WeChat *** Alphabet List (ID: wujicaijing), Author: Zhang Lin, header picture from: Visual China At 11:20 p.m., 10 minutes before the company's prescribed lunch break, in an office building where white-collar workers gather in Shanghai, Lin Yue and his colleagues avoided the sight of the leader and sneaked downstairs.
If you go a little later, you may have to wait for a seat. Lin Yue's "hard to find" is not a Michelin or Internet celebrity restaurant, but a self-service rotating small hot pot restaurant with an average of less than 40 yuan per person.
This small hot pot restaurant is located on the second basement floor of the shopping mall near Lin Yue's company, next door to Saria, which has the reputation of "affordable Western food".
For less than 40 yuan, you can eat hundreds of vegetables and fruits, as well as French fries, fried chicken thighs and small crispy meat, and what kind of bicycle do you need?After several times, this small hot pot restaurant has become a "fixed canteen" for Lin Yue and his colleagues.
At the same time, Nancy in Beijing also found that in the past one or two years, there have been more and more affordable small hot pot restaurants, which are different from the small hot pot restaurants that Nancy once had the impression of a little low, the new batch of small hot pot restaurants not only have fresh and rich ingredients, but also have a more concise and fashionable store decoration style.
29.9 yuan a self-service small hot pot" "no more than 40 yuan per capita to eat to support", these cost-effective small hot pot brands avoid high-rent areas such as CBD business districts, Shanghai Minhang District, Beijing's largest community Tiantongyuan, Beijing's largest community office buildings ...... GuangzhouWhere these young people from other places gather to work, low-cost small hot pot restaurants have become their stronghold.
On the one hand, the cheap small hot pots that were once entrenched in third- and fourth-tier cities and even county towns are marching into first-tier cities. A number of regional affordable small hot pots, such as Shengxiangting Zhuan Hot Pot, Nong Xiao Pot, Xiao Shabu, and Senji Rotary Hot Pot, are joining and expanding and carrying out a nationwide layout.
On the other hand, more and more hot pot brands and fast food brands are also eyeing the category of low-cost small hot pot. Recently, Nancheng Xiang launched 378 yuan set of "100% original cut meat small hot pot";Just a month ago, Haidilao also launched a sub-brand "Hi Lao Hot Pot" with an average per capita of less than 80 yuan, laying out the low-end hot pot marketEarlier, in 2021, Banu had already launched the "Peach Niang Rice Small Hot Pot" with an average of about 35 yuan per capita.
As early as 1999, with the first bar-style small hot pot Xiabu Xiabu opened into Beijing, the scene of one-person food, cost-effective and relaxed atmosphere style has become the favorite of young people with bulging wallets.
However, in recent years, the hot pot ** has been rising, and the unit price of Haidilao has already exceeded 100 yuan, and the unit price of Xiabu Xiabu, the representative of the once affordable hot pot, has also increased from 48 in 20174 yuan rose to 63 in 2022$9. Because of this, "Why is hot pot ** getting more and more expensive?".and "hot pot assassin" and other related topics frequently appear on Weibo hot searches.
For today's young people who value "cost performance" more than "service", the demand for affordable small hot pot still needs to be satisfied, which may be the reason why affordable small hot pot has become popular again.
However, while the affordable small hot pot shows its strong vitality through the life cycle, many practitioners have not been able to pass through this winter.
Just two months ago, Wang Xin transferred the small hot pot restaurant he operated. In three years, Wang Xin invested more than 600,000 yuan, but until the store was transferred, he still failed to return the cost.
On the one hand, it is impacting Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but on the other hand, it is withdrawing stores and exchanging cash. In the trillion-level hot pot market, there are many predators, and the seemingly "small and beautiful" cheap hot pot track is equally tragic.
One. There are always too many things in first-tier cities that lure young people to spend impulsively. Especially in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, it seems that no amount of money is enough to spend.
