Is the market prospect of hot pot ingredients just needed or the emperor's new clothes?

The hot pot material sales market seems to have a low entry threshold, and the ultimate test is the brand's supply chain advantage. The supply chain has a great demand for funds, which requires the brand to have profound basic operational skills and considerable control over the upper, middle and lower reaches. At present, it is quite common for brands to cut leeks with a few frozen products at will. In this case, entrepreneurs should do a good job in the overall strength of the brand and not be blinded by the excitement. The hot pot material sales market is hard to hide.

In 2020, the hot pot material sales market runway is hot.

According to Tianyancha's data, there are more than 5,300 hot pot ingredients mutual aid companies including hot pot ingredients and hot pot supermarkets. Among them, 60% of the companies were established within one year, an increase of 3,400, an increase of 2 16% compared with 20 19.

In addition to the traditional hot pot Castroni, various fresh platforms are also emerging one after another. You Xian and Ding Dong buy vegetables every day and set up stalls for "hot pot at home" and "hot pot at home"; Box Ma Xiansheng applied for registration of "Box Ma Xiansheng Hot Pot", and on 20 19, the category of hot pot restaurants was gradually liberalized, and the service of "take-away food delivery for 30 minutes to get home" was mainly promoted.

Traditional hot pot restaurant companies and comprehensive retail are also the ideas of adding positions to make hot pot ingredients. Jiupin Pot, Chuandinghui and Lazy Bear Hot Pot have also set foot on the runway. Sanquan, Gome, Mengniu Dairy and other companies will also rationally distribute the hot pot market in cross-border marketing in 2020, as well as well-known brands such as Haidilao Hot Pot and Xiaolongkan, which have captured a large number of customers in the hot pot material level.

Among them, Quanguo Shi Hui and Lazy Bear Hotpot Restaurant showed a rapid advantage in opening physical stores, ranking in the top three with 5000 1000 respectively. Among them, last May, Lazy Bear Hotpot received tens of millions of dollars of investment from ByteDance and became its fourth largest controlling shareholder.

As the second child in the field of hot pot shopping malls, the development trend of lazy bear hot pot restaurant should not be underestimated.

On February 24th, an eye-catching survey showed that Lazy Bear Hotpot Restaurant recently conducted a round of equity financing of nearly 100 million yuan, which was led by Xingtuo Assets and followed by ByteDance, the old shareholder of Guo Sheng Capital. This round of assets will be used for digital system research and development and sales market expansion.

It is worth mentioning that in 2020 alone, Lazy Bear Hotpot has successively obtained equity pledge financing from Meng Fanyi, angel investment from ByteDance and pre-A equity financing from Guo Sheng Capital. So far, the total equity financing amount of Lazy Bear Hotpot Restaurant has exceeded 1 100 million yuan.

▲ Lazy Bear Hot Pot Restaurant offline promotion storefront

In addition, Little Black Bear Hot Pot Restaurant has announced the plan for future sale: in the VIP verification materials of Tianyancha, lazy bear supply chain management will "seek to sell in 2025".

Generally speaking, the hot sales market gives lazy bear hotpot restaurant courage. In 2020, the annual GMV (total transaction volume) of Little Black Bear Hotpot Restaurant has exceeded 200 million yuan. After 100 stores expanded, the key vitality of new year's goods was put into store operation, and the connection between online e-commerce and offline promotion stores was completed.

Lazy Bear Hot Pot Restaurant, established on 20 19, provides processing of hot pot ingredients, Chinese restaurant finished products and semi-finished products, focusing on six provinces in China, and its development trend has now opened 1 100 stores.

Judging from the reasonable layout of the stores, Lazy Bear Hotpot Restaurant has two kinds of stores: dinner store and retail store, among which the dinner store is concentrated in Shanxi Province, mainly hot pot restaurant. Retail stores are located in Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Anhui provinces.

At present, all the six provinces in China operate by franchise agents, and most of them are community supermarkets, which are distributed in young communities and high-end communities. Shanghai and Beijing are direct stores, and direct stores are set up in large and medium-sized shopping malls or new retail stores by means of "store in store".

The popularity of the sales market makes us wonder whether the hot pot material mall is a good project to make money.

How can hot pot stores quickly realize hematopoietic function under the market competition of restaurants and stores?

A competitor of the hot pot material shopping mall.

Is hot pot material really a good project to make money in the mass sales market?

In fact, consumers' demand for hot pot restaurants has many alternatives. First, they can immediately join the brand's home package according to the selling point of hot pot, with an average of about 50, which is higher in first-tier cities. Second, it can meet the requirements of hot pot restaurants according to new retail life supermarkets such as Box Horse Fresh Life.

Judging from the specific feelings, there is no doubt that the sense of accomplishment of entering a hot pot restaurant is better than that of joining a brand hot pot restaurant. Because the restaurant has a restaurant kitchen to finely process food, the restaurant is closer to consumers in cognitive ability.

