The caption | Visual China
There is no doubt that "May Day" is the peak of the catering industry.
Taking advantage of the large-scale passenger flow, shopping malls across the country have rushed to open new stores, according to incomplete statistics, nearly 30 projects have opened before and after the golden holiday, and more than 10 projects have opened on April 30.
As a traffic pool for shopping malls, the restaurant industry has repeatedly set records. With the reputation of "Changsha Hunan Cuisine Queue King", the cooking tobacco small stir-fried yellow beef that entered Shanghai for the first time also ushered in a soft opening in Shanghai Yuexing Global Harbor during the small long holiday.
Queuing is undoubtedly the most intuitive and convincing performance of whether the restaurant is hot or not. And the first-time cooking smoke, there is no water and soil dissatisfaction.
On the first day of the soft opening on May 1, the cooking tobacco reproduced the grand situation of 12 consecutive hours of uninterrupted queuing in Changsha, and the longest queuing time reached 6 hours.
In the following days, cooking smoke has soared all the way to various charts.
On May 2, it rushed to the second place in the popular list of Shanghai Hunan cuisine in Dianping;
On May 3, it topped the first place in the Shanghai Hunan cuisine hot list;
On May 4, it ranked 54th in the Popular Food List of Dianping Shanghai;
On May 5, it ranked 25th in the Popular List of Shanghai Food;
On May 10, it ranked 5th in the Popular Shanghai Food List of Dianping;
On May 13, cooking tobacco has firmly occupied the top three positions of the popular list of Shanghai cuisine.
The speed with which cooking tobacco opened the Shanghai catering market, the remarkable achievements, and the popularity of the phenomenon made diners praise each other, and also made the stop-and-go visitors thrilled.
According to the 2020 development report released by the Shanghai Catering and Cooking Industry Association a few days ago, as of now, Shanghai has more than 100,000 restaurants, and the number and density of restaurants rank first in the country; in the shopping malls with the largest number of shopping malls in the country, catering has accounted for more than 30%, the highest in the country.
That is to say, walking in Shanghai, there will be a restaurant every two minutes, and every three minutes, there will be a snack bar. Diners have a wide choice, and the development of restaurants faces great competition.
All along, various Hunan cuisine brands have been trying to go out of Hunan and go to the front line. But no brand is really on the front line. Most of them are still fly houses, and there is no real sense of formation scale.
The table of Shanghainese has always been a thick oil and red sauce, and the mouth of Shanghainese is also famous. In the face of "spicy" a bit of bullying, bent on making "spicy Hunan cuisine" cooking smoke, how is the "cooking smoke speed" created?
Customers wait in line for 6 hours, for what?
"Cooking tobacco is the representative of Hunan cuisine, cooking tobacco is the king of Changsha Hunan cuisine queue, choose cooking tobacco to enter the global port, add some spicy to our lives!" According to the person in charge of global port investment promotion, with the continuous diversification of catering consumption demand, they chose this popular Hunan cuisine queue king in Changsha through comparison, hoping that it can bring more surprises to everyone.
Cooking smoke did.
On April 27, when the restaurant's internal testing was still in full swing, they were asked by enthusiastic diners who wanted to enter the restaurant: "Why is the cooking smoke open but not open?" What gimmick is the internal test going to play? ”
In order to meet the needs of consumers, the restaurant carefully tried to open up the internal test seats. Since April 28, the cooking tobacco small stir-fried yellow beef (The first store in Shanghai) has been almost overcrowded, and customers who go to eat often have to queue for five or six hours, and some customers are unbearable, they express dissatisfaction with the store, and even give bad reviews on the online platform. Time and time again, the store attendants and operation team patiently explained to customers to soothe their anxiety about queuing.
During the 5.1 period, cooking tobacco has become a new catering punch card in Shanghai. As the first Hunan local Hunan restaurant invited by Shanghai's largest shopping mall, it topped the Shanghai Hunan cuisine hot list in less than two days after soft opening.
The popularity is obvious. "It is open for 12 hours, there is a queue of customers when it opens at 10 o'clock in the morning, and there are customers waiting for the store when it closes at 10 o'clock in the evening." A mall manager witnessed the soft opening of cooking tobacco throughout the whole process. Some customers have proposed that they hope that after the cooking tobacco is stationed in Shanghai, it will still not change the Hunan flavor. The reason why they waited in line for six hours was to take a bite of Hunan flavor. For such expectations, the operator also made a commitment: "The ingredients are uniformly purchased by Changsha, and the gold medal chef team sits down to restore the consistency of the taste of Hunan local cuisine." ”
Statistics from the Municipal Commission of Commerce and third-party agencies show that in 2018, a total of 835 Shanghai first stores settled, far ahead in the country, of which 443 restaurants were first stores. Among the first restaurants in Shanghai in 2018, there are 151 first stores in China or mainland China, and there are 6 first stores in Asia and first stores in the world.
