Everyone says that Shanghai and even the entire catering industry are difficult to operate. For example, I wrote this article before, "Shanghai catering industry collectively calls for help: resumption of work is worse than suspension of business." But three recent events made me

Everyone says that Shanghai and even the entire catering industry are difficult to operate. For example, I wrote this article before: "

The second item: Shanghai's Metro Line 10 has already started to operate driverless. There is no driver's cabin. From the front of the car, Large glass allows you to see into the tunnel ahead.

The third article: Influenced by the 100,000+ article "Voices of Shanghai Restaurants During the Epidemic: Asking for Support, Looking forward to Dine-in".

Three seemingly unrelated things, why did the above sentence make me think of it?

Let’s start with the 100,000+ articles. Sympathy, crying, complaining, asking for help and other words are full of the whole text. The logic of the whole article is that due to epidemic prevention and control, dine-in is not allowed, take-out is sucking blood, and rent is killing people, so now we are living Can't go down anymore. The comment area of ​​

was even more lively, with hundreds of schools of thought contending.

The editor of the article was very clever and told the self-reported stories of more than 20 catering people throughout the article. However, I personally feel that he only talked about other people's stories because he was afraid of settling accounts later.

seems to make some sense at first glance, but after careful consideration, I found that this is selling anxiety and conversational skills. The whole text attempts to arouse the care of landlords and society with "crying children get milk".

Such a "heart-touching" petition is very much appreciated by the majority of catering people who are full of business and social atmosphere. It’s really nice to follow along and vent and complain.

Although it is not the same, after reading it, I am still thinking about how to find the landlord to reduce the rent, or close the store and go online. How many people are thinking about why my business is so vulnerable.

This generation of restaurant owners can grow up because they have many advantages such as hard work and willingness to study.

But in the final analysis, the main reason is to ride the elevator of the country's rapid economic development.

Standing at the forefront of the times, enjoying rapid growth and demographic dividends while bragging about how awesome we are, the days are gone forever. As we enter 2022, our economic growth has already gone from double digits. , down to single digits, and this number may not exceed 5% in the future, because the base is already very large, and the era of rapid growth has passed.

Even when there is no epidemic, most restaurants only make money this month and lose money next month, or even if they make a profit every month, it is a meager net profit. That’s why there is an industry perception that catering is difficult. It is precisely because of this understanding that there are more than 100,000 people today;

In fact, the industry recognition that catering is difficult is correct. I think it is correct. The catering industry is an industry with a wide range of disciplines. There is a formula Catering Company = Food company + brand company + marketing company + human resources company +….

Replacing the catering company on the left with a Fortune 500 company is actually just that. However, most catering people only have the understanding that it is difficult to do, and they don’t know what is difficult to do? This is the saddest thing.

Let’s talk about the second thing, the subway is driverless. The subway is already driverless, so is it really far away from driverless cars, trains, and civil aviation? When concepts such as web3.0, metaverse, , artificial intelligence, , etc. are flying all over the sky, what should caterers do to continue to ride the wave of the times?

Finally, let me talk about the first thing. When everyone was secretly happy to see 100,000+, KFC, which entered China in 1987, could sell 28,000 packages priced at 69 yuan per customer in a few seconds, with a turnover of 1.93 million in an instant. Complete, this is only the participation of some stores in Shanghai area. Is the unit price of

low? Can you still say that catering is difficult? Why can’t we, who are also catering people, not do this? What's the difference between them? How big is the gap? This is very worthy of our thinking.

So, please stop complaining and start thinking about where the gap is? How big is the difference?

The gap in standardization capabilities

Speaking of standardization, catering people cannot avoid McCann. Their product standardization, service standardization , and operation standardization have always been an example for chain enterprises to learn from.

After more than 30 years, how many people have learned it? The chain rate of domestic catering companies has not been high because of the gap in standardization capabilities of single stores * the number of stores. This is the reason why most chain companies cannot grow. There are very few companies that can learn and implement

. Xibei and Taier are industry leaders.

