Lifestyle
Lifestyle
1991 On a green train from Inner Mongolia to Beijing, a businessman surnamed Wei made a bowl of noodles he brought from Taiwan Province.
He is a Taiwanese businessman who came to the mainland to start a business from Taiwan Province. He carries the expectations of his family, but he is almost losing all the start-up capital of RMB 40 million.
and this bowl of noodles gave him inspiration.
4 years later, his instant noodles produce 6 billion packs per year.
This food, which has a strong and fast-produced flavor, has risen with the prosperity of China's commerce and construction activities. A reporter from Bloomberg once said in a report that "the instant noodles bowls everywhere on construction sites are as many as towering cranes on the ground."
Now, China's instant noodles sells more than 40 billion packs of annual sales, and it is no exaggeration to say that China is an instant noodle empire.
Today, let’s talk about instant noodles in China.
1964, Beijing Food Factory made "instant noodles" in China for the first time. Unfortunately, its instant noodles were to make full use of scraps and use duck oil to fry noodles. The taste of instant noodles such as
is unknown, but in the words of the People's Daily, it is "there is a strange smell that disappears quickly."
1970, Shanghai Yimin Food Factory No. 4 made China's first bag of instant noodles in the true sense - egg instant noodles, which sold 2 million bags in a year.
Yimin Food Factory has a very big background, and the national-level candy "Big White Rabbit Milk Candy" is also written by them.
This instant noodles later became a brand called "Happy" instant noodles.
It’s a pity that not every pioneer can become an industry giant. Unlike Japan, the pioneer of "Nissin", the world’s first package of instant noodles, Happy Brand Instant Noodles quickly dissipated with time.
But instant noodles are gradually recognized by Chinese people.
Hangzhou, which is very close to Shanghai, smelled a business opportunity.
Hangzhou Flour Factory also began to make instant noodles, and it also distributed goods in supply and marketing cooperatives and stalls in Hangzhou. By 1983, their instant noodles sold 90 tons annually.
1984, Hangzhou Flour Factory launched a complete set of instant noodles equipment jointly designed and made by the grain and oil machinery factories in Guangdong, Shanghai and Tianjin. Each shift produces 30,000 bags of instant noodles, and three shifts a day, which is not enough to sell instant noodles.
Hangzhou Flour Factory is just a part of the instant noodles wave. In Zhuhai, further south, Huafeng Food Company was established, producing the "Sanxian Yi Noodles" that people of that era had eaten.
In the north, , Nanjie Village, Luohe, Henan, produced "Beijing Spicy Instant Noodles" that are also a memory of the people.
You may be curious, why is the instant noodles made in Henan called Beijing instant noodles?
Because Nanjie Village sold flour back then, he collaborated with Beijing Jinsong Pastry Factory to produce pastries. Later, he found out that instant noodles were in trouble, so he went to make instant noodles.
At that time, the two words "Beijing" were supreme in the hearts of Chinese people. People would think that bringing the word "Beijing" must be a good thing.
So Nanjie Village took a clever idea and borrowed the name brought by Jinsong Pastry Factory to hang the "Beijing" sign for its instant noodles. The above instant noodles factories were the main output of instant noodles in that era, and their business was very popular, and the more they did, the better.
, especially the "Shuangfeng" instant noodles in Hangzhou flour mill, were all supplied by tickets at that time, so there was a long queue for buying instant noodles. If you came late, you had to wait for two more days to ship new goods in the factory before you could buy them.
is so popular that they have to work extra overtime to meet the demand for supplying goods to outside Zhejiang Province.
I am from Northeast China. After coming to Hangzhou, I have always had a question, Why do people in the old Hangzhou generation call instant noodles " fast food noodles "?
It was not until I found the packaging bag of "Shuangfeng" that I knew why ↓
Because when they first saw instant noodles in Hangzhou, this thing was called fast food noodles. It was carved into the bones. It was called
As Hangzhou Shuangfeng instant noodles sold better and better, in 1985, they spent a huge amount of money to import more advanced production lines from Japan to expand production. By the end of the 1980s, they also introduced Japanese joint ventures to build a factory, preparing to do a big move.
But what they didn't expect was that they were at their peak and were about to be killed. . .
1991, a Taiwanese businessman named Wei Yingzhou was worried on the green train.
He brought about 40 million yuan from his home to develop in the mainland. He has an ancestral oil factory in his hometown, so he also wanted to develop his old business and do edible oil business. The name is "Top Good", and he also spent money to advertise at CCTV. The slogan is "Top Good Cooked Oil, It's Favorable".
However, the experience of the past three or four years has made him feel "high" uncomfortable. His oil is not very good, and he almost lost all the money he brought.
