Can the "double power" of Polar Latour ice cream be as good as Honey Snow Ice City in the tea market?
With nearly 18,000 stores, how to outline the new growth curve of Michelle Ice City?
But the road to the upside does not seem to be smooth, whether it is a high-end ice cream store that has briefly tested the water, or the launch of a high-end tea brand "M+", it has performed flat in the market and does not seem to have set off many waves. And just when everyone is looking at this, on August 17, Mi xue ice city's high-end ice cream brand Ji Latour suddenly announced: open to join.
In this regard, different voices appear in the industry: can Michelle Ice City, which started with 1 yuan ice cream, break the inherent impression in the high-end ice cream competition and obtain new breakthroughs? What innovation does the open franchise Polar chart have in terms of model?
Defining "Ice Cream and Tea"
High-end brands have "improved"
As a tea sinking player, Michelle Ice City is constantly looking at other tracks while basing itself on the tea market. Although it is difficult to remove the title of "parity", Mi Xue Ice City has never given up the opportunity to break through upwards. By chance, Zhang Hongchao, the founder of Michelle Ice City, met Li Zenghui (founder of Ji latu), who was trying to make tea at the time, and under his "persuasion", Li Zenghui decided to enter the high-end ice cream market.
To this end, it also went to Italy to investigate, and then in 2017 founded the high-end ice cream brand "Polarato", although it is very similar to the "Gelato" high-end store opened by Mi xue ice city in 2009 in terms of name transliteration, but ji latu is not a self-created brand of Mi Xue Ice City, but a new brand under its investment.
From the inquiry of the enterprise investigation platform, it was learned that in 2021, the proportion of investment in Polar Lats changed twice before and after The Honey Snow Ice City increased from the original investment of 60% to 85.7%.
△ Image source: Qi Cha Cha
When opening a high-end ice cream shop, Li Zenghui also considered where will chinese consumers demand ice cream in the future? Is it possible to cross the seasonal cycle and open up sales in winter? In his view, the tea market is a long-standing strong outlet, if the combination of ice cream and tea, will certainly be able to play a complementary role. Therefore, Li Zenghui put forward the concept of "ice cream and tea" in the definition of high-end stores, innovated in taste, and introduced unique flavors such as jasmine yogurt, salted egg yolk, and black sesame.
According to the data of the narrow door restaurant eye, as of September 6, the number of existing stores in Jirattu is 19, and 3 stores will open soon. From the store information, it can be seen that Jilattu has entered popular shopping malls such as David City, Zhenghong City, and 27 Wanda, and has been stationed in Hangzhou Kerry Center, Wuhan International Plaza Shopping Center, Xi'an Vientiane World and so on. Most of these stores are directly operated stores in Jilatu, and some are franchise stores.
△ Image source: Dianping
At the same time, the customer unit price of about 26 yuan of the jilatu in the market to get a good reputation, of which the praise rate of up to 93% or more, most of the comments of consumers think that its product taste praise, the value is in place.
△ Image source: Narrow door dining eye
Although in the high-end ice cream market, Jilatu has a certain "improvement", it is not difficult to see that the vast majority of high-end ice cream shops in Jilattu are opened in Henan Province, and their popularity has not been fully opened. In this regard, Li Zenghui, founder of Jilatu, revealed in an interview that in the future, Jilattu will continue to expand high-end shopping malls in major cities, so that more people can enjoy the delicious experience brought by handmade ice cream.
Plus yard street shops
Continue the concept of "breaking through the lowest price"
In addition to the layout of high-end stores, Ji Lattu also recently announced the opening of a new franchise model, that is, inheriting the concept of "breaking through the lowest price" of Michelle Ice City, mainly "street stores", but not excluding the better points in the shopping mall.
△ Image source: Jilatu official Weibo
To this end, Jilat has continuously conducted cross-regional market research and pilots in the past two years. Red Food Franchise Preferred (ID: hongcanjm) noted that in the public review, Ji Lattu opened the first "ice cream + coffee" street shop in Zhengzhou. In the comments, netizens posted the product price list, and it can be seen that the products include ice cream, sparkling water and coffee drinks of various flavors. Among them, unlike shopping mall stores, the taste of ice cream in street shops is relatively single, and only four flavors of pumpkin, strawberry, vanilla and chocolate currently appear.