The Chinese restaurants I am talking about here refer to mass market restaurants, not Pearl or Tire restaurants;

Most Chinese restaurants say that Chinese food is difficult to standardize? First, the boss says it is difficult to standardize catering, which is a sign of irresponsibility, laziness and one of the original sins of catering; second, the chef says it is difficult to standardize and does not cooperate with standardization.

The reason why chefs resist standardization is because it will destroy the chefs' jobs.

In most restaurants, the ingredients are not that good, and the cooking methods are nothing more than frying, stir-frying, steaming, deep-frying, roasting, boiling, etc. With technology today, what cooking method cannot be standardized? Without standardization, it is difficult to ensure consistent taste. Different chefs, different periods, different stores, and tastes cannot be unified. Lead to customer churn.

Fortunately, everyone has seen this gap, and all catering colleagues are gradually narrowing the gap on the road to standardization.

The gap in digitalization degree

Speaking of catering digitization, a concept proposed in recent years, many catering companies spend huge sums of money to purchase cashier systems. However, digitization is not just about purchasing a cash register system, but digital applications from front-end to back-end. Is your cash register digitized and your operations digitized? Is procurement digitalized? Are marketing activities digital? The most critical thing is, has the company’s thinking been digitalized?

are still holding weekly and monthly meetings. Store managers and district managers each have a set of PPTs. Bosses and senior executives sit below and give guidance. One meeting is held for a day. Today in 2022, how can we still sit still with such efficiency? ? If you don’t fall, who will fall?

was still patting his head, thinking about an event. Event planning means calculating the approximate cost on paper. The implementation of the event means hanging a poster at the door and commenting on the online event. After that, there is basically no more. It neither analyzes customer profiles nor the cost of visiting the store, the purpose of the activity is unclear, and it cannot review the effects of the activity. Everything will be business as usual for the next activity. The effect of the activity depends on heaven, earth and luck.

The Happy Children’s Meal was released on June 1st. It was difficult to buy in Shanghai due to the epidemic. On June 19th, from replenishment, logistics, marketing and store launch, 28,000 sets were ordered in a few seconds. 1.92 million turnover. How many restaurant chain brands can achieve such speed and efficiency? Why does

need 28,000 sets? Why launch on June 19th? Why use reservation? What's the connection here? I asked several whys here, and you need to find the answers yourself. But I think there is a high probability that these figures are not calculated by patting oneself on the head, but are finally arrived at after considering various factors and combining with market data.

Therefore, digitalization should be a business philosophy and a habit of thinking. Digitalization must be implemented in all business activities. Enterprises must use digitalization to establish a complete operating system and use the system to connect products, stores, operations, Different functional departments such as marketing, procurement, and finance can promptly discover their own problems and find solutions. The gap between

is very huge. This is the gap from thinking to behavior. This cannot be solved by poaching one or two people or a department. What is needed is a top-down change.

The gap in understanding of the system

KFC is known as the foreign restaurant that knows China best. From the perspective of product development, KFC has developed many dishes to adapt to the country. The development and launch of these products are operated by a complete set of systems and processes.

Among most catering companies, how many catering companies systematically develop and launch new products? Does the launch of new products include data research, data support, data tracking, and accumulation of product libraries? There are very few restaurants. Most restaurants have been resting on their laurels based on the few dishes they started with. How many innovations have they made? It’s not because KPI requires new dishes or business is not good, so new dishes are served.

So I think so. In the future, chefs will appear in two directions, one is pearl restaurants and tire restaurants, and the other is in food factories and supply chains.

In the future, the products in most shopping mall stores will be standard products, products that are standardized throughout the entire process from supply chain to production. There are no chefs in these restaurants. The differences among catering companies are reflected in positioning, branding, operations, and standardization. These require a deep understanding of the system and a lot of time to accumulate.

These things are difficult, but they are correct. Do the hard but right thing.

Conclusion

These gaps were not obvious in the past due to rapid economic growth and demographic dividend. Today, they have surfaced. These debts owed in the past need to be repaid one by one. How to repay

? We hope that the catering companies that survive will think carefully, act quickly, and review carefully.

When the black swan incident strikes again, I hope all catering colleagues can respond calmly.

So this article is just to commemorate those fallen catering companies.

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