In fact, the reason for his loss of money is very simple. His "highest" cooking oil focuses on high-end. At that time, the price of cooking oil subsidized by the government was 80 cents, but it was better and sold for 2 yuan. . .
Wei Yingzhou may have some misunderstandings about the problem of face. If ordinary people really want to have face, they will save money to buy big brothers and BB machines and then don’t show off on their waists. What kind of face can they have if they spend more than twice as much money to buy oil for cooking?
Seeing that his business could not turn around, the more he thought about it, he felt more and more uncomfortable. He wanted to have a full stomach first, so he soaked a pack of instant noodles brought from his hometown Taiwan Province. It doesn't matter if you like
, which attracted the attention of the people on the train.
The reason is very simple. Everyone has seen instant noodles, but they have never seen such a fragrant instant noodles.
Wei Yingzhou carefully studied it and found that the mainland's instant noodles such as Huafeng, Beijing spicy and Shuangfeng are all equipped with a bun of seasonings. The ingredients are salt, chili powder, pepper powder, MSG, etc. Instant noodles like
are not unpalatable after soaking them, but at most they are a tool to satisfy your hunger.
And the delicious instant noodles he is eating are produced in China, and some are sold in China, but they are all imported. A pack costs at least 5 yuan, and a little more expensive can be sold for 10 yuan.
he thought it was a blank market at the time and immediately prepared to raise money to make instant noodles.
During the planning period, he thought a lot.
For example, when choosing a location, he decided to go to Tianjin to build a factory first. First, Tianjin had local economic support at that time, and secondly, Tianjin was in North China, and noodle foods had a more audience base in the north than in the south. In terms of flavors of
, he chose braised beef , because pork was rare at that time, and beef was even more amazing. If instant noodles were braised beef flavor, it would be inevitable that it would be a bit of ordinary instant noodles with some small shrimps on the noodles.
finally got the name, and he thought a lot.
He hopes that his instant noodles will give people a "healthy" and "professional" feeling.
At that time, the word "Master" was a very powerful honorable title, which means experience, so he decided to spell out a name with the words "Health" and "Master".
Of course, this can't be called "Master of Health", it sounds quite cheap, so it was finally named "Master Kong ". The instant noodles produced by Master Kong were very different from other aspects of the mainland at that time, that is, there was a "sauce bun". This sauce pack of
gives instant noodles a strong beef flavor soup, and it instantly sells out after advertising on TV.
At this point, we have to mention whether there is any beef in Master Kong’s beef noodles, because there are always people who joke that “the cows in Master Kong’s factory have only suffered skin trauma.”
I looked carefully and found that most of the beef in braised beef noodles are used in sauce bags.
Although there is no actual recipe, I found a similar process for the sauce bun.
They crush the beef into a paste, then add enzyme preparations to enzymatically dissolve it, and then cook the soup, and finally concentrate the soup by evaporation under reduced pressure.
In layman's terms, it means stewing the meat into the soup. In our Northeastern dialect, it is "stewing the soup".
so there are still beef in braised beef noodles. Although there are not many, they are not as few as everyone imagined.
In short, the sauce bun made Master Kong rise instantly. It is said that he once seized 90% of the instant noodles market. This number comes from a very old report and cannot be verified now, but in terms of taste, there is indeed no one in the original instant noodles that can be cooked.
After Tianjin stabilized, Master Kong began to develop to the south and built factories in Guangzhou and Hangzhou successively. This made us feel bad about the Shuangfeng instant noodles we mentioned earlier.
After Master Kong was mass-produced in Hangzhou, the price was one cent cheaper than Shuangfeng instant noodles.
Originally, Master Kong tasted better, and the price was cheaper than Shuangfeng. Shuangfeng stopped production within two years, and the Japanese capital injected funds also withdrew its investment and ran away, and the factory went bankrupt.
Huafeng, far away in Zhuhai, also suffered the same impact, but they were a little better. Later, they were acquired by the Chinese businessman "Jinguang Group" from Indonesian .
However, Master Kong did not enjoy the invincible loneliness, and the unification of the same Taiwan Province immediately entered the mainland market.
At that time, Master Kong had occupied the market in the instant noodles category, so he unified the "Unified Simple Noodles" thing, which was later renamed Xiao Raccoon.
The positioning of the noodles is snacks, and the main audience is children, but there were regulations that year that "business activities are prohibited from entering schools and classrooms."
In order to increase popularity, I thought of a loss trick.
They send instant noodles to the school batch by batch. This is considered a welfare donation, not a commercial activity
This fragrant and crispy fried food makes the children unable to stop. After eating it for free a few times, they immediately learned to buy it for their own money.
