Xibei won two more public welfare awards, and "love" is the background color of Xibei's values

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the national catering revenue in the first 11 months of 2023 has achieved the best results in five years, and it is expected that the catering industry will exceed 2019 in 2023, and the industry is sprinting towards the era of 5 trillion.

Also in this year, China's catering industry is facing further fierce competition, involution intensifies, costs rise, we witness wave after wave of "store closures", and the reshuffle of the catering industry continues.

Some are leaving, some are still moving forward.

On the first day of 2024, Jia Guolong, chairman of Xibei Catering, released an internal New Year's message, entitled: "Respect common sense, practice basic skills, and achieve high-quality growth". In the internal letter, Jia Guolong disclosed the operating data of businesses including Xibei Noodle Village, quality takeaway, professional children's meals, and retail. In the past year, Xibei has maintained strong growth, with overall revenue exceeding 6.2 billion yuan in 2023, a record high.

As a 36-year-old catering enterprise, Xibei has also gone through ups and downs, getting rid of crises and passing through the cycle many times, and we can find some references through Xibei's actions in 2023.

Respect common sense and practice basic skills

Let's take a look at a few sets of key data from Jia Guolong's internal letter:

In addition to the overall revenue of more than 6.2 billion yuan, in 2023, the number of "five-star stores" of Dianping in Xibei Noodle Village will increase from 95 at the beginning of the year to 149, an increase of 57%;

In the final analysis, the reason behind the above achievements is the title of the internal letter, "Respect common sense and practice basic skills".

Since 1988, when he opened the first Huangtupo snack bar in Linhe, Inner Mongolia, Jia Guolong has been working hard in the catering industry for 36 years.

The essence of opening a restaurant is actually the three elements of product, environment and service, of which product is the foundation of life, and it cannot be overemphasized, and delicious is the premise of everything. Nowadays, most of them use explosive products, but explosive products have a life cycle, and how to continuously launch periodic popular meals with classic dishes as the core to improve consumer stickiness and repurchase is more important.

Looking back on 2023, Xibei will focus on its main business, Xibei Noodle Village, and first smash its own super single product - "Organic Mein Noodles" in terms of products, with the slogan of "Grasp the key to health, eat Noodle Noodles as a staple food", Xibei will continue to improve the product strength of organic Medon.

Noodles are the fist products of Xibei and synonymous with Xibei. In the middle of 2023, Xibei quietly completed the upgrade of the stalls of stores across the country, and in the newly established "Tomato Stall", the noodle girl made noodles on site and interacted with customers in real time. In addition, Xibei has also completed a comprehensive upgrade of the noodle dishes, from five kinds of tomato sauce noodles, oily tomato noodles, to the "Flavor of the World 4" Xinghua Grandma inherited the noodle flower nest.

"Beef and mutton from the grassland, whole grains from the countryside. Jia Guolong mentioned in an internal letter: On Douyin, the videos related to the Naadam Mutton Food Festival in Xibei Noodle Village have been viewed more than 330 million times, and Xibei has dominated the list of "roast sheep" for 10 consecutive weeks, winning a good reputation in the society.

Many customers who have tasted Xibei roast lamb are curious: how can Xibei's mutton be "delicious and not fat"? The secret of Xibei mutton with high-quality ingredients from the place of origin, Xibei will go to the grassland every year to select 6-8-month-old lambs weighing 12.5-16.5 kilograms, they eat grass, drink water, walk 15-25 kilometers a day, and their muscles are firm and elastic.

The purpose of the existence of leading enterprises is to lead the industry to upgrade, jump out of the quagmire of price war, and create more value for customers.

The catering industry is diligent and makes money by one dish at a time, so Xibei chooses to deepen its own products, adhere to the "delicious strategy", and return all competition to common sense. Even if it is the most "stupid" way to cook, at any cost and labor, I firmly believe that delicious is the last word.