Lin Yue, 25 years old, has been in Shanghai for more than 2 years, but his monthly salary is only 8k. Compared with his peers who earn millions of dollars a year on social **, Lin Yue's income seems to be a bit unattainable, but even so, this is already his hard work every day.
In Shanghai, this *** poverty" has become very easy, a big meal or a time out to play, and the wallet will be deflated. Because of this, Lin Yue always tries to reduce his expenses, the house is shared, the rent is 2,500 yuan a month, and he never buys anything in the mall, PDD is his favorite online shopping platform.
The meal always has to be eaten, but the simple work meal of 40 yuan at every turn also makes Lin Yue want to cry without tears, and he really has no time to cook by himself. Therefore, when he first saw the sign of the newly opened small hot pot restaurant near the company standing at the door of the "33 yuan wireless eating", he couldn't believe that this was the price that he could see in Shanghai in 2023.
The restaurant that Lin Yue often goes to adopts the form of self-service rotating small hot pot, one person and one pot, although the store is not large, but there are many hot dishes. "In fact, 33 yuan is not counting the bottom of the pot fee**, but the bottom of the pot is only 10 yuan, and there are different spicy pot bases, clear soups and mushroom soup pots to choose from. Now it costs more than 30 yuan to eat a spicy hot pot casually, and the 43 yuan self-service small hot pot is not too attractive. ”
Nancy, who coordinates Beijing, is also a fan of cheap small hot pot, the hot pot restaurant was recently discovered by Nancy in a shopping mall on the edge of the Third Ring Road, with a simple and fashionable decoration style, a calculation method of charging according to the sign, and the slogan of "pure beef, not adulterated" can be seen everywhere, just like an upgraded version of the rotating small hot pot restaurant.
The bottom of the pot is 10 yuan, the dipping sauce is 7 yuan, and the ingredients are skewered in advance, and each one is signed 15 yuan, ramen free. There are nearly 20 kinds of dipping sauces on the small feeding table, and the dipping sauce secrets hanging on the wall intimately provide four dipping methods for old Beijing, Chongqing, Chaoshan and Sichuan. There are counter seats for one person and regular seats for large groups.
Almost 50 yuan can be fed. Before checking in to this small hot pot, Nancy often chooses to eat hot pot when shopping with friends on weekends, "When you can't remember what to eat, it's always right to eat hot pot." But now in any hot pot restaurant, the bottom of the pot will cost seventy or eighty yuan, the mutton will cost fifty or sixty, the beef will be seventy or eighty, and the platter of hundred-leaf yellow throat will cost more than 100 yuan, and then a little shrimp slippery, meatballs and green vegetables, two people can eat three or four hundred yuan. ”
With this money, I can eat at home several times. What's more, in the face of the most authentic Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot flaunting itself on the street, Lin An couldn't pick out a distinctive, "Go to METRO to buy a base and eat it at home, in fact, it has a taste." In terms of eating, I am not afraid of spending money, but I prefer to eat something distinctive, the ordinary spicy pot base, which is really not worth my money. ”
But the mess on the table after a family banquet hot pot is Nancy's biggest headache, and now, this cheap small hot pot in Nancy's public comment collection menu has become the best solution.
On Dianping, Nancy's small hot pot collection is labeled as a "new store", and the first comment on the store is posted on September 22, 2023.
The alphabet list is searched by keywords such as "rotating hot pot" and "small hot pot", and the total number of stores displayed by Dianping has exceeded 100, among which there are many stores that have been labeled as "new stores".
Two. The hot and boiling bottom of the pot is enough to soothe every wandering soul, and for young people, hot pot has never been just food.
The giant billboards in the bustling city have built the imagination of young people for ideals and decent life, but the luxuriously decorated brand hot pot restaurant has deterred many young people who have just opened North Drift and Shanghai Drift because of their high **.
Nowadays, hot pot is becoming more and more expensive. In the past, "there is nothing that cannot be solved by one hot pot", but now "do you really need a hot pot of 150 per capita?"”
