With low prices** sweeping the industry, the threshold for catering seems to be getting lower and lower. "As long as it's cheap, you can do catering" has become a mantra that many catering people joke. But at the same time, more and more catering businesses are falling. It seems to have become a characteristic of the catering industry under the influence of low prices.
Photo: Ning Ying.
40 yuan Sichuan salt dishes for two, 3699 yuan camping restaurant selection5 yuan for coffee, 99 yuan for two cups of big-name milk tea ......Low prices** are becoming the norm in the restaurant industry.
Don't miss it, fat cow and shrimp are only 99 yuan, now we will give you another 69 yuan tomato pot bottom link, everyone can eat Haidilao at home. One, two, three, on the link!On December 9, in the official live broadcast room of Haidilao Delivery on the Alipay platform, two anchors of men and women were introducing the preferential activities of Haidilao Delivery. According to the anchor, the fat beef and shrimp are both 35 yuan on weekdays, and the bottom of the tomato pot is 33 yuan.
It is not a new thing for catering companies to sell goods live online, but now the battle is more fierce than ever. Consumers are willing to grab low prices and gather wool, and catering businesses seem to insist on "losing money and making money". The increasingly low price** has made eating a business activity involving merchants, platforms, store explorers, and consumers. Whose wallet is fattened by such a **chain?
Low prices** normalize.
At the end of October, the first live broadcast of the chain restaurant brand Taier Sauerkraut Fish on Douyin once again proved the vitality of low prices to the market. On October 25, Taier Sauerkraut Fish started its first live broadcast on Douyin, and in less than 6 hours, its sales have exceeded 100 million yuan, and it ranked first on the Douyin ** Goods List. According to the official *** news of Taier Sauerkraut Fish, this live broadcast lasted 15 hours, starting at 9 am and ending at 24 pm. On the same day, a total of 25 products were put on the shelves in the Taier live broadcast room, including vouchers, ** hot-selling items, etc. As of 4 p.m. on the 25th, more than 300,000 vouchers of "69 yuan instead of 100 yuan" vouchers were sold. The attractiveness of the low price** can be seen.
In fact, among the restaurant chain enterprises on the same track, the action of Taier sauerkraut fish adding low-price ** is not fast. Since the launch of the ** function on Douyin in 2021, it has become the norm for users to swipe Douyin to swipe various food and beverage coupons. Last year, Haidilao officially joined Douyin** and launched 720% off meals for two and four people. This year, Haidilao relied on 79 yuan instead of 100 yuan vouchers, 9The 9 yuan signature dish coupon has harvested a large number of consumers. In addition, many chain restaurant brands such as Xiaolongkan, Meizhou Dongpo, Burger King, KFC, and McDonald's have also joined the "** war".
After other companies launch low prices**, if they do not launch benchmark meals, they will lose a large number of customers. Li Fei (pseudonym), the operator of the hot pot restaurant, told "Xiaokang" that most stores are forced to do low prices. "Why has low prices** become mainstream?Why do merchants want to do low prices?The restaurant owner's answer focused on two words - drainage.
Like many veteran internet foodie users, Jing Ran (not her real name) found that her shopping Xi had changed, and it all started with dining. In the past, it was where it was delicious and where to go with high evaluation, but now it is to open the major platforms to check where it is cheap. For more than a year, Jingran has had her own "** scripture": "Meituan and Dianping share the same account, but the meals that are limited to a single person can be purchased twice through the two platforms. The stores under the Douyin local life channel are generally not the most affordable, and if you want to get the lowest dishes, you have to go to the major live broadcast rooms to squat 'seckill'. Many people don't know that Alipay has also launched a 'consumer circle', focusing on local life**, and low-cost meals can also be found inside. Jingran showed his ** order records in recent months to the "Xiaokang" China Xiaokang Network, and there are many 9 in the records9 yuan grilled fish for two meals, 099 yuan milk tea, 99 yuan home-cooked stir-fry four-person meal such as "wool".