In recent years, "consumption downgrade" has become a hot word, and customers' consumption behavior has become more and more rational. However, cost performance is not equal to "low price and low quality", and the ultimate cost performance is the price decline and the quality increase. Consumers' pursuit of cost-effectiveness does not mean that the requirements for consumer quality are reduced.

Consumers' aspirations for a better life and high quality will never change. Practitioners can find the key to the development cycle by conscientiously doing catering, returning to the essence in operation, always maintaining the pursuit of high-quality catering and sticking to the delicious products.

F&B brands have moved from one to another

Speaking of Jia Guolong and the Xibei he founded, the word "toss" must be unavoidable.

From Huangtupo Snack Bar, Ailigus, Gardener's Restaurant, Jincuigong Noodle Food Village, to Xibei Noodle Village, Xibei Kung Fu Cuisine, Dragon Castle, Jia Guolong Small Pot Beef...

It can be said that every new project of Xibei is eye-catching enough, and sometimes it is accompanied by controversy.

In this regard, Jia Guolong is very open-minded, and his own answer is: If you succeed, then you will have to fight grain in the current period; if you don't succeed, all of them will increase the fertility of the land, and these abilities will be transformed into your future and increase your competitiveness. If you do business for a long time, there is no such thing as failure.

Jia Guolong firmly believes that a thing that can be accomplished without going through 9981 difficulties must not be a big deal.

After years of exploration, Xibei's fast food and retail business has finally achieved phased results. In Jia Guolong's internal letter, it was mentioned that in 2023, the overall retail revenue of Xibei Kung Fu cuisine will exceed 340 million. At the same time, Xibei's fast food business has also explored its own path, Jia Guolong Chinabao was upgraded to Longbao, and the first sinking store was opened in Hohhot on the eve of New Year's Day in 2024. According to information on the Dianping platform, there are two more stores in Longbao that are preparing to open.

In November 2023, Xibei's first main meal sub-brand "Jia Guolong Small Pot Beef" was born, focusing on the beef category of Jia Guolong Small Pot Beef well complements Xibei's layout of casual meals in the 60 yuan-80 yuan unit price range, and will also allow Xibei to gain more room for the development of formal meals.

It was learned from Xibei that as of the end of December 2023, Jia Guolong Xiaoguo Beef has opened 5 stores in Beijing, and a number of stores will be opened before the Spring Festival in 2024.

For mature catering brands, developing new brands is an effective way to meet the diverse needs of consumers and reach more users, and promoting "multi-brand management" is also a powerful measure to disperse the risk of changes in the market environment and prevent brand aging.

12 years ago, restaurants could survive well as long as they did dine-in, 9 years ago, the takeaway economy rose, and dine-in + takeaway became a dual channel of catering revenue; 5 years ago, some catering companies began to try to do new retail; after 2020, prefabricated dishes suddenly became popular......

Under this market change, KFC, Haidilao, Xibei, Jiumaojiu, Meizhou Dongpo ...... More and more catering companies are beginning to move from one yuan to diversification. The market and demand have catalyzed the arrival of the composite era of restaurant enterprises, and enterprises need to expand the consumption scene and walk on multiple legs to allow enterprises to survive in the era of thin profits.

Today, Xibei has the "Ninety-Nine Dourts" that focuses on specialty catering, "Xibei Seafood" which focuses on quality banquets, "Xibei Noodle Village" which focuses on Chinese casual meals, "Jia Guolong Small Pot Beef", which focuses on cost-effective meals, "Longbao", a fast food brand that focuses on the sinking market, and "Xibei Kung Fu Cuisine", a retail brand that covers a wider space. It can not only do business of more than 10 yuan or 20 yuan per capita, but also do business of 100 yuan or hundreds of yuan per capita, so that the interests of Xibei's core customers are guaranteed, the overall satisfaction of customers is improved, and the restaurant can be guaranteed to have reasonable profit margins.

The future of the Chinese food industry is a sea of stars

In the past two years, many domestic catering brands have started the journey of "going to the sea of stars".

