Snack bars and Starbucks in the county and ordinary outbound Chinese tourists

Visual China.

Text |Finance and economics are unscrupulous.

What will happen in the new 2024, no one can predict. But the reality is that there is often a crisis in the midst of change, and there is often a turning point in the midst of a crisis.

In the past year, we have experienced a lot of changes: the end of the epidemic, the influenza A raid, the emergence of ChatGPT, and the ...... of layoffsIn these unpredictable times,"Chill"It's being delivered to everyone non-stop.

The Spring Festival is the traditional peak season for consumption, and it is also a time period for the concentrated release of various consumer demands, and it is also a window for us to observe the vitality of China's economy.

Every year, Caijing Wuji will take the perspective of "returning to his hometown to observe" to pursue, go to **, and report many stories about the city and people, people and business.

From 618 to Double 11 to the Spring Festival just past, it has become a norm for consumers to tighten their pockets. In this context, as a barometer of China's economy, what kind of economic vitality does this year's Spring Festival consumption outline?

Internet celebrity snack collection stores are becoming a new figure on the old streets of the county.

Li Xiang, who returned to his hometown ahead of schedule, rarely had the opportunity to buy New Year's goods with his family, but this year, his mother did not lead him to the crowded supermarket, but bought them all in one stop in Zhao Yiming's snack shop, which had just opened downstairs.

When I first opened, I had a membership and I could get a discount," my mother explains.

In Li Xiang's opinion, this newly opened snack shop in Lao Cai is indeed different from the small shops that have faded around

Signboard large light boxes, clean and bright storefronts, standardized services, in addition to customers carrying shopping baskets, there are also takeaway riders shuttling among them from time to time, no wonder some people write reviews on the Internet "not only suitable for foodie shopping, but also suitable for taking photos and punching in".

Since last year, with the peak of the dividends of the times and the advent of a low-desire society, especially in the post-epidemic era, consumers' sensitivity to ** has increased day by day, and a large number of mass-selling snack store brands have sprung up on the streets and alleys.

This wind also blew to the small county town of Li Xiang's hometown.

A 500ml bottle of Coca-Cola costs less than 3 yuan, which is 20-30% cheaper than the supermarket price. Many locals have directly shifted their channels for buying New Year's goods this year from large supermarkets to mass-selling snack shops.

Li Xiang didn't expect that just about 200 meters away from Zhao Yiming's snacks, there were chain brands such as Snacks Very Busy and Snacks Preferred. After simply taking a stroll around the only business district in this county, Li Xiang also found that almost all the wholesale snack brands are gathered here.

This also brings a problem, low prices are a significant advantage of these snacks are very busy, Zhao Yiming snacks, good want to come, snacks Youming and other mass-selling snack brands in the county to expand aggressively. But the other side of the coin is homogenization and involution.

Buy New Year's goods to so-and-so, Spring Festival**, the lowest price of the year. "During the Spring Festival, at the door of these three mass-selling snack shops within a radius of 300 meters, the loudspeaker kept circulating **information**.

The basic operation method of the mass merchandiser snack store is generally through the "low-cost just need water drink + big-name snacks" drainage, many customers who enter the store originally only want to buy a bottle of discounted drinks, but are attracted by the display in the store, by the way, there are more goods to buy.

However, when consumers are faced with two stores with the same low-price drainage products and similar product richness, the lower ** becomes the reason for swaying consumer decisions.

According to Li Xiang's observation, it is difficult for consumers to prefer one brand over another, and his mother said, "Every once in a while, I can see a snack shop, and I am a member of their family." Buy the same product cheaply, and see which one is more delicious for different products. ”

In fact, in order to compete for the market, mass snack brands are constantly fighting, which has also had an impact on supermarkets, convenience stores and other formats, and more and more self-employed people who can't beat them choose to join.

The owner of a mass-selling snack store revealed that in the county, including his 7 stores, a total of about 14 Zhao Yiming snacks have been opened, and if other brand snack stores are added, there are more than 20.

Interestingly, at the Spring Festival party with classmates, Li Xiang mentioned the newly opened mass snack brand in the county, and the two classmates were preparing to join a certain snack store brand after the year.

After more than a year of long-distance running, the competition in the mass snack market has shifted from internal friction to group competition. Industry insiders**, this battle will officially start in 2024.

Through the window of Spring Festival consumption, a large number of popular "Internet celebrity" snack shops on the streets are growing by leaps and bounds in the county market. However, in the process of rapid expansion, the mass snack brand has reached a state of overheating. What awaits these mass-selling snack stores must be a reshuffle.

In addition to the mass-market snack stores in the county, Starbucks is also eye-catching.

On a lively afternoon during the Spring Festival holiday, in a fourth-tier city in northern Jiangsu Province, there is a "waiting sign" with a local accent on one side, and sometimes English communication on the other, so the scene is happening in the county's first Starbucks.

