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- Chief Business Intelligence
- Chief Business Intelligence
Introduction: The once popular "king of queues" has disappeared.
Catering reshuffle! The unstoppable "tide of store closures", all walks of life lamented that business was not easy to do.
Relevant data statistics show that from January to June 2024, more than 1 million catering-related enterprises will leave the market, and the data is close to the sum of last year.
According to the report of Winshangyun Think Tank, from August to September this year, the closure of brands was more frequent, among them, catering as the hardest hit area, accounting for more than half, and many brands fell before they reached the "11th Golden Week", and many of them were once popular "queuing kings".
Especially in the hot pot industry, which has no technical threshold, it has borne the brunt of the impact in the downward trend of catering.
According to the data of Narrow Door Restaurant, as of August 5, the total number of stores in the hot pot industry reached 503525, 209989 new stores were opened in the past year, and a net increase of 60,054 in the past year.
This means that in the nearly one year as of August 5, more than 140,000 stores have been closed in the hot pot industry!
Recently, an Internet celebrity hot pot was exposed to close stores in many places, this was once known as the "beautiful frog fish head hot pot industry" phenomenon-level Internet celebrity brand, but now the situation is to close the store at a loss and struggle to survive.
"Internet celebrity" is easy, but it is difficult to become popular, and under the wave of catering reshuffle, the life cycle of Internet celebrity brands seems to be shorter.
It used to be the "king of queues" everywhere
harvested half of the Internet celebrity hot pot in the entertainment industry
As the birthplace of hot pot, "Chongqing hot pot is good at research and development", this sentence is true.
Brother Laoguan Chongqing Beauty Frog Fish Head (hereinafter referred to as "Brother Laoguan") was founded in Chongqing, and the founder Chen Jiayun founded Brother Laoguan in 2014, focusing on fish hot pot. In 2017, the elder brother grafted a bullfrog on the basis of cold pot fish.
The appearance of the elder brother has added another category to the subdivision of the hot pot track, and its main "fish and frog hot pot" has become popular in the catering industry as soon as it was launched.
Open a store and fire a store, and everywhere you go, you can set off a queue craze.
How popular is this store?
In 2017, the elder brother opened the store in Shanghai, but it was less than 2 days after the opening, and he had to stop business because of the large number of people in line and the chaos on the scene.
There are even so many people that you have to find scalpers to buy tickets, after all, it is impossible to eat without waiting in line for several hours.
In the most popular years of the elder brother, some people queued for 6 hours, "taking the number from 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and waiting for us to eat at more than 10 o'clock".
There are even a lot of links to old officials and scalpers on the Internet, who would have thought that eating a meal would make such a big battle......
At the beginning of August 2021, the elder brother opened the first store in Beijing in Chaoyang Joy City, Beijing, and the queue was staged again.
Less than two days after the store opened, a queue strategy was already circulating on social platforms.
There was even a die-hard fan who had to give a bad review because of the long queue.
Some people describe it as "queuing like the Spring Festival", it is no exaggeration to say that no matter where the elder brother goes, he can set off a wave of "beautiful frog fish head".
With star products such as "Healthy Bullfrog" and "Reservoir Fish Head", it has also attracted a lot of celebrities, Xu Zheng, Guli Nazha, Jiang Shuying, Wu Zongxian, Bao Bell and other stars have come to eat, and it can be said that almost half of the entertainment industry has been harvested.
In just a few years, the development of the elder brother is also very rapid, and he has opened a number of stores in 40+ cities across the country.
According to public reports, in just three years, in 2020, the number of stores in the country reached 58.
However, how brilliant it once was, how lonely it was to exit.
Today's elder brother and old official have long since lost the scene of crowds queuing up in the past.
"Brother and old official, there is no need to queue up at all now, and there are many vacant seats."
"I thought that the old official might have to queue for a long time to have a seat at this point, but when I arrived, I found that there were only a few tables of guests, and there were a lot of empty tables."
Not only is there no lively team in the past, but in the past two months, there have been news of the closure of the old brother in many places across the country, involving Guangzhou, Xi'an, Wuxi, Shaoxing, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin and other regions.
Among them, Shaoxing closed 4 stores, leaving only one store; Only one store in Shenzhen is left in operation in Guangdong; There is only one store left in Beijing; Xi'an and Wuxi no longer have elder official stores.
According to public reports, as of April 2024, Gelaoguan has opened 100+ stores in 40+ cities across the country.
According to the big data of Red Meal, as of October 15, Brother Laoguan has more than 70 stores across the country, which means that Brother Laoguan has closed at least 30 stores in a year and a half.
used to be the "king of queues", but now the scenery is no more. It can be seen how cruel the survival of the fittest in the hot pot track is.
If you don't do it, you won't die:
Internet celebrity hot pot was detected with carcinogenic veterinary drugs
Although the defeat of the elder brother was due to the overall economic recession, it was also the result of his own self-inflicted blame.
On December 15, 2020, bullfrogs, which are ordered at almost every table in Ge Laoguan's store, were found to contain banned veterinary drugs.
