burn money for the market, positioning their own brands as high-end, and the appearance is trendy, but in fact, the product premium is high, and consumers will no longer pay after trying it.
After being broken by the brand, the new Chinese marketing has also become a marketing method that only attracts traffic and cannot be sustained.
Luckin Coffee, which has been co-branded with Moutai and has been very successful, chose to co-brand with the dance drama "Dream of Red Mansions" on social platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu after entering the new Chinese style, and put forward the concept of "new Chinese coffee style". But in the end, it overturned because the co-branding only existed in concept.
The Li MEGA model was dubbed "Chinese horror" by consumers, resulting in a sharp drop in Li March deliveries, and Hongqi Auto was also complained by users that it had lost its recognition due to the excessive pursuit of new Chinese elements.
It's understandable that brands that market with the hottest concepts of the moment, but increasingly sensible consumers are no longer as brainless as they used to be. In order to catch up with the new Chinese craze, those brands take the concept as the guide, hoping to harvest consumers through the heritage of traditional culture, but in this process, most brands just rigidly put on the shell of the new Chinese style, and its content has no background.
Such a marketing atmosphere has also led to the proliferation of new Chinese styles, which in turn has aroused consumer disgust. Those homogeneous marketing ideas make consumers quickly aesthetically fatigued, and no brand is new.
For brands, new marketing needs to be accompanied by new content. How to maximize the effect of brand communication, we also need to start from our own operating model, product quality, service quality and other aspects, relying only on a concept, in this era it is more and more difficult to give birth to "pouring wealth".