Text|Red Food Network Zhou Lixi.A new member has been added to the Wandian Club.Edit|Jing Xue.
On December 15, KFC China's official Weibo released news again, saying that the 10,000th store has landed in Hangzhou and officially opened today.
Screenshot of KFC's official Weibo.
This also means that in China, KFC has become another catering brand that has crossed the threshold of "10,000 stores" after Zhengxin Chicken Chop, Wallace, Juewei Duck Neck, Michelle Bingcheng, Luckin Coffee, and Guoquan Shihui.
01 Accelerate the expansion of stores, KFC China stores exceeded 10,000 According to the information released by KFC's official Weibo, today, KFC Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal Restaurant opened at Hangzhou Wulinmen Wharf!So far, the scale of KFC stores in China has officially exceeded 10,000!
KFC's official Weibo.
In fact, looking back at the development of KFC China this year, it can be seen that the brand is obviously speeding up the opening of stores.
At the second-quarter earnings briefing, Yum China CEO Qu Cuirong pointed out that KFC has deployed in more than 1,900 cities and towns, and is still tracking more than 800 other towns without KFC. Yum China plans to continue to accelerate store expansion through franchising and different channels, "including adding new channel opportunities, such as universities, hospitals and high-speed rail service stations." ”
At the same time, KFC also mentioned for the first time that it will speed up the opening of franchise stores in the future. According to Qu Cuirong, it is planned that KFC will accelerate the opening of stores in the next three years, maintaining more than 1,200 net new stores per year, and franchise stores will account for 15% to 20%.
RedMeal also noticed that KFC China has also made some adjustments in terms of store models. In September this year, at an investor event, KFC unveiled 4 models for new stores, including standard stores, future stores, mini stores, and low tier models. In addition, there are a variety of functional modules such as to go, shoulder to shoulder, coffee cart, small station, etc., which can be flexibly assembled on any new store model according to needs.
For example, to go is to open a window on the exterior wall of the restaurant, so that customers who take out can easily pick up food at the window without entering the restaurant.
02 "Foreign fast food" is running wildly, and the battle for the sinking market will escalate In fact, not only KFC China, but also McDonald's China, Burger King, Subway and other foreign fast food brands are now invariably increasing their stores.
Recently, McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said in an interview that the company plans to increase the number of restaurants in China from 6,000 to 10,000 by 2028.
McDonald's China CEO Zhang Jiayin also publicly said that the United States, with a population of 400 million, currently has 14,000 McDonald's stores, while China has an urban population of 700 million, and if time and conditions are not considered, China should have 30,000 McDonald's stores.
McDonald's official Weibo.
In addition, waist players, who are not as large as the two giants, are also accelerating their store expansion.
According to a report by Jiemian News, Burger King has set a plan to maintain the opening of 200 new restaurants in the Chinese market every year from 2023.
and Subway, which completed the change of business in China this year, also clearly put forward a plan to accelerate its expansion. According to a report by Nanfang***, the relevant person in charge of Subway China revealed that Subway China plans to open no less than 4,000 new restaurants in the next 20 years.
It is worth mentioning that foreign fast food companies have begun to accelerate the opening of stores, and there are similarities in the strategy of opening stores, that is, they all look at the sinking market.
In August this year, McDonald's publicly stated that the proportion of new McDonald's stores in China in lower-tier cities has reached 50%.
The research report of Anxin Trading Co., Ltd. also shows that from 2020 to the first half of 2023, the proportion of net increase in the number of stores in KFC 3rd to 6th tier cities is higher than that in high-tier cities.
However, the competitive pressure in the sinking market is not small.
Red meal big data shows that as early as 2022, nearly half of the country's Western-style fast food stores are distributed in third-tier cities and below, and local brands such as Wallace and Tustin have opened a large number of stores in sinking markets. In particular, "Houlang" Tustin has opened stores in third-tier and below cities in the past two years, and as of early December this year, its total number of stores has reached 6400+.
It is foreseeable that with the in-depth penetration of giants such as KFC and McDonald's into the sinking market, the competition for Western-style fast food in the sinking market will be more fierce in the future.