2024: Dig deep holes, accumulate grain, and don't rush in. Text |Xu JiaEdChen Meixi**: Hedgehog Commune (ID: Ciweigongshe).
Author: Xu Jia.
You are a diligent worker, tired of the office, with age anxiety, and determined to quit your job and start a business.
There are technical barriers in the high-paying field, and the blue-collar workers are too hard, and when you compare a circle, you suddenly find that you have no land, no money, no connections, and no muscles. So you searched for 2023 money-making opportunities on the short** platform and found a large number of catering franchise advertisements. "People take food as the sky, and restaurants will never worry about running out of customers. "You think so, click into the franchise**:
The brand promises that it has the ability to develop products, improve the chain and standardization. According to the map, there is a franchise store 1 km south of your home, and the owner started with a side investment, and now his income has doubled.
Big brands, popular projects, 0 experience and 0 franchise fees to open a store, free technical training, special person follow-up, full support.
You think, "Maybe, I can really do this?" ”
So you began to browse the rules of joining, listen to the opinions of all parties on the short ** platform, and actively participate in the offline franchise exhibition. A broad road to prosperity seems to be slowly unfolding.
Turn-overs are accepted on general roads, with the exception of catering franchises. In the words of someone who came over: "The catering industry is a rocket start-up, and once it starts, there is a steady stream of expenses to invest in." You don't know if it will work out in the end. If the rocket **, it can only allow you to sell some scrap iron, and there is no whole body to retreat. ”
In 2024, if you are thinking about joining the restaurant, you may want to try to talk on paper first: some people who have come before have stories and experiences that they want to share with you.
The picture comes from the screenshot of the franchise, without any guiding intention
A quick recruitment company that circles money: "After paying the money, you will change your face".The old chef wants to open a restaurant, and he has his hands on it. It is difficult for a layman to learn from scratch. At this time, joining a brand with a full set of business plans seems to be a lot easier.
In the summer of 2015, the comedy film "Pancake Man" was released. In the same month, a pancake brand was established and opened to join. The small shop soon opened near Wang Duojin and Zhang Hong, and the popularity can compete with today's lo-mei fried skewer shop. The couple had a little savings and were preparing to start a new business.
The pancake brand promises to provide franchisees with one-stop services: site selection, decoration, kitchenware, sauces, skills training, publicity. Take him to quickly switch the catering track, and brand awareness can also bring more traffic to the store. - It's like a babysitter-level business for an inexperienced couple.
So they dialed the franchise ** and visited the headquarters again. Looking at the bright and clean headquarters located in the downtown area of Beijing, listen to the brand - in Zhang Hong's words, "like selling a house, saying that this is a university town, drawing a blueprint for us and building momentum." They soon decided to join with 80,000 yuan.
The money was paid, the contract was signed, and everything was different.
The original promise to help select the site turned into a perfunctory inquiry**; The decoration is only given to the drawings, and the rest is "looked at"; tens of thousands of yuan of kitchenware costs, in exchange for a pancake pan, an ordinary juicer, the market price is less than 5,000 yuan; It is said that purple rice and millet are provided with various multigrain pancakes, and in the end there is only one kind of white flour; The promised package education and package meeting finally turned into a two-day round cake, two lunch boxes and two ingredient textbooks.
What's even more outrageous is that the brand promotion that is said to be good is finally cashed into a memory card. Plug it into the loudspeaker, and it will automatically ** "Yo yo Chek make trouble, pancakes and fruits come to a set."
After the store opened, the store had to purchase everything from cooked soybeans, sauces to food bags from the brand, which was the same as the ** kitchenware at that time, which was also a large and unreasonable price.
In the early morning of a winter day 8 years later, Zhang Hong, who had just closed the stall, recalled the experience at that time, and there was a lot less anger, and she told the whole process of joining the pancake brand with half anger and half laughter into cross talk, but she could still distinguish the "mess" left by the brand back then.
After opening, they did not usher in the expected boom.
The two children want ** powder, the two have no other part-time jobs, and the expenses of a family of four are all counting on the sales of pancake juice. In order to increase revenue, they have successively purchased ice cream machines and expanded snacks such as frozen meatloaf. In the spring of the following year, the brand's supply was repeatedly out of stock, and finally it could no longer be contacted.
In less than 1 year, with a net loss of 300,000 yuan, the couple sold their only house in Beijing and closed the store for the sake of capital turnover.