For Boxma Xiansheng Mall, consumers have greater decision-making power. Both of them are the most powerful market competition in hot pot shopping malls.

Further analysis, it seems that the direct competitors of hot pot materials shopping malls also come from restaurants.

In addition to the low average unit price difference, the factors from customers themselves include: customers want to go out, can't (or won't) invite people into their homes, don't want to clean up the mess, want fireworks in the restaurant, and have low-priced hot pot franchisees to choose from, which will ruin customers' requirements for entering hot pot restaurants.

▲ Box Horse Hotpot

This is the pain point of home cooking. To reverse the core competitiveness, we feel that at least three points must be guaranteed:

First, the supply chain management price is more cost-effective than the local sales market, and it has a price advantage for people who want to purchase goods. Moreover, food is more cost-effective and of higher quality than restaurant stores, and even the distribution level is more advantageous and faster than restaurant stores.

However, we can't think that the use value of food at home is not enough, and we can't think that lazy bears and pots are worrying in the future. The popularity of the financial market is enough to show its existence and use value.

In view of the future of hot pot restaurant ingredients, everyone thinks it will cause some harm and promotion to the catering industry.

From a comparative point of view, the only advantage of the catering industry is that there is a restaurant kitchen that can be developed and processed at the back end, and there is no reason to help consumers handle the convenience of eating.

It has been discussed before that in the middle and late stage of the new restaurant, the chef will become the "asset burden" of the catering industry, but it is not. If the back-end development, production and processing and the chef's subjective initiative are removed, the charm of the restaurant will inevitably decrease.

Take the beverage store as an example, the chain convenience store has a lower solution for healthy drinks. It is reasonable to say that the more expensive tea shops should not do business, but the objective fact is just the opposite.

So we can see that discussing whether a restaurant needs a chef is basically the same logic as discussing whether a drink shop needs a milk tea teacher.

In addition, with the continuous upgrading of products in hot pot stores, it will promote the positive development trend and iterative update of hot pot franchisees/barbecue stalls and their catering industry.

It can be seen that no matter what the future of Little Black Bear Hotpot Restaurant is, it does have a certain driving force for consumers and the catering industry. At least from this point of view, Little Black Bear Hotpot Restaurant is an available and useful business operation mode.

How to subdivide categories and market demand? After the development trend of retail system software and market segmentation categories reaches a certain level, the updated business circle will be split. For example, tobacco, alcohol and drinks have become the main positions of chain convenience stores, creating a franchise brand similar to 19 19.

For example, the category of leisure snacks has been subdivided into well-known brands such as good shops, three squirrels and herbs. Famous products and Sephora are commercial innovations and new well-known brands split under the fine classification of personal care; Famous products are commercial innovations split under the category of daily necessities.

▲ Category segmentation

From the breakdown of various categories in the store, we can see that when the development trend level of a business circle is high enough and in a relatively saturated state, new breakthroughs will continue to appear in the sales market.

The new field of hot pot ingredients may be the same, frozen products, but before that, a format innovation was split out.

Although frozen products have opened up a new stage, there are still limitations.

As far as the chafing dish sales market in the current sales market is concerned, whether it is called the first pot circle or the second little black bear in other places, the chafing dish materials are still concentrated on meat, fish and a small amount of aquatic products and fresh food, and fresh food cannot be given.

Vegetables, fruits, melons and fruits are not easy to store and consume a lot, so customers are very sensitive to new products. In particular, the vegetables, fruits and vegetables that have been produced and processed have not been sold during the warranty period, and they are not even eligible for price reduction.

And the number of customer orders is very low. For example, a portion of winter melon costs 8 ~ 15 yuan in a hot pot franchise store, but the purchase price in a shopping mall generally cannot exceed that in 5 yuan. Counting the chef's labor cost and natural loss will be unbearable for the current hot pot supermarket.

From 20 18, Boxma Xiansheng also entered the hot pot restaurant scene. Compared with Boxma Xiansheng, even if the supply chain management is strong, strict store restrictions are adopted in the whole process of specific market sales to ensure that the loss rate is below 15%. This shows how difficult it is for a small well-known brand with limited overall supply of comprehensive fresh food to make fresh goods in hot pot.

Fresh raw materials, especially vegetables, are an indispensable category of hot pot restaurants. If this requirement is not met, the feeling of consumption will be greatly affected. Needless to say, the competitiveness of hot pot supermarkets will also be greatly weakened.

In order to have long-term competitiveness, the following three aspects can not be ignored:

The first is how to develop chilled barbecue materials in hot pot restaurants. After all, "new _" is the first element of eating mala Tang.

The second point is whether the central kitchen of refrigerated products can be extended to three meals a day. According to the production and processing of three meals a day, ensure the hygiene and safety of goods and facilitate customers.

The third is the store decoration and site selection of community supermarkets. How to join the community and create stickiness? Different from the mall?

