Written by H h
Edited by Peng Xiaoheng.
The new generation of Lanzhou ramen, represented by Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong, and Zhang Lala, has swept the dining tables of young people crazily.
Almost every shopping mall in major cities can see at least 1-2 Lanzhou ramen restaurants, although the price is as high as 30 yuan per bowl, but in the bright days, many young people outside these ramen restaurants are queuing to enter and compete for a table.
Source: Chen Xianggui's official Weibo.
was originally a very traditional catering category, and it was suddenly able to open all over the major shopping malls in a chain manner, which is obviously inseparable from the help of capital. According to the data, as early as the first half of 2021, the three major Lanzhou ramen brands represented by Chen Xianggui have successively received venture capital, and some brands have even received investment intent with a valuation of more than 1 billion yuan.
The heat comes and goes fast. "A bowl of 30+ ramen, if you haven't eaten it before, you may try it, and you won't consume it as often as hot pot barbecue. To put it bluntly, ** is not cheap, but it can't meet your higher expectations. In the face of the dilemma of losses and store closures encountered by the new generation of Lanzhou ramen brands, some netizens said so.
This catering category, which once made the investment community exclaim that "VCs with heads and faces make Lanzhou ramen", is entering a downward channel at a speed visible to the naked eye.
What does the new generation of Lanzhou ramen look like?
To this day, when it comes to Lanzhou ramen, most people's first thought may be the traditional halal signs and family-oriented roadside shops.
Unlike traditional ramen restaurants that open on the side of the road, the new generation of Lanzhou ramen often chooses to enter major shopping malls in order to match their "value", as Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala, who have set off a boom in the past two years.
In fact, the new generation of Lanzhou ramen has strong consumption upgrade characteristics in many aspects, such as store decoration and dining experience.
Taking Chen Xianggui as an example, the brand naming gives people a sense of authenticity of Lanzhou ramen, including the advertising slogan in the store that says "Dream back to Lanzhou". In terms of store decoration style, Chen Xianggui adopted the most northwestern-style earth color, one of the purposes of which is to convey the authentic image of his brand to consumers.
Source: Chen Xianggui's official Weibo.
In addition to the clean and bright dining environment, Chen Xianggui's real killer feature is the golden sign of "free refill" that can be seen everywhere inside and outside the store. For consumers, these 4 words can make people more determined to enter the store.
The second is Ma Jiyong, although the style of the store is somewhat traditional, but it is enough to make people shine. The wood color is the basic color and the highly saturated blue can highlight the key points, and the ramen stall and the noodle making process are also placed directly on the bright side, so you can clearly see it when you enter the store.
In the choice of tableware, Ma Jiyong has done it quite exquisitely. A delicate wooden tray will be placed under the celadon bowl for noodles, including all kinds of skewers provided by the store, brass cups for jujube tea, and various side dishes will be served on wooden trays and small plates, and the overall texture will be full.
To a certain extent, the appearance of Ma Jiyong has broken the inherent impression of consumers in the past that some Lanzhou ramen restaurants use beef cubes instead of beef slices for "one cow for three generations".
Source: Little Red Book.
Zhang Lala focuses on minimalist Japanese style, with "pulled beef" as a selling point. In the opinion of founder Zhang Xiaohui, the beef can absorb the soup more after being torn, and the quality of the beef that can withstand the tear is often higher, otherwise the taste will be very chai. At the same time, in order to meet the social needs of young people, Zhang Lala also launched the Internet celebrity product "Niu Da Bowl" with a capacity of four or five people, which attracted many young consumers to come to check in.
Zhang Xiaohui has repeatedly emphasized in public that Zhang Lala is not just selling a bowl of noodles, but based on a bowl of noodles to make catering. Just like McDonald's sells hamburgers, but hamburgers are only one of McDonald's main products. This is also the key reason why Zhang Lala started with Lanzhou beef noodles, and now continues to launch dishes including roasted pineapple, roast beef, snack ribs and other dishes.
