Introduction: Beware of the ice cream "assassin" in the freezer
Produced by Mathematics Society
Author 丨 Lin Mu
I never expected that eating ice cream in summer also requires "chopping your hands".
In the past few days, "ice cream assassins" have become popular on social media such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu. They refer to those ordinary-looking ice cream assassins that hide in the freezer and instantly empty their wallet balance when checking out. I was holding the ice cream that I was afraid of putting back in embarrassment.
A netizen left tears of regret after walking out of convenience: Don’t touch ice cream that you don’t know, it will make you miserable. There are also netizens who are optimistic by nature: they could obviously grab the money directly, but they still gave him an ice cream.
Some people were just lucky and picked up a "15 cents" ice cream. Later they found out that it was called "15 cents" and the price was 6 yuan. Netizen comments: This kind of ice cream is the best way to relieve the heat. It’s already cold before you even open it.
Nowadays, it is increasingly difficult to find ice cream priced at less than 3 yuan in chain convenience stores, and ice cream priced at less than 1 yuan has begun to disappear from the freezers of major supermarkets and mom-and-pop stores. Looking at the endless "ice cream assassins", people began to miss the summers many years ago when "little puddings were free" and "old popsicles soaked in beer".
01丨Why has ice cream become more expensive?
There is a saying circulating in the ice cream industry today: I couldn’t afford Chocolates before, but now I can only eat Chocolates. This joke is not an exaggeration. A 5-6 yuan Qiao Lezi has become the price dividing line between the era of traditional ice cream and Internet celebrity ice cream.
In the childhood memories of many people born in the 1990s and 2000s, small puddings, popsicles or mung bean paste costing 50 cents each are indispensable in the refrigerator in summer. Qiaolezi only buys them occasionally to satisfy their cravings, and ice cream balls cost 25 yuan Haagen-Dazs is almost the ceiling in the ice cream world. But now, Qiaolezi is ridiculed by many netizens as the "last act of dignity", and Haagen-Dazs's ceiling has long been pierced by Internet celebrity ice cream.
When it comes to Internet celebrity ice cream, one cannot avoid Zhong Xuegao, who has been regarded as the "Hermès" of the ice cream industry in recent years.
Zhong Xuegao was established in March 2018 and subsequently released 6 products, all priced at more than 10 yuan. Zhong Xuegao has been targeting the high-end ice cream market from the beginning, which is known for its "expensiveness". The Ecuador Pink Diamond ice cream launched in the same year is priced at 66 yuan, which makes Haagen-Dazs appear to be modest in price against it.
Internet celebrity ice cream began to become popular this year. Aoxue launched coconut ash ice cream priced at about 9 yuan, which immediately became popular on INS, Douyin, and other social media; Zhong Xuegao completely broke out of the circle with the Ecuador Pink Diamond, the day it went online 20,000 units sold out.
Since then, the ice cream industry has staged a storm of Internet celebrities. New and old brands have been involved in competition from taste to packaging and marketing, and prices have also soared.
One of the important reasons why ice cream is getting more expensive is the rising cost of raw materials. The raw materials for ice cream are mainly milk, sugar and chocolate. It is reported that from 2008 to 2020, the cost and price of raw materials such as milk and whipping cream required for ice cream production increased by about 80%.
Since the epidemic, the prices of sugar and milk have remained high. Under cost pressure, even some old ice cream brands such as Little Pudding and Chocolate have begun to increase their prices. The reason why some Internet celebrity ice cream prices are ridiculously high is because merchants continue to "pile materials."
For example, Zhong Xuegao’s Ecuador Pink Diamond costs 66 yuan a piece. According to its founder Lin Sheng, the cost of each piece is almost 40 yuan. You can get a glimpse of it from its cost structure, such as scarce pink ruby chocolate, 1.2 million 1 ton of Japanese grapefruit and yogurt.
Zhong Xuegao has launched two series of four "Zhong Xuegao's cakes" since last year. The price once broke the Ecuador pink diamond record, ranging from 68 yuan to 88 yuan.
Among them, Heni Cheese and Xing Yunian are the top killers in the "Ice Cream Assassin" that has recently flooded the Internet. Judging from the appearance, the ice cream in the square box is covered with high-end materials such as macadamia nuts and diced apricots. The price has also reached hundreds of yuan. This also makes people think of the sky-high price of cut cakes filled with ingredients.
It is a common practice in the industry to use high-end raw materials to increase brand premium, and ice cream manufacturers have begun to rack their brains to increase product prices. So on the basis of sugar and milk in the past, matcha from Japan, milk from Australia, cocoa powder from Ghana, and chocolate from Belgium appeared.
is a product born under a set of Internet celebrity ice cream formulas. It looks like cakes, desserts, milk tea, and fruits, but it looks less and less like ice cream.
02丨"Internet celebrity tax" and "face tax"
In addition to racking up the materials, ice cream manufacturers also put a lot of effort into marketing.
In the movie " The God of Cookery ", Stephen Chow uses marketing phrases such as "pig red that cannot be melted by passion", " fried pork skin with stronger love" and "Parisian nine-stick fish that only falls in love with once in a lifetime". The God of Cookery’s signature dish is a bowl of street side bread that is packaged into a couple’s set meal priced at 99.99.
In the world of Internet celebrity ice cream, the so-called special red grapes are actually bulk red grapes. The purely hand-ground Japanese Yabukita tea is made from a mixture of multiple varieties of tea leaves. The chocolate coating is actually a substitute for cocoa butter, and it is fake without adding a drop of water. What's more, the total number of bacterial colonies and coliforms were found to be unqualified.
