Reporter Chen Ting Zhao Wenqi Editor Liu Xuemei
In Shanghai in April and May, under the storm sweeping the epidemic, there is a group of special entrepreneurs working tirelessly.
These entrepreneurs have a common identity: the helmsman of new consumer brands.
Compared with traditional brands, new consumer brands have shallow foundations and are still in the growth stage. It is precisely because of this that the special emergency since April has brought unprecedented pressure to these helmsmen. How to minimize brand losses for employees who are not smooth in logistics, temporarily closed stores, limited inventory, and home office workers have become major test questions before them.
Now, Shanghai has entered the stage of fully restoring normal production and living order in the city, and the resumption of work and production of large and small companies is in an orderly manner. After surviving this challenge and looking back, they found that the experience during this period also activated their fighting spirit and team cohesion, and even unlocked new skills.
Crisis coexist, and we will take advantage of the situation to prosper. Every entrepreneurial brand will always face the storm on the road to growth.
What has this epidemic brought to new consumer brands? What changes will each brand make in the subsequent layout and business focus? What changes has the epidemic brought to its industry? Recently, a reporter from " Daily Economic News " talked to four new consumer brands helmsmen and reviewed this experience that may be unforgettable for them. The answers from the helms of these new consumer brands may bring some inspiration to entrepreneurs of all new brands. (Special Topic | Discover 1001·Future Business)
Kuafu Fried Skewers Founder Yuan Zelu :
Use Internet methods to achieve a counterattack, and the full-link digital construction of the catering industry is on the string
Yuan Zelu Picture source: Image provided by the company
Yuan Zelu and Kuafu Fried Skewers One day's work started with the "morning meeting", and this fast-paced working habit that was popular in Internet companies was brought to the traditional catering industry by Yuan Zelu.
In the past two years, the epidemic has been repeated across the country. As a national franchise brand, sudden outbreaks in any place will bring a major blow to Kuafu fried skewers. The "morning meeting" gave Kuafu fried skewers more opportunities to respond in advance - according to local epidemic prevention policies and changes in store business data, timely measures were introduced to help stores quickly increase order volume and save themselves.
According to Yuan Zelu recalled to the reporter of "Daily Economic News", during the epidemic in Shanghai, the stocking of Kuafu's outlets across the country was affected by cross-provincial logistics for two or three consecutive months.
However, since last year, Yuan Zelu realized the importance of self-built supply chains for new catering consumer brands. At that time, Kuafu fried skewers gradually focused on the supply chain, investing in and building a total of 6 factories from warehouse distribution to factories. This initially invented supply chain system also played a major role in this round of epidemic, ensuring effective supply of stores across the country when logistics was most severely blocked.
In order to welcome the resumption of work in the Shanghai market, Yuan Zelu seized the retaliatory consumption opportunities that would inevitably arise after the resumption of work. "Shanghai branch has been observing Shanghai policies since May 1, making preparations per day, and 'suicide-style transportation' of 5 million yuan in Shanghai. Because we judge that once a lockdown occurs, there will definitely be retaliatory consumption. We must ensure that there is sufficient goods when the lockdown is unblocked." Yuan Zelu told reporters.
Compared with other large catering companies, Yuan Zelu said that the snack category has the characteristics of small single investment, wide coverage of people, and easy to adjust its business direction. It has a stronger ability to resist risks in the post-epidemic era. At the same time, the company achieved full-link digitalization last year, which can better help stores fight risks and accelerate development. More importantly, the company's supply chain capabilities must be up to the critical moment.
Yuan Zelu has always jokingly called Kuafu fried skewers a "dressed in a catering garment". Digitalization has also penetrated into every system and link of Kuafu Fried Skeleton.In the supply chain field, store operators can check the delivery status of the ingredients they ordered in real time through the Kuafu Merchant App. Once the logistics problem occurs due to the epidemic, they can quickly coordinate and solve the problem through 24-hour customer service.
. In the takeaway process, the store does not have to explore how to operate it by itself. The company's takeaway operation team will help the store complete the work of establishing online stores, setting up online menus, and attracting traffic. The takeaway team adjusts its operating strategy at any time through the daily operating data of global stores.
This innate digital ability has made Kuafu Biaoshang usher in a highlight moment of counter-trend growth since its establishment.
data provided by Kuafu Fried Skewers show that since this year, Kuafu Fried Skewers has exceeded 100 stores in Beijing, Shaanxi, Jiangsu, and more than 150 stores, Suzhou , Xi'an and Beijing have exceeded 100,000 in a single-day turnover of stores. On the first day of Suzhou's dine-in, the daily turnover exceeded 20,000. The first store in Shanghai resumes work and production, the daily turnover exceeded 20,000. The daily turnover of stores that have resumed work and production has exceeded 20,000. The daily turnover of stores that have resumed work has reached more than 20,000. Franchisees in many places have fission 3, 4, 5 and even 7 stores...
