As we all know, football originated in China, but when this entertainment activity called Cuju in ancient times came to modern times, it was forged by European and American countries to become the world's number one sport.
It has to be said that in any era, as long as a super player who has mastered the advanced productivity of and capital enters the game, he can rely on his "money ability" to bring civilization traditions out of his origin and embrace the wide-area market in a more money-making way.
Today, is this logic also proven to be successful in the catering industry?
's capital's curiosity and driving force has broken the regional restrictions on the traditional flavor of food, and welcoming new development opportunities after leaving the original city. For example, more than 60% of the stores of " Meet Xiaomian " are open in Guangdong, more than 60% of the stores of "Baman Rice Noodles" are open in Beijing, and almost all of the stores of "Guifenghuang" are open in Beijing, while the predecessor of Guangxi's largest rice noodle brand "Sanpinwang Beef Noodles" is "Guizhou Huaxi Beef Noodles".
originated from the Lanzhou Beef Noodle in the northwest. It also triggered a quick bet from capital under the operation of a group of high-end players in Shanghai, allowing us to see what effect will be produced by a bowl of beef noodle after combining with capital.
However, the capital market is not a temple, the capital market is a world of martial arts.
is a world of martial arts, even if there are masters, heroes, and weirdos, there are naturally some assassins who seem ordinary but are unpredictable.
When capital starts from the moment of the track of Lanzhou Ramen, it means that both co-creators and consumers need to keep their eyes open, cover their wallets, and beware of themselves.
Because, the "hunting moment" where ramen assassins frequently appear has come solemnly. And the end of this Shura Farm will be a gorgeous transformation of Lanzhou beef noodles, a mess, or a bigger shock to the industry. Perhaps before time gives us the answer, we can try to guess through the following.
Ramen Assassin, the "wronged" one takes the bait?
In the past three years, it has been the highlight era of the flour noodle track taking off in the financing market, and has ushered in unprecedented capital popularity. "Baman", " third-grade king ", "Meet Xiaomian", "Five Ye Mixed Noodle" and so on have all completed several rounds of financing.
The main reason is that the catering supply chain industry is becoming more mature. Raw materials are delivered to the store from central kitchen , which can support the scale efficiency of terminal catering brands. For capitalists, being able to expand rapidly means the arrival of investment opportunities.
has to admit that the dividend period of online traffic has ended, and the cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher, and entrepreneurs and investment institutions have turned their attention offline again. In the offline track, catering projects, especially noodles that are suitable for both the north and south, have highly standardized production processes, and are easy to replicate efficiently, will naturally be favored by capital.
According to iMedia Consulting "2021 New Chinese Noodle Restaurant Industry Trends and Consumer Behavior Insight Report", the revenue scale of China's Chinese Noodle Restaurants in 2021 will reach 312.09 billion yuan, and it is expected that the revenue scale will exceed 430 billion yuan in 2024.
Among them, Lanzhou beef noodle is a representative of Chinese local cuisine, with a high recognition and the largest noodle among Chinese ramen. But at the same time, the track has always had an embarrassing situation of "having categories but not having brands". According to the aforementioned report, so far, there have been no more than 1,000 chain brands in the Lanzhou beef noodle industry.
Under the trend of consumption upgrading, Cameng believes that the opportunity to "newly made old products" in this category has finally arrived.
"Chen Xianggui", "Ma Jiyong" and "Zhang Lala", these three emerging brands that focus on Lanzhou beef noodles are released in a high-profile manner during this window of opportunity. However, they do not come from the northwest, but are all made in Shanghai. Naturally, they are more versatile than traditional ramen brands.
In early May 2021, Ma Jiyong Lanzhou Beef Noodles received an angel round financing. At the end of November, Chen Xianggui, who claims to be authentic Lanzhou flavor, completed a round A financing of over 100 million yuan, and his current valuation is close to 1 billion yuan.
On December 21, Zhang Lala, the main tycoon of beef ramen, announced that it had completed a B round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, led by CICC Culture Consumption Fund, a subsidiary of CICC Capital, followed by Jinshajiang Venture Capital and Sheng Jing Jiacheng. This is the third round of financing that Zhang Lala has received in just one year in 2021.
With capital support, these three new-style Lanzhou beef noodle brands have all stepped up their efforts to take the boutique route, locking the consumer group in young white-collar workers, and creating the attributes and quality of Internet celebrity stores through productive and tone-oriented marketing strategies.
In order to match this positioning, their stores are directly located in the surrounding areas of Gaoda Shang shopping centers or office buildings. It is reported that the proportion of stores opened by three brands, Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala, in large shopping malls, has reached more than 80%.
This will inevitably make the product pricing relatively high-end and restaurant square meter . Dianping shows that in Shanghai, the average customer unit price of Ma Jiyong and Chen Xianggui is between 35-40 yuan, while Zhang Lala's customer unit price is higher, reaching between 40-50 yuan.
In addition, the rich product line has made obvious innovation and upgrades compared to traditional noodle shops. Taking Zhang Lala as an example, in addition to the dishes that focus on the northwest flavor, it has also launched a number of new products that cater to the diverse needs of young consumers, including roast beef, roasted pineapple, roasted small crispy meat, roasted bullfrog, snack ribs, edamame and ginkgo, etc.
However, wool comes from sheep. Brands like Chen Xianggui, Ma Ji Yonghe Zhang Lala require higher rent and maintenance costs than street noodle restaurants, which will definitely be directly reflected in the prices of beef noodle and dishes. Therefore, the selling price is generally 2 times or even more than 3 times that of traditional noodle restaurants, so it is not difficult to understand.
read here, some people may be worried about this, thinking that these new brands of Lanzhou beef noodles will be cultivated into a new batch of "assassins" and let consumers shout when they pay the bill?
Food Alliance believes that if you have this concern, it means that you may not be the target consumers these brands are targeting. instead of letting the "willed" take the bait, the ramen assassin pursues the "will" take the bait from the beginning.
In other words, the same bowl of noodles is sold to different people.
But this will inevitably arise, that is, whether the business is booming does not depend on the brand itself, but over-reliance on site selection and business districts are backed by the class attributes of consumer groups.
For example, in Shanghai, it is also a store of Chen Xianggui brand. It is understood that the Meiluo City store is always full of food whenever the food is in full swing, while the Changning International Plaza store is few and there are also people next to it, and Zhang Lala next to it is also in a similar situation.
So, looking at the whole of Shanghai and even China, how many customers are there to match the positioning of boutique Lanzhou beef noodles? Can it really support this new brand to become bigger and stronger?
Food Alliance believes that for now, their living space is limited to first-tier cities, and they are still within a few very large-scale elite business districts.
For a long time, if we cannot embrace more groups with different levels of consumption, especially the vast space of the sinking market, and cannot create a profit model with truly high replication rates, then in the end, this "ramen rookie" is nothing more than a capital game.
Capital cooking noodles, the "golden" way?
Some rapidly expanding star projects have the motivation to "make a plan".
Is the way to play Shanghai Xinpai Beef Noodle Restaurant essentially about rapid expansion and cutting leeks? Relying on quick gameplay, let more people join the game? If a leading institution invests 100 million, can it lead to a 1 billion result?
capital invests not noodles, but this game.
And, capital will distort the laws of enterprise development. For any brand to develop continuously, survival is the first factor and needs to be profitable. The push of capital may make emerging catering brands not have time to grow steadily.
still takes Zhang Lala as an example. It is understood that although the number of stores opened in just one year is over 100, many stores are in a long-term loss state, and some stores lose at least 60,000 yuan a month.
A consumer investor who is a well-known domestic leading angel investing in funds said, "Those who truly develop and grow into influential brands are not enough to rely solely on capital support. They have all experienced many ups and downs, constantly practicing to make themselves survive."
In this process, brands should grow with employees, the market, and consumers.
But objectively speaking, Shanghai’s new Lanzhou beef noodle brand still has many things worthy of recognition compared to traditional noodle restaurants. In particular, the introduction of modern management models such as SOP product production standards, digital system, purchase and inventory system, supply chain system , membership system, SKU product quantity specification standards, etc., has made Lanzhou beef noodles in the hands of this group of players, in addition to being a chewy, it has a "golden" way.
Therefore, in the long run, capital is still positive for the overall noodle restaurant industry. Xinpai Noodle Restaurant has refined and standardized thinking and abilities that traditional noodle restaurants do not have. At the same time, capital strictly controls the project trend and is extremely cautious about food safety issues, which can play a good role in supervising the noodle restaurants in providing a good supply chain system.
will also force the entire Lanzhou beef noodle track, especially traditional time-honored brands, to accelerate transformation and combine it with capital.
Capital cooking noodles, boil on the outside and burn on the inside?
The popular paths of Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala are similar to those of most new consumer brands, that is, what young people like, they target the brand to what mold they make.
However, young people's enthusiasm will disappear, their focus will shift, and the enthusiasm of capital will inevitably have a deadline.
At present, these new brands in Shanghai have just moved Lanzhou ramen to the mall, and the average customer price has already discouraged some consumers. What is even more anxious is that capital cannot solve the problem of how to establish solid product barriers and it is difficult to form the core competitiveness of the brand. In this case, the brand homogeneity is too prominent and can be easily imitated, copied, and “slapped on the beach by the back waves.”
In addition, as a capital-backed pasta brand, there is also a problem of "boiling outside and burning inside". It is easy to have a conflict of position between serving capital and serving consumers, resulting in companies being unable to truly consider it from the perspective of consumers and losing their true nature.
This undoubtedly makes people have deep doubts about the future of capital noodles. How should a brand's long-term vitality be shaped?
In fact, the answer to this question is not difficult to answer. Simply put, it is a firm belief in promoting a chain business strategy. In the process of chainization, has continuously made the pricing strategy more reasonable and affordable, and has more proactively and pragmatically catered to consumers' changes in their demands from pursuing "price-price ratio" to "price-price ratio", so that the sense of value and happiness carried by a simple bowl of beef noodles can be improved. The best added value of
products must be the crystallization of the two-way pursuit of brands and consumers. Lanzhou beef mask has the predecessor of high popularity and large market space. Casino believes that in this category, there is a complete opportunity for Thousand Store brands to appear.
The direction to achieve the goal of Thousand Stores must be to strive to seize the value depression in the sinking market, and at the same time further focus on the strategy of brand communityization.
According to the analysis of the "2022 New Catering Industry Research Report" released by Meituan Research Institute, at present, shopping malls in my country's catering market have entered the era of stock, and the catering layout is gradually approaching the community. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, communityization has become a catering opportunity that has been "isolated", and community catering is destined to become a new growth point in the industry.
Standing in this golden age of constant opportunities and challenges, whether Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala can re-find their positioning and development strategies may become the key to their destiny.
Conclusion
A joke circulated on the Internet, and some people questioned why luxury brand bags are sold so expensive. When the answer came out, it made people hilarious and thought spontaneously.
What you buy at a high price is actually the high price itself, and that bag is nothing more than a gift.
Although this is a joke, what is being joked about is actually the consumption psychology of the elite class.According to this logic, can a bowl of ramen that costs 40+? Can it be understood that consumers eat not noodles, but face.
But, I don’t know how long will the face cooked by this bowl of capital be fragrant? Will this second half of the Lanzhou Ramen Rookie game be a surprise, or will it open high and close low in ? It may depend on the future operations of these players...
