Brand occupancy, category blocking.
Author | Editorial Department of Pinzhao
Uprooted hot pot
The "get rich in other places" mode is being opened
Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot is blooming all over the country, and the acceptance of spicy is becoming more and more unified;
The northern faction of shabu mutton went south, and the copper pot sesame sauce swept the country;
Cantonese hot pot goes north, bringing a fresh experience that is not greasy.
Today's shopping malls are absolutely inseparable from the figure of spicy hot pot, from "market tatters" to various "hot pot + desserts", many hot pot brands have rolled the Sichuan and Chongqing hot pot gameplay to a new height. When it comes to the category with the most potential for non-local expansion, Cantonese hot pot is undoubtedly a strong candidate.
According to the "2024 China Cantonese Cuisine White Paper", most of the Cantonese hot pot sub-categories have gone nationwide, and the proportion of stores in South China continues to decline, with beef hot pot, pork belly chicken hot pot, and Hong Kong-style hot pot accounting for 27.4%, 54.9%, and 24.5% of the stores in South China, respectively.
In this context, a number of Cantonese hot pot brands founded from other places have also seized this outlet, taking the lead in the blank area, expanding the market scale and winning the advantage. There is a brand in the Hunan region that continues to explore and innovate the various fusion methods of pork belly chicken hot pot, and gradually grows into the head of the Hunan pork belly chicken hot pot category, and this brand is the pot king pork belly chicken.
In 2018, the first store of Claypot King was grandly opened in Changsha Bofu Plaza, officially firing the "first shot" of pork belly chicken to occupy Changsha shopping mall.
Prior to this, the Group's brand Lao Yuan Pork Belly Chicken (hereinafter referred to as "Lao Yuan") has been deeply cultivated in the Changsha market for 5 years and is the leading brand of the local pork belly chicken track.
After the launch of the pot king, the popularity and word-of-mouth quickly caught up with Laoyuan, and quickly opened the market in Changsha. In just a few years, the king of the pot has made great progress, taking Changsha as the base, and opening direct branches in Zhuzhou, Huaihua and other cities. According to the official data of Clay pot king, the total number of directly operated stores of Clay pot king and the group's brother brands has approached 70, and it has seized at least 90% of the market share of Hunan pork belly chicken market.
But why did the clay pot king become the head of the market segment? And what did it do right?
Use brand placeholders to complete category blocking
Pot King with non-greasy open differentiation
Laoyuan, Pot King, and Laoyuanjia, these are the three brands under Hunan Desheng Catering Service Management Co., Ltd., a group to which Pot King belongs, all focusing on the category of pork belly chicken.
Why should there be as many as three brands in the same category, the answer given by the founder Zhou Dehua is: brand occupancy and category blocking.
Founded in 2016, Lao Yuan was already a leading local brand before that, and the question in front of Zhou Dehua at that time was: how to open the store into the mall?
After thinking about it for a while, Zhou Dehua felt that as far as the Changsha market is concerned, pork belly chicken hot pot is an unpopular category with limited market capacity.
Instead of upgrading to make a profit, it is better to create an opponent for yourself, which can not only promote the healthy competition between the two brands, but also harvest the entire pork belly chicken market, form a dual competition pattern in the region, and block the development of other competitors.
Similar scenarios are frequently played out in the industry, just like the classic comparison of McDonald's and KFC, or Pepsi and Coca-Cola, which are mirror images of each other, competing and coexisting. This echoes Jack Trout's law of duality, which states that in each category, the top two competitors tend to control and define the entire market segment.
In 2016, Zhou Dehua took the step of strategic transformation, introducing his store to the shopping mall, and carried out all-round refinement and innovation in store size, staffing, product variety and business strategy. He focused on a space of about 200 square meters and strictly controlled the initial investment within one million, which not only significantly reduced the capital investment and achieved the complete recovery of funds in just one year, but also stimulated the enthusiasm of customers to queue up, virtually forming the best word-of-mouth communication effect.
It is based on such successful exploration that Zhou Dehua's sub-card "Clay Pot King" came into being. By 2019, Claypot King had expanded rapidly in Changsha's major commercial centers, successfully opening 15 branches in just one year, of which more than 60% of the stores were popular, ranking among the top three shopping malls in their stores, and becoming a hot local catering brand.
