text | Shangyan
html At the end of August, two major hot pot listed companies, Haidilao (06862.HK) and Xiabu Xiabu (00520.HK), successively released their first-half financial reports, and the financial reports showed that both companies suffered losses in the first half of the year.
In the first half of 2022, Haidilao's operating income decreased from 20.09 billion yuan in the same period in 2021 to 16.76 billion yuan, a decrease of 16.6%. The net profit continued the loss since the second half of last year, with a net loss of 267 million yuan.
Haidilao mentioned two main reasons: one is that in the "Woodpecker Plan", the one-time loss and impairment loss of the disposal of long-term assets of totaled approximately 255 million to 327 million yuan; the other is that the epidemic spread across the country in the first half of the year, and several restaurants stopped operating or suspended dine-in services for a period of time.
Coincidentally, as another strong brand in the hot pot industry, Xiabu Xiabu is also facing a dilemma of loss.
In the first half of 2022, the revenue reached 2.156 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 29.24%; the net loss was 280 million yuan, and the loss expanded by 492.69% year-on-year, and the loss amount was almost close to the 293 million yuan loss of last year; in the analysis of the cause, there was also information that "being unable to operate fully due to the epidemic factors". Among the 116 cities where Xiabu Xiabu is located, 92 are affected by the epidemic, accounting for about 79%.
Net profit loss, large-scale store closures, stock price decline, market value evaporated, and high-level exchanges. Haidilao and Xiabu Xiabu have joined forces to enter a "shrinkage period".
In fact, in the first half of this year, the situation in the entire catering industry was not optimistic, and many "Internet celebrity stores" also chose to close their stores. For example, the Grom ice cream that once triggered Xiaohongshu started a craze for Italian ice cream in Shanghai when it first opened. It is loved by consumers because of its unique taste and exotic style. But after the epidemic this year, the brand pressed the pause button.
In the hot pot track, some celebrity brands also choose to shrink their front lines. For example, " Xianhezhuang " and "Radio Lane" are two major "Internet celebrity" hot pot brands. In 2019, more than 500 stores were opened nationwide. Now, the flagship stores in Xianhezhuang and Radio Lane located in Shanghai People's Square have been suspended.
National Bureau of Statistics released data showing that from January to April 2022, catering revenue was 1326.2 billion yuan, a decrease of 5.1%; in April, catering revenue was 260.9 billion yuan, a decrease of 22.7%. According to the national economic operation in the first half of 2022 released in mid-July, the national catering revenue was 2004 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.7%.
However, despite this, the catering industry is not wailing, and the losses of Haidilao and Xiabu Xiabu do not mean the decline of the hot pot industry.
Although it is in a difficult period of the epidemic, hot pot is still the most mainstream category in the consumer market. NCBD (Food Book)'s "2021-2022 China Hot Pot Industry Development Report" shows that the size of China's hot pot market is expected to exceed 1,000 billion yuan in 2022, and is expected to reach nearly 1,300 billion yuan by 2025.
So, who is in the industry taking over traffic?
"Rookies" in the hot pot industry have created the "Bannu phenomenon"
Compared with the catering industry, which shows its decline, the newcomer in the hot pot industry has not only won the favor of many investment institutions, but also widely expands stores in first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. It can be said that "open one and be popular one".
Only this year, Banu has opened new stores in Beijing, Hefei, Wuhan, Suzhou and other cities, especially in Beijing, opening three stores in a row, making rapid progress and achieving impressive results.
and other catering companies were widely affected by the epidemic, Banu stores were still booming business. Data shows that in the first quarter of this year, the market turnover rate of the Beijing market in Banu reached 5.66 times per day, while the opening turnover rate of the first store in Hefei, which is a newly opened store, exceeded 6 rounds; in the Shanghai market, although after more than three months of suspension of business, after the resumption of dine-in, the store business quickly recovered, even more popular than before the epidemic, with the highest rating of nearly 500 tables.
