The title picture comes from the movie "No Thieves in the World".
Author: Wu Shaoge |Editor: Ge Weiwei.
"Weekday lunch struggling. ”"Two bags of pots will send us away, don't come, you haven't started yet. ”
As soon as the news came out that Haidilao would launch a buffet at the Shanghai Dapu Road store and the Hangzhou Shaoxing Road store, Muzi (pseudonym) asked his friends to wait to line up. "108 yuan per person, more than 20 kinds of meat dishes, more than 20 kinds of vegetarian dishes, and snacks to eat, but it is more cost-effective than my usual hot pot. ”
It is reported that 3 days before the trial operation, some netizens successfully booked through the mini program, and the waiting table for dinner had to be queued for one and a half months. But in the follow-up, the Haidilao buffet** was not launched as scheduled, Muzi and his friends took advantage of the excitement and returned disappointed, and Haidilao also fell into the question of "can't afford to play" and "small pattern".
Not to mention whether there is another hidden reason for Haidilao's reversal, "lunch buffet" has indeed become a treasure of hot pot brand popularity. At the beginning of January this year, Sister Hong's old hot pot Shanghai Wantiguan store launched a lunch buffet of 118 yuan per person, and as of January 31, the sales exceeded 170,000 pieces. In addition, the elder brother official hot pot also spread the news of selling buffet lunches.
Can the hot pot buffet flood into the lunch camp last? When will migrant workers be free to have lunch?
The tradition of "working at sunrise, resting at sunset, and eating three meals a day" has long been changed by migrant workers.
Many migrant workers who work overtime and stay up late give up breakfast in order to save time and sleep for half an hour more. It has become the daily routine of many young people to get up with difficulty and simply wash up and rush to the company to clock in and go to work. At the end of 2020, Convenience Bee released the "White-collar Breakfast Report", which shows that the proportion of people who never eat breakfast has reached 1037%, that is, 1 in 10 people is "insulated" from breakfast.
As for dinner, most of the migrant workers also came in a fool's way. In addition to work or dinners with friends, they usually choose to "eat a little bit" at dinner.
As a result, lunch became the most important of the three meals a day. This first layer of "heavy" naturally refers to the importance of lunch. At noon, the migrant workers who had not eaten breakfast but had already worked hard for two or three hours were already hungry and had to eat a good meal.
The second layer of "heavy" refers to the cost of lunch spent by migrant workers. The above-mentioned "White-collar Lunch Report" shows that the situation in various places is 652% of white-collar workers spend less than 20 yuan on lunch. However, in just three years, lunch has been rubbed against the eye.
In the past, you could get a takeaway for 20 yuan, but now you can't eat enough for 30 or 40 yuan. Muzi took the Japanese restaurant near the company as an example, "At the beginning of 2022, a curry beef omelet rice was sold for 30 yuan, but the price increased in June, and it became a ** form, adding a small dish of vegetable salad, just a few vegetable leaves, a tomato, ** directly rose to 48 yuan, and the amount of beef also shrank, and it would be good to have 2 small pieces of beef in a meal." ”
Muzi's experience is not unique. Posts complaining about the high cost of lunch abound on social platforms: the all-you-can-eat Malatang that used to cost 20 yuan now has to worry about more than 40 yuan if you add a few meatballs and more meat; McDonald's burgers have recently increased their prices by 3% after reducing their size; Go to the Western food brand Wagas to eat grass, a bowl is close to 80 yuan ......
Image source: wagas applet.
It is worth mentioning that there are also Korean migrant workers who complain that "lunch is too expensive". According to data from South Korean technology company Food God, during October and December 2022, company employees spent an average of 9,633 won per day on lunch, equivalent to 52 yuan, which is 16% higher than the same period in 2021. In this case, rushing to convenience stores at noon on weekdays to grab sandwiches and boxed lunches is gradually becoming the norm for Korean migrant workers.
In addition to traditional meals, catering companies have put a lot of effort into enriching the lunch forms of migrant workers.
The hot pot lunch buffet is one of a kind.
In the eyes of the outside world, self-service ** can not only digest the excess ingredients in the store, but also a good way to drain traffic. It is reported that Sister Hong's old hot pot buffet attracted a lot of consumers on the day it was launched. Some netizens said: "I got the number at 11 o'clock, queued for more than 30 minutes, and it is estimated that I will not be able to eat until the afternoon." ”
However, whether it is 108 yuan for Haidilao or 118 yuan for Sister Hong's old hot pot, the price far exceeds the average lunch price of migrant workers, and they can't eat it often after all. Sister Hong's old hot pot also knows that the self-service mode of the expensive lunch market cannot last long, so the self-service ** activity is only set for one month.
Details of Sister Hong's lunch buffet, source public comments.
At the same time, the retail gentleman noticed that the self-service rotating hot pot that once disappeared is now popular again. According to the signing of the money, one person and one pot, with a minimum of 30 yuan per capita, it has become a favorite lunch for consumers.
Data shows that in the past two years, the number of new brands of affordable rotating small hot pot has soared and developed rapidly, for example, Wai Spicy Chuanxiang, which was founded in 2018, will open more than 180 new stores in 2023 alone; The chain hot pot brand Little Sheep also plays the cheap small hot pot model, with 15 yuan at the bottom of the pot and less than 100 yuan for a meal.
