Eight years ago, when most restaurant owners still thought that the supply chain factory was chicken ribs, Zhang Li had already begun to discover that the so-called "chicken ribs" were actually the blue ocean of the future, which could gnaw a big taste.
Nowadays, when it comes to China's barbecue supply chain, the Liske barbecue supply chain founded by Zhang Li can become one of the industry leaders, serving large restaurant chain brands such as Xibei, Xiabu Xiabu, Metro and other large supermarket complexes.
And few people know that behind Zhang Li's achievements, few people know that all this comes from Zhang Li's backwater battle in 2016.
2016 is undoubtedly a crucial year to change the direction of the Northeast boss's entrepreneurial story. Before this, Zhang Li's story is a very representative, extremely inspirational catering brand entrepreneurship model - a young man from Northeast China, who came to Beijing with his bare hands to break into the world, first came to work in a dumpling shop, and worked for five years, and later, he finally had a barbecue restaurant named after his hometown, and in nearly ten years, the barbecue brand belonging to his hometown was promoted to the whole country, and there were hundreds of stores in the country in his heyday.
Compared with this, Zhang Li's story after 2016 has more legends because it forced himself to jump out of his comfort zone and the realization process was difficult to replicate.
In 2016, Zhang Li's ten-year brand expansion road slowed down in this year. He realized that the expansion of a catering brand to a certain scale would be affected by internal management, supply chain construction, cash flow and other issues. Therefore, Zhang Li calmed down to sort out the many problems he saw, and decided to choose a new track - barbecue supply chain.
He put all his energy into the establishment of the supply chain factory, the factory from scratch, he explored a little bit, research, continuous trial and error, continuous optimization, and finally made Liske one of the leading enterprises in the barbecue supply chain track.
Why can Zhang Li complete this "counterattack"? In such a special entrepreneurial success case, what are the universal experiences that are worth learning from colleagues in the catering industry? The supply chain market is still expanding, where is the next opportunity point? Let's look to Zhang Li's experience to find the answer.
01 "I'd rather be a money-losing boss than a money-making worker"
Strictly speaking, Zhang Li's first entrepreneurial project was born in 1999, when he failed the college entrance examination.
In his hometown of Harbin, 19-year-old Zhang Li found a 57-seater Longjiang bus from his father's unit. He removed all the seats except for the driver's seat and converted them into tables. Every night he drove the car to the biggest intersection in town to sell barbecue, which he called "Caravan Barbecue".
But years of experience in eating skewers can't be instantly transformed into the ability to marinate skewers and grill skewers, plus the road is slippery in the northeast winter, Zhang Li skidding and falling into the roadside ditch several times. So the "caravan barbecue" soon died.
Zhang Li was born and raised in Xinglong Town, a town under Bayan County, Harbin, which is a necessary stop on the train route from Jiamusi to Beijing. In Zhang Li's mouth, whether it is in the past history or in the adaptation of film and television dramas, this is a "place where heroes come out". Because there are too many younger brothers in the family waiting for money for living and going to school, in 2000, 20-year-old Zhang Li decided to take his dream of "hero" from Xinglong Town to the big city to make a difference.
The ideal is plump, the reality is cruel, and the "hero" is not good. Fortunately, after hitting a wall many times in Beijing, Zhang Li met a Tianjin brother who had been a young man in Northeast China for ten years, and then settled in his dumpling restaurant.
Zhang Li remembers that the dumpling restaurant has nearly 200 square meters, and the store only sells dumplings and cold dishes, which was a lively restaurant with very hot business around Xiba River at that time. ”
In Tianjin Big Brother's dumpling shop, Zhang Li learned more than just making dumplings. Because the eldest brother in Tianjin always likes to chat with Zhang Li and talk about everything about opening a store, Zhang Li said, "The growth experience of more than 4 years in that store is a very important foundation for me to do catering." ”
God will not disappoint those who work hard, and with the accumulation of time, Zhang Li has shown a lot of management skills that are better than those of his colleagues in the store. In 2004, when Tianjin Big Brother decided to transfer the store, Zhang Li's excellent ability was noticed by the new owner who took over the store and made a request: Zhang Li must stay. Zhang Li helped the new owner, who had never done catering before, renovate the store and hire new people.
At that time, although Zhang Li was only a waiter with a monthly salary of 350 yuan, he once again sowed the seeds of entrepreneurship in his heart, "I had a dream at that time, if I could open a restaurant before 08 years ago", "I would rather be a boss who loses money than a money-making worker".