Source: Dianping.
If you look at the entire Internet celebrity noodle restaurant industry, although the styles and emphases of different brands are slightly different, their essential differences are not large.
For example, Hefu Lao Noodles, which claims to "eat Lao Mian in the study", has indeed put a lot of effort into the ingredients, and the soup bases and colorful noodles of various flavors are about fifty or sixty yuan after a few snacks.
The new generation of Lanzhou ramen is racking their brains to create differentiation in all aspects, but in the final analysis, how many new tricks can be played in a bowl of noodles?
Direct sales to joining,
Rapid expansion and frequent store closures
In terms of horizontal comparison, the establishment time and financing nodes of the three ramen brands of Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala are actually quite close, in July 2020, July 2019 and August 2020 respectively, and most of the financing time is concentrated around the middle of 2021.
In order to better promote the brand, Chen Xianggui has always focused on the consumption cognition of authentic Lanzhou beef noodles, and strives to draw an equal sign between the brand and authentic Lanzhou beef noodles; Unlike Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong has been digging deep into the history and culture of Gansu, and has launched the slogan "Live up to Chinese beef noodles" with Ma Yaoshan, the founder of Lanzhou Ramen, as the brand endorsement. Compared with Chen Xianggui and Ma Jiyong, Zhang Lala, who was established the latest, emphasized that the ingredients "beef should be torn by hand" in order to get out of the road of differentiation, after all, Zhang Lala did not have too many cards to play in his hands at that time.
Compared with the first two, Zhang Lala's stores have a higher degree of standardization, which is actually the reason why founder Zhang Xiaohui has been comparing his ramen brand with McDonald's, so that it can be quickly copied in a short time.
In the entire consumer industry, after the brand has capital support, the expansion method can usually be divided into two types: direct store operation and open franchise. Although the former has a higher overall degree of control, the pressure on profitability is also quite large, and the latter is often able to tell a good story faster, which is the key reason why the new generation of Lanzhou ramen brands will be more inclined to follow the franchise model later.
The ideal is very plump, and the reality is very skinny. "Among the three major online celebrity Lanzhou beef noodle brands, both the pace of expansion and the number of stores are almost all less than expected. Especially throughout 2023, the high-end ramen market, which has been matured by capital, will continue to be in trouble.
Source: Chen Xianggui's official Weibo.
Chen Xianggui, which was established in July 2020, had more than 200 directly-operated stores nationwide by the end of 2021, and opened 45 stores in December of that year. In July of the same year, when he was in high spirits, the founder of Chen Xianggui said that the number of stores is expected to exceed 600 in the next three years, and 1,000 stores will be opened in 2025. It's a pity that the number of Chen Xianggui's stores is still fluctuating around 200, and the speed of store opening has slowed down significantly.
Although Ma Jiyong has the largest number of stores among the three online celebrity beef noodle brands, with more than 240 stores, its national store closure rate has reached 14%. At the end of 2021, Zhang Lala, who shouted the news that he had signed a total of 100 stores across the country, had a store closure rate of an astonishing 43%, which is equivalent to at least 4 out of 10 stores going out of business, and until now the number of its stores is less than 60.
In the current market environment, the asset-heavy direct sales model has been proven to be unworkable, and major brands have begun to seek franchises.
In November 2023, Chen Xianggui posted an advertisement for a partnership application in Moments, with investment budgets ranging from 500,000-800,000, 800,000-1.2 million, 1.2 million-1.5 million and more than 1.5 million.
Another example is Zhang Lala, from the perspective of the franchise manual, the initial investment includes brand franchise fees, information fees, etc., a total of 540,000 yuan, not including the management fee of 3% turnover. Combined with the 70% gross profit margin and the customer unit price of about 32 yuan declared by the person in charge of Zhang Lala's investment promotion, the daily order volume needs to reach 246 franchisees to reach the lowest capital protection line, and the ping effect of 5,000 yuan needs to exceed 500 orders per day to achieve.
