**|Deep Blue Finance.
Written by |Wang Xin.
Adults' defenses are often broken in an instant, but I didn't expect that "food" can also be transformed into technology and ruthlessness, which makes people collapse.
Recently, a Shanghai drifter ordered a Yang Guofu Malatang, but it turned out that it was all synthetic meat, "collapsed, I want to die", and gave a one-star bad review.
The netizen's soul tortured and asked, "More than 6 pieces of beef, you can only give me a slice, but why are you synthetic meat." Why isn't synthetic meat labeled?Moreover, "the ingredients used in foreign branches are very fresh, and the Chinese market is rotten."”
What happened to Yang Guofu Malatang, who can make consumers roar so much and want to go public?
Yang Guofu can't be a "Starbucks".
Regardless of whether Yang Guofu has Chinese and foreign double standards for the time being, on social platforms, the complaints about Yang Guofu's spicy hot synthetic meat are not an exception.
As early as 2022, when Yang Guofu submitted his listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, there were six questions about Yang Guofu, which also pointed to his synthetic meat problem.
In fact, people may be more concerned about eating synthetic meat than eating synthetic meat. After all, synthetic meat is much cheaper than real meat products, less nutritious but more risky, and some consumers who care about quality will not eat it if they know it in advance, which also reminds the catering industry to strengthen supervision.
But how does Yang Guofu do consumer education?Founder Yang Guofu himself once said: "We benchmark Starbucks, not only to diversify online and offline, but also to hope that consumers can also have a sense of glory when they eat Malatang." ”
It is not difficult to judge that Yang Guofu is going to take the route of high premium, which also makes Malatang's "value" skyrocket.
On a certain group, the per capita consumption of a Yang Guofu Malatang in Chengdu is 30 yuan, which is relatively high among a bunch of Malatang shops around. According to online comments, if a lady in Yang Guofu wants to eat well and add a bottle of drink, a meal will casually exceed 50 yuan.
Such a ** may have subverted many people's perception of Malatang's "cheapness", if ** goes higher, the hot pot restaurant will be ashamed of itself.
But does Yang Guofu really deserve its premium?Also on the store's review page, its overall rating is only 35 points, not only "average taste", but also "not fresh ingredients" and "poor service". Where does the glory come from for such a consumer sense?
* Behind the low quality, Yang Guofu still has a lot of sassy operations. For example, the same price of meat and vegetables for side dishes of more than 25 yuan a pound in physical stores, and it is not difficult for people who have been to Yang Guofu Malatang to find that some of Yang Guofu's dishes are soaked in water, whether it is for freshness is unknown, but this practice will undoubtedly increase the weight of dishes, and the taste of some dishes will deteriorate after soaking for a long time.
It seems that behind the dissatisfaction of consumers, Yang Guofu is under the slogan of "Starbucks", which is a Chinese catering company, and actually does the work of "Honey Snow Ice City", which is not only worse than "Starbucks", but also more expensive than "Honey Snow Ice City".
The "bat" incident once again exposed food safety shortcomings.
If the quality of ingredients is not worthy of the first test is whether consumers are willing to pay the "IQ tax", then the frequent food safety problems are challenging the bottom line of the public.
In Yang Guofu, consumers can't eat real meat, but they can eat earthworms, hair, and spoiled dishes. Recently, another netizen posted that he ate a foreign body that looked like a bat in the Yang Guofu Malatang he bought in the supermarket, and the children at home washed their stomachs overnight. The incident is currently being investigated by the relevant authorities.
This time it was Yang Guofu's self-heating Malatang series, and some netizens reported that the raw materials used were some cheap agricultural and sideline products. In order to cover up the quality defects, Yang Guofu added a large number of additives to the self-heating Malatang, including preservatives, pigments, flavors, monosodium glutamate, etc., the dosage of these additives far exceeded the national standard, causing serious harm to human health.
This is not the first time Yang Guofu has had food safety problems!
In July 2021, a ** blogger made an unannounced visit to Yang Guofu's store and found that there were problems such as rat feces in the warehouse and the continued use of ingredients that had been eaten by rats. Subsequently, after the overall planning of the national market supervision department, more than 3,000 stores of Yang Guofu across the country were investigated, and more than 800 were ordered to rectify, 5 were warned, and 24 were placed on file for investigation.
Almost every once in a while, there is news that Yang Guofu's store has been investigated and punished, involving a wide range of problems, from the quality of raw materials, to the hygiene of processing, to the specification of distribution.
