Haidilao and Yili jointly launched the "milk fizzling pot"** to test the water in the direction of catering + retail, what is the meaning behind this?
This article was originally published by Red Meal Network (ID: Hongcan18), author: Hong Jun.
Sichuan-style hot pot is often spicy and unhappy, and because of this, as long as anything enters the pot of hot pot, it seems that it always needs to "follow the local customs". But recently, the "milk fizz pot" jointly launched by Yili and Haidilao Delivery has some different characteristics.
Recently, Yili and Haidilao Delivery have made a new attempt in China: the two sides jointly launched the "milk sizzling pot", a new creative combination of hot pot + milk, which has caused consumers to plant grass one after another. A food blogger posted a note on the social platform saying that he recently saw a Haidilao delivery store selling a product called "milk sizzling pot" in Ele.me, which not only has a customized pot base, but also comes with three boxes of Yili skim pure milk, "It looks very novel, I haven't eaten this kind of cross-border mix and match eating method in the past, so I want to buy and try it."
It is reported that the "milk sizzle pot" is a new combination of the bottom of the pot jointly launched by Yili and Haidilao Delivery, driven by the Ele.me platform meal zero cooperation IP project "FUN Pairing". The inspiration for this new cross-border eating method is Haidilao's popular overseas "Spicy Milk Pot": it uses an exclusive spicy butter flavor soup base and combines the milk of the skim process to make the bottom of the pot more spicy and creamy, so that customers who are not usually good at eating spicy food can easily control it.
In the market in the past two years, brand co-branding cross-border marketing is not uncommon. But this time, the "milk fizzer" is a bit different: the two sides are not simply a joint marketing, but to further drive the normal sales of retail brands in the catering channel with products. Therefore, on the surface, this is another cross-border attraction at the product level, but in fact, it points to a larger name, that is, the re-departure of catering retail.
In such a combination of "hitchhikers", catering brands, retail products, and takeaway platforms are indispensable.
Catering retailing starts again
Retailing of food and beverage sounds like a professional word, but in fact, many people have consumed it. For example, hot pot restaurants sell packaged hot pot ingredients. Tea shops sell tea bags, gift boxes, and more. Especially during the epidemic, many stores will sell some of their own ingredients to consumers. But in general, compared to dine-in and take-out of catering. In the past, most of the catering retailization was tepid, on the one hand, it lacked fist products, and on the other hand, it also lacked enough deep user minds.
There are several reasons for this situation, the first is that the scale of catering and retail cannot rise. Dine-in is the foundation of catering, and the rise of takeaway is also due to the intervention of Internet platforms, which has greatly improved the efficiency of matching supply and demand, so as to form scale and continuous purchase. From the very beginning, catering retail has been more of a supplementary form of sales, and even has some inventory consumption and capacity reuse purposes. Generally speaking, catering companies often don't put too much effort into how to design products, promote and open sales channels from the perspective of retail channels. Because that's another set of logic, and it's not what the restaurant industry is best at.
For consumers, leaving the experience-oriented dine-in and efficiency-oriented takeaway scenes, it is also a headache to buy some ingredients provided by catering brands to go home to do them. For example, companies that focus on Northwest cuisine sell packaged lamb chops, and the ingredients are good, but it is not enough to really cook a meal. This is also the logic of the fresh community store, it will organize a complete supply plan from vegetarian dishes to meat dishes and even condiments around how to make a table of dishes.
In this series of fun activities organized by Ele.me, a different way of thinking is reflected. Through the establishment of Ele.me, Yili and Haidilao, two absolute leading brands in their respective fields, have come together, and the cooperation between the two sides has not only stopped at the marketing level, but also moved to the product level, creating a brand-new and unprecedented way of eating and taste in the market, which is a very novel experience for consumers. At the stall of the Spring Festival reunion and reunion, this "spicy milk" new and peculiar taste of hot pot caters to the market's emotional demand for innovation and change in traditional reunions.
In other words, the spicy milk flavor is actually a popular idea of an Internet e-commerce platform, a test in the direction of catering + retail. One of the differences between Internet e-commerce and offline physical retail is that it uses Internet tools to gain insight into consumer mentality and consumption trends, and drives sales by highlighting popular products. Generally speaking, offline stores do not have explosive thinking, but emphasize more on the promotion of explosive products to long-tail products through store scenes.
Why is Ele.me indispensable?
Of course, such a test is first of all a careful polishing at the product level. Only then can the product really explode. But it's different from the co-branding of Luckin and Moutai. This product needs to be created by three parties.
The birth of "milk sizzling pot" is inseparable from Haidilao's accurate grasp of the new taste of hot pot, and it is also inseparable from the cross-border innovation provided by Yili's products. So, an interesting question arises: why is Ele.me also essential?
We can compare it to the Heytea Fendi co-branded case that was also popular last year. In this case, Heytea did more of a product-level flash mob marketing. The product is not a regular product of the brand, nor does it really tie in Fendi's various bags and apparel. In other words, it is more of a product-level cross-border marketing rather than a catering + retail, and the core is still catering. The role of Fendi is simply to provide traffic topics**.
But this time the "milk fizzer" is not like that. From the background of the birth of "Fun Partner" and the long-term creation of the platform, it can be seen that behind it is Ele.me's hope to promote catering brands to have one more growth point in addition to dine-in and take-out, so the platform is also deeply involved in product to marketing. As mentioned earlier, the catering industry is actually difficult to do retail, after all, the genes are different. However, the intervention of the platform can revitalize the resources of its various formats, and at the same time act as an intermediary party, the process of matchmaking and coordination and cooperation, so that catering + retail brand + Ele.me has more opportunities to achieve 1+1+1>3.
The embodiment of this joint force not only comes from the big data provided by the product side, but also reflects the evolution of Ele.me through takeaway to instant retail, and knows more about what kind of products consumers need in what scenarios. This makes up for the most important shortcoming of catering + retail. Moreover, in the process, the platform can also use its own traffic to help cross-border goods strengthen their awareness of consumption scenarios and further promote product sales through digital marketing methods.
You know, even the best catering brands in China, in fact, most of them don't invest heavily in marketing. For F&B businesses, the store is the best advertisement, and the dishes are the best products and flyers. In the era of dine-in, the store is the scene, and there is really no need to think about what other scenarios and needs consumers have, but today's market is different.
As the tentacles and scenarios of many brand rebirths, how to play and explore new structural opportunities in this system is actually in need of more vertical segmentation consulting and "external brain" help for catering companies. If the platform has the ability to meet this part of the brand's needs through its technology, data, market insight capabilities, and platform cross-border supply, it can become the brand's closest comrade-in-arms, not just an ordinary distribution channel. Of course, in this process, the brand itself will ultimately benefit from the expansion of consumer influence and the structural new growth of business.