Not only in the ice cream industry, but also in new consumer fields such as milk tea and beauty cosmetics, the price of new marketing techniques is doubled. This can be regarded as a kind of "Internet celebrity tax". The price of
is not enough, so IP is available. When the raw materials and marketing rhetoric of internet celebrity ice cream are almost exhausted, manufacturers begin to target IP.
On the "Ice Cream Assassin" list, in addition to the frightening Zhongjia cake series, the second one is undoubtedly a cup of ice cream called "Dasai". Although it only costs 80g, it sells for 69 yuan. Netizens ridiculed "Hagen" Das smelled good instantly."
This ice cream was launched by Dassai, known as "Japanese Moutai", in 2011. Initially, a 120 ml bottle sold for 350 yen (approximately RMB 17), and now the price has doubled.
Cross-border IP alliances of "ice cream + winery" have become quite common in recent years. For example, Wuliangye and Heytea have launched wine-flavored ice cream, Luzhou Laojiao and Zhong Xuegao, Jiang Xiaobai and , Mengniu, , etc. have all cooperated to launch alcoholic ice cream. Even Moutai has jointly launched Moutai ice cream with Mengniu. The content ratios of the three products Moutai and are respectively 2%, 1.6%, and 2%, and the prices are 59 yuan and 66 yuan. .
The reason why ice cream manufacturers spare no effort to raise prices is because high premiums can leave more room for gross profit for the channel. In the past, traditional channels such as supermarkets, community supermarkets, and mom-and-pop stores occupied the main sales channels. Wholesale was the main sales channel. For a piece of ice cream worth 1 yuan, the wholesale price could be as low as 40 or 50 cents, mainly for small profit margins. pin.
But as chain convenience stores gradually became more popular, the retail scene of ice cream consumption grew faster, and the sales strategies of dealers and channel dealers also began to gradually change to high profits and low sales.
The owner of a community supermarket in Shuangqiao, Beijing, told Mathematics News: "The best-selling ice cream is the two or three yuan ones. Basically, residents in nearby communities buy them in boxes, but there are very few repeat customers for ice creams that exceed 10 yuan or more than 5 yuan." .”
It can be seen that Internet celebrity ice cream is not favored in traditional channels. Mathematics Society visited many community stores, supermarkets and convenience stores in Beijing and found that the ice cream in the freezers of some merchants did not have clearly marked prices or was not clearly marked. This is also one of the reasons for the emergence of "ice cream assassins".
"I didn't pay attention when I went to the supermarket once to check out. When I got home and looked at the receipt, I saw that a stick of ice cream was more expensive than a large bag of yogurt." Wenwen, born in the 1990s, said that from then on, she asked the price first when buying ice cream, and she no longer had the freedom of ice cream. .
00 Xiaohai went to a convenience store with his girlfriend on the weekend and picked up four ice creams. When they checked out, they found that they cost more than 80. The two of them froze in place for nearly 10 seconds, and finally gritted their teeth and bought it. Xiaohai said that he suddenly realized that at that moment, the farthest distance in the world was from the counter to the freezer.
03丨It’s easy to plant grass and pull it out quickly
The explosion of Internet celebrity ice cream is not unrelated to the rise of young people’s social media. It is also a product of the Internet celebrity economy created by traffic.
Search "Internet celebrity ice cream" on Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and a large number of reviews or grassroots content published by users and KOLs will appear. With precise marketing and algorithm push, Internet celebrity ice cream has been given social attributes. With its exquisiteness and uniqueness Packaging flavors such as , Novelty and Novelty continue to attract the curiosity of young people, thus leading to follow-the-trend consumption.
The brand itself is also willing to join the platform to promote and build momentum. Take Zhong Xuegao as an example. As of now, his number of fans on Xiaohongshu and Douyin platforms are as high as 80,000 and 448,000 respectively. Previously, he had been in the live broadcast rooms of Li Jiaqi , Luo Yonghao and other leading anchors. You can often see Zhong Xuegao’s products.
However, one of the characteristics of the Internet celebrity economy is that grass can be planted quickly and weeded out quickly.
Internet celebrity tea drinks serve as a warning. At the beginning of the outbreak of Internet celebrity tea drinks, tea drink merchants replaced milk tea powder , tea bags, and concentrated jam with milk, tea leaves, and freshly squeezed juices, causing the price of tea drinks to skyrocket and once exceeded 30 yuan. High-end brand players such as Heytea and Naixue have emerged, and Internet celebrity tea brands are springing up like mushrooms after a rain.
But soon, due to the serious homogeneity of the industry and improper management of some merchants, negative news was frequently exposed. After tea brands could not reap the marketing dividends, they began to enter the reshuffle stage. They promoted prices, even closed stores and laid off employees. .
The current Internet celebrity ice cream industry is also going through a process of disenchantment. From the recently popular topic of "Ice Cream Assassin" on the Internet, we can see that young people have been suffering from the price of Internet celebrity ice cream for a long time. On Xiaohongshu and Douyin, the popularity of the topic about Ice Cream Assassin was 22.319 million views and 1.09 billion views respectively.
After the trend of Internet celebrities subsides, consumers will gradually return to rationality, and those ice cream assassins hidden in the freezer will eventually be ignored and eventually relegated to the cold palace forever.
What people miss may not be the cheap ice cream with single flavors and simple packaging many years ago, but the summer when you can open the freezer and choose your favorite flavor without any burden.