"The starting point depends on traffic, and the life-and-death supply chain." Yuan Zelu often talks about this sentence. The extreme self-rescue in this extreme environment of the epidemic has also allowed Yuan Zelu to further prove the correctness of this view. In his opinion, the repeated epidemics in various places over the past two years are accelerating the changes in the snack and catering market. The essence of catering is an industry where manufacturing is the foundation and service industry is the appearance. All brands must pay attention to their own supply chain construction.
"The problem with fast food snacks has always been dispersion. Compared with husband-and-wife stores, national chain snack brands are more risk-resistant. The epidemic has accelerated the achievement of chain rate earlier and faster." Regarding the transformation trend of the snack catering industry in the post-epidemic era, Yuan Zelu said. He also emphasized that in the future competition of catering brands, the proportion of digital capabilities will be further increased. Digitalization is no longer a plus for catering companies, but a necessary skill.
Lele Tea CMO Guo Sihan:
After the epidemic, the survival of the fittest has intensified the store location selection and product launches will be more cautious
As a local brand in Shanghai, its headquarters and most stores are concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai Lele Tea, which is hit hard by the epidemic, seems a little unexpected when facing the sudden outbreak of the epidemic.
"This epidemic has indeed had a great impact on us. From April 1, Lele Tea stopped operating all stores in Shanghai, and sales in Zhejiang and Jiangsu regions also fell sharply. The performance of many stores was 60%-70% before the epidemic. Immediately afterwards, as the epidemic escalated and the control area expanded, Beijing's Chaoyang and Haidian District require working from home. Stores in the mall can basically only deliver and pick up food at the door, and the overall performance has also been greatly impacted." In an interview with a reporter from "Daily Economic News", Lele Tea CMO Guo Sihan sighed to the reporter of "Daily Economic News".
Before this, Lele Tea's main sales channels for freshly made baking and new tea drinks were offline stores and online takeaways. This epidemic forced Lele Tea to achieve the transformation from "traditional offline sales" to "online community group buying " in the shortest time.
html In early April, Lelecha established a "community group buying special group", and carried out work simultaneously from front-end design, package research and development, supply chain, online operation, store operation, and personnel and logistics. Unlike more than 90% of baking companies on the market that use OEM factories to produce, Lele Tea’s bread is made and sold on time. It not only has complex production processes, but also involves hundreds of raw materials, which has extremely high requirements for the supply chain. During the epidemic, due to restrictions on lockdowns, the company's high-standard warehouses were unable to transport raw materials, and manpower and supply were once facing difficulties.
Lele Tea revealed to reporters that after coordination from multiple parties, various raw materials entered Shanghai through the supply guarantee line. In order to complete the supply as quickly as possible, the company mobilized all manpower to train and then took up the job, and participated in the warehousing and raw material delivery work together.At the same time, colleagues in baking research and development made plans to replace different products based on possible changes in raw materials, but this also adds more difficulty to the operation team and requires more time and manpower to communicate with consumers.
is the working hours of community workers and volunteers, and ensure that the soft bag is during the best taste appreciation period. Employees need to start fermenting the dough from 3 a.m., and go through the 4-hour fresh soft bags such as noodles, wake up, and bake. They will uninterruptedly from 7 a.m., and then ship them out one after another by a special car to ensure that the soft bags are delivered to all communities and group leaders before 8 p.m. In the Lele Tea corporate community, many consumers are surprised that they still have a hot bag.
Lele Tea's freshly made European bags also delivered three daily meals to Shanghai at that time, citizens were interested in quality life. According to Zhang Yunshu, the person in charge of online operations, on the first day of the official operation of the internal group buying project, a large number of group buying calls rushed in instantly, and an average of 3 calls per minute was received. During the epidemic in Shanghai, Lelecha can answer thousands of group purchase calls almost every day.
Now, with the steady progress of Shanghai's resumption of work, Lelecha has once again changed from the "online community group buying" model to the "offline sales and platform operation" model, promoting the orderly resumption of work in stores across the country.
Lele Tea Shanghai store resumed work on June 1st. Photo source: Image provided by the company.