Zhang Li helped the new owner of the dumpling restaurant put the store on the right track, and the seeds of entrepreneurship sprouted, and that year, he found a small stall of a fast food restaurant to the north of the Ditan crossroads, selling Northeast barbecue, with a monthly rent of 750 yuan.
This rent was not cheap at that time, but fortunately, Zhang Li's small shop business was okay, and it could sell for three or four hundred a day. But the drama of his entrepreneurial story seems to have begun to emerge at this time - on the day his turnover exceeded 1,000, his stall caught fire.
The fire burned everything Zhang Li's first business in Beijing, including a deposit of several thousand yuan, but it couldn't burn his entrepreneurial dream.
A year later, Zhang Li and his girlfriend scraped together more than 6,000 yuan, borrowed 100,000 yuan from relatives and friends, and took over a mutton skewer shop that had been in business for 3 months and had not improved. The wage earner has his own shop again, and the legend of the Bingcheng string bar has also begun.
02意外造就的烧烤"神店"
When the store first opened, it didn't become an instant hit. At first, Zhang Li learned from the big brother in Tianjin to sell dumplings in the store, with some stir-fried vegetables and skewers, but the business was not good, "There are not many people who love dumplings in that alley, and it is not easy to find people who make dumplings." ”
The following summer, Zhang Li mainly sold beer and small cold dishes such as edamame, peanuts, shredded potatoes and lamb skewers. 3 yuan a bottle of beer, 4 yuan a cold dish, 5 cents a lamb skewer, this side business is surprisingly good, "24 bottles of a box of big green sticks, can sell more than 30 boxes in one night." Seeing new business opportunities, Zhang Li decided to open a serious Northeast kebab shop - Bingcheng Skewer Bar in that environment where grilled wings were still popular. It was also with simple beer, cold dishes and skewers that the store began to make a profit in 2006, with a daily turnover of more than 18,000 at most.
The business of the store is getting better and better, and in March 2008, Zhang Li opened a second Bingcheng String Bar, located on Wusheng Road in Beijing. Earn money faster than you think. Zhang Li invested more than 400,000 yuan in the second store, and the cost was recovered in the third month after opening. At the end of 2008, this store brought him a net profit of more than 800,000 yuan, "since 09, this store will earn 2 million a year", "It is a very powerful 'god store' in Beijing at that time", at that time, there were even people who saw the good business of this store and wanted to take 3 million to invest.
When the store was making a quick profit, some people began to recommend Zhang Li to open up to join. As soon as the franchise was released, people who wanted to make money with him flocked to him. This made Zhang Li realize the brand value and influence, and also realized that it was necessary to control the quantity and quality of franchises. In 2015, Bingcheng String Bar still has more than 100 stores across the country, with a revenue of 3~400 million yuan a year.
03 Awakening after the prosperity of "God Store".
As the pace of joining gets faster and faster, the fast train will eventually stall. More than 100 stores are scattered in Beijing, Tianjin, Henan, Hebei, Shandong and other provinces, many stores have business but do not make money, "Zhengzhou has a store that sold 70,000 yuan in one day, but it still loses." ”
Human problems, which are the reason for the greatest probability when normal business logic is violated. Recalling why the brand began to decline, Zhang Li admitted that there were some problems in site selection and procurement at that time, and the company's organizational structure adjustment could not keep up with the speed of development, and many vice presidents had limited capabilities. ”
But for Zhang Li at the time, this was definitely not the primary issue. He is immersed in the dream of "becoming bigger and stronger", and the store has been expanded again and again, and the supply capacity of ingredients is far from keeping up with the demand, so he must have a larger central kitchen.
"At that time, 100 stores had been opened, but my dream was that if Bingcheng could open 500 stores, then we had to build a (supply chain factory) according to 500." At the beginning, Zhang Li built a skewer processing workshop in Songyuli, and asked his mother to personally lead more than 20 other people to produce on site, and put it in the cold storage opposite to freeze it after it was done.
In 2015, he took all the money he earned to build a factory in Majuqiao, and the following year he spent a lot of money to build a factory in Yanjiao, "the first one took 38 million, and the second took more than 4 million."
After the completion of the factory, the big problem that endangered the brand artery appeared, and the cash flow fell into a crisis, "At that time, the capital demand of my front-end store was 30 million, plus the cost of investing in the factory, the output was not much is more than 70 million, where to go with all this money?"