It is no exaggeration to say that Changsha's pork belly chicken market has officially formed a dual pattern of "street fishing and shopping mall clay pot king".
Entering 2022, Zhou Dehua once again led the trend and launched the third brand for young consumer groups - "Lao Yuan Jia", compared with the previous "Lao Yuan" and "Pot King", "Lao Yuan Jia" is not only more youthful and energetic in terms of brand image, its business model is also more flexible and convenient, by providing value-for-money products and services, it has successfully attracted a large number of young people who pursue cost-effectiveness, and effectively improved the return rate of customers.
The price strategy is actually to delineate the target customer group. Prior to this, "Clay Pot King" attracted a group of diners shopping in shopping malls with its high-end positioning of 100+ per capita consumption; The "Laoyuan", which is deeply cultivated in the community market, has won the favor of surrounding residents with a per capita consumption of 70 to 80 yuan; Today, "Lao Yuanjia" has become an Internet celebrity restaurant for young people at a price of 60+ per capita.
Such a subversive idea, once successful, will directly block the latecomers. Changsha's pork belly chicken market share will all be in the hands of the same company.
Specific to how to cut into the crowd of shopping malls, the king of the pot uses "non-greasy" as the core selling point. The Hunan region is famous for its fragrant, spicy and fresh Hunan cuisine, and the overall taste is heavy, but it is not without the demand for light flavors, and the clay pot king grasps the dietary needs of Changsha consumers for light and healthy health, and takes "non-greasy" as the core value to cut into the pork belly chicken track.
At the operational level, the king did not stick to the rules, but innovated and upgraded the traditional pork belly chicken hot pot model, reshaping it into a new concept of "clean but not greasy" hot pot.
In order to highlight the brand characteristics, the king of the pot took the initiative to challenge the "greasy" label of heavy hot pot such as Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot, and quickly established a unique brand image of "non-greasy hot pot" by emphasizing that "more and more consumers prefer non-greasy hot pot" on the menu, and widely spreading the concept of "clean but not greasy hot pot" through online and offline channels.
Category integration + scene differentiation + site selection and upgrading
The king of the pot has a trick to "get rich in other places".
In a previous interview, Zhou Dehua, the founder of the pot king, said, "Pork belly chicken belongs to a relatively niche category, in fact, it will be more advantageous in Changsha, because many people don't know that there is pork belly chicken hot pot." For example, in Hunan Province, no more than 40% of people have eaten pork belly chicken or know about pork belly chicken. ”
From a niche category to today's well-known, the pot king did not copy the model of Cantonese hot pot in Guangdong, but constantly thought about how to meet the needs of the local market.
1. Keep the base and integrate categories
Although the traditional pork belly chicken hot pot is rich in products, almost all of them are concentrated in hot dishes, and the form of production is relatively traditional, which is difficult to meet the needs of the people of Hunan.
At the bottom of the pot, the clay pot king has formed a diverse combination of pork belly chicken + coconut chicken + spicy soup base.
Coconut chicken is a popular hot pot category in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the early years, with a refreshing taste, simple production and strong sense of experience. Pork belly chicken is the opposite, the taste is rich, especially with the addition of pepper, the whole product will have a feeling of dryness after eating, so it also leads to the sales of this product in the winter are very high, but in the summer it is greatly discounted. The addition of coconut chicken solves this pain point, which is refreshing and sweet, which is very suitable for summer.
The addition of spicy soup base meets the diverse needs of consumers. Imagine such a scene, 4 little friends, aimlessly walking in the mall, voting to eat hot pot, some people strongly want to eat pork belly chicken, and some people feel too light, and suddenly someone clapped, "Then go to the pot king, there are both spicy and non-spicy", which undoubtedly increases the effective entry of passenger flow.
In terms of dishes, the traditional product classification system is broken and ingredients with high local acceptance are added.
At that time, almost all of the pork belly chicken brands used product classification, meat, seafood, balls, vegetables, etc., all of which were signboards, resulting in average sales and a lack of popularity. In the fields of Chinese food, fast food, and other hot pots, there have long been signature dishes or best-selling dishes, that is, the Taurus products in the pyramid of product lines.