"cost-effective" is undoubtedly the main reason for the popularity of small hot pot in recent days. Looking at platforms such as Dianping and Xiaohongshu, "cheap and affordable", "cost-effective" and "rich dishes" have become high-frequency words that accompany small hot pots.
But it is not only the young people who have just entered the society who gather in the small hot pot restaurant, they may also be financial practitioners with a monthly salary of 20,000 yuan, or they may be Internet celebrities with hundreds of thousands of fans.
Hello, Vincent, the brief has been sent, and after the feedback from the other party, I will meet with the Monica team. At eight o'clock on Friday night, after the last ** meeting of the day, after coming out of an office building in Beijing's CBD, Allen took the subway to Tiantongyuan, Beijing's largest community.
Allen, the A side is a delicate investment bank white-collar worker with a full mouth in CBD, and the B side is also an involuntary social animal, which is no different from ordinary Beipiao workers.
As soon as he got out of the subway entrance, bursts of hot aroma rushed to his nostrils, and Alan plunged into the revolving small hot pot restaurant on the side of the street. "'exquisite' at work, it's important for me to be 'down-to-earth' when I get off work. "Allen's earliest memory of rotating small hot pot is actually on the university campus, and the small hot pot charged by the sign could not last more than 30 yuan. "A drink at a craft brewery near the company is enough for me to eat here for a week. ”
When the day of intrigue and office politics is over, the small hot pot restaurant is the only place where Allen can temporarily get rid of industry slang such as "OKR" and "1". No one knows him here, the night and the thick white gas of hot pot are the best "protective colors", there is no need to "keep the branches" like in a restaurant with 200+ per capita, listening to the college students on the left discussing Pinduoduo, and the eldest sister and the boss in the back chatting about a handful of chicken feather dishes for 10 yuan in the morning market, these bustles are like white noise, which makes him feel unprecedentedly relaxed.
For regular customers, there is also a hidden menu for small hot pots. A Chao is a football blogger with more than 500,000 fans on social **, and the first time he was pulled into a small hot pot restaurant by his girlfriend, "The small hot pot is rich in ingredients and many vegetarian dishes, which is just right for her during the ** period, and she even eats the small hot pot as a fat reduction meal." But for Ah Chao, who has no meat and is not happy, it is another way to eat a small hot pot into a big hot pot. "Mutton is a la carte, 15 yuan a piece, I usually order 3 servings, and other dishes are included in the 38 yuan buffet, and the food is not more than 100 to the buttress. ”
Later, this small hot pot restaurant became the stronghold of Ah Chao and a few buddies. "In Haidilao, if you want to control the per capita meal cost within 100 yuan, you have to calculate it, but here, there is not much money to open up. And Ah Chao found that in such a cheap small hot pot restaurant, he can even enjoy the same Haidilao-like service.
This kind of community store is an acquaintance business, and we are familiar with the boss when we come and go, and the drinks in the store are not to our taste, and the boss acquiesces that we can bring our own. On the contrary, because the à la carte meat dish has increased the unit price of customers in the store, the boss will prepare it directly from the back kitchen every time and deliver a fresh fruit plate. Although these fruits are also placed on the conveyor belt of the rotating hot pot, this way of "treating each other differently" is very useful to Ah Chao and his friends, and it has also become the reason why they often enter this store.
Three. Since 1999, when the first restaurant of Xiabu Xiabu, the "originator" of small hot pot, entered Beijing, small hot pot has even accompanied the growth of a generation.
After 20 years of iteration, today's small hot pot has been improved from the first chain of ingredients, the first chain of equipment to the decoration design of the store. Alphabet Bang visited a number of affordable small hot pot restaurants and found that compared with more than 20 kinds of ingredients to choose from in the past, most of the ingredients in today's small hot pot restaurants have more than 30 kinds of ingredients. The quality of ingredients has also been upgraded, beef and mutton can also be ordered a la carte, and some stores even have nearly 10 kinds of pot bottoms;The dining mode is also more diverse, in addition to one person food, many stores also provide multi-person dining seats, freezer self-pickup, spin ** assistance, according to the signature and other forms of combination, at the same time, the decoration style is also more younger.