In the past, due to the difference between the best and the taste, and the domestic coffee market has long been involuted, there was once a view in the industry that "the county does not love Starbucks", but this perception has formed a strong contrast with the story of this small city in northern Jiangsu that happened during the Spring Festival.

Xu Wen, who returned to his hometown from Nanjing for the holiday, chose to gather with friends at Starbucks during the Spring Festival, originally thinking that Starbucks would be quieter: "There are no Internet celebrity stores in my hometown, and there are many milk tea shops in Luckin, Cudi, and there are also many people, so I originally thought that there would be fewer Starbucks people." “

But what Xu Wen didn't expect was that Starbucks, the county seat, not only attracted a group of migrant workers who returned to their hometowns with computers, but also many young people who returned to their hometowns for blind dates during the Spring Festival.

If you walk into this small county town Starbucks during the Spring Festival, you will not only see young men and women dressed in exquisite fashion and talk extraordinarily, but you can also hear people talking about all kinds of popular topics.

A young man who returned to his hometown wrote on his social ** after checking in to this Starbucks: "There are also Starbucks in small counties, which is the romance of hometown." ”

And such a check-in scene once happened in China's first-tier cities in the past, and Starbucks once dominated such a romance.

It's not hard to see why returning young people are crowding Starbucks. On the one hand, Starbucks' brand influence is still attractive to the county, and this temperament from the city makes up for the psychological discomfort of young people returning to their hometowns.

The "third place" advocated by Starbucks also seems to be more suitable for the Spring Festival, especially in the county seat with a slow pace of life.

For example, young people who choose to come to Starbucks for a blind date in the county town are partly because Starbucks is a symbol of "decency" in their hearts, and partly because Starbucks still represents a way of life. "Back to the county seat. Drinking Starbucks is a kind of life. Xu Wen thought.

In addition, behind the above phenomenon is also due to Starbucks' sinking strategy in recent years. According to Starbucks' "2025 China Strategic Vision", Starbucks China Headquarters stated that "Starbucks values not only more than 300 prefecture-level markets in China, but also nearly 3,000 county-level markets". Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, also said that the county will be the main market for Starbucks.

The sinking market represented by the county is vast, and there is also hidden consumption power, which will undoubtedly be an important strategy for Starbucks' future developmentAnd "small counties, big brands" will also be the key for brands to seize more market increments in 2024.

There are two things that are indispensable in the life of the urban elite, one is coffee and the other is fitness.

But the fitness industry hasn't been doing well in the past few years. "Gym running" has repeatedly become a topic on the Internet, and there are not a few consumers who find that the gym has closed down when they come to the door again after purchasing an annual pass.

Some practitioners attribute the reason to the broken capital chain of the gym due to the sequelae of the epidemic and the macroeconomic environment.

And during this year's Spring Festival, with the release of Jia Ling's new work "Hot and Hot", the fitness industry, especially the gym, finally got a respite.

After watching "Hot and Hot", my friends and I agreed to work out together**" Wang Fuyao showed Caijing Wuji a 5-person WeChat group called "Falling Championship", and the group members posted their recent weights and were made into excel**. Each of us put together a prize pool of 500 yuan, and next year's New Year will be rewarded to the person with the most **. ”

A similar phenomenon is happening across the country.

Gyms in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places were packed during the Spring Festival. Some consumers even watched "Hot and Hot" in the cinema on the front foot, and went to the gym downstairs to get an annual card on the back foot.

was urged to work by customers", fitness coach Zhou Kang smiled and "complained".

He revealed that during the Spring Festival this year, the number of people who came to consult ** increased significantly, and the private lessons were basically saturated, and even group classes had to be booked in advance, otherwise "they couldn't grab it at all".

Objectively speaking, the pre-sale model of the gym itself has the attribute of leverage, and the essence of "thunderstorm" and "running away" is that there is a problem with the risk management of the enterprise, and the epidemic and the economic situation are just catalysts.

Therefore, the new users brought by "Hot and Hot" can only temporarily supplement the company's working capital, and it is still unknown whether it can really pull the fitness industry out of the quagmire.

But what is certain is that all gym practitioners are trying to seize this rare opportunity.

According to the gym staff, in the past, the gym opened on the seventh day of the Lunar New Year or even later, but this year, most of them opened on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, and some of them opened on the third day of the Lunar New Year. In addition, there are some gyms that have signs that say "no closing during the Spring Festival" and "24 hours open".

Returning home during the Spring Festival, in addition to lamenting that Starbucks can also be drunk in the county, Xiao Wang, who returned to a fifth-tier town in Anhui, found that in order to "harvest" people's wallets, the small business in the county also has new business opportunities.

When Xiao Wang helped his sister take care of the baby, he observed that in addition to the common children's playground that was full, the plaster doll painting stalls and handmade glue everywhere occupied two-thirds of the square at home.

Attendance at gypsum stalls, large and small, is in short supply.