In the battlefield of the "first store" filled with smoke, the speed of cooking smoke to open the Shanghai market is very rare. There is no shortage of other category head brands that have topped the Shanghai food list, but the only ones that have won the championship at this amazing speed are cooking tobacco.
In fact, as a veteran Hunan dish that must be punched in Changsha, cooking tobacco has undergone 23 years of precipitation, which is the acceleration of cooking smoke coming to Shanghai today.
The positioning of cooking tobacco is based on small stir-fried yellow beef, "high-grade Hunan cuisine that is difficult to eat at home", "old craftsmanship", "Hunan cuisine craftsman" and other labels have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of Changsha diners.
The cooking tobacco into Shanghai is to prepare the "9 classic Hunan dishes" composed of three famous Hunan dishes, including small stir-fried yellow beef, Mao's braised pork, and minced pepper fish head, as well as six Hunan home-cooked dishes such as chili fried meat and sour radish stir-fried beef hundred leaves, as a stepping stone for the first store in Shanghai.
Among them, "small stir-fried yellow beef" is both a signboard and the pride of cooking tobacco, because this dish once represented Hunan cuisine into the United Nations and went to the world.
As early as 2006, the Changsha Evening News reported on the grand queues in Daijia Village, with a long convoy of 2 kilometers lined up in front of the store. Becoming the talk of Changsha people after tea and dinner, at that time, it can be said that it is "the top stream of Hunan cuisine".
In 2018, after the founder of the cooking tobacco brand and his team members showed the style of Chinese Hunan cuisine to the world at the United Nations headquarters, the small fried yellow beef with cooking tobacco appeared in Hunan Satellite TV's "Longing for Life", "Chinese Restaurant", "Every Day Upward" and other programs, becoming the designated Hunan cuisine for the Chinese New Year's Eve meal of the 2020 Hunan Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala, and received the personal "endorsement" of more than 40 first-line stars.
This long-established brand has undoubtedly taken a key step in responding to the call of customers, going out of the country and entering the country.
What is the core of the cooking smoke speed?
There is no shortage of hot restaurants in the market, and the competition in the catering industry is also quite fierce.
According to the "China Catering Report 2019", catering stores are growing at a rate of more than 23% per year. The number of stores is growing fast, and the elimination is also very fast. 3.5 million new restaurants were added throughout the year, followed by 3 million restaurants that closed during the year, with an average lifespan of just 420 days.
According to a set of survey data released by winshang cloud think tank recently, in 2020, the benchmarking projects in 21 key cities across the country adjusted nearly 40,000 catering brand stores (newly opened stores + newly closed stores) throughout the year, and the overall switch store ratio was 0.75, which was the lowest value among all formats.
A local restaurant into Shanghai, whether it can continue to maintain the heat, continue to obtain customers, and catch repeat customers is the key. Cooking tobacco can create records, win the favor of consumers, and build a three-dimensional brand image.
Offline, through the three dimensions of in-store experience of scenes, products and services, customers have the impulse to share their consumption experiences online.
In the scene, lemon yellow not only represents youth vitality, but also is particularly conspicuous, and the same dazzling sun hall on the 4th floor of Global Harbor can be described as a powerful combination. The consumption scene with high appearance value and strong characteristics undoubtedly creates an opportunity for consumers to take photos and share;
In terms of product, there is no doubt that it is delicious, and before the meal is served, the aroma and appearance – spicy pyrotechnics, ritualized copper cow heaters – are important added value. The product experience with full color and fragrance makes customers have an aftertaste and is willing to share it with others;
In terms of service, with the concept of quality and intention, we can achieve warm and thoughtful results. Whether it is to be delivered or to eat in line, they are treated with a very good smile, so that every customer is full of expectations when they come, and they are still unfinished when they go.
Customer sharing will create online topics, and topics will drive sharing, eventually forming a benign closed loop.
Internally, ingredients are the core competitiveness of cooking tobacco. Behind the ingredients, it is necessary to deepen the supply chain, stand on the channel, and turn it into a barrier to building a brand.
Daniel Zhang, founder of Haidilao, once said: "Our strongest place is actually the supply chain. I dare not say that the world is the best, but it is definitely the best in the world. "The supply chain that supports the Haidilao Empire includes eight major systems such as Yihai International (hot pot base supply), Shuhai supply chain (dish procurement, central kitchen, warehousing and logistics, etc.), and Shuyun Oriental." Among them, Yihai International alone is a Hong Kong listed company with a market value of more than 100 billion.
In Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia, sipping self-built sheep breeding base; in order to ensure the exclusive taste, Xi tea starts from the source of planting, from tea growth, picking, blending and other links to customize good tea that meets its own standards.
Similarly, cooking tobacco not only has 23 years of supply chain and catering management accumulation, but also has the ingenuity of cooking Hunan cuisine.
The small fried yellow beef noodles are spicy and spicy, tender and delicious, but the inside is very elaborate. The quality of yellow beef in the market is uneven, often chewed and has no fresh beef taste. The team of cooking tobacco, in order to find a delicious yellow beef, searched all over the country, and finally determined to be deep mountain stocking, eat grass, drink mountain springs, climb steep slopes, and naturally grow for more than 30 months.
Cooking tobacco not only selects the key parts of the high-quality yellow beef, but also goes deep into the place of origin, professionals purchase and control the whole process, no intermediate links, to achieve daily fresh to the table. Scalpers are killed every morning and transported in a cold chain to the restaurant. What you eat is the freshest.
Behind the strict and picky food specifications, the freshness of ingredients is the integration and efficient series of the supply chain, the kitchen and the front hall that have been polishing the "internal strength" of the enterprise for decades.
Dining trends can be manufactured, but quality competition is long-lasting. It is to adhere to the core battle of products, to match the unique brand image of cooking tobacco with perfect supply chain and catering management capabilities, so that cooking tobacco can "come to battle, fight is to win", through the speed of cooking tobacco, to win the favor of consumers.
Can the speed of cooking tobacco be copied by other old brands?
The core behind the fierce competition in the catering market is actually the brand battle.
Hunan cuisine out of Hunan, there are also pioneers.
As one of the earliest brands of Hunan cuisine into Guangdong, Dongting Tucai Restaurant took the lead in setting off a wave of native cuisine in Guangdong, and won many awards and reputations in Yangcheng, opening more than 40 stores at its peak.
However, unfortunately, in the past few years, due to the shift in the center of gravity, Dongting Tu restaurants have not been transformed in time, resulting in the gradual aging of the brand, and the competitiveness in the market is not as good as before.
In order to achieve transformation and upgrading, recently, the founder of Dongting Tucai Restaurant resolutely abandoned the positioning of tucai, focused on the single category of "native chicken", and started again. And its new iterative upgrade of the "Dongting Tuji Restaurant", as soon as it opened, it became a popular foodie punch card in Guangzhou, and the turnover directly doubled 4 times in one month! The 20-year-old brand has rejuvenated its youth and is relished in the industry.
Hunan cuisine into Cantonese, has a geographical convenience. Hunan cuisine into Shanghai, it is more challenging.
From the perspective of the general environment, according to the 2018 development report released by the Shanghai Catering and Cooking Industry Association, Shanghai has more than 100,000 restaurants, and the number and density of restaurants rank first in the country; in the shopping malls with the largest number of shopping malls in the country, the proportion of catering has reached more than 30%, the highest in the country.
From the category point of view, according to the research report on the temperament of Shanghai catering in recent years, jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine and Cantonese cuisine, the two major light cuisines, occupy half of Shanghai catering. The Shanghai benbang cuisine is known for its "light, delicious and delicious".
Whether it is the fierce competition or the strangeness of consumer tendencies, the "cooking smoke speed" is precious.
Compared with Jiangsu and Zhejiang Cantonese cuisines that are mainly snacks or easy to cook, Sichuan cuisine, which wins with ingredients, is suitable for large-scale chain franchises. Hunan cuisine, which is mainly based on "stir-frying", has extremely high cooking requirements, so the road to expansion is difficult. The other two of the "Three Queue Kings of Changsha" are milk tea representative Tea Pleasant Color, and Crayfish representative Wen Heyou. Their success is also based on a unique category, avoiding the hard mode of painstakingly drilling Hunan cuisine.
In contrast, many similar catering brands in the same period have already folded the battlefield for different reasons.
Born in the 1980s, hot bonsai lagged behind the pace of the times after the dividend period of the blank market; Tan Yutou, founded in 1996: eager to go public, the capital budget was poorly managed; Dai Mei, founded in 1997: the affordable business model could not support the layout of mainstream shopping malls; small county liver string incense: trademark disputes and plagiarism followed the trend, the trend receded.
In general, when a restaurant's table turn rate reaches below 2, and the storefront opened in the core business district, it is necessary to carefully consider where to go. In the final analysis, external brand recognition and customer experience management have embarked on a one-way street, and the internal operation system and supply chain deployment are out of control, which is two "stuffy thunder".
In addition to the business problems, their failures have a commonality: they do not embrace change.
According to the "2020 China Consumer Brand Development Report", the online market share of Chinese local brands has reached 72%. At present, the acceptance and love of China's young generation for domestic products is the highest in the past few decades.
At the same time, the data shows that the current population of China's "post-80s", "post-90s" and "post-00s" population is close to 600 million, which is bound to set off a wave of rejuvenation and drive new local consumerism.
New consumer demand is ushering, young consumers are no longer limited to the product itself when shopping, service, design, aesthetics, etc. are all considerations, and in this case, many old brands realize that the sense of thinking and innovation are gradually contrary to the crowd, which will lead to a disconnect between consumer demand.
Cooking tobacco is quite innovative and embraces change.
As Dai Zong, the founder of cooking tobacco, mentioned in the interview: "Now, positioning in catering is very important, because ten years ago, the overall catering was in short supply, and it was almost possible to survive, but now, especially in recent years, it is obviously oversupplied, at this time, we must find the correct positioning, do a good job of differentiation, and leave a label memory in the hearts of consumers."
As early as ten years ago, Hunan cuisine was still in the stage of homogenization competition, and when scattered and non-chain small restaurants blossomed everywhere, cooking tobacco conducted market research in a timely manner. In view of the emerging catering market and consumer groups, Cooking Tobacco has continuously revised its brand positioning, and after capturing new business trends, it has cautiously but keenly entered the business circle from the roadside and completed the brand upgrade. Huangxing Bronze Statue Shop, which once set a record of 12 hours of queuing, took more than 2,000 tables a day, and the turnover rate was as high as more than 11 times.
CMB International expects China's catering industry to achieve a more thorough recovery in 2021, while leading companies will benefit more from rapid expansion in 2021. At the level of food and beverage data analysis, increment is the only factor that determines the market potential. Hunan cuisine is a new category that goes out of the mainland and goes to the chain, without the leader boss.
According to professional statistics, in recent years, Hunan cuisine has made efforts in first-tier cities, with the number of stores rising by 1.48% and continuously expanding to second- and third-tier cities. From the perspective of taste type, the spicy and sour spicy that Hunan cuisine is good at can bring consumers more layers and freshness, which will make many people "addicted", and the favorability will naturally rise.
The reason why the "cooking smoke speed" is fast is by no means blind acceleration forward, otherwise it will only rush out of the track. What matches the high speed is undoubtedly a strong stability, and behind the stability, it comes from the precipitation of time, thick accumulation, step by step. The road to cooking tobacco that stands out from the "hunan cuisine without brand" camp is really a different path, and the scenery is unique.
The cooking tobacco that opened the Shanghai market undoubtedly proved the value of the Hunan cuisine category to the market, showed the potential of the Hunan cuisine category, carried the banner of Hunan cuisine, and set a good example for peers and latecomers. At the same time, the experience of cooking tobacco has also made the catering industry more convinced that as long as the product is extremely outstanding, it can often make a more amazing response to the test of the diversified market.
"The times value quality, and Hunan cuisine will go further." With the explosive product "small stir-fried yellow beef" as the signboard, a single product is refined and standard, and finally made its own brand. Nowadays, this explosive product has been given back to the brand and even the category itself, becoming a representative of Hunan cuisine, which is difficult for other Hunan cuisine brands to replicate. In the hunan cuisine category with many names, cooking tobacco occupies the name of "Changsha's three major queuing kings". Therefore, going out of Hunan and going to Shanghai is also an inevitable choice made by cooking tobacco to continue to forge ahead.
Adding some spice to life is an expectation from Shanghai; making orthodox Hunan cuisine and not changing the hunan flavor is the persistence of cooking tobacco. How far the domineering Hunan cuisine vanguard can explore on this road, let us wait and see.