"This wave of epidemic isolates on a large scale. Young consumers have begun to focus not only on personality and self, no longer obsessed with 'poetry and distance', but have a higher pursuit of the current quality of life. These changes in ideological and cultural trends have a deep impact on the economy, market and individual consumption behavior. Repressed shopping demand will break out after the end of the epidemic, and good products and brands will always be favored by consumers." Guo Sihan told reporters.
In her opinion, as the tea beverage industry becomes saturated, consumers have increasingly demanded on brands. The industry is currently in a period of survival of the fittest. After several rounds of cleaning, the best brand will be left behind.
"We believe that after experiencing the epidemic, the brand power is still in an upward period. Compared with friendly companies, Lele Tea has advantages in the average number of single-store members, order volume, public opinion, etc. Therefore, the company will still maintain a relatively rapid development pace this year, but it will be more cautious in store location selection and product new products, etc.," said Guo Sihan.
. In terms of specific decisions, Guo Sihan said that based on the current normalization of the epidemic, Lele Cha has also re-planned its new product and store layout. Previously, 3-5 new products were launched every week. In view of the current situation, Lele Tea has slowed down its pace of new developments and launched more popular products with "anti-fighting" flavors, appearance, and cost-effectiveness to reduce the cost of loss, training and other products caused by material switching.
"At the same time, we will accelerate the expansion of first- and second-tier cities, and focus on opening the "first city first store" that can represent the brand image. The cities that have been included in the plan include: Kunshan , Hefei, Zhenjiang , Yangzhou , Yiwu , Jinan, Qingdao and other cities." Guo Sihan revealed to reporters. Chen Zhuyu, partner of
:
After the epidemic, food brands will pay more attention to people's real needs
eclipse was established in 2013 and is headquartered in Shanghai. It initially expanded its popularity by posting food videos online. As of now, eclipse has accumulated more than 60 million fans. At the same time, the brand products of Solar Eclipse have also been placed in most e-commerce platforms, Hema and some cities' boutique supermarkets.
Chen Zhuyu is a partner of the Solar Eclipse, COO of the Canned Food Farm and CEO of the Solar Eclipse Life Museum. In early April, Chen Zhuyu's biggest feeling was "caught off guard."
"At the beginning, the forecast of the lockdown time was insufficient, but after April 5, I felt that I could not wait for a clear lockdown time, so I started to prepare for supply guarantees." Chen Zhuyu told the reporter of "Daily Economic News".
At that time, organizing and carrying out community group buying business became the first choice for solar eclipse records.
Chen Zhuyu recalled that at that time, the team quickly applied for the qualification of the supply guarantee enterprise and simultaneously began to form a distribution team in Shanghai to apply for a pass. "After everything was ready, we chose noodles, fast food, lazy dishes and soup base products to form a group purchase package."
organized and carried out community group purchase business, which became the first choice for the solar eclipse record. Image source: Image provided by the enterprise
Problems follow one after another, mainly focusing on products and transportation capacity.
"The biggest difficulty in group buying in the early stage is insufficient product and transportation capacity. Because the main warehouse is sealed and the inventory is limited, it is relatively difficult to make adjustments and shipments when the transportation capacity is limited. So we first launched three packages for urgent needs, and concentrated transportation capacity to supply delivery in a few areas such as Minhang , Changning , Jing'an , Putuo , Hongkou , Hongkou , etc.," Chen Zhuyu revealed.
At that time, the warehouse could operate extremely limited personnel. In order to reduce the workload of volunteer team leaders and the error rate of distribution, and improve the delivery efficiency, the Eclipse Team insisted on pre-packaging in the warehouse according to the package combination. The next day, the driver would deliver it to the community gate according to the order, and the group leader and community volunteers were responsible for the transportation of the "last 100 meters".
Chen Zhuyu revealed that at that time, production was greatly affected, and factories were facing a situation where raw materials were price increases (such as packaging paper materials, etc., which increased by more than 30% year-on-year compared with before the epidemic), logistics prices, and workers were unable to start work stably. Even if factories in other provinces can produce, the logistics cost of newly produced products entering Shanghai warehouses is at least three times that of before the lockdown.
Looking back at the various situations she faced at that time, she told reporters that in the face of emergencies, most people are not prepared. It is particularly important to quickly change their thinking, adjust their teams, and run new business models. "The continuous development of community group buying in Shanghai is actually the rapid response and self-rescue of various companies during this special period," said Chen Zhuyu.
htmlOn June 1, Shanghai entered the stage of fully restoring normal production and living order in the city. Are new consumer brands looking forward to retaliatory consumption? In Chen Zhuyu's opinion, there is unlikely to be retaliatory consumption online. "Since May, Shanghai citizens have been exposed to relatively rich types of group buying products. I think that the anxiety of shortage of materials has caused citizens' consumption desire to be released early and irrationally."