At the moment, this number is almost unattainable. If we take into account the food safety, control and other problems that may be brought about by open joining, it will only be more difficult.
Capital doesn't like noodles anymore?
According to public data, the time nodes for Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala to obtain frequent financing are basically concentrated around June 2021, including star institutions such as Sequoia China, Shunwei Capital, and GSR Ventures. Chen Xianggui and Ma Jiyong are valued at 1 billion, and Zhang Lala is also valued at nearly 400 million yuan, and many people in the investment industry call it "the new outlet of the times".
So, why did various capitals fall in love with noodles at that time?
First of all, the characteristics of Lanzhou beef noodles themselves are suitable for the chain fast food model, and the meal is fast and has a high degree of standardization; Secondly, the profit margin of beef noodles is higher, even if the meat is added, the profit margin is also quite high according to the knife method of "one cow passed down to three generations", for example, the gross profit margin claimed by Zhang Lala is as high as 70%.
Of course, the most critical point is that there is no truly influential brand in the larger market scale, and "there are categories without brands" is its biggest feature, which gives the capital a lot of imagination.
Zhu Xiaohu, managing partner of GSR Ventures, once said: "There are 400,000 offline noodle restaurants in China, of which 200,000 are Lanzhou ramen. China's McDonald's and KFC are Lanzhou ramen. ”
Although all kinds of capital poured in at that time, and investors were also conclusive, it is undeniable that the financing tide of noodle products is heating up.
According to Tianyancha data, the last financing of the three new-generation Lanzhou ramen brands was when Tencent invested in Ma Jiyong on February 7, 2022, and the financing records of Chen Xianggui and Zhang Lala were all stuck at the end of 2021. In the first half of 2023, only two noodle brands have received financing.
Source: Tianyancha.
Lu Zhengyao, the former founder of Luckin, was renamed "Qu Bayu" in less than three months after the official operation of his entrepreneurial project "Qu Xiao Noodle", which also sells hot pot and makes pre-made dishes, and the outside world has ridiculed it for not having any characteristics. The failure of Quxiaomian also shows that the entire noodle market is cold to a certain extent.
In addition, the well-known chain noodle restaurant "Jia You Good Noodles" from Shanghai was closed by many stores not long ago, and some stores were closed due to arrears, and other negative rumors, which are expected to go bankrupt and liquidate soon; Wuye Mixed Noodles, which has received 300 million yuan in Series A financing and wrote on its official website that "the number of stores will exceed 7,000 in the next three years", is not surprisingly a big heel, and the closure rate of Wuye Mixed Noodles in 2022 is as high as 418%, closing more than 600 stores in just over a year.
Source: Wuye Mixed Noodles' official Weibo.
The core reasons why capital's enthusiasm for eating noodles has fallen off a cliff can be attributed to two points: high costs and lack of core selling points.
In fact, the cost of opening a restaurant in a shopping mall in major cities has always been relatively high, and the rent and labor alone have seriously dragged down the online celebrity ramen brands. In addition, in order to match the high price, many raw materials need to be transported by air, which is bound to further increase the cost.
The high cost is transmitted to the consumer side, and the ** of the Internet celebrity ramen brand cannot be reduced, for example, the cheapest bowl of noodles of Ma Jiyong and Zhang Lala costs 26 yuan, and Chen Xianggui's starting price is 28 yuan. Like many big restaurants, they are opened in large shopping malls and the prices are not low, so consumers will obviously have higher expectations for these brands. It's a pity that after tasting it for the first time, many consumers have labeled it as "unpalatable", "industrialized taste", and "not cost-effective".
In the final analysis, it is just a bowl of noodles, and how to draw an equal sign between ** and value is a problem that the new generation of Lanzhou ramen must consider in the future.