This newspaper (chinatimesnet.CN) reporters Zhou Mengting and Huang Xingli report from Beijing.
Snacks are busy, pushing the competition among mass-marketed snacks to new heights. On January 29, the "China Times" reporter learned from the snack is very busy that its "super snack is busy", which was officially opened on January 27, and the turnover exceeded 780,000 on the 27th and 28th, and the super snack is very busy, covering an area of up to 1,300 square meters.
Since November last year, when the two major brands of mass snack snacks were merged with Zhao Yiming Snacks to form the Snack Busy Group, the entire mass sales snack industry has become lively at a speed visible to the naked eye. The snack group is very busy and the other head snack Wanchen Group has started a battle from coaxing franchisees to seizing the area. However, compared with the current retail industry, the battle between mass sellers and snacks is also considered a false fire.
Store expansion
At the beginning of 2024, snacks are busy and increase their hole cards. It is understood that Super Snacks is very busy located in Yuhua District, Changsha City, divided into two floors, is the brand's largest store in the country, of which the first floor is the snack shopping area, and the second floor is mainly the snack theme leisure and entertainment area.
Snacks started in 2017, and in September 2018, it created a precedent of a 300-square-meter snack shop, and now it has opened a 1,300-square-meter snack shop that stunned everyone again. In this regard, snacks are very busy and believe that the current offline store is no longer a single shopping place, but has evolved into a diversified experience space with strong social attributes, and shopping in the new consumption era is not a single selling + buying model, but more like a comprehensive activity that integrates multiple sensory experiences such as shopping, shooting, appreciating, and playing.
Lin Yue, chief consultant of Lingyan Management Consulting and an analyst of the catering industry, told the China Times that the snack is very busy with this super store, and its strategy is ulterior, on the one hand, it integrates social attributes into snack mass stores to create topics for marketing and communication; On the other hand, the diversity of consumption scenarios is increased through design, including the introduction of online celebrity tea drinks to drive traffic from the perspective of co-branding; Although the operating cost is very high, it is a positive strategy at the level of business innovation and business model iteration, but it is certainly unrealistic to roll it out on a large scale.
On November 10, 2023, Snack is busy and Zhao Yiming Snacks officially announced a strategic merger to form Snack Busy Group; On December 18 of the same year, the snack group was busy with 10An investment of 500 million yuan. However, the reporter learned that the Super Snack Busy store was not opened in the name of the Snack Busy Group, but was opened and operated separately by Snack Busy.
Regarding the combination of snacks and Zhao Yiming's snacks, on January 31, snacks were busy and replied to this reporter, "At present, the two sides have achieved resource integration in product procurement and first-chain business, forming a more large-scale and volumetric procurement advantage; In terms of brand building, Snacks is busy and Zhao Yiming Snacks still maintain independent operations, and the two sides will further strengthen consumer mental construction and user operation in the future; In terms of regional development coordination, the two sides will continue to deepen the layout based on their respective advantageous regions and do a good job in coordinated development in the development of new markets. Regarding the division of labor, such as capital, market planning, brand development, etc., the two brands will follow the unified deployment of the group for strategic synergy. ”
North-South commercial war
Casual snacks are an important category in FMCG, and according to iiMedia Consulting data, the size of China's snack market will reach 12 trillion yuan, in the next few years will maintain a stable growth trend, leisure snack sales channels have become the object of the acceleration of the layout of major capital, three squirrels and BESTORE have made a layout in the mass sales snack track.
In August 2022, Wanchen Group, which was originally engaged in the R&D and sales of edible fungi, also launched an impact on the mass snack track, and then quickly became the first phalanx of mass snack through mergers and shareholdings, and in September 2023, it merged its four major brands of Lu Xiaoyu, Adi Didi, Hao Xiang Lai, and Lai Youpin into "Hao Xiang Lai".
Benefiting from the expansion of the wholesale snack business, Wanchen Group's revenue in 2023 is expected to increase by 1538 year-on-year55%-1647.79%, of which the annual operating income of the wholesale snack business is expected to be 8.5 billion yuan to 9 billion yuan, and the cumulative net profit of the wholesale snack business is expected to be 28.5 million yuan to 37 million yuan after excluding the accrued share-based payment expenses.
At present, Snack Busy Group and Wanchen Group are already the two major heads of the mass snack industry, of which the base camp of Snack Busy Group focuses on the southern market, while Wanchen Group is mainly rooted in the north. On January 31, the reporter learned from the snack is very busy that the number of stores in the country has exceeded 7,500 in the snack group (snack is busy + Zhao Yiming snacks), of which the number of stores in the country has exceeded 4,000. As of January 2024, the total number of stores opened in the brand system has also exceeded 6,000.
Entering 2024, the competition in the wholesale snack industry will become more and more fierce. In Lin Yue's view, the current snack wholesale industry is facing a reshuffle and survival of the fittest. In this context, the two leading groups in the industry have also competed.
*According to the report, a few days before Super Snacks opened the store, the Snacks Group and Wanchen Group asked franchisees to "flop" The incident was boiling. The so-called flop refers to the fact that brand A makes brand B franchisees change store signboards and make brand A brand through subsidies, buying stores, etc.
Compete for franchisees
At present, the competition for the regional market has been further intensified by the leading brands of snack wholesalers. On November 30, 2023, Haoxianglai announced the announcement of expanding the investment promotion area on the official website, and decided to enter Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong and Guangxi. On December 9 of the same year, Snacks was very busy and opened the registration channel to some cities in Sichuan, Yunnan, Henan and other provinces. On January 5, Zhao Yiming Snacks announced a new franchise subsidy policy in its official ***.
Nowadays, whether it is snacks are very busy, Zhao Yiming snacks or want to come, they will put improving the national market share in the first place. The reporter learned that in mid-January 2024, Snacks was very busy releasing the latest market expansion plan, which will invest 1 billion yuan to develop the national market, focusing on expanding the northern region; Zhao Yiming snacks will also accelerate the pace of nationalization in the future, and will invest more than 1 billion yuan in the next six months for the development of the national market, focusing on the layout of northern cities including Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi and many other provinces.
In addition, Wanchen Group said in an institutional survey on January 23 that the company will continue to deepen the existing advantageous areas and maintain rapid growth potential in other markets.
For the current competition of snack wholesalers, snacks are very busy and told reporters that industry competition is no longer limited to the competition of store discounts, but will also rise to the hard power competition of brand power, product power, chain, digitalization and other aspects of enterprises.
However, although the competition between the heads is lively, some industry experts are not optimistic about it. Bao Yuezhong, a new retail expert, told this reporter that the current fire of mass selling snacks is virtual, because due to the impact of the environment, whether it is a traditional supermarket or a catering retail supermarket, the pressure is relatively large, in this case, it is not realistic to buy or not to buy, eat or not to eat snacks to sell particularly hot; The current situation of mass selling snacks may be related to the promotion of capital in the back and the blind expansion of enterprises, and on the whole, the snack industry will be reshuffled in 2024.
Editor-in-charge: Huang Xingli Editor-in-chief: Han Feng.