The iteration of affordable small hot pot is also attractive to entrepreneurs because of the low entry threshold and the fact that there is no longer a need to cultivate the market. At the end of 2019, 35-year-old Dadong quit his job in the operation and management of a listed company and opened a cheap small hot pot restaurant on the B1 floor of a shopping mall near the subway outside Beijing's Third Ring Road.
The reason for choosing the catering track is very simple, in the eyes of Dadong, the hot pot consumption market has a good foundation and low labor costs. Importantly, the cost of a small hot pot is lower than that of a large hot pot restaurant.
But the reality soon made Dadong sober up, and the franchise fee, equipment fee, rent, and labor ......It is estimated that Dadong's investment exceeds 500,000 yuan.
Although the price is only 39 yuan, Dadong bluntly said that "it is profitable". "The pricing method of affordable small hot pot seems simple, but in fact, it is carefully designed, from the matching of ingredients to the cost control of the interior decoration, there is a lot of attention to it. Even the placement of ingredients, a few turns around the guests can be full, there is a rule to follow. ”
The ingredients in the Dadong store have not been adjusted for a long time. He bluntly said that if you want to maximize profits, in fact, you can make trade-offs in terms of ingredients, "But if you sacrifice product quality, maybe my store won't survive for three years." "After three years in the industry, Dadong has met many peers, but half of them can't do it.
Even if it's cheap, consumers will vote with their feet. Compared with a chain hot pot restaurant, walking into an unknown small hot pot restaurant on the street is very much like "opening a blind box", and it is difficult to say whether it is a surprise or a fright.
Before finding his favorite small hot pot restaurant, Xiao Yu had also stepped on the pit a lot. "Some of the dipping sauces at the bottom of the pot are super unpalatable, and although the ingredients are very fresh, I can't eat much and give up;There are also good pot bases and seasonings, but the ingredients are very poor, and all kinds of synthetic meat are simply hard to swallow;There are also advertisements that are very cheap, but the bottom of the pot and the seasoning are calculated separately, and the sum is almost seventy or eighty yuan. ”
Nowadays, every time I can't think of what to eat, Xiao Yu, who lives in Tongzhou, Beijing, will go to the nearby Hualian shopping mall to eat a small hot pot, and the self-service small hot pot restaurant is opened next to Xiabu Xiabu, in Xiao Yu's opinion, compared to the unit price of 70 yuan per capita in Xiabu, the average price is only 36 yuan of self-service small hot pot, which is still very competitive.
However, just a month ago, Xiao Yu found that this small hot pot restaurant, which had only been open for half a year, had closed.
Two months ago, Wang Xin also "returned from the small hot pot track" and is now looking for new entrepreneurial projects. "The competition in each belt of the hot pot track is very fierce, especially the small hot pot within 50 yuan, in addition to similar small hot pot restaurants, the opponent may also be Mao Cai or Malatang. "Affected by the decrease in the number of shopping malls, Wang Xin's small hot pot restaurant failed to survive two years.
Under the wave of consumption downgrading, affordable small hot pot restaurants have once again won the favor of young people after 20 years of development. But in the hot pot track, which has long been in the Red Sea, the hot pot battle around young people with different consumption abilities is just as tragic.
Lin Yue, Nancy, Wang Xin, Xiao Yu, Allen, A Chao, and Dadong are pseudonyms in the article).
WeChat*** Alphabet List (ID: wujicaijing), Author: Zhang Lin This content is the author's independent point of view and does not represent the position of Tiger Sniff. Do not do without permission**, please contact hezuo@huxiu for authorizationcom
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