According to Tehai International's financial report for the first half of 2023, Haidilao currently has 115 Haidilao restaurants abroad, of which 70 are located in Southeast Asia, 17 in East Asia, 18 in North America, and 10 in other regions. As early as March last year, Luckin Coffee laid out in Singapore and currently has 12 stores in the local area.

However, in general, tea and coffee, snacks and fast food, and hot pot are still the main forces. Most of the main meals, especially high-quality meals, are still in the wait-and-see stage, and there are no leading brands yet. As the first brand of Chinese dinner, Xibei has great overseas market opportunities.

Jia Guolong has repeatedly expressed his "yearning" for overseas markets, and last year Jia Guolong went to Europe and the United States many times to investigate, and after he came back, he said half-jokingly and half-seriously, "Their diet is too simple, we have to 'save' them." ”

At present, Chinese meals in developed countries (especially led by the United States) are more traditional as a whole, and they are even in the state of "the first wave of going to sea in the eighties and nineties". From this point of view, there is a lot of room for breakthroughs from brands to categories, and the market is also "calling" for stronger brands with more quality.

In terms of categories, whether it is the abundance of products or the good experience, Chinese meals can best represent Chinese culture, with relatively high unit prices overseas, active markets, and strong consumption power. These have a good environmental foundation for Chinese dinners, especially the "quality meals" represented by Xibei.

In fact, since last year, Xibei has been planning to go to sea. When Jia Guolong's small pot beef brand was first born, Xibei revealed that the brand was one of the store models prepared for going overseas, and one of the reasons for choosing the beef track was that the acceptance of beef in overseas markets was obviously higher.

However, compared with Jia Guolong's small pot beef, the Xibei Noodle Village brand may be more suitable for going to sea. In terms of products, Xibei can use the oatmeal product matrix to develop the noodle product matrix, and can use the Northwest cuisine to develop Chinese-style quality meals, and the consumption power of the American market can also provide enough space for the future development of Xibei Noodle Village.

At the end of the internal letter, Jia Guolong looked forward to the future of Xibei. In 2024, Xibei will strategically do three things, namely, to steadily develop the domestic business of Xibei Noodle Village, with more than 400 stores, and to rapidly develop Jia Guolong's small pot beef business, with more than 100 stores. The last article is that Xibei will fully launch Xibei's overseas business, and Xibei's overseas business will successfully break through in the United States.

The key to going to sea is to "go out", just like back then, Xibei went out of Inner Mongolia to Beijing, and later went out of Beijing to all parts of the country. This time Xibei finally began to take the first step outward, as long as he walked out, there was nothing to fear.

At last

2024 is the 36th year of Jia Guolong's entrepreneurship.

Looking back on the development history of Xibei for so many years, there are some textures of movie versions:

36 years ago, a "ladies and gentlemen, I don't read it!" opened the curtain on Jia Guolong dropping out of school and starting a business.

24 years ago, Jia Guolong went through thousands of difficulties and dangers, bringing Jincui Palace Noodle Food Village back to life, and on the Chinese New Year's Eve of the new millennium, he drove that second-hand van through Chang'an Avenue and couldn't help but sigh: This time he finally stood in Beijing!

Four years ago, the entire catering industry suffered a heavy blow, and Xibei was also choked, and even "the cash on the account could not last for three months".

Standing in the present, when we try to understand Xibei again, the observations we can obtain may be more objective. Xibei is the history of the development of Xibei in China's catering industry, and is a microcosm of China's catering industry and thousands of catering enterprises, we have experienced the development of the times, changes in the market environment, and the ups and downs of consumer demand. However, as long as you don't leave the field, there is no such thing as failure, and anything that can't kill you will make you stronger, and the real players in the restaurant industry belong to the long-termists.

In 2024, we will continue to adhere to and love this industry, respect common sense on this basis, and practice basic skills to achieve high-quality development.