Li Fei's hot pot restaurant is located in Beijing's Chaoyang District, mainly for community residents. The location of the shop is not good, and the nearest subway station is about 15 minutes away. The store is not spacious, and there are less than 10 tables in total, but thanks to the freshness, suitability, and taste of the dishes, the store is packed as soon as the meal arrives, and there are still people waiting in line on holidays. But in April this year, Li Fei also launched a low-price ***, which is really unbearable, and big-name chain stores and individual-run stores are pushing **. At the beginning of this year, the business was much worse, and the customer flow increased significantly after being on the list. "Li Fei's *** launched in April includes a pot base, a fat cow, a fat sheep, four seasonal vegetables, a staple food, a fruit plate, two drinks, and two small ingredients. If all these products are according to the regular price of the menu, it will cost 212 yuan, but the online ** price is only 88 yuan, which is a little more than 4% off. "4% off is basically a threshold of ***, if you can't reach 4% off, even if you get on the **, it is difficult to have sales. If you want to rush the passenger flow, it is generally 2% off**. Li Fei introduced.
Low prices** are becoming the norm, and relevant data also shows that meals under 100 yuan are more popular with consumers. Meituan data shows that in the past three years, the orders of catering have been concentrated in the range of 50 yuan to 100 yuan, and the most cost-effective products are more popular with consumers. Chenzhi Catering big data also shows that as of the second quarter of 2023, the average customer unit price of many chain fast food brands has decreased by 1-2 yuan. As of the fourth quarter of 2022, China's per capita consumption of food and beverage was 354 yuan, less than 30 yuan accounted for more than 60%.
Sell a single loss and lose a single order".
After attracting traffic at low prices, some stores have successfully transformed and gained a large number of loyal customers, while more stores are in the dilemma of either "selling one order and losing one order", or the customer flow has decreased significantly.
Before the advent of low prices, price reductions were often a means of opening up awareness when a new store opened. The new store allows more customers to come to the store for consumption through ** activities, which can effectively reduce the idle time of the store and the waste of in-store costs, and also have more opportunities to get praise from customers and retain customers. In the catering industry, there is a saying of "repeat customers", and low prices** is to give "repeat customers" an opportunity to enter the store for the first time. But nowadays, many restaurant owners say that as long as the ** stops, the customers will not come back, and there are basically no "repeat customers".
Zhang Zhou's (pseudonym) own Hunan restaurant began to promote ** business in June this year. Previously, the *** that had been on his store was mainly 8% off and 9% off, and the drainage effect was not obvious. "At that time, less than 10% of customers came to the store every day to buy **. "This year, Zhang Zhou saw that there are more and more Sichuan and Hunan restaurants with low discounts, and he was ruthless and put on a batch of about 3% off *** basically launched** After more than half a month, the customer flow has increased significantly, but more than eighty percent of the people who came to the store were directly written off ** coupons, and they did not order other snacks. According to Zhang Zhou, there were originally a few tables in the store at lunchtime, but after the low price**, it was basically full every day, and even the back kitchen and hall were too busy. The hottest seller in the store is the 89 yuan fish head meal for two, including a signature chopped pepper fish head, a small fried yellow beef, a braised tobacco bamboo shoots, a chili eggplant, a crockpot soup, and two bowls of rice.
In August, Zhang Zhou made a calculation. In the month, the turnover in the store exceeded 200,000 yuan, and nearly 1,000 orders were sold in various **sold, and the customer flow more than doubled compared with before, but it did not make money. After careful calculation, almost every low price** sold is losing money. In September, after Zhang Zhou removed all the ** with a 3% discount, the business returned to the original point.
Many shopkeepers think the same as Zhang Zhou, exchange low prices for platform traffic, and then attract online traffic to offline. But almost none of them succeeded in achieving the second step.
Why can't low prices be exchanged for fixed consumers?In fact, the logic of low price ** is to use ** discount to convert public domain traffic to private domain traffic. "When the low price ** is only used by some companies or part of the time period, the above logic does hold, but when everyone does this, the low price ** has no effect. Chain management expert Wen Zhihong explained.
With low prices** sweeping the industry, the threshold for catering seems to be getting lower and lower. "As long as it's cheap, you can do catering" has become a mantra that many catering people joke. But at the same time, more and more catering businesses are falling. It seems to have become a characteristic of the catering industry under the influence of low prices. According to the data of enterprise inspection, the cumulative number of new registrations of restaurants in the country in January and October this year was 35010,000 families. The number of new registrations in the same period last year was 28750,000, an increase of 329 in the whole of last year9. In other words, the new increase in catering in the first 10 months of this year has far exceeded that of the whole of last year. However, the revocation data of catering in the same period is shocking. From January to October this year, the cumulative sales volume of catering in the country was 10560,000. According to the professional catering second-hand equipment supplier, the closed restaurant that came to him for consulting in October this year was about more than twice the sum of the previous two months. At most, the amount of information can reach 40 in a day.
** is not an unfamiliar word for the restaurant industry. As early as more than 10 years ago, ** appeared in the market. Nowadays, ** is making a comeback, and the most simple ** war behind it reflects the increasingly rational dining requirements of consumers.
An unavoidable platform.
Low prices are getting more and more volumes, and the platform is a link that catering people can't avoid.
According to a number of catering businesses, most of the catering activities are now either launched on Meituan's single platform, or on Meituan and Douyin. And these two platforms have their own advantages and disadvantages, which is reflected in the **, Meituan has always deducted 6 points, and Douyin adopted a completely free policy for **deduction points when it was first launched, and then charged 2A fee of 5 pips. But for F&B businesses, this account cannot be calculated so simply. If you want to do catering on Douyin, you need to consider the promotion of the store by the "store explorer" and the promotion of Douyin. In short, it is how to let customers see the store's ***, and it costs a high fee to find institutions and influencers to promote.
According to Li Fei, the people who invited him to be the best were divided into several batches, mainly service providers, operators and talents. Service providers are third-party organizations authorized by Douyin, who help local merchants operate and manage, organize influencers to visit stores, get traffic for stores, and earn commissions from closed orders, ranging from 5% to 20%. The operation is equivalent to the publicity outsourcing team, they mainly promote the store in the form of **output, and earn a single ** service fee, some of which also have to take commissions. **Talent is an independent content creator, they generally have a fixed fan base, through ** or live broadcast, to improve the ** rate of the store. But in the eyes of many catering people, such a team is not very reliable. "To do the best, you have to fight for low prices, first make it popular, and then make money" is the general rhetoric of this type of service provider. "Low prices do bring popularity, but once low prices are canceled, popularity is gone. Li Fei said.
Operators said that the price reduction is also necessary based on the platform rules. "The platform will guide catering businesses to lower prices through first-class mechanisms, traffic support, etc. According to him, different discounts, different mechanisms, and different placements, "in short, low prices can get more streams."
Nowadays, the catering ** has changed again. In addition to short** delivery, catering live streaming has sprung up. This means that if merchants want to get push streams, in addition to paying the corresponding handling fee to the platform, they also need to pay the "pit fee" of each anchor.
Douyin is the big brother of catering live streaming, and Meituan's live broadcast, which started in April this year, is emerging. Alipay has also entered the field of live catering and tried to convert traffic. Catering is essentially a traffic business, which is deeply matched with the Internet business where traffic is king, and Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Pinduoduo, Gaode Map, and Eleme, which occupy a lot of traffic, are not far behind, and they are eyeing the cake.
Jingran has recently discovered a new way to "gather wool" for dining. In the "Foodie***" that Jingran joined, everyone is sharing all kinds of benefits every day**. Among them, the live broadcast of Meituan's "explosive group" and "God in demand" shared by group friends with ID ending in "can" has been well received by everyone. Everyone affectionately calls the act of squatting in the live broadcast room to grab ** coupons as a "can door". According to Jing Ran, there are not a few ** grabbed by the group friends, and she has just grabbed a roast lamb leg coupon recently, ready to go to the meal with her friends.
The data shows that in July, when the first-level entrance of the live broadcast was just launched, the GMV of Meituan Live in a single month was about 5-600 million, with a month-on-month growth rate of 20%, but in August, it quickly reached 10-1.2 billion, and there were more than 100 million live broadcast rooms one after another. By October, the monthly GMV had exceeded 2 billion yuan.
The platform competes for the stream, and the live broadcast is popular. The industry pattern of Internet + catering is creating a variety of traffic involution. For merchants, it is not easy to convert online traffic into offline traffic, and it has become a difficult problem to have customer flow or profit.
*: Late December 2023 issue of Xiaokang.
Author: Yuan Kai.
Proofreading: Fenghua.
Review: Gong Zimo.