It was around 2016, relying on the rapid development of the Internet platform and the traffic economy, a large number of fast recruitment (fast investment) companies appeared. They disguise themselves as sub-brands of some well-known brands, special licensees or copy a copycat brand, use a large number of advertisements and celebrity endorsements to create a false business prosperity, defraud franchisees of investment, but after receiving money, they change shells and run away, without providing the promised follow-up services.
Wang Duojin and Zhang Hong speculated that they must have met the fast recruitment company back then: "Later, when I thought about it, it was just a pancake, and others could sell it with a small cart, no matter how tall it was." "Broke the brand's filter with 300,000 yuan, and Zhang Hong never dared to touch it again. She watched the tea and catering franchises around her flock to the store, and quietly closed the store: "Every question is an investment of 10,000 yuan." It is not easy for ordinary people to get money, and tens of thousands of yuan can destroy a family. ”
With the reshuffle of the catering market, the popularization of knowledge and policy norms of thunderstorm cases, the momentum of Kuaizhao Company has gradually faded in the past two years. According to the analysis of an individual restaurant owner, the increase in marketing expenses in recent years is also one of the factors that hinder the company: it is not cheap to invite people and recharge marketing funds, and it is difficult to create a big scene with a small cost. But in the eyes of some veteran caterers,Quick Recruitment companies still exist, and they're not going away.
"Because there are too many people who don't understand this line of work and want to save trouble," he saidZhou Xiaoqing, who does catering in Hebei and creates his own brand, also provides catering consulting services, said bluntly. In his opinionIf the restaurant wants to expand its scale, it will eventually move towards three trends: franchise, joint operation, and consulting. "If it's based on a valuable brand, a good ** chain, altruistic values, and proper ambition, these three business models are fine. But the bad thing is that there are too many people who don't do practical things in the market and want to make money to cut leeks. ”
Today's "quick recruitment company" is more like an adjective, which is equated with "trap" and "cutting leeks". It's just that the means of "cutting" are more hidden, they are hidden in different business models, confusing data, between the words and sentences of the contract, and in every link of the ** chain, ready to trap the next ambitious catering novice.
Brands and franchisees are not necessarily in the same boat
As the momentum of Kuaizhao Company has gradually faded in the past two years, there have been fewer cases of "running away brands" like Wang Duojin and Zhang Hong. But even if you join a mature catering brand, there are still many links between investment and making money, and there are many "pits" in each link. Successful people can indeed achieve a single store profit, but if the catering novice is not careful, he will step into the pit of loss.
Completing a store franchise will go through many links, and due to the different positions of interests, the intentions and dissatisfaction of both parties during this period will also be revealed.
For brands determined to expand their stores, the more unified their practices are and the more unified their operations are, the higher the cost: manpower, systems, raw material procurement, and factory production for store inspections. In order to achieve large-scale operation, it is natural to obtain profits from franchisees. But there is also a degree of profit grabbing: whether it is to make a benign profit on the basis of helping merchants, or just to go public, seek scale, and purely pursue profits.
On the other hand, as a downstream business, the most common situation encountered by franchisees is that the estimated investment amount of the brand is quite different from the actual one: "The plan is written 100,000 yuan, and you will find that the rent and deposit, tenant transfer fee, later purchase and hoarding, manpower, water and electricity are large expenditures, not to mention the details of mop tables and chairs." ”
Even if they have a sufficient budget, some franchisees will feel different "abacus" or "sincerity" when they see the kitchenware shipped by the brand.
Li Xingliang, who is engaged in the work of second-hand catering equipment, has done it for more than 500 stores. There are many chain stores such as Yihetang, Mixue Bingcheng, Shuyi Burning Fairy Grass, and Meiyijia, as well as many catering novices who want to turn over and become bosses. In their stores, he most often ** is air conditioners, refrigerators, ice machines, display cabinets, operating tables, etc., so he has figured out some insider information in the franchise industry:In the decoration and the machine, there is a huge profit margin.
The picture comes from a screenshot of the WeChat conversation with Li Xingliang.
In this industry, I have seen too many bosses' difficulties and bitterness, blindness and anxiety after the closure of the store. Helplessness when bargaining with us. We looked helpless. Sometimes I feel that these franchise companies are too hateful and have no power point. After 4 years in the industry, he named his profession "Catering Harvester", specializing in the embarrassing endgame of closed stores.
The budget is supported, the store decoration and appliances are all ready, and soon, the franchisee will encounter a new problem: the ** chain is too expensive.