The clay pot king also made explosive product design in the menu, creatively introducing ingredients with high acceptance in Hunan such as fat beef, hairy tripe, duck blood, etc., to improve the order rate, in addition, it also added special categories such as claypot rice.
2. Continue to differentiate scenarios:
If the heavy oil Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot is targeted at the young people who prefer strong tastes, the non-greasy pork belly chicken hot pot accurately connects the white-collar workers and family customers who pursue health and lightness, and cleverly divides the hot pot lovers in the mall into two camps, one side is obsessed with the spicy temptation of Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot, and the other side is fond of the health regimen of pork belly chicken.
"Non-greasy hot pot" is the cognition to be established by pork belly chicken, which not only highlights the value of the product, but also highlights the attributes of hot pot, and consumers can understand it at a glance.
In order to enhance the appeal of the advertising slogan, Claypot King cleverly used the herd mentality of consumers to carefully create the slogan "More and more people choose non-greasy hot pot", implying that healthy eating has become a social trend, suggesting that consumers choose "non-greasy" when enjoying hot pot is a wiser and healthier choice.
This impactful advertising slogan has been widely disseminated inside and outside the Claypot King's stores and in various media, continuing to attract waves of customers and injecting a steady stream of impetus into the growth of its brand influence.
In terms of store scenes, Claypot King has explored the "two-wheel drive" store model of regular stores and theme stores.
In 2021, the first palace-themed specialty store "Claypot Palace" of the King of Claypot will open in Changsha Central Impression City. The clay pot hall is based on the Qing Dynasty court style building, and the walls are covered with hot pot murals in the style of Chinese painting in a large area, and the elements such as lighting, tables and chairs are classical and simple, highlighting the trend and relaxed brand attitude of the clay pot king.
According to the person in charge of the pot king brand, the pot king theme store combines the palace style with the modern fresh style, and puts forward the scene-based expression of "long live the non-greasy" on the basis of the core value of "non-greasy", and traces the origin of the pork belly chicken with the advertising slogan of "blindly warming and replenishing pork belly chicken, it was an Internet celebrity three hundred years ago", and tells the story of the category.
In the Claypot King theme store, the service staff dressed in Hanfu greeted the guests, the menu was directly named "Non-greasy Secret", and the price of the dishes was the same as that of the regular store, bringing consumers a cost-effective immersive consumption experience. As soon as the theme store was launched, it set off a wave of pork belly chicken craze in Changsha.
3. Site selection and upgrading, focusing on shopping malls
Site selection and upgrading is another powerful weapon for the king to attack the Changsha market. Compared with the common idea of opening traditional pork belly chicken stores on the street, Zhou Dehua, the founder of Claypot King, took a fancy to the lack of a blank market for pork belly chicken brands in Changsha's shopping malls, and proposed a location strategy to open all the stores of Claypot Dawang in shopping malls.
In 2018, there were more than 60 medium and large shopping malls in Changsha, but there was no pork belly chicken brand. If the battlefield of the pot king is aimed at the shopping mall, you can enjoy huge channel dividends, quickly shape brand potential, and avoid head-to-head competition with Laoyuan.
Red meal big data shows that most of the stores of Claypot King are located in large shopping malls with convenient transportation, and the store traffic data and consumer feedback are very good. Taking Changsha City as an example, most of the Claypot Dawang stores are located in shopping malls along the subway line in the city center, and the store reviews on Dianping are above four stars, and many stores have more than 1,000 reviews.
epilogue
The local area is too involuted and goes to other places to make a living; First, let the fellow villagers who work in other places taste the taste of their hometown, so that outsiders can eat the food of a certain place without going to a certain place; Or dry fragility of local attributes, with a fusion, trendy attitude, to welcome Generation Z. This is the current situation of the hot pot that blooms in other places.
Founded three pork belly chicken brands, after so many years of ups and downs, today's Zhou Dehua is known as the "king of pork belly chicken" by industry insiders.
From differentiated competition to now becoming the absolute head of the pork belly chicken category in Hunan, the clay pot kings are still constantly conquering cities and going to various cities in Hunan.
In terms of model, Zhou Dehua also laid out the strategy in advance, and the king of the pot took the direct sales route, while the Laoyuan and Laoyuan families took the franchise route, each with its own mission.
I also look forward to the future answers of the pot kings.