The main focus of the sales market is actually to take advantage of the large number of stores and the proximity of customers to the market. The more stores there are, the greater the popularity of well-known brands, and the more established the cognitive ability of customers to well-known brands.

Although the hot pot restaurant sales market has reached one trillion yuan, the number of consumption is still insufficient. Even Zhang Jianjun, the founder of Haidilao Hot Pot, said, "The catering industry is actually a very pan-entertainment industry, unlike the mobile phone WeChat, which can't be used without it. _ There is a quasi-hot pot franchise store or restaurant that you can't live without. In fact, there is a person in the world who only eats one restaurant all his life and keeps changing dishes. "

In the case that the repurchase rate is difficult to improve, we have to speed up the pace of expansion and continue to find new customers.

Is it a good idea to join the organization? With the rapid expansion, various franchise chains have become the mainstay of the hot pot material sales market, but are their survival as hot as the sales market?

At this stage, there are two key revenue ways for the subdivision runway of the convenience store chain of hot pot materials. One is that the franchise fee is not charged, and the key income is completely divided by the market sales of franchise chain foods. The other is to deduct the initial fee, and after obtaining excellent cash flow, you can get the difference between entrepreneurs and goods.

The slogan of food exchange among gamers in the circle is "250,000, making a profit in one year", but the objective fact is not that simple.

Although many foreign brands deduct the franchise fee, the cost of raw materials and interior decoration is higher. For a storefront of 60-80 square meters, the cost of opening a physical store has widely exceeded 250,000, reaching the threshold of 300,000-400,000.

In addition to the above costs, the daily operating costs are not decimal. Especially in first-and second-tier cities, the daily salary of three employees is 1000 yuan, and there are hidden costs of water and electricity. If calculated according to the gross profit margin of 29%, you must earn nearly 10 thousand yuan every day to win and lose the balance.

But this is obviously very laborious. Although hot pot restaurants are popular all over the country, they are obviously not as cyclical as autumn and winter, and their business is not ideal all year round. In addition, hot pot ingredients are also an area with low comprehensive gross profit margin.

The person in charge of a shopping mall revealed that the gross profit margin of hot pot materials in shopping malls and supermarkets remained at around 25%, far less than the gross profit margin of catering above 50%. The low profit rate makes the profitability of franchise chain stores unexpected.

Under such circumstances, with the long-term trend of pneumonia epidemic easing, people's demand for social media is expanding, and the advantages of home cooking are slowly slowing down. It will probably take 2- 3 years to make a profit.

In addition, many entrepreneurs blindly follow the trend with the psychological state that a project investment embezzles profits, only to find that the sales market is quite different from their own imagination.

Many entrepreneurs come in and find that there are fortresses at all stages. At first, the brand opened a physical store in the business circle, with only one within 3 kilometers, and later the distance was changed to 1.5 kilometers.

In addition, entrepreneurs only give frozen products, but frozen products are the same and very easy to copy. Therefore, the threshold of hot pot shopping malls is extremely low, and other similar well-known brands can open physical stores at close range, resulting in diversification of aspect ratio.

Hot pot material seems to be a new project with low threshold, but it has very strong supply chain management ability for brands.

▲ Lazy bear official website photo

Well-known brands should not only standardize the system software of storefronts (including goods, interior decoration, employees and intelligent management systems), but also have intelligent supply cloud systems, otherwise a large number of entrepreneurs may quit and close down.

In the fierce market competition in this field, Zhu, an investment analyst in China's bio-industry, said, "In the field of hot pot ingredients, the core content of the company's market competition in the future is the supply chain management system that is difficult to replicate. However, improving the infrastructure of supply chain management must consume a lot of assets, so in the final analysis, hot pot material is just a game played by bosses. "

Because the key market competition of hot pot materials is reflected in product quality and price, the supply chain management is highly standardized.

Relevant data and information show that it takes about 1 100 million yuan for a hot pot ingredient company to build a processing factory, and a large amount of funds will be allocated to create a comprehensive processing factory, which is really high for new entrants of hot pot ingredients.

Take lazy bear hotpot restaurant as an example. At this stage, four big warehouse supply chain management infrastructure projects have been carried out, and strategic cooperation has been carried out with 200 hot pot ingredients and semi-finished products processing plants to achieve low cost and high efficiency in warehouse allocation.

Others, such as Cookware Food Exchange and Chatterbear, also regard the improvement of supply chain management as the direction of development trend.

It is understood that Cookware Food Exchange has cooperated with 500 processing plants such as Sanquan, Lee Kum Kee, Anjing and Shuanghui Group to build ten warehouses and four R&D centers nationwide; Chatterbear also regards "sound supply chain management" as one of the three development trends after equity financing.

Therefore, the hot pot material sales market will burn to the end, and it is very likely to become an asset mobile game. If _ has the advantage of occupying assets in this sales market and deeply cultivates supply chain management, it is difficult to excel under Kafka Castle of assets.