Today's catering industry is no longer an era when you can rent a storefront and do business.

In recent years, restaurant owners have obviously felt that they have learned so much about positioning, mode, operation, brand ... various courses and successful cases, but the more they learn, the more stupid they become, and the restaurant business has not improved.

This is because the environment and stage are different from others, and the path to success is naturally different and the logic is different.

but the underlying logic is relatively consistent about failure.

Recently, Ding Yi, the founder of Chuanting Barbecue, a catering boss who graduated from Tsinghua with an MBA but gave up his million-dollar salary to do cross-border barbecues, shared the underlying logic of three failures in combination with different stages of catering entrepreneurship.

success cannot be duplicated, but failure is alarming. I wish you less detours and less pits that others have smashed with real money on the road of catering business.

(Ding Yi, the founder of Chuanting Barbecue)

1

Positioning a market that no one else has done, 99% of which is self-satisfaction and death

In recent years, catering bosses have learned the most, and it is positioning. In general, positioning is a "one book, many benefits" thing, not only in catering, but also in all commercial fields.

The most classic case is Wang Laoji. Through positioning, a very common product has become highly differentiated, and the pain points of users have been met, occupying customers' minds (only drinking herbal tea and Wang Laoji), and finally repositioning competitors (drinks are divided into two types, Wang Laoji who does not get angry, and other drinks that get angry).

A deep study of positioning will help to form a late-comer advantage and crush others from the perspective of IQ. Therefore, the original intention of many small white people who do cross-line catering is: "The current restaurants are too stupid, and there are always users who can't meet their needs, so I'm going to locate the blue ocean market that they haven't found and differentiate."

but is there really such a blue ocean market that you can "make a profit" by positioning? Look at two cases first.

The first case is the SM-themed restaurant selling crayfish. Crayfish is a very popular item, and SM is also very curious. After its launch, customers flocked to it for a while, which was successful from the point of attracting everyone's attention.

However, the scenes of customers eating are divided into fast food, parties, banquets, etc., and doing cultural sightseeing is not a common consumption scene in the catering industry. Therefore, such highly differentiated positioning has earned enough gimmicks, but customers have no reason to spend again.

The logic of refreshing mint pot bottom is:

It sold badly in the end, because hot pot is full of excitement, and cold mint sounds strange, which violates the basic attributes of hot pot and is highly differentiated. It seems that a blank market has been found, but the consumers in this market are almost blank ... < P > Summary 1: < P > Through the above two cases, give a piece of advice to those cross-industry entrepreneurs who want to stand out in their positioning: catering is a Red Sea market, and many moves have already been played. If you choose a move that no one has played, 99% may be self-satisfied and suicidal.

differentiation is ok, but do you want to know clearly whether your differentiation is for drainage or continuous profit? Is it short-term or long-term? Entrepreneurs, no one is smarter than anyone else. Don't fall into self-satisfaction and think that you have discovered something great. In this era of fierce competition, we must carefully examine the positioning.

2

If business is good, you can make profits, raise funds and open branches? How naive!

after starting a store, entrepreneurs begin to plan their strategies. The most common idea is just like a line in Stephen Chow's movie "The God of Food":

"If it were me, I would change one store into two, two into four, four into eight, eight into sixteen, and then I would go public, raise funds, and speculate in stocks, and then I would make a fortune!"

When the business is good, you think that there is nothing wrong with your product and service model, and then you think about expanding profits, opening branches, financing, making crazy copies, and finally becoming a restaurant empire ... This idea is really naive.

Because there are countless bugs in every step from good business to profitability, from profitability to opening a branch, and from opening a branch to getting more profits, it is not a natural and logical chain.

Let's comb this chain carefully, and we will find that there are too many misunderstandings:

This is of course wrong. The most important factor that determines whether your business is good or not is not your own competitiveness, but the relationship between supply and demand in the market.

For example, if your restaurant is located in a particularly good location, and the competition is not particularly great, then as long as the products are not made exceptionally, the business will be good. But this does not mean that your products, prices and services have great advantages compared with your peers.

Good business doesn't mean that you can make a profit, which is actually something that many people who are new to the catering industry can't see through.

a good business means a large number of people, but whether the account can be settled or not is two different things. For example, in Sanlitun, the most prosperous business district in Beijing, there are hundreds of people around. You have opened a mala Tang, with a per capita income of 21. You survive with the strategy of low-price competition, and your business is sure to be good. However, the cost of rent is high, and it is difficult to make a profit if you sell more.

We all know the story about grandma's house and green tea. It was not profitable after turning over the channel for three times, and it was not profitable until turning over the channel for the fourth time. Therefore, it is not a natural link to have more guests and make profits.