Chen Zhuyu believes that offline consumption will have a certain recovery and rebound. "After the epidemic, many people should need more socialization and realize the necessity of daily emotional socialization between people."
Looking back on the experiences in the past two months, Chen Zhuyu has some experience. She said that she will continue to improve her supply chain layout capabilities in the future and consolidate the infrastructure in this area. "After the epidemic, food brands will pay more attention to people's real needs and the construction of the entire supply chain."
"For entrepreneurship, risks always exist, but the core issues that companies should pay attention to will not change: the core values of the brand, how products meet people's real needs, how supply chains are laid out and built in solidly, as well as cash flow and profits. These core issues need to be thought and adjusted with the changes of the times and society." Chen Zhuyu said.
Lixiangguo head Wang Lin:
After the epidemic, new brands will pay more attention to the construction of the backend
Starting from April, the daily operations of Shanghai-based simple food brand Lixiangguo has been affected. Fortunately, the team quickly reacted and took timely response measures.
Lixiangguo head Wang Lin recalled to the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that in late March, Lixiangguo realized some "abnormalities". At the end of the month, the team carried out some preparations. "Although the team has no experience in community group buying, it has to move and do something for the community and residents. We held several meetings overnight. No one was afraid of difficulties or retreated, and unanimously decided to do the difficult and correct things." In early April, Lixiangguo's community group buying business was launched.
Lixiangguo head Wang Lin Picture source: Photo provided by the interviewee
Under the influence of the epidemic, the community group buying business that faces consumers has become the main sales channel of Lixiangguo in Shanghai. He recalled to reporters the "amazing" scene when the community group buying business was launched.
"In terms of product portfolio pricing, we did not raise the price, and we also made a price discount. The packages selected hot-selling items that daily consumers like, such as old Shanghai-style scallion pancakes, dumpling wontons, buns , etc. The first day went online, and the order broke that night. At that time, we only left a girl's phone number. Not only was her phone number blown up, but more than 1,000 people added her WeChat. Finally, everyone sorted out until 4 a.m. before sorting out the first wave of demand." Wang Lin said.
As a national brand headquartered in Shanghai, Wang Lin told reporters that in the past two months, Lixiangguo's daily operations have been more affected by logistics and distribution, and the supply chain has been less affected.
He said that Lixiangguo has more than a dozen e-commerce warehouses nationwide, and production companies that cooperate with Lixiangguo are also spread all over the country. "At this stage, we still maintain sufficient material guarantee capabilities."
In addition, Wang Lin revealed that some upstream suppliers located in Shanghai have indeed been affected, but since Lixiangguo had relatively sufficient reserves for suppliers and carried out timely responses, the impact was not much.
In the past two months, many consumer brands have relied on promoting the community group buying business that faces consumers directly to "rescue". Wang Lin also bluntly stated that after the normal operating rhythm is restored, Li Xiangguo will also consider retaining the community group buying business that is popular among consumers during this period.
Wang Lin said, "In the direction of community group buying, we may prepare more differentiated products and combinations based on the characteristics of the channel and the needs of consumers."
htmlOn June 1, Shanghai entered the stage of fully restoring the normal production and living order in the city, and Lixiangguo is also gradually restoring the daily operating rhythm.
Wang Lin revealed that about a month ago, the company was preparing plans for resumption of work and production. "Now that work has resumed, everything is moving forward in an orderly manner. We have felt the enthusiasm of consumers in Shanghai since last month. Most of the products are well prepared. Once the logistics is unblocked, they will resume the normal delivery speed in the past."
He said that as a new brand, after this epidemic, we will pay more attention to the construction of the backend. "The upstream supply chain, logistics, transportation and distribution, and other infrastructure that consumers cannot see are crucial for new brands. When the epidemic encounters, it will be a big test for enterprises in these aspects."
After this challenge, Lixiangguo also saw potential market opportunities for the brand.
Wang Lin predicts that in the future, consumers will have more demand for foods that combine convenience and quality and deliciousness. Consumers will start to think about the necessity of planning the family and stock up, and even prepare an extra refrigerator. Under this market education, the development of pre-made dishes will also make further breakthroughs and be accepted by more people.
For the consideration of building a brand's risk resistance, Wang Lin said that in the future, Congress will strengthen the preparation of emergency plans and the preparation of normalized qualifications, as well as the reserves of supply chains such as raw and auxiliary materials.
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