Chinese fast food can not be McDonald's KFC because there is no listed company, can not go out of the regional market, the business model still need to be polished.

No public company

According to the China Securities Regulatory Commission Anhui Bureau recently announced the "Anhui jurisdiction to be the initial public offering of the company's counseling work basic situation table", Laoxiang chicken catering Co. In the list. According to Laoxiang chicken first counseling filing report, in September 2021, Laoxiang chicken and Guoyuan Securities signed a listing counseling agreement, plans to be listed on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In this regard, a responsible person of the company said no comment, all to official information shall prevail.

Publicly available information shows that Laoxiang chicken, formerly known as Feixi old hen, was founded in October 2003, upgraded to "Laoxiang chicken" in 2012, the restaurant dishes to chicken soup and various types of fried vegetables and rice-based.

For a long time, rice fast food, and even the whole Chinese fast food, have no access to the capital market. Previously, Countryman landed on the U.S. stock market in 2010, but was privatized and delisted in 2016 due to poor performance since then. Zhenkongfu had planned to make a dash for an IPO, but then failed to do so due to internal shareholding issues.

Can't get out of the regional market

In recent years, Chinese rice fast-food brands have entered a period of rapid scale, and one after another, thousands of store brands have emerged. At the end of last year, the countryside base of the group's countryside base and Mr. Rice stores reached a total of 1,000; in May this year, Laoxiang chicken also announced that the number of stores over a thousand. But compared with 7,000 KFC and 4,000 McDonald's, the size gap of Chinese fast food is still huge.

Behind the scale of the failure to go, is the Chinese fast food standardization degree is not high, which is difficult to solve the industry's pain points. And Jun senior chain expert Wen Zhihong said, compared to Western-style fast food to bake and fry-based, Chinese fast food cooking techniques are much more complex, such as stir-fry, deep frying, stir-fry, stewing, baking, steaming, etc., to improve the operating procedures to achieve the standardization of meals, the difficulties can be imagined.

Because of the low degree of standardization, Chinese fast food is mostly isolated, basically for regional brands. For example, Mr. Rice specializes in southern cities such as Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan and Changsha; the vast majority of Laoxiang Chicken's stores are located in Anhui province; and another catering company, Lao Niang-u, focuses on the Yangtze River Delta region.

Business model still needs to be polished

Lai Yang pointed out that cross-regional expansion of food and beverage brands needs to face multiple challenges, such as personnel management, supply chain security, and operational systems. "Unlike formal dining or hot pot, the survival of Chinese fast food is mainly a law of thin profit and high sales, if you want to cross-regional development, will inevitably push up the cost. To open a store in a new place, it takes time to train a new operations team; if you want to ensure quality control may also need to establish a centralized factory in the local area, these are costs. Overlaying the lower unit price of Chinese fast food further lengthens the capital return period."