The answer is no, because every store has its own cost structure characteristics, unless you can find a place that is completely consistent with the cost and traffic of your current location, but in fact such a place does not exist.

If we ignore this point and rashly open a branch, the customer base, cost structure and business strategy will be different, which is equivalent to starting a second business.

so, if you want to open a branch, first study clearly whether the profit model of the first store is universal and reproducible.

even if the profit model of a single store is suitable for many branches, does it mean that the more branches are opened, the more profits will be made? The answer is also no.

Because even if your restaurant is highly standardized, catering is a crowded industry, which means that you have to invest a lot of management energy.

I often tell many people that when I opened three or four stores, it was very cool, because I could manage it myself and managed it very well. But when I arrived at five or six stores, I had to hire a regional manager. The salary was 21,111 yuan. He also said that he would supervise and train managers to cooperate. At the same time, financial and purchasing personnel also came out.

It's equivalent to an office cost of more than 111,111 yuan a year, and these expenses may not be better managed in the end than when you are alone.

So restaurant chain management is a big pit. In this case, the more stores you open, the less money you may make.

Because catering is a labor-intensive industry, even if every store is profitable, it may not be able to obtain financing, because in the eyes of capital, catering is difficult to copy, especially dinner.

even if you are lucky enough to get the capital, can you open a shop all over the country? There are also many bugs in this link.

for example, if you are a street shop, it will be very difficult to copy it, because the location of street shops is difficult to standardize, and each location is different, so it will take a long time to talk about it, and it will be difficult to implement the store opening plan.

Summary 2:

So looking back at every link in this chain, there will be all kinds of pits that those of us who have not been engaged in catering for a long time or have no personal experience can hardly solve.

but the more fundamental reason that is difficult to solve is that I always feel smarter than others and don't believe in these pits. Therefore, I advise you to learn more from those catering predecessors you "despise". Don't think that you will solve these pits better than them. Look at your business objectively and avoid naive thoughts.

3

The catering industry is about to be harvested, and it will remain unchanged until it dies

In this rapidly changing commercial society, even if you have been an old catering gun for more than ten years, you may not be able to keep up with the market demand in business thinking mode. I have recently discovered two obvious phenomena.

In the past, catering was based on traffic thinking. We tried our best to get traffic regardless of the pipeline.

However, when I visited Chaoyang Joy City (one of the most popular shopping centers in China) a few days ago, I found that the level of every restaurant in it was very high, from VI design to food structure to price, but only four restaurants had significantly higher business than others, and the remaining dozens had almost the same attendance rate.

Therefore, it is almost impossible to gain average traffic and popularity and then make money by differentiating user experience in the future.

in this case, there is no advantage of backwardness, and even if there is, it will be released within two or three months. Therefore, we should consider how to optimize internal efficiency and cost structure. Under the same passenger flow and popularity, others don't make money, but I can make money.

In the past, I started my business from scratch, and now there are many stories about getting rich, but it will become more and more difficult in the future, because times are changing, and the times of Haidilao, Jiumaojiu and Xibei are gone forever!

In the past, it was possible to develop and accumulate resources at the same time, but now the resources in the catering industry are more and more concentrated, leaving few opportunities for self-made entrepreneurs in terms of cost, scale and benefit. And I guess, the catering industry has become an industry that is about to be harvested:

The first one is the food supply chain, such as COFCO and Shounong. Why do they harvest restaurants?

Because restaurants have entered the era of meager profit, it is difficult for catering enterprises to survive, but they are not afraid and it doesn't matter if they don't make money, because they can supply raw materials in the store, even if they earn 1% or 2%, it is an extra business.

the second is real estate tycoons, such as Vanke and Wanda.

Because of the competition in commercial real estate, people have turned their attention to the last mile. Commercial real estate is more like a life service platform, and some catering brands will be introduced. It doesn't matter if your restaurant doesn't make money. Through the drainage of your restaurant, the plot can appreciate.

the third is capital, such as hongyi.

such a big consortium can buy all kinds of restaurants, build an ecological circle, including the front-end and back-end, and find opportunities for appreciation of the projects through the good operation of the ecology. In this mode, the capital itself does not rely on the profit of restaurants to make money.

The fourth one is the Internet bigwigs, such as Meituan, Hungry, Alibaba and so on.

they cooperate with restaurants or set up their own smart restaurants to realize online and offline new retail.

The fifth big boss is the traditional catering big boss, such as Haidilao.

Haidilao once created his own brand, made small restaurants and laid out ecological circles, but at present, the national effect is not very satisfactory, so he may appreciate it by harvesting other catering brands.

Summary 3:

So without these forward-looking thinking, or a clear understanding of the catering industry, business thinking still stays in the past, then the future may be very depressed, because the past achievements can no longer be realized. But this is the gift of the times, and we have to embrace with open arms.