In 2023, the entire catering industry is emphasizing the ability of the first chain, which is the key link to prove the strength of the brand, accelerate the scale of franchise, and ensure quality and cost performance. Some franchisees have a hard time in the middle, and they are often required to only buy from the headquarters - from paper towels and chopsticks to noodles and sauces. This is sometimes like buying and selling, and the profits are just flowing away from it: "Even if we join, we can only get 6% off when we get the goods from the main factory." Excluding the deduction points of the takeaway platform, manpower, water and electricity rent, etc., the final net profit is pitiful. ”
Low net profit will directly affect the return cycle of franchisees.
Brands often promise a short payback period, but the reality is that many factors such as the fluctuation of ingredients**, damage to equipment, additional expenses caused by employee errors, and changes in the proportion of dine-in takeaways in stores (takeaway margins) will lengthen the payback period.
These situations are not only in the field of franchising, some anxious franchise brands have begun to turn to the franchise model.
Nowadays, if a catering brand company wants to start the road to franchise, it needs to have a commercial franchise record - which requires the main applicant company to meet multiple conditions such as being established for one year and having two direct stores that have been in business for one year.
As a result, joint ventures emerged as a more "lighter" business model.
0 franchise fee and 0 threshold are its key words, which can save a lot of franchise fees for merchants with low budgets. But in the words of a catering practitioner: "The franchise fee is only a one-time payment, but the joint operation model will earn you money from many links such as equipment, decoration, ** chain, and operation." To put it bluntly, an incapable affiliate brand will not pay a penny, give you unusable technology, and draw your profits. ”
All this sounds like a suspicion of "cutting leeks".
However, Snail, who has joined the lo-mei shop and has also dealt with the brand, believes that the current market environment is not a "leek" that can be explained clearly, and there are many factors affecting the ups and downs of a business, which needs to be viewed dialectically.
Most people get a single-store profit model, and the actual franchise process is very long, inspection, contracting, site selection, and operation. A single distortion can cause the store to fail. One formula cannot solve all the problems, and it is necessary to consider the differences in the cognition and ability of the franchisees themselves, which is a process in which both parties take risks. ”
Unlike most franchisees who close their stores in a hurry and lose a lot of money, Snail's investment and exit process is much calmer: three months after opening the store, he finds that the store is losing money, time and learning opportunities, and the business can no longer give him predictable growth space, so he quickly sells the store. In his view, the catering market is treacherous and changeable, and as a business, we need to improve our awareness, summarize lessons, and closely observe the market. In his spare time, he also wrote clear review notes.
Snail wants to share the review notes with his peers.
In 2024, can Xiaobai still join the catering? In 2023, the revenue of the entire catering market will exceed 5 trillion yuan for the first time, reaching the highest in nearly 5 years.
In 2024, as the reshuffle of the catering franchise market intensifies, will Xiaobai be able to take a share of the catering industry through joining?
When the Hedgehog Commune asked many opinions with this question, it was found that the cautious old restaurant man would emphasize the general environment:
The current catering market has been saturated, the low-price war is too fierce, Xiaobai is ineffective involution, and the old brands are trying to survive. ”
Some franchisees are more focused on the industry itself:
In the market where old stores stick to and Internet celebrity brands frequently appear, people who do not have money, land, and high-quality ** chains must have the ability to integrate resources and collaborate. To survive in a group, not to 'kill out', but to 'survive'. ”
The "passer-by" who is determined to completely stay away from the catering track said:
Choose to start a business and try to avoid crowded tracks where big names gather, such as tea, hot pot, and pickled cabbage fish. Try to choose a category that does not have too many big brand chain stores, otherwise it will not be as well-known as others. Nowadays, there are not many opportunities to get rich, so you have to run your business in a down-to-earth manner, from 0 to 1, steadily. If the salary of a part-time job is already relatively high and you can support your family, you must not start a business as a "little white", and the risk of starting a business now is not lower than that of a part-time job. ”
Of course, there are some suggestions that can be implemented immediately.
Zhou Xiaoqing, a catering practitioner, often emphasized in the consulting service: "If you want to do catering, don't start from joining, don't invest blindly." You can first go to be an apprentice or waiter, to really endure hardships, to understand the preparation process, profit model and business status of a store, and start by learning a craft seriously. ”
"Dig deep holes, accumulate grain, and don't rush in. This is the current consensus of all catering people.
At the request of the interviewee, Wang Duojin, Zhang Hong, and Snail are pseudonyms in the article. ）