"Only now do I understand a truth, it is not possible to build fixed assets with working capital. At that time, building a factory with a dream was not based on the reality and development plan of the brand, so I felt that catering people needed to have their own thinking ability, judgment and plan for the future, and they could not rely on 'self-satisfaction' to lay out just because it was too easy to get results. ”
"I haven't opened a store for 5 years, and I've been closing." During the epidemic, more than 10 stores in Bingcheng String Bar were closed, and there are currently less than 20 stores left in the country, "So Brother Wang of Nancheng Xiang is right, there must be a flying saucer-shaped structure, less management, and no plane-shaped." ”
With the aging of the "Shendian" brand and its fall from the altar, from a big expansion to a rapid contraction, Zhang Li calmed down and realized the importance of internal management and brand planning.
He began to buy a lot of books and read them repeatedly, "I will buy whatever others say is good." In his office, the shelves occupy a large area, mostly filled with books on management, supply chains, and learning English. He casually took out a copy of "From 0 to 1" from the bag he had just brought on a business trip, and the pages of the book with obvious reading marks could be seen everywhere with fluorescent yellow marker circles.
04 The king of the barbecue supply chain who "hit by mistake".
"I didn't take the opportunity soberly and lost the five years that were the most suitable for development, but fortunately, everything was still in time, and I was lucky." Looking back at the scale of Zhang Li's existing barbecue supply chain business, his experience seems to prove the old saying that "there is no endless road".
But not everyone was a prophet, and the people around him at that time didn't think that the supply chain was a way to go, "Many people said that I was like a fool, and I didn't do the supply chain with such a good brand, but I think I can only choose this." ”
Previously, the Yanjiao factory was built on the scale of 500 stores for self-sufficiency under its own brand. Later, due to the fact that the front-end stores only decreased but did not increase, there was a surplus of production, and a large number of people were wasted every day. In 2016, Zhang Li decided to open the supply chain to the outside world.
The first customer was Wusheng Mutton Soup, and Zhang Li's factory took their order for lamb kebabs. After the first order was issued, Zhang Li spent more time thinking about the new business of supply chain.
He read the success story of Sysco, the "king of the global supply chain", "and later saw on Baidu that its annual revenue is 50 billion US dollars, so it has such a big business!" He bought a lot of books on the supply chain, "to understand the business flow, logistics, cash flow, information flow of all kinds of flows, and found that the supply chain in the back end of China's catering industry is not mature, which is an opportunity."
In 2020, after the lease of the Yanjiao factory changed and the factory was sold ahead of schedule, he moved the factory to Tianjin, and the new factory was put into operation in the summer of 2021. He named his factory Lisco, a nod to Sysco.
At present, Liske has become a partner of many leading catering and retail chain brands such as Xibei, Xiabu Xiabu, Hema Fresh, Metro, Xijie Fried Skewers, etc.
The transformation from a barbecue franchise chain brand to a barbecue supply chain factory is tantamount to a new life for Zhang Li, but the experience of being able to be reborn is not something that anyone can achieve.
"Why are many catering people unsuccessful in transforming into factories? Because it's completely two modes of management. In the eyes of Zhang Li, who has personally entered the game between the two, the management of the front-end store and the back-end factory is completely different, "production and manufacturing emphasize efficiency and management, while catering is marketing, communication and sales." Because of this, most of the members of the team are veterans from leading food manufacturers such as Mengniu, Feihe, and Dacheng.
In the face of the future supply chain industry, Zhang Li feels that the market is still there, "the catering industry has risen from 5 trillion to 15 trillion, and the supply chain market is also growing, but after the mountain of each category in the supply chain market is occupied, it is difficult to be replaced by others", "I still think that the supply chain window will be closed within 5~8 years, and everyone will run this track at that time." ”
"The supply chain is a long-term career that needs to be polished, I crossed over from doing catering, and now I am out of the barbecue industry, I dare not say that I succeeded, I can only say that I am not dead." Zhang Li's dream has changed slightly from 20 years ago, he no longer wants to be a "restaurant boss who dances to the front", this time he just wants to be a big hand behind these catering brands.
05 Conclusion
From the barbecue to the supply chain, Zhang Li likens the process to his favorite sport of competitive motorcycling, where there are no riders on the track who don't crash, as long as they enter the track, the crash is just a matter of laps.
Crashes are not terrible, and many amateur riders are terrible and leave a huge psychological shadow after a heavy fall. Only by overcoming this shadow can you have a chance to get the first place, otherwise you will always have to run after someone else's taillight.
The same is true for the catering industry, once the development is deformed, sooner or later it will fall once, but if it falls, can it stand up, and can it start again after standing up?
Obviously, Zhang Li is the one who fell off the car and got up again, and defeated himself again.