Yin Feng of Coffee Wings: The Entrepreneurial Story of the "Fairy Sister"

Entrepreneurship is the process by which entrepreneurs and their business partners optimize and integrate the resources they possess or the resources they are able to possess through their own efforts, so as to create a greater economic or social value. Entrepreneurship is an act of thinking, reasoning and judgment that requires entrepreneurs and their entrepreneurial partners to organize and manage their business, and to use their services, technologies and artifacts to operate. The following is my help to organize the coffee wings Yin Feng: "fairy sister" entrepreneurial story, for your reference, I hope to help friends in need.

A real entrepreneur, can not just rely on the bold hither and thither, and can not be in the college classroom sermon out. He must be in the tide of the market economy, climbing and rolling in the storm of the hammer in the growth.

As usual, Yin Feng was having dinner at Coffee Wing's store in Beijing's Shimao Department Store when a waitress came over and told her, "Mr. Yin, there's a customer who wants your autograph, and he seems to be a college student." Yin Feng went out and looked around, a college student who had just graduated six months earlier and wanted to ask Yin Feng to sign his diploma.

"How can this be? How can I sign my name on such a serious document as a diploma!" He was so kind that Yin Feng took a picture with him.

For the shopkeepers here, this is no longer a surprise. Their boss is not only an entrepreneur, but also a star. Ever since Tianjin TV's "Not Yours" program went viral, Yin Feng has become the face of Coffee Wings, and she's even more famous than her company. "There was once a father and daughter from Xinjiang who spent more than a year using colorful pages from various fashion magazines to assemble a colorful vase as tall as me and send it to the company, and the spelling on the vase was I Love Wings of Coffee Fairy Sister." Yin Feng was touched to say.

Beautiful, temperament, popularity, but also a chain of more than 20 directly-managed stores, 50 franchise restaurant entrepreneurs, in the era of new media, which in itself combines into a point of communication can be detonated. Yin Feng, known as the "fairy sister" by her fans, her favorite line is Chen Ou's confession in the famous advertisement: "You only smell my perfume, but you don't see my sweat. ...... The road is not free of questions and ridicule, but it's not a good place to be. that so what?"

"On the surface, I'm a white, rich and glamorous, but I'm an entrepreneur first and foremost, doing the most grounded service industry." Yin Feng said, "Coffee Wings has come to this day because of the perseverance and dedication of me and my team to touch the ground."

Three kinds of people around: rich and handsome, rich and powerful

Since joining the BOSS group of "Not Yours", Yin Feng has to set aside six days a month to record the program, starting from 9:00 a.m. until midnight, and recording two periods a day, which has now exceeded 500 periods. In the predominantly male BOSS group, Yin Feng leaves an impression on the audience that he is "reasonable, favorable and courteous": he likes to consider issues from the position of the job seekers, and is not as aggressive as he should be.

When Yin Feng joined the show in 2010, Coffee Wings only had 14 stores in Changsha, and had yet to make it out of Hunan in the true sense of the word. But with the popularity of "Not Yours", more and more people know about Coffee Wings, which creates a strange paradox: the reputation is out there, but customers can't find the stores.

"Especially Beijing and Tianjin, the former is the capital city and most of the owners' companies are also in Beijing, so it has a big influence, while Tianjin is the 'mother house' of the program 'Not Yours', which has a very high ratings." Yin Feng said, "Since 2012, we have been considering moving our management headquarters to Beijing, and using Beijing and Tianjin as the starting point for Coffee Wings to go nationwide."

Yin Feng chose Shimao Department Store for her first store in Beijing. She valued the location between Gongti and Sanlitun as a "distribution center" for Beijing's new consumer culture. But when she talked to the head of World Trade Center about moving in, she was told that the renovation of the store had to be completed within two months. Yin Feng said there was no problem, and promised to move in on time.

After signing the contract, the executive invited Yin Feng to dinner and asked, slightly uneasily, "Ms. Yin, is Coffee Wing your main business or a side business?" Yin Feng said of course it's her main business, she's been doing it for 12 years. "That's good, I always see you on TV and thought you were a celebrity playing for votes! I was really worried that Coffee Wings was affecting the speed at which we could open stores." In the end, it only took 50 days for Coffee Wings to renovate and become the first catering company to enter Shimao Department Store.

And what makes Yin Feng keep crying and laughing is that many people thought it was after "Not Yours" that Coffee Wing came out of nowhere. "We entered the northern market, a bit like when Niu Gensheng do Mengniu road: first do the market, then do the product." Yin Feng said, but we have actually accumulated enough experience after more than 10 years of operation and groping in Changsha.

2013 was the only year in the history of Coffee Wings that they didn't open a directly-managed store, because that was the year they took on 50 franchisees. "Although under the same brand, but direct and franchise expansion methods, management methods, for the chain industry is very different, I worry that the two at the same time to do too much of a challenge for us, so it was suspended last year, direct camp, to focus on franchising, to put it bluntly, is to feel how to better establish the service system of the wing of the coffee, the management system, through the data to operate, rather than Simple human input." Yin Feng said.

In the "Not Yours" BOSS group, Yin Feng is a rich white boss, surrounded by other male bosses are basically handsome, and she dealt with the most people every day, in fact, or employees or partners, with the Internet, these two types of people are either "xx" or "landlord". "The most important thing is that she has to deal with employees and partners on a daily basis. In other words, Yinfeng has to constantly switch between several modes of work.

Yin Feng came from a family of revolutionary cadres and grew up as a lady of the house, so when she became the boss, she was still used to being "serious". After opening several stores in Changsha, she found that communication with her staff was often a problem as her management radius increased. "I always point out the problems to the employees who serve the dishes in a very professional and civilized language, but they simply don't understand, and the problems remain after I'm finished." Yin Feng said, "Then I realized that it was myself who had the problem, and had to change, to communicate with the employees in a language they understood."

And in the BOSS group, which is mostly Internet bosses, Yin Feng thinks his biggest contribution to the show "Not Yours" is to change people's understanding of the most traditional industry of catering. "In the beginning, some bosses used to laugh at me for opening a restaurant, so I shot back at them: how many years has your company been around? Is your company profitable?"

In Yin Feng's eyes, contribution number two was to change the structure of the industry's workforce. With the help of this program, Yin Feng recruited a large number of college graduates from higher education institutions, which in the past, it is unlikely. "The traditional concept of China's food service industry, the threshold is low, the staff generally low education, so that many college students and even returnees tend to rush, it is possible?"

There are a lot of young people, thousands of miles to defect to the wings of the coffee, just to work in the wings of the coffee, but also in the parents, family members escorted to the wings of the coffee. "Now most of the young people have little social experience, look at the problem is relatively simple, think the fairy sister looks very bright, thought into the coffee wing of their own must be the same, usually I will talk to them, let them know, everything has a process, and you see the bright just the results are not the process, and would like to take a shortcut to learn only the results do not learn the process, this thing is basically not! This is basically impossible." The company's main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.

Selling is not a meal, it's social

In Yin Feng's words, her parents are "red and specialized old **** production party members", and her expectations are not rich at all, but a stable, decent job full of bookish flavor. When Yin Feng filled in the college entrance examination, her parents chose the most popular international trade English major for her. The first time I saw this, I was able to get my hands on the first thing I wanted to do, and I was able to get my hands on the second thing I wanted to do.

However, Yin Feng's route to the university was to be an artistic youth, so even after she graduated from the university, her friends around her were still in the same circle. At that time, she was in Changsha, a variety of "bureau", basically all the major local newspapers, publishing houses, television stations, painting and calligraphy, music, film and television, and other cultural circle of friends, these friends of Yin Feng as a circle of an important "think-tank", that is, to see her more ideas, The first time I saw her was when she was a young girl, and she had a lot of ideas.

After working in two state-owned enterprises for a few years, the creative Yin Feng finally could not resist the nine-to-five, decided to start a business. She said that school began to love to read the "21st Century Newspaper", the newspaper often mentioned the concept of the chain is very attractive to her, so the earliest business choice is an Italian clothing brand to join, and a girlfriend *** with to do, Yin Feng is responsible for the selection of goods and store design, especially the latter, showing the Yin Feng very sharp business aesthetics. "Window clothing how to arrange, need to add what accessories on the clothes, how to constantly adjust the changes to attract attention, I am very passionate about figuring out these things, think it's fun. Over the course of a year, we really made a ton of money. "Yin Feng said.

In 2000, Yin Feng decided to start a café. One motivation was that it was hard to find a restaurant to socialize at when they were all friends gathering: it was either too noisy or not toned down enough. This is when a new rising Chinese and Western 丨 restaurant in the south came into Yin Feng's sights. This restaurant is playing the western sign, there is enough tone, Yin Feng quickly signed a franchise agreement with the other party, and it is exclusive.

But as soon as he did, Yin Feng realized that what he wanted was not the same thing at all. The food to do how to do, how to design the service process, how to manage the staff, etc., Yin Feng as the boss is completely unwork. she decided to go to Guangzhou in person, go to the headquarters to do the internship. At that time, the chain's boss told her that she could come, but there were two conditions: first, she had to wear the uniform of a Green Court waitress, and second, she had to do what the other employees did, so she couldn't desert. Yin Feng swore that there was no problem. When she arrived in Guangzhou, she directly checked into a five-star hotel and went to work the next day.

The first day down, Yin Feng almost can not stand, back to the hotel tired on the bed, did not walk for so long experience, feet hit four bubbles, instantly aggrieved and cried, and thought why do so to their own suffering ah, began to waver, want to stick around, tangled up in the night. Woke up the next morning, thought, is their own choice, but also embarrassed to regret, gritted his teeth and put on a band-aid and went to work. So, I really insisted for a month. After returning to Changsha, feeling like an expert, full of confidence, the year the largest and most eye-catching 1600 square meters of Changsha curry restaurant to achieve profitability.

As a franchisee, the advantage is that under the tree, many things can actually not have to worry too much, but Yin Feng is not this kind of person, she always has a variety of strange and bizarre new ideas, to the headquarters of the people of the great pressure, the feeling is not to do franchising, but to create another brand to open a directly managed stores. By 2003, Yin Feng's franchise contract expired and she decided to do her own personalized curry restaurant.

The news made many Changsha "tycoon" ecstatic, because it means that Yin Feng is not subject to the "exclusivity treaty" constraints, free to join her to give up the brand, a very short period of time, a number of Western-style cafes in Changsha City, put up The signboards were erected in Changsha in a very short time. The first time I saw this, I had to go to the hospital to get a prescription for a new drug.

Yin Feng knows what her core competitiveness is, and that is the circle.

The venture coincided with the birth of Yin Feng's second child, and on the 28th day after the birth, she began to build momentum for Coffee Wings, organizing a number of large-scale events. She first invited the famous host He Gui, Marco, for the coffee wing to record "store song", finished and invited people from Japan to make the song into a small CD-ROM that was not yet popular in the country at that time, repackaging, about 10,000 such CD-ROMs were made and given to friends around. At the same time, we participated in the recording of the former Supergirl and Hunan TV Star Academy programs, and invited the final winner of the program to the Coffee Wings, which was packaged in the form of a fan meeting. This series of activities has made the coffee wing quickly become a new landmark in Changsha's cultural circle, and many program groups simply take the coffee wing as a "royal recording site".

But with more and more stores and more and more business, Yin Feng began to feel the bottom of the barrel, and in 2006, the bank wanted to auction off the downtown office building where her first store was located, with a starting price of less than 10 million yuan for more than 6,000 square meters. What Yin Feng thought was that if she bought it, she could make it her utopia, the most fashionable place in Changsha for the petit bourgeoisie. She didn't even think about the price, she directly participated in the bidding, and finally took the building for nearly 30 million yuan.

Back to the company, she asked the financial account how much cash can be pumped, the financial told her, far from enough! At that time there happened to be two large stores under construction to invest more than 10 million dollars in capital. Now Yin Feng anxious, call friends one by one to borrow working capital, although a lot of help, but there is still a gap. Finally, Yin Feng's sister suggested that the whole family, including parents, sister and their own all real estate are mortgaged to the bank, only to settle. "At that time, when I saw my mom and dad signing, my tears came out." Yin Feng said, he only cared about running forward, put the whole family on the edge of the danger of life, no choice, Coffee Wings this thing must be done.

Soon afterward, he used the money from the bank loan to pay back his friends, and then used the water from the coffee wings to pay back the bank.

The first thing I did was to get the money back from my friends, and then I used the water from the coffee wing to pay back the bank.

Through this incident, Yin Feng realized that doing business can never rely on passion alone. Later, the cost of opening Coffee Wings stores in Changsha was reduced from an irrational 10 million yuan to millions one after another, and Yin Feng began to enter the role of manager. It wasn't until 2012 that Coffee Wings opened directly-managed stores in Beijing and Tianjin, and in 2013 that it opened franchises. "Some people see that I've been on TV alone for the past two years, but actually we've been building up our strength." Yin Feng said.

In 2014, Coffee Wings will launch a new brand: mini Wings, a younger, more fashionable brand. Yin Feng says it's about being a third space for Chinese people outside of work and life. "Chinese people are more introverted, unlike Westerners, just drink a cup of coffee, our social activities always need to use a certain form of media, the reason why the coffee wing is a cafe is to form a social media through the food and beverage category that Chinese people are used to." And what makes Yin Feng proud is that, as a southern chai restaurant brand of coffee wings, came to the north actually stood firm. "Look at other purely southern coffee chains, most of them returned in defeat."

Yin Feng said the happiest thing now is flying, because he can sleep. "I'm lucky to get six hours of sleep a day now, or four hours in most cases." A classmate who is now an executive at a multinational company once said this to another classmate, "Yin Feng is the pettiest one among our classmates, but do you know why her career now exceeds that of many others? Because she always wants results for what she has decided, and not only says, but does it to the end."