"We want the street shop model to be simple, pure, and more people-friendly, rather than a place to play tricks." Li Zenghui believes that the logic of the survival of street shops is different from that of shopping mall stores, and street shops should consider "popularization". Compared with the 13 flavors of the mall store, the street store will have 4 to 6 flavors, with a special taste as the main one, but it will not follow the taste of the mall store. In addition, the price is also very grounded, the price of a single ball is 6 yuan, the double ball is 10 yuan, and in the collocation, consumers can randomly combine ice cream with other drinks according to their own needs.
It is understood that the standard store type of the "Polar Lattu" street shop is 20 square meters, the main expenditure cost is the equipment cost, decoration cost, rent three major costs, its store opening cost is controlled at 350,000, and the current preferred "point" is the commercial street, office building, school.
Rivals abound
Why did Polaratu "come to the top"?
Under the change of dopamine economy and consumption generation, consumer demand for ice cream has transitioned from simple cooling function to enjoyment consumption in the past, and anti-seasonal consumption has become the norm.
According to the survey data of the China Catering Industry Association, the total national market in 2019 reached 138 billion yuan, and consumption ranked first in the world. Ice cream has unexpectedly become a dark horse in the food industry during the epidemic in 2020; it is predicted that the national market size is expected to exceed 160 billion yuan by 2021.
In the domestic ice cream market, there are three strong forces: one is the foreign ice cream giant, Häagen-Dazs and DQ from foreign-funded enterprises still have strong combat effectiveness; the second is the dairy products that dominate the convenience store freezer, Mengniu, Yili and other domestic old brands are deeply rooted in the hearts of the people; the third is the fast food giant's special dessert station, KFC, McDonald's "second half-price" is well known.
△ Häagen-Dazs Guangzhou Grandview store
These are potential competitors of Polar Latour, but in the view of Li Zenghui, the founder of Polar Latour, it has not caused much impact. First of all, the ice cream in the Polar Latulu shopping mall store emphasizes that it is handmade and freshly made, and it cannot be confused with the products industrially produced by foreign brands. Secondly, many people think that convenience store ice cream is easier to obtain from the convenience of purchase, but for Polar Latour, which is backed by Honey Snow Ice City, no one is better at delivering these affordable coffee and ice cream to customers. Third, compared to the ice cream at the fast food dessert station, Ji Latour must be better in taste and store experience.
In this regard, Red Food Franchise Preferred (ID: hongcanjm) also interviewed Guo Shuang, founder & chief product development officer of SanfenTian, she said, "Ice cream itself belongs to the century-old category, and enterprises need to develop diversified presentation methods, as long as the appearance is high enough and the taste is novel, consumers can generate the desire to buy under the heartbeat, and are willing to pay a higher premium to buy." ”
In addition, Guo Shuang further emphasized that the ice cream street shop model created by Ji latu is different from the model of "catering + dessert station" created by Sanfen Sweet, and Ji Latu belongs to a separate street shop model, and its ice cream products are profit products of the store, and it is necessary to rely on these products to maintain the operation of the entire store. The dessert station created by SanfenTian in the catering enterprise mainly treats sweet drinks as a traffic product, which does not need to generate much profit revenue, and the greater purpose is to help stores drain and attract customers and create new value revenue.
△ Image source: Sanfen Sweet official website
It is worth mentioning that at present, Ji Lattu has been recognized by many restaurant companies with its popularity and innovative taste, and has reached cooperation with some local catering brands in Zhengzhou to provide them with customized dessert solutions.
Recently, just announced the impact of the IPO, the number of stores will exceed 20,000 "Snow King", from the beginning of its inception, it has relied on one dollar ice cream to quickly "go out of the circle". As a brand, what is the plan for the future development of Jilat? Li Zenghui revealed that in terms of product categories, it will be further extended and innovated to bring consumers a diversified product experience; in terms of channels, at the same time, high-end shopping mall stores and franchise street stores will be forced to start from the goal of "ten thousand stores"; in terms of price, through its own supply chain advantages, the cost will be optimized, hoping to make higher quality ice cream public.
In addition, Li Zenghui also said, "In the future, multi-channel must be what we want to do, at this stage, our focus is to deepen and expand our own store model, and show more product differentiation advantages, but it is not excluded that the future will enter the supermarket channel and carry out retailing." ”