"Chengchuanxiang" is also called "hot pot malatang", which is the most intense flavor of the rivers and lakes in the streets and alleys of Bay and Yu. As a street, Chuan Chuan Xiang rarely enters the elegant hall. However, " Yuan Ji Chuan Chuan Xiang ", which was founded in 1996 and started with a street shop, is now taking the path of corporate operations and has already owned more than 300 chain stores. In a low entry threshold and fierce competition, how did this catering company break through?
The following is an excerpt from the business magazine report:
From the street to the store
In the late 1980s, Yuan Gang came to Chengdu from Suining, more than 200 kilometers away with the 63 yuan he had saved, and was determined to make his own career here. But the road to entrepreneurship is difficult. Yuan Gang went from carrying a carry and selling chili noodles from the streets to later having some savings. He started to rent a shop and worked hard to run his own miscellaneous business.
In 1996, Yuan Gang was sensitively aware that the wind direction had changed. In this year, many large chain supermarkets began to settle in Chengdu, bringing a huge impact to the miscellaneous industry. It is difficult to compete with the wholesale and retail form, and will undoubtedly be severely squeezed by large supermarkets in the future. At this time, with his keen vision, Yuan Gang took the initiative to change his entrepreneurial path and began to explore Chuan Chuanxiang's business. Because of this, he was not overwhelmed by the development of society like many businesses in that era. In 1996, he opened the first Yuan Ji Chuan Chuanxiang on North Fourth Street, Gulou, Chengdu.
At that time, Chuanchuanxiang was a very low-end food, with street stalls and low tables and stools, and people bent down to eat on the table; dishes were piled on the roadside, allowing the dust on the street to swell. "Everyone does this." But Yuan Ji is different. It has a bright and spacious store and comfortable large tables and seats. Yuan Gang even decided to set up a dish display area indoors, so that customers can choose in a self-service style just like shopping in a supermarket. This is completely contrary to the "traditional" approach that gives customers a sudden better choice: compared with street shops, the taste is equally authentic and distinctive, and the dining is more comfortable and clean, and even the price is cheaper than most of their peers. Within one or two years, Yuan Ji opened four or five stores in a row.
Yuan Gang is a person who is not easy to satisfy. In addition to changing the "texture" of Chuan Chuanxiang, he also has a huge plan - to change this industry. In 1998, Yuan Ji established a company and began corporate operations; from 2000 to 2001, Yuan Ji opened the first franchise chain store in Chengdu in Lijiatuo, Chengdu, and began to develop outside Sichuan Province, officially embarking on the national franchise chain road, opening multiple branches in Guangzhou, Kunming and Xining respectively; in order to create a standardized and standardized brand image, since 2003, Yuan Ji upgraded the brand three times in a row, forming a complete set of VI identification systems; in 2007, Yuan Ji began to build his own production base, establish a logistics distribution system, and bagged all hot pot ingredients.
The way to join
Yuan Ji is the most successful franchisee named Xie Chao. He started his business at the age of 14 and started his business in roasted wax and marinated. By chance, he opened three Yuan Ji Chuan Chuan Xiang restaurants in a row and introduced his sister to join 2. With his learning and growth in Yuan Jizhong and outstanding personal abilities, Xie Chao has now achieved remarkable achievements in many industries. He has established his own catering brand, owned forty or fifty branches across the country, and opened a financial investment company. Such a competitor is the best "student" for Yuan Ji: Xie Chao was inspired by Yuan Gang when he opened a company; and his company management was even more true to Yuan Ji. He personally attended every meeting of Yuan Ji, constantly learning how Yuan Ji trained, planned, and summarized.
Another Yuan Ji franchisee, Leng Zhenlong, relied on the borrowed money to open the first Yuan Ji Chuan Chuanxiang Store, but with the help of Yuan Ji Company, he quickly achieved the most profitable store in Chengdu. And now, he has also established his own company to run hot pot.
General Manager Yang Liangjun called this Yuan Ji’s “culture of fate”.The general education and business level of practitioners and operators in the catering industry is not high, and Yuan Gang regularly organizes professionals and outstanding franchisees to train them every month, so that employees and operators can know how to manage and operate, and how to pursue their own value. After growing up, encourage them to achieve their careers.
Rational identification and steadily entrepreneurship Unified and customized franchise cooperation
Like all franchises, Yuan Ji also attaches great importance to "rational identification and steadily entrepreneurship" with franchisees. The recognition here is not only at the level of brand and corporate culture, but also at the entrepreneurship passion, mature career attitude, strong desire for success and harmony at the level of development awareness. This is also an important reason why Yuan Ji Chuan Chuan Xiang can lead the way in the fierce competition in the catering industry.