Recently, a topic of "How to view the Banu phenomenon in the catering industry" has also become a hot search on Weibo, causing widespread heated discussion; in the context of many brands choosing to close stores or shrink, Banu's counter-trend growth seems particularly dazzling, which also injects a shot of a heart-warming agent into the miserable catering industry.
data also reflects the true psychology of customers, and Banu has become the national chain hot pot brand with the best reputation in the hot pot industry. According to the results of the "China Hot Pot Brand Satisfaction Survey" released by NCBD (Meal Booklet), Banu won the first place in the "Hot Pot Brand Satisfaction Ranking" for two consecutive years. Under the ice and fire of
, Banu's outstanding achievements are even more curious: As the highest-priced national chain Sichuan-Chongqing hotpot brand, insisting on not engaging in discounts and promotions, why can Banu make the store popular?
Productism is paramount, Banu wins the key
Financial writer Wu Xiaobo In his year-end speech on the trend of category innovation, he specifically mentioned a "low-key and crazy" dark horse brand -
"Bannu Hot Pot, it only does one thing, to make the most used product in hot pot, and to achieve the ultimate through technological innovation... A line was torn apart in the red sea of pot. "
In fact, among all hot pot products, tripe accounts for 54.9%, which is the hot pot dish with the highest order rate. Banu took the hot pot single product tripe as the entry point and created the tripe hot pot category, streamlining more than 100 SKUs in the menu to 30+, highlighting the "triple + 12 big hits" product matrix, shouting "Service is not the feature of Banu, tripe and mushroom soup are", and gaining super high popularity with its special products.
The initial success also triggered the founder of Banu Du Zhongbing to think deeply about catering. What is the essence of the catering industry? Du Zhongbing thought he had touched that threshold: productism; so Banu took on the banner of "productism", and he focused all his attention on the product level: digging out good products, packaging good products, and presenting good products. He believes that serviceism and sceneism are just one aspect of catering, while productism is the system that runs through the whole process.
Later, Banu, who pursued "productism", has been continuously deepening its efforts on product , and has successively launched original products such as fennel fried dough sticks, black chicken rolls, Banu drag noodles, New Zealand tripe, well water soybean sprouts, and Banu rolled noodles, which has triggered the industry to imitate and is regarded as the "product research and development center" of the catering industry.
Banu, who carried the banner of "productionism", even directly proposed that "the service is not excessive and everything is particular", which is quite subversive to Haidilao's "serviceism", but the current competitive landscape seems to be verifying this judgment.
While Haidilao is leaving the altar, Banu's rise benefited from a different strategic thinking than him.
HaidilaoZhang Yong Once reminded friends in the business world: Entrepreneurs sometimes package greed into an ideal. Unexpectedly, the prophecy of Haidilao in 2022 may be trapped by the greedy expansion a few years ago.
Looking at the performance of Haidilao and Banu during the epidemic, you can find that Haidilao is constantly adjusting its actions, such as price increases and price reductions, opening and closing stores, diversification and contraction... Behind these dazzling actions are profit losses and morale consumption.
In the past ten years, Banu has maintained a rare strategic determination, which is fully reflected in Banu's daily competitive concepts, decision-making logic, operational principles, etc.
As early as the beginning of the epidemic, Du Zhongbing had a very clear judgment: The epidemic does not have the opportunity to buy at the bottom of the catering industry. The catering industry is a century-old industry, so you can only take it slowly.
Banu has been gradually making a national layout according to this concept. In 21 years, it has only opened 85 direct-operated stores and has never expanded rapidly. Although the average customer price is at the top of the Sichuan-Chongqing hotpot brand, it has always adhered to the principles at the business level: does not offer discounts, promotions, and takeout.
