The development of Hunan cuisine brand

The Hunan cuisine is sweeping across the country in recent years with a high speed rarely seen in history due to its strong aggressive flavor.

Hunan's Hunan cuisine bosses are mostly bold, love to learn, foresight, dare to deny themselves, dare to push back to the beginning, dare to positive innovation.

The following is a case study of a Hunan cuisine brand in our service. We are now sharing the strategy and logic behind the whole case, and hope it can inspire you.

The founder of the project, Mr. Jiang, a chef by trade, started his business from scratch, running a Hunan cuisine restaurant called Private Cuisine in Xiangtan, Hunan.

Earlