Whether it is the first sipping and feeding of small hot pots, or the rotating small hot pots all over the streets, the unit price of 60 yuan seems to be these obstacles that they cannot cross, why is this? Is there really no way for the small hot pot category to break through the unit price of 60 yuan?
This article was originally published by Red Food Network (ID: hongcan18), author: Li Xiaoping.
A few days ago, He Guangqi, the founder of Sipping and Breastfeeding, who regained the control of Shuaiyin, responded to the voices about the continuous rise in the unit price of sipping and breastfeeding in recent years, saying that it will continue to take the mass consumption route, and the unit price of customers will remain within 60 yuan, which is also regarded as the most important measure for sipping and breastfeeding to reverse the decline.
According to the statistics of Meituan, the per capita unit price of small hot pot stores in 2021 is less than 80% of the total price of 60 yuan. From sipping and feeding back below 60 yuan to many low-cost small hot pots on the market, why will 60 yuan become a difficult hurdle for many small hot pot stores to cross? What are the historical reasons or logic behind this? Is the small hot pot category really unable to get rid of the label of low price?
Small hot pot, made in low prices and trapped in low prices
Chinese has a long history of eating hot pot, and the types and styles of hot pot are different in different places. In Sichuan and Chongqing, Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot from here to the whole country, conquering the taste buds of thousands of diners; in Guangdong, Chaoshan beef hot pot, pork belly chicken hot pot, coconut chicken hot pot prevailed; in North China, shabu-shabu hot pot and sheep scorpion hot pot are the most popular flavors; in the southwest, Yungui hot pot mostly use mountain rare mushrooms, unique.
In Taiwan, there is also a unique simple version of hot pot, that is, "small hot pot". The Small Taiwanese HotPot not only inherits the flavor of the shabu-shabu pot, but also combines the tradition of spicy hot pot, which is a kind of hot pot variant.
In the 1990s, this small hot pot model was brought to Beijing by a Taiwanese businessman, who was He Guangqi, the founder of Sipping.
When the first sipping and feeding opened in Beijing in 1998, although people were curious about this new species of hot pot that was eaten by one person, it did not make a big splash in the market at that time.
△ The first store in Beijing
(Image source: Sipping and breastfeeding official website)
The turning point was in 2003, because the SARS virus was mainly transmitted by droplets, when 70% of restaurants in Beijing were closed, and the "one person, one pot" model of sipping and breastfeeding became a natural isolation measure and became a special selling point.
After that, thanks to the low operating costs and strong replicability of stores, some small hot pot brands have appeared in the market, such as DouLaofang, Bainian Shu One Pot, Nong Xiao Pot, Wushu Alley Small Hot Pot, Andi Shi Lu Rotating Small Hot Pot, etc. Under the promotion and market education of this batch of small hot pot brands, small hot pot has officially entered the eyes of consumers.
△ Image source: Doulaofang official Weibo
However, the important reason that really makes the small hot pot popular all over the country is not the dining form of one person and one pot, but its high cost performance compared to ordinary hot pot.
Take the menu of sipping and nursing 8 years ago as an example, 7 yuan can arbitrarily spell two vegetarian dishes or balls, and 27 yuan can eat a lamb set. This was in the context of the relative lack of material conditions at that time, which undoubtedly greatly reduced the threshold for people to eat hot pot.
However, with the improvement of people's living standards, eating hot pot has gradually moved from a relatively luxurious consumption to daily and popular, and the disadvantages of small hot pot have also begun to be exposed.
Because to ensure the cost, the small hot pot has to be compressed and controlled in terms of ingredients, environment, service, etc., so that its original cost-effective advantage is completely lost. In the past, dozens of meat and vegetables could also eat fat beef or mutton, but now dozens of them can only eat vegetarian dishes, and the choice of meat dishes is only so many frozen meat.
At the same time, the disadvantages of small hot pots have also been magnified, there are fewer small soups in the pot, it is difficult to have the rich taste of ordinary hot pots; the environment, service and social attributes cannot be compared with ordinary hot pots, and they are obviously at a comprehensive disadvantage in the competition.
△Image source: Sipping and feeding the official website
In the face of fierce competition in the hot pot market, some hot pot brands are also trying to change the impression that small hot pot gives people low price and low cost performance.
For example, Sipping and feeding has opened a small hot pot with high-end positioning, and has chosen to increase prices while actively improving the store environment and improving the quality of services and ingredients. According to its financial report, since 2017, the unit price of sipping and breastfeeding has soared from 48.4 yuan to 62.3 yuan. In its view, raising the price will have enough profit margins to improve the dining environment, the variety and quality of ingredients.
High-end small hot pot brands such as Beijinger Fire, Shanghai Lisboa Bean Fish, Chengdu Huangcheng Laomai Xiaoguan and Zhengzhou Dingdinghong, which focus on seafood or imported ingredients, also hope to differentiate from ingredients and quality.
△Image source: Zhengzhou Dingdinghong official Weibo
However, when the sipping and feeding will throw away the "cost-effective" of the former sharp weapon, in exchange for not competitiveness, but the departure of the original customer group. On various online platforms, many consumers complain that their prices are expensive, the ingredients are not fresh, and the service attitude is poor. The business situation of sipping and breastfeeding is also deteriorating, and the turnover rate has dropped from 3.3 to 2.3 times. In 2020, the turnover of sipping and breastfeeding fell by 9.5%, forcing it to continue to survive, announcing that it would close 200 stores and return to the unit price of less than 60 yuan.
Other high-end small hot pot brands have also performed mediocrely in recent years, and there has not been a big noise in the market.
Trapped in the low price band below 60 yuan, there are other small hot pot brands. For example, the revolving small hot pot restaurants that can be seen everywhere on the street have an average customer unit price of basically between 20 and 30 yuan; the small hot pot products launched by fast food brands such as Yoshinoya and Laoxiang Chicken basically maintain the unit price of customers within 60 yuan; even if the unit price of banu mao belly hot pot reaches 180 yuan, the unit price of its hatched brand "Peach Niang Rice Small Hot Pot" is only 29 yuan.
Obviously, the small hot pot is limited to the price range of about 60 yuan per capita unit price, and the fundamental reason is that the category is difficult to innovate, especially in the case of low customer unit price, the premium space is limited. This is also an important reason why small hot pot restaurants are blooming everywhere, but it is difficult to get out of differentiation.
Under $60,
The days of the small hot pot are also not good
Some people may say that since it is difficult for small hot pots to compete with ordinary hot pots in the range of more than 60 yuan, then continue to stay below 60 yuan, and it is not good to carry out differentiated competition with ordinary hot pots? But the reality is: in the catering market below 60 yuan, the life of small hot pot is also difficult.
First of all, the price competition within the small hot pot is very fierce.
When sipping and nursing to the high-end market, the new format represented by the rotating small hot pot has sprung up in the streets and alleys. Open the public review search keyword "small hot pot", almost all of them are self-service type of rotating small hot pot, roast shabu small hot pot stores. And the secret weapon they can survive everywhere is low price.
△Image source: Nong Xiao Pot official website
Red Food Network (ID: hongcan18) observed that most of the rotating small hot pot customers on the market are currently at a unit price of about 30 yuan, even those who open in the mall self-service rotating small hot pot, the unit price of the customer is only about 40 yuan. With such low prices, it is not easy for these small hot pot brands to live moistly at the moment when ingredients, rents and artificial highs.
Taking a self-service rotating small hot pot with an area of about 80 square meters and 50 seats in Zhenghong City, Zhengzhou, as an example, the monthly rent is as high as 100,000, but the unit price of the guest is only 40 yuan, even if its turnover rate can reach 4.0 in the peak period of sipping and nursing, the monthly revenue can only reach 250,000, and the rent proportion has reached 40%, which is much higher than the normal level.
Under the serious inner volume of various brands, the taste of the food environment tends to be homogenized, which not only further weakens the competitiveness of the entire small hot pot category, but also indirectly leads to the rapid death of many small hot pot restaurants, living for less than half a year.
In addition to the competition between the same category, the vigorous development of the large hot pot category is also compressing the development space of the small hot pot.
In recent years, the large hot pot category led by Sichuan-Chongqing spicy hot pot has developed rapidly, and they either take spicy heavy taste and light health as the selling point, or stimulate consumers with fresh-cut beef, coconut chicken, pork belly chicken, mushrooms and other special ingredients, occupying more than 80% of the hot pot market share.
△Image source: Photo Network
In contrast, the seemingly ubiquitous small hot pot restaurants can only be regarded as a niche market.
In addition, the rise of other categories is also further compressing the living space of small hot pots, such as the competition of spicy hot pots, impopping vegetables, skewers and other catering formats.
In terms of rotating small hot pot, in addition to the slightly different way of eating, in terms of dishes and taste, it may not be as impressive as spicy hot and impounding dishes. Compared with the spicy hot and impounded dishes of 20-30 per capita, the unit price of small hot pot has no advantage, and the dining efficiency is far inferior.
Because of this, some small hot pot brands simply make small hot pot into a high-grade version of spicy hot. For example, in Chongqing, in only 9 months, nearly 20 stores of Xiangmangu Thai small hot pot have been opened, which directly eliminates the link of shabu and serves a pot of cooked food to consumers, with a unit price of about 30 yuan, but it has achieved a high turnover rate of 12 times.
△Image source: Shang Bangkok Thai hot pot official website
Low-price tags are hard to break,
Where is the way out of the small hot pot?
In the customer unit price of more than 60 yuan to compete in ordinary hot pot, down into a serious inner volume, there are other categories of tigers looking at the outside. Where is the way out of the small hot pot category? Red Food Network believes that all categories are worth doing, just to see if we can find the right way, the same is true for small hot pots. In this regard, we believe that the small hot pot may be able to exert its strength through the following aspects:
1. Dig deep into the single economic dividend
According to data previously released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, as of 2018, China's adult single population has reached 240 million, of which 77 million people are currently living alone, which has promoted the hot single economy in recent years. But even so, the small hot pot that focuses on "one-person food" does not seem to have eaten any dividends, and the important reason is that it has not fully grasped the needs of the single group.
At present, most small hot pot restaurants use bar-style dining tables, and this open dining environment is no different from fast food for single people. What they need is not just a meal for one person, but a meal in a one-person environment.
Therefore, if the small hot pot wants to win the favor of the single group, in addition to the one-person-one-pot model, it can work the dining environment and the quality of the meal. At the same time, it can also fit the current lazy economy, develop online takeaway, and launch a small hot pot package suitable for one person to eat.
For example, in view of the traditional hot pot takeaway pain points, the elimination of the single small hot pot that pioneered 1-2 people's food has launched a small delivery mode of 99 yuan set to give pots and pans, so that the unit price of hot pot takeaway is accepted by most young people.
△ Image source: Eliminating Lang's official Weibo
2. Hot pot + category, expand the product line
Since last year, fast food brands such as Wafu Noodles, Yoshinoya, and Laoxiang Chicken have successively launched small hot pot products, which has also made the track lively again.
From the perspective of operating model, these fast food brands are more likely to use small hot pot as a supplement to the product line. For example, Hefu Fish noodles use noodles + small hot pots; Laoxiang chicken is a "fast food + hot pot" model, focusing on chicken soup pot bottom small hot pots; Yoshinoya is a limited time in the store to launch a self-service small hot pot.
△Image source: Yoshinoya's official Weibo
For fast food brands, small hot pot is not only a good product line supplement, but also can increase the unit price of customers. In this regard, small hot pot brands can also learn from each other in turn, through small hot pot + fast food or + drinks / desserts and other ways to expand the product line, thereby increasing the unit price of customers.
3. Explore the new model of small hot pot + cuisine
One of the major pain points in the current small hot pot market is the serious homogenization of dishes. In order to get out of the differentiation, the small hot pot may be able to learn from the "hot pot + cuisine" model that has been successful in the field of hot pot.
In the field of hot pot, the model of "hot pot + cuisine" has become very common. For example, the representative of "hot pot + Sichuan cuisine" is drunk, and the classic "three steaming nine buckles and 12 bowls" in Sichuan cuisine is put into the hot pot; the Hunan lak-flavored hot pot is to integrate Xiangxi bacon into the hot pot, which belongs to the typical "hot pot + Hunan cuisine"; in addition, pork belly chicken and coconut chicken are the types of hot pot evolved from Cantonese cuisine and Hainan cuisine, respectively.
Compared with ordinary hot pot, the operation mode of small hot pot is lighter and it is easier to try various innovations. In this model, with the culture and taste of various cuisines, the small hot pot will also have a higher premium and stronger competitiveness.
epilogue
In the past, high cost performance was the secret weapon for small hot pot to gain a foothold in the fiercely competitive hot pot market, but with the changes of the times and market changes, the price has become an obstacle to the development of small hot pot.
In order to better develop the current small hot pot category, in addition to getting rid of the vicious competition of blindly low prices, it is crucial to explore a set of business models that can play the advantages of the category.