After the news was exposed, the elder brother and the official went from being in the spotlight to being criticized by tens of thousands of people.
After the accident, many stores of Brother Laoguan said that due to different suppliers, there was only one store involved. And the store involved has also changed suppliers.
But it's clear that consumers aren't buying it, because no one wants to eat a bullfrog with a banned veterinary drug.
In fact, this is not the first time that food safety problems have occurred in the elder brother's official company, and the affiliated enterprises of the elder brother have failed to pass the sampling inspection many times, such as ofloxacin in 2018, enrofloxacin in 2019, and carbouracillin in 2020...... And it has also been administratively punished many times because of food hygiene.
As a catering industry, food safety and hygiene are particularly important, and once the reputation collapses, it is difficult to win back people's hearts.
After the news of banned veterinary drugs was exposed, netizens expressed great anger, "With so much marketing effort, it is better to manage your own food safety first, and there are scalpers selling tickets at the door." ”
The Internet has a memory, and many netizens also remember that this is not the first time that an accident has happened!
Although consumers are willing to spend hours queuing up to eat an online celebrity store, consumers are not a big injustice, and repeated problems will only exhaust consumer trust, and the online celebrity store will eventually be abandoned by consumers.
Internet celebrity restaurant
Unable to cut more and more rational consumers
In recent years, the catering industry has continued to be cold and faced with huge pressure and challenges.
"Hot Pot", which debuted in 2020, became the new king of the hot pot queue as soon as it debuted, and it was regarded as a new "spoiler" in the hot pot field.
And this top hot pot has recently been exposed to the closure of stores in many places.
The first store of the hot pot in Wuhan, which had set a record of a single store's monthly turnover of more than 2 million, was officially closed on August 11, and the first store of the hot pot in Nanchang was also announced to be closed......
In the earnings call on August 26, Su Danman, executive director and chief financial officer of Jiumaojiu Group, also said that the only store in Kunming City is also planned to be closed in the second half of this year.
With the closure of the store so often, you can also know that the pressure of hot pot is not small!
Regarding the withdrawal from the Wuhan market, Jiumaojiu Group publicly stated that it was based on a comprehensive consideration of the market environment, operating costs and customer needs.
To put it bluntly, it is not profitable, and in today's environment of cold catering consumption, closing stores that do not make money is also a sign of stop loss.
Some time ago, the Internet celebrity hot pot brand "Just Thai Thai Hot Pot" from Thailand also closed 8 stores in Shanghai.
"Panda Laozao Hot Pot" has also closed six directly-operated stores in Shanghai one after another.
When these Internet celebrity hot pot brands landed in Shanghai that year, they were all a scene of long queues, and the queue of four or five hours was not a problem.
It's just that in front of rational consumers, these Internet celebrity hot pots are becoming more and more uncontrollable.
It's not just the popular hot pot restaurants that are under pressure, but even the high-end positioning of "Huige Hot Pot" is also mired in negative news, with stores shrinking, net profits losing year after year, and stock prices continuing to plummet......
Founded in 2004, "Hui Ge Hot Pot" focuses on high-end Cantonese hot pot, with a per capita consumption of more than 500 yuan, and the hot pot is at least two people to eat, so it is impossible to eat hot pot in this store without 1,000 yuan.
At that time, this hot pot restaurant had a very high-end environment, with exquisite private rooms, red wine and a variety of high-end seafood ingredients, which made the hot pot taste Michelin-in.
At that time, even if it cost thousands of yuan to eat a hot pot, it did not prevent Brother Hui's hot pot from still being popular with many people, and it was also a hot pot brand loved by celebrities.
It's just that Huige hot pot has not escaped the "consumption downgrade", and the number of its stores has been decreasing, and by the end of 2023, there are only 4 stores left in Huige hotpot in Shanghai.
Moreover, the share price of its backdoor listed parent company has also been falling endlessly, and on August 7 this year, it ushered in a "flash crash", falling by more than 90%! It once recorded the largest decline in the Hong Kong stock market on the day.
In those years, the Internet celebrity hot pot restaurants that triggered rounds of queuing craze fell one after another.
And since the beginning of this year, the hot pot track has also opened a "volume", and a number of hot pot giant brands such as Xiabu Xiabu, Nan Hot Pot, and Gang Hot Pot have begun to adjust their prices.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to August 2024, the national catering revenue will be about 3.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.6%, the lowest growth rate in the past decade.
Catering prices are declining, costs are rising, many brands are forced to get involved in price wars, and catering brands without strong supply chain capabilities can only be out in advance.
As a highly saturated track, the reason for this is that the threshold is low, so the hot pot industry will eventually return to service and quality.
Referring to Haidilao, which focuses on high-quality services, Haidilao achieved operating income of 21.491 billion yuan in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 13.8%; Core operating profit reached RMB2,799 million, an increase of 13.0% over the same period last year, and both revenue and core operating profit reached a record high.
Therefore, if the catering industry wants to survive in the fierce battle, it still needs to have barriers and develop its core competitiveness.
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