During the Chinese New Year, adults spend less money, but they are not soft on children. Moreover, in addition to allowing children to sit quietly and participate in the creation of art, painted plaster can also relieve the fatigue of parents with their babies during the New Year. Xiao Wang concluded.

There are multiple reasons why gypsum stalls are popular.

Caijing Wuji observed that on the one hand, the small plaster doll only needs to be colored by the participants and is simple to operate, so it lowers the threshold for participation. On the other hand, merchants attract consumers through a variety of **IP images and shapes. Some of the appearance is modeling, but the inside is a piggy bank, with the baby parents to go shopping in front of the stall outside, but also willing to buy a practical ornament for the child, the shape is unique and looks good at home.

Therefore, not only children, but also the gypsum stall has captured the desire of "big friends" to participate, and the repurchase rate of this business is relatively high.

Corresponding to high repeat purchases is visible profits.

Caijing Wuji learned that the cost of the plain embryo of the gypsum doll is not high, and the market generally has a 20cm height-based plain embryo ** about 20-30 yuan, and the cost price and material cost may be about 5 yuan.

As for the handmade cream glue, it is cheaper, the supplies are ready-made, and it is about 38 yuan to make a stationery box decoration. Many small parts are also purchased in Yiwu or 1688, and the cost of cream glue is about 2 yuan.

The gypsum stall is just a kick in the economy of the Spring Festival stall"It's better to set up a stall than to greet the New Year" has also become a hot word in this year's Spring Festival.

Looking at many gypsum stall owners, Xiao Wang was also moved, she told Caijing Wuji that she was going to enter the gypsum market during the Spring Festival next year, and she was also ready to enter the gypsum market during the Spring Festival to earn a cup of milk tea money.

The 8-day Spring Festival holiday has created the most popular Spring Festival holiday travel record in history.

According to the 2024 Spring Festival Holiday Travel Express released by Fliggy on February 17, the number of domestic travel bookings for this year's Spring Festival has significantly exceeded that of the same period in 2019, with medium- and long-term travel increasing by more than three times year-on-year, and the average travel date of independent travel has increased by 30% compared with last year.

Chinese tourists, who underpin the global tourism market, hit a peak in outbound travel in the past four years during the Spring Festival, with outbound travel bookings soaring 10 times year-on-year, and more than half of the popular overseas travel destinations surpassed the same period in 2019.

Behind the boom, has the consumption level of Chinese tourists returned to the previous level?

In addition to the early morning and dark of group tours, in addition to experiencing the magnificence of ancient Egyptian civilization at zero distance, Chinese pay more attention to the experience of outbound travel rather than simply buying and buying, which gives him a new understanding of outbound travel.

"The most noticeable change is that people are more willing to pay for travel and less concerned about shopping. ”

In addition to the scheduled itinerary, his Egyptian tour group has added a total of 3 self-paid items, namely taking a hot air balloon, desert sand bashing and Red Sea yacht to go to sea, buying three projects and getting one project free, 500 US dollars per person, and none of the people in the group have participated.

ZEN bluntly said that this Egyptian tour is a "special forces tourism" in the absolute sense.

Every day in Egypt, I get up at 4 or 5 o'clock to gather and set off at the departure attractions, I feel more tired than going to work, but everyone is quite happy, willing to get up early, and feel more about the ancient Egyptian civilization. ”

When he walked among the ruins of the temple with a history of three or four thousand years, and faced the majestic pyramids left by the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to human history, he instantly felt that this was the meaning of my coming out.

And when it came to the outbound travel "reserved program" shopping, everyone's enthusiasm was obviously not as high as imagined.

Although the things in the Khalili market are very cheap, but at first glance it is very Yiwu, the souvenirs that should be bought are in the scenic spot 1 dollar and the local vendors have been gambling, the most bought things are local chocolates or something, take them back to friends and colleagues to taste. ”

Foreign traders finally waited for the long-awaited Chinese tourists, shouting "Chinese no.."1 At the same time, they found that they not only learned to bargain in English, but also became more reluctant to "throw coins" as before.

As Zen said,Chinese tourists are increasingly understanding that the essence of going out to play is a sense of experience, not a superficial materialistic desire.

Although in this challenging era, the recession of the general environment and the involution of the industry have become the focus of people's attention, and consumers are also tending to be rational, affordable and cost-effective, the resilience and vitality of China's economy have always existed.

On February 17, a number of travel platforms released big data on holiday travel one after another. The data shows that during the Spring Festival, domestic tourism, outbound tourism, and inbound tourism blossomed in many places, with significant year-on-year growth, and many indicators exceeded the level of the same period in 2019.

In this Spring Festival, we have seen that third- and fourth-tier cities have shown great potential for "small snacks" in the county market; This Spring Festival, we have seen a substantial increase in cultural tourism and catering consumption, and the continuous release of consumption potential; This Spring Festival, we saw ......In any case, the new demand, new patterns and new scenarios of consumption are rich and vibrant, making a good start for the economic recovery.