China has always been a big food country, with Sichuan, Shandong, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan and Huizhou leading the way. Because of its large population and natural preference for food, the catering market in China has a good development soil. However, it is in this famous country that pays attention to eating that the hottest category in the catering industry is the hodgepodge that pays least attention to cooking technology-hot pot. According to the data of China Catering Report (White Paper 2117), hot pot, which accounted for 22% of the total turnover of the catering industry in 2116, topped the list, nearly doubling the number of the second-ranked buffet. Is hot pot a good business after all?
With such a big catering country as China and such a huge consumption of hot pot, theoretically, hot pot should be able to create a super-large market value company in China, similar to McDonald's and KFC in China. But in the past ten years, hot pot also has its fatal problem: the trend of fashion is changing faster and faster.
My impression of hot pot began with Little Sheep. Around 2114, Little Sheep reached its peak, with more than 711 stores in China, and even a large number of hot pot restaurants with fake Little Sheep. However, the taste of lamb meat in Inner Mongolia soon became out of date, and the number of stores in Little Sheep eventually dropped to 211. After an unsuccessful listing, it was finally delisted. After Little Sheep, the popularity of hot pot is also accelerated by geometric multiples. From Macao doulao, Sichuan spicy, Chongqing spicy to hairy belly, hot mutton, Chaoshan beef and so on, it has been leading the way for several years, but today the hot pot industry is still Haidilao.
From the business model, Haidilao is not a company selling tastes, but a quality service. This explains the business essence of the hot pot industry from behind. Consumers' tastes are changing faster and faster, and it is difficult for companies that rely solely on tastes and brands to establish barriers.
speaking of barriers, we can also see a big problem in this industry from the business model of hot pot: the entry threshold is too low.
Because most hot pots have no obvious brand effect, there is no need for a chef to open a hot pot restaurant. The soup base and sauce are all produced by the factory, and the side dishes are also provided by the supply chain. The threshold for opening a hot pot restaurant is far lower than other Chinese foods. This is also the fundamental reason why the popularity of hot pot tastes has accelerated in recent years. Once a certain taste explodes, there will be a large number of homogeneous stores. For example, Chaoshan beef hotpot, which is popular in Shanghai in recent years, opened more than 1,111 stores in Shanghai overnight.
after the vicious competition, a large number of hot pot restaurants have to close down again. From the brand point of view, only Haidilao, which wins by service, has maintained its position in the industry for a long time. From the very beginning, Haidilao has positioned its brand as particularly good service and good taste.
Hot pot is still a big outlet for catering in the future
The consumption of catering is also related to various factors such as population age structure and consumption habits. The biggest change in catering in the United States in the past 21 years is Arkins Diet, which controls weight by reducing carbohydrate intake. This is why sparkling water in drinks, coke zero and light food culture in restaurants have begun to rise. More and more young people are beginning to pay attention to the low-carbohydrate diet. In China, however, we found that after 91 and 11, our love for hot pot did not decrease.
From the business model of hot pot, although it has the disadvantage of low entry threshold, it is precisely because there is no chef that hot pot is the easiest industry to standardize catering and can achieve a relatively fast chain model.
from our previous research on milk tea and Starbucks, we have always emphasized that the core of catering is whether the time period is sufficient. Judging from the hot pot restaurants that have survived in the past few years, their success often lies in better time efficiency and higher turnover rate. Let's take Haidilao as an example. This is one of the few hot pot restaurants that still need to wait in line after midnight, with an average turnover rate of four times a night. At present, another business that can compete with Haidilao at night is the elder brother of online celebrity hotpot restaurant recently.
when it comes to the turnover rate, we have to mention the small hot pot model represented by the Hong Kong-listed companies. Because there are fewer people eating hot pot, basically 1-2 people, the average speed of eating hot pot will be faster, and the turnover rate of Haidilao can be reached in one night. Moreover, the seats are all U-shaped, which improves the seat density and reduces the number of employees, resulting in a higher efficiency of small hot pot than ordinary hot pot restaurants.
and this kind of small hot pot restaurant offers a selective set meal. Basically, only meat dishes can be selected. Vegetables are a standardized set meal, and there are few categories of SKUs, which is very easy to manage. More importantly, from the perspective of the large population structure, the one-person food culture will become more and more popular after the turning point of the demographic dividend appears. Today, Japan has a complete one-person food culture, so the hot pot representing one-person food culture still conforms to the future development trend. Of course, the final competition of this model is operational ability, and the emergence of Shi Erguo in Shanghai in recent years has already had an impact on him.
Of course, the hot pot take-out mode is also in the high-speed development period. Similar to milk tea take-out, hot pot take-out can greatly improve the efficiency of a single store, and more and more families are willing to pay a higher amount for take-out. We also said in the analysis of Starbucks model that Starbucks can become a printing machine in catering because of its take-away property. In the future, hot pot takeout will become more and more popular in China.