But what is even more disappointing is that Yang Guofu Malatang is unrepentant and repeats his offenses, which makes consumers very sad. On the black cat complaint platform, there are as many as 1,240 complaints about "Yang Guofu", and in the past month alone, many complaints have pointed to food safety problems.
The first strand of Malatang "was put aside."
On the one hand, there are more than problems, but on the other hand, Yang Guofu is impacting the "first share of Malatang".
Starting from the small husband and wife store in Harbin - Yang Ji Malatang, Yang Guofu himself tried to add milk to red oil, etc., and improved the heavy and spicy Sichuan Malatang into a taste suitable for northerners, so as to successfully get out of the circle.
After more than 20 years of "spicy" expansion, Yang Guofu took the lead in closing the door to the capital market before Zhang Liang, a distant relative who also made Malatang.
As early as February 2022, Yang Guofu Malatang submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but the hearing and listing have not been completed half a year later, and the prospectus has become invalid.
In October 2022, Yang Guofu's listing in Hong Kong was finally approved by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, but Yang Guofu has not yet submitted the form for the second time, which indicates that the company's listing plan has changed.
While the listing stalled, shareholders could not sit still. Recently, Tianyancha showed that the operating body of Yang Guofu Malatang, Shanghai Yang Guofu Enterprise Management (Group)**, has undergone industrial and commercial changes, and the registered capital has increased from 10.3 billion yuan decreased to 30 million yuan, a decrease of about 709%, and a number of shareholders, including Yang Guofu and his spouse Zhu Dongbo, have reduced their capital contributions.
Jumping out of the entrepreneurial story outlined by Yang Guofu to investors, let's take a look at the root cause of Yang Guofu's continuous problems
According to the previous prospectus, as of September 30, 2021, the Yang Guofu brand had a total of 5,783 restaurants, including 3 self-operated restaurants in Shanghai, 5,759 franchised restaurants, and 21 overseas franchised restaurants. According to the information on the official website, Yang Guofu has more than 6,000 stores worldwide.
In 2019, 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, Yang Guofu's revenue from franchise stores was 103.6 billion yuan, 105.6 billion yuan, 109.7 billion yuan, accounting for the total revenue of the period. 3%。
The income from franchise stores is mainly divided into two parts: franchise-related expenses and sales of goods purchased in a unified manner. The franchise fee actually accounts for only about 5% of the total revenue, and the sales of goods account for nearly 80% of the total revenue. Among the goods sold, only the seasoning and spicy hot soup base are produced by the Sichuan factory, and the rest are mostly purchased.
In other words, Yang Guofu mainly purchases goods from third parties and then sells them to franchisees to earn the difference, which is similar to the business model of Mixue Bingcheng. It is not so much a Malatang company as it is a porter of Malatang raw materials.
The benefits of this business model to Yang Guofu are obvious, directly eliminating the cost of opening a direct store, light assets, small risk, fast expansion, every year only need to throw goods to the franchise store to make money, but also from time to time to occupy the franchisee funds.
Reflected in the income statement is - windfall profits.
In 2019, 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, Yang Guofu Malatang achieved revenue of 118.2 billion yuan, 111.4 billion and 116.3 billion yuan;The net profit for the same period was 18.1 billion yuan, 16.9 billion and 20.2 billion yuan;The corresponding net profit from sales is as high as that. 37%, throwing Haidilao, which expanded through direct sales in the same period, out of a few streets.
But Yang Guofu's shortcomings are also obvious. Franchisees have a lot of business decision-making power, and it is difficult to ensure the unity of terminal quality control, hygiene and service, which is a great test for their quality control system. There is no shortage of some franchisees who still deceive consumers under the sign of Yang Guofu after they quit joining.
Therefore, Yang Guofu's store has repeatedly "overturned". Over time, this may self-destruct the brand and retrace the path of the "king of tags" Antarctica.
Epilogue. Malatang originally had the excellent characteristics of high efficiency and high cost performance, and is becoming an important growth pole of Chinese fast food, with an estimated market size of nearly 200 billion yuan in 2025, with a five-year compound growth rate of 115%。Due to the rapid expansion through franchising, Yang Guofu ranks first in the Chinese fast food market in terms of both product sales and the number of restaurants, and is naturally the leader in the field of Malatang.
But now that Yang Guofu's scale has grown, his reputation has a tendency to collapse. In this regard, Yang Guofu can also choose to increase management costs, control quality more strictly, and treat consumers more conscientiously in the selection of materials. It's just that these measures will compress their own profit margins, and under the torrent of catering involution, even if they can be listed, they may lose their imagination to take off.
But if you think about it carefully, the catering industry with a low threshold is itself making hard-earned money, and greedy for huge profits will only backfire in the end.