In the industry, many of Banu's practices can be called "non-mainstream". For example, under the epidemic, live streaming and selling goods has become the second path for many brands to generate income. Banu has also insisted on going deep into the origin to do live streaming, but the weird thing is that Banu does not sell goods, but talks about products, which can be called the "clear stream" of the live streaming industry.
When pre-made dishes were blowing in the catering industry, Banu proposed the third-generation supply chain concept of "can be cold and fresh, can be naturally not added, and can not be overnight". Banu believes that catering cannot be standardized for standardization, but should serve the ultimate delicacy and return to the taste of Chinese people eating on their own. This rare strategic determination of
has made Banu jump from a dark horse to the largest white horse in the industry in 10 years.
reshapes the value system, the breaking through the hot pot world
In productism, Banu's perseverance is not a simple slogan, almost every single product must have very strict requirements.
For example, whether to make hot pot or not is a choice, because it is easy to cause problems in boiling soup. Many restaurants no longer boil it and use ingredients. However, Banu's wild mountain mushroom soup has always insisted on boiling it on high heat every day. In order to let customers taste the most delicious taste, each soup will be poured out after eating it for more than 4 hours. What customers drink is definitely the original wild mountain mushroom soup.
harshness in products made Banu challenge the entire industry. Others used ordinary greenhouse spinach, so Banu then planted wild spinach with vegetable farmers in a directional direction; others used ordinary pepper, Banu purchased Maowen pepper, which was several times higher; others used ordinary flour, Banu used natural and unadditive flour; others sold root-deleted bean sprouts, and Banu sold them into baskets of natural living bean sprouts...
There are many stories about Banu products circulating on the Internet, and even Du Zhongbing circulating on the Internet. There are also many jokes circulating in the strict requirements for products - I got angry when I saw the well-water soybean sprouts sent out by the store; I even asked to grow into the same size; I was scolded for crying because R&D personnel have never been able to develop a dough that meets the requirements... There are countless examples of
in Banu, and Du Zhongbing's daily work basically revolves around "products", which is called " Jobs in the hot pot industry". Only with such extreme pursuit of products can it be called true productism.
In Banu's philosophy, "productism" is not only the focus of the product, it is also a product-centered and reconstructs a composite "ecosystem" of products and services, store experience, marketing systems, etc. Focusing on this, Banu has built the store into an experience venue for productism implementation.
If Haidilao's "serviceism" has been paid attention to and imitated by the entire hot pot industry and has gradually become the service standard of the entire industry, which is the "first upgrade", then the "not over-service and everything is particular" proposed by Banu is to lead the hot pot industry to carry out the "second upgrade" of productism.
For example, what is a better service? It’s not about helping customers do everything, which is too disturbing, but is moderate, timely and in moderation; what are better ingredients? It’s not about following the crowd. I have whatever others have. Instead, going deep into the origin, selecting good ingredients, developing specialty products, making differentiation, and truly contributing good products to consumers; what is a better hot pot? It must be more important to pay more attention to quality, taste, health and comfort in all aspects of dishes, services, ingredients, eating methods, environment, and pot bottom.
Although he was once questioned as a hit because he dared to challenge the hotpot boss Haidilao directly, nowadays, Banu, who won by productism, has gradually embarked on his own path.
If the epidemic is an accelerator of the decline of the catering industry, allowing both the market and consumers to return to rationality, then when some content attached to quality is eliminated, adheres to the core of catering - productism, and has the opportunity to truly return to the essence and be seen by more people.
Therefore, when the epidemic accelerates market competition, in the process of washing the sand, only companies that truly devote themselves to quality can constantly adapt to the uncertain external environment and market changes, and become the new favorite of the industry in the critical needs of consumers. This is also the root cause of the "Banu phenomenon" that has grown against the trend.
As a hot pot upstart, Banu's persistence in strategy interprets the significance of long-term value in the competition in the hot pot world, and market feedback has also made this new star in the hot pot industry a light to illuminate the industry during the epidemic, providing a reference sample for the future of the catering industry.
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