In order to further poke the pain points of the children, they also launched small gifts such as Water Margin Cards and toys. I liked their "fighter" series at that time.
Back then, I really ate a lot of simplicity noodles to show off my children in order to get a cool fighter.
After the noodles became famous, the unified name became famous and began to gradually erode Master Kong's noodle cooking market.
also uniformly produced braised beef noodles, which deliberately cheaper than Master Kong 2 cents
Master Kong saw it and said, "What a guy, this is not the one I used to use when I was fucked by Shuangfeng instant noodles. You are making a big axe in front of Luban's door~
So suddenly, while the product remained unchanged, the price of my braised beef noodles increased by 2 cents.
Otherwise, Master Kong is a business genius? Generally speaking, he is just a hot-hearted person and he is fighting a price war, right?
But Master Kong is very smart. Unified was already rich before coming to the mainland and has a strong capital. He can only kill himself in the price war.
So instead of falling into a price war, it is better to play a psychological game that will shape the brand.
This price increase has brought about 5 cents to the price difference between Master Kong's price and the unified instant noodles.
In the minds of consumers at that time, about every 5 cents was a leap of grade.
In this way, consumers will think that Master Kong is more advanced than Unified, which will maintain Master Kong's image as "the first brand of instant noodles".
But the price increase will eventually affect sales, so they launched a cheap version of Master Kong instant noodles that is cheaper than Uni-President for 1 yuan. It is very uncomfortable to hold Uni-President in the middle without going up or down.
In addition, Master Kong has also launched a unified market to simply eat noodles.
Your name is Little Raccoon, right?
I'm just called Little Tigers
You send a Water Margin Card, right?
I will give you the "Tornado Card".
Hey, my whirlwind card can not only collect, but also play, more than you,
Just when these two companies were fighting fiercely, several other manufacturers quietly rose.
from Hebei has created a low-priced version of "Master Kong". The taste is slightly worse, but the price is twice as cheap as possible. I want to win the low-end market of instant noodles.
doesn't sound special, right?
In fact, his operation of selling instant noodles is very sensual.
He gave the product different names and then sold it in different regions.
In the southern region, the economy is relatively developed, and every village and household are promoting "to achieve a well-off society", so he named it "Hualong Well-off society".
In the Central Plains region, cities led by Beijing are more in line with the international community, so it is called "Six-Chome".
. In the north, because there are three eastern provinces in the north, he named it "Dongsanfu"
. This operation made countless people in Northeast China think that Dongsanfu is a specialty of Northeast China. If you buy it, you will support your hometown. In fact, they are a company in Hebei.
After he made a lot of money from the low-end market, he also began to transform and launched "Jinmailang" to invade Master Kong and the unified high-end market. This wave of
made Master Kong very uncomfortable, so Master Kong launched the mentality of "Fumanduo" to go to the low-end market to build Hualong.
Another player from Henan is called Baixiang . He also wants to start a sinking market and has created a new gimmick, which is "bone soup noodle".
He overwhelmed his advertisements and said that his noodles are "with bone soup, the noodles are more fragrant." He also said that he contains real large bone ingredients and can supplement calcium and plays a health card, which is evenly matched with Hualong.
When it comes to the concept of stir-frying, we have to mention another new player, called "Wugu Taoyuan". Everyone shouted that instant noodles were unhealthy when frying instant noodles, COFCO Group launched Wugu Taoyuan instant noodles, which became popular for a while, but later COFCO sold this brand. Without the background blessing of COFCO, it sold the sales later.
, and Huafeng, far away in Zhuhai, took the attention of the "Magic" crisp noodles, and later launched the "dough cakes taste directly without sprinkling the material" operation, which grabbed the unified market.
is like this. As a veteran giant in instant noodles food, he was beaten by Master Kong and other rising stars. At that time, the high-end one could not sell Master Kong, Hualong and Baixiang in the middle and low-end ones, and the noodles could not be sold even Huafeng. The situation was once very embarrassing
. Master Kong did a killer level operation, that is, he bought the agency rights of the "Family" chain convenience store. Why is
said to be a killer weapon?
You will find that Master Kong's instant noodles and drinks were placed on the best position in the shelves, and the unified product, right? . .
Sorry, there is no unified turnaround for
, from a rumor: "Magic use corpse oil to make instant noodles".
We don’t know what people at that time thought, just like the rumor that “ham sausage is made of corpses in the crematorium”, they are innocent and believe in the fried instant noodles. The sales of
The sales of wizards were blocked and Uni-President became a profitable person. The little boss simply sold noodles.
. In 2008, Uni-President launched a Jedi counterattack because he launched the old sauerkraut beef noodles.