Yuan Ji provides franchisees with unified services such as unified image identification, patent and intellectual property support, distribution of secret base materials, continuous post-communication and training. In addition to guiding in daily business, it also builds a stage for all partners to share joy and exchange successful experiences: new employee induction training exchange meeting, back hall supervisor training exchange meeting, supervisor training exchange meeting, safety training meeting, cashier training exchange meeting, manager learning exchange meeting, ingredient training learning exchange meeting, etc.
At the same time, Yuan Ji customized franchise services to fit the actual geographical location and urban economic circle of each franchise store. Just from the decoration style of the franchise store, Yuan Ji has formulated and designed three scientific and systematic decoration plans: A-level (fine decoration cultural store), B-level (casual specialty store), and C-level (simplified practical store), and provides franchisees with detailed decoration investment and provides systematic guidance and reference for partners. Nearly 300 3-level model stores across the country are for partners to visit and inspect.
Refine franchise services First 24-hour online network support
How to win-win with franchisees and maintain Yuan Ji's brand vitality for a long time has always been the direction of Yuan Ji's exploration.
Since 2005, Yuan Ji launched the tourism reward program for outstanding franchise partners, providing tourism rewards to outstanding business partners. Now he travels once a quarter, domestic tour once a year, international tour once a year, and up to 7 tourism rewards throughout the year. Since 2007, Yuan Ji has not only provided tourism rewards to outstanding franchise partners, but also prepared big prizes for particularly outstanding outstanding partners: cash, gold, high-end health products, luxury goods and other rewards.
In 2013, in order to strengthen communication and cooperation with franchisees across the country, Yuan Ji invested heavily in establishing a "24-hour online" website system. Each franchise partner has a unique company website login account. After logging in to the company website, you can download and view the company's latest internal information. Not only that, each partner can also manage the news information of their respective branches, publish the latest event announcements, and truly achieve 24-hour online support.
It is reported that from March to April 2013 alone, Yuan Ji Chuan Chuanxiang successfully signed contracts with 8 companies nationwide, including Wuhan Hu Da Store, Dazhou Tongchuan Store, Neijiang Dongxing Store, Yunnan Baoshan Store, Chengdu Guoyan Store, Wuhan Optical Valley Store, Nanchong Nanbu Store, and Hubei Xiantao Store; while Yuan Ji Guiyang Store, Wuhan Guiyuan Road Store, and Dazhou Tongchuan Store have all entered the business stage, and the turnover is very gratifying.
Brand operation
After more than ten years of development, Chuanchuanxiang, as a sub-industry of hot pot, has a market and consumer group that is both the same as the consumer group. Yuan Ji also encountered his own bottleneck: At present, Chuanchuanxiang companies with branded operations like Yuan Ji have very high entry thresholds. Yang Liangjun admitted: "Opening a store in Chengdu is very expensive. And brand stores like Yuan Ji require more strength and energy. Many people think that Yuan Ji is not cost-effective and choose to open a street shop, but they don't know that the risk is greater."Why are street chuckwheats, small cold pots and other street snacks blooming everywhere, but they are short-lived and cannot form a climate and scale? These street chuckwheat shops have small investments and low thresholds, but their limitations are also very obvious: per capita consumption is low, and the costs of rents and other things are rising; without brand support, it is difficult to get a single store; at the beginning, the business risks and advertising costs are huge, especially the risks in food hygiene supervision will increase accordingly, which will increase operating costs and squeeze the already low profits; it is all because of lack of mature business management experience.
There was a famous Chuanchuanxiang brand in Chengdu. In the early days, large and small stores opened at will and expanded rapidly, but in a few years Later, he encountered a shrinking store and had to change careers; Chuanchuan, a street-spoken area in Chengdu, also encountered a similar bottleneck and began to turn to high-end stores in order to seek profit support.
The company-oriented and brand-oriented operations of Yuanji are already risk-resistant. Faced with the common dilemma of the industry, Yuanji began to use disposable pot bottoms to lay out open kitchens to make safety, hygiene and service. Second, expand outward. Although this industry has matured in Sichuan, Chuanchuan still has extremely distinctive characteristics for other provinces. After a series of transformations, at the beginning of this year, Yuanji opened many stores in Guizhou, Wuhan and other places.