There are also alternative chain store players who specialize in cross-border layout of the lunch market, especially coffee brands.
As early as 2019, Luckin launched BOSS Lunch, including Sichuan-style shredded chicken noodles, tuna grain salad, classic beef mashed potato salad, cherry tomato and grain food box, a total of four light foods, priced at nearly 40 yuan; In December 2022, TIMS launched the "Pizza Two-Piece Set" and "Pizza with Snacks" and other lunchtime**, priced at 299 yuan; In the same year, MANNER launched Western-style simple meals such as pizza and bibimbap; Starbucks has also added food for lunch in the baking area**.
In addition, Sheng Xiang Pavilion, Yan Lu Tang, One Heart One Taste, etcHot brine brands alsoAdd staple foods such as mixed noodles, bibimbap, soup and riceLayout of the lunch market**.
It's not just chain brands that are popular in the lunch market. At the beginning and end of 2023, the Northeast lunch box exploded twice. 10 yuan a big box of all-you-can-eat, the amount is cheap and affordable, which makes many netizens "kneel and beg".
According to ** reports, CBD areas in Beijing, Guangzhou and other cities began to appearLunch box self-employedThe day before, inform the location of the stall, and the next day drive to sell food, priced at 10 20 yuan box lunch, basically sold short.
However, this kind of "guerrilla" boxed lunch self-employed also faces many problems, in addition to food hygiene and other rigid requirements, they often have no bargaining power in the procurement of ingredients, coupled with limited personnel, once the order volume is too large, whether they can eat on time and continue to make profits has become a suspense.
Private kitchen management, scheduled meals, and door-to-door delivery"**Small dining table".The model also caused heated discussions, and for a while, small table entrepreneurs emerged explosively, but it was also difficult to avoid "falling into" and not being able to easily cope with the dilemma of soaring orders.
*Small dining table, picture source Xiaohongshu.
There are also those that fascinate migrant workersCommunity cafeterias。3 yuan a piece of shredded potatoes, 4 yuan a piece of mapo tofu, the community canteen has become a real depression in the city. There has been a craze for community canteens in various places, and even a collection of community canteen addresses has appeared on platforms such as Xiaohongshu. It's just that the frenzy of migrant workers is also a big challenge to the carrying capacity of community canteens.
In this way, there are solutions to expensive lunches, but they are difficult to do on a large scale.
Speaking of which, the lunch needs of migrant workers are actually very simple. First, it is necessary to take into account both the need to eat enough and eat well, and to meet the needs of convenient access in a short period of time; Second, it is necessary to be as delicious as possible and cost-effective.
1 hour to eat, I don't know what to eat at all. The small shops in the neighborhood have basically tasted it, and the farther ones are not happy to run there. White-collar CC (pseudonym) has just been working for less than 2 years, and according to her words, every time she eats lunch, she has to fall into "choice difficulties".
Further research by Retail Jun found thatEven if the restaurant store is made large, it has its unspeakable difficulties.
For example, if the store is located in the central business district of the city, the store rent is high and the operating cost is high, and the food premium will not be low; If it is in a remote area, it is inevitable to rely on the existing takeaway platform, and the platform commission is gradually becoming more expensive.
Taking Meituan as an example, in 2019, it was reported that the platform commission increased from 15%** to 18%, and now some merchants even exceed 30%. Merchants' profits are gradually compressed, and raising the price is also a last resort.
In addition,Dine-in and takeaway have fundamentally different business models. Specifically, dine-in consumers pay more attention to location, taste and environment. In contrast, takeaway consumers are more concerned about convenience and cost performance on the basis of meeting the taste standards to solve the current problem of food and clothing.
Because of this, the best-selling products are not necessarily still hot-selling, and if you want to do a good job in takeout, you must consider the design of the main online products, products** and corresponding**.
In addition, from the perspective of catering practitioners, the most critical thing affecting dine-in is the product, followed by operation and marketing management, but for takeaway, because there is no offline dining scene, its product cost is composed of "food cost + processing cost + rental cost + packaging cost + transportation cost + platform commission + marketing cost". Among them, marketing expenditure occupies an important position, and marketing promotion has become a major threshold for catering stores to do takeaway.
Another hurdle is the balance between scale and taste. This point is particularly hotly discussed in chain Chinese restaurants such as Lao Xiang Chicken and Lao Niang's Uncle. For the sake of speed and efficiency, it has long been a tacit fact that chain restaurant brands use pre-made dishes. Nowadays, it doesn't matter if the food is fast but there is no pot gas, and the workers just want to "get by".
Up to now, the "lunch swell" has caused more migrant workers to try to bring their own rice, regardless of the taste, and burn it out according to the tutorial first. More recently, the lunch problem is difficult to solve, and migrant workers have begun to take the initiative to choose to simplify lunch. Even if you don't have two dishes and one meal, a sandwich in a plastic bag and some raw vegetables is barely a meal.
The lunch that is difficult to have both is still tormenting many migrant workers. Perhaps in the near future, there will be a few hard conditions to be added to the job search needs of migrant workers - "having a canteen", "giving meals" and "including lunch".
Today's topic: What do you usually eat for lunch on weekdays?