The taste is quite controversial. Many people call it the eternal god, and some people think it is not as delicious as braised beef, but the market response of this taste is still very great.
unified by this taste, and sales have increased 20 times in four years.
Master Kong immediately took out a commercial weapon - copy!
Not only Master Kong is copying, but all instant noodles manufacturers have almost launched the flavor of old sauerkraut.
so I made a unified advertisement for "Someone imitating my face", which made a sarcastic wave of all the friendly businessmen.
originally had a good start to turn the tables, but as a result, due to the impact of takeaway, the instant noodles market has been getting worse every year. Since 2013, China's instant noodles have experienced four consecutive declines, with sales falling from 46.2 billion bags to 38 billion bags in 2017, and the market is shrinking continuously. The reason for
is very simple. The takeaway subsidy war lasted about three or four years. At that time, you could eat a meal of meat, vegetables and mini cola for about 10 yuan. The cost-effectiveness of instant noodles was directly compared.
In addition, since takeout is also quite convenient, the convenience of instant noodles also seems to have no advantage.
During this period, in order to seize the market that has begun to shrink, Master Kong fought a "gift war" with Unified. From stainless steel basins, large porcelain bowls to ham sausages, there is nothing they don't give away.
According to the Chairman of the United Nations, the two families consumed a total of 4 billion ham sausages in this gift war.
So that year, the ham sausage market also ushered in a small recovery
In the end, no one won the battle, and the revenue of all instant noodles manufacturers began to decline, so everyone was looking for transformation.
Because there are still some fun in the high-end instant noodles market. Although
takeout is cheap and convenient, the advantage is not very big in the sub-category of "noodles".
If the noodles are cooked and placed in the soup for delivery, it is very likely that they will become messy when they are in the hands of the customer.
If it is a separate delivery of noodle soup, although the noodles are no longer clumpy, the noodles do not smell and taste bad.
If you want to have a bowl of good noodles, you still have to cook yourself.
Just like that, Master Kong and Unified have both entered the field of the ultra-high-end instant noodle market.
has launched a Japanese-style soup expert. The texture of the noodles and soup base are really a bit like Japanese ramen.
Master Kong has launched the Suda Noodle Restaurant series. The noodle cakes are non-fried and are more like fresh noodles when cooked. The ingredients will contain a few large pieces of beef. It is no longer the "cover is for reference only", but it has become "what you see is what you get".
They have not been very smooth in this new field.
Because of the snail noodles , they both gave them a blow.
According to classification, theoretically speaking, snail noodles, such as instant noodles, also belongs to the category of instant noodles.
During the epidemic, the market for convenience foods has rebounded, but the number one hot-selling product on Taobao is not instant noodles, but snail noodles. The strength of
snail noodles has a certain "following the trend" effect, but it also shows that people are more picky and more particular about the taste and richness of instant noodles. The first generation of snail noodles often packs of small ingredients, making instant noodles seem unbeatable.
, and second place, is also a convenience food similar to instant noodles. It is a self-heated hot pot with a variety of ingredients and a wide powder.
In addition to snail noodles and self-heating hot pot, a very powerful new player has also come to the market for instant noodles, and he sells it with various live streaming.
This new player is called "Ramen Talk".
Ramen said this thing, redefined instant noodles.
His promotional point is "making the same style in a ramen shop in 5 minutes".
If you want to cook noodles, traditional instant noodles will take 5 minutes to cook.
But his taste is far away from traditional instant noodles.
Of course, the reputation of ramen is also very polarized. A large number of people say it is delicious, and a lot of people complain that it is unpalatable. I think it depends on the personal taste.
However, you have to admit that the instant noodles industry has changed, and it is all about consumption upgrading. After the ramen became popular, a large number of traditional instant noodles manufacturers turned to make competitors of ramen.
From leading the times to being led by a startup brand, I think it is quite a frustrating thing.
era is constantly changing, you can't stop it, nor can you stop it.
However, I don’t think anything like instant noodles will disappear. It will upgrade to various magical versions and continue to live with people.
Because of the rapid cooking of a pot of delicious noodles, it cannot be replaced in Chinese life.
It is something that can heal the soul.
late at night, you can't sleep.
took out your phone. Most of the takeaways are grilled fried chicken that is so hard-core. When you see the delivery time, you will have to add 5 yuan to the late-night delivery fee for 30 minutes.
So, you decided to put the noodles in the bowl.
in just five minutes, the fragrance is everywhere.
You picked up the chopsticks
bite the noodles and let the noodles be broken, one bite of noodle soup to relieve your worries.
It will always be with you in a steaming hot manner.
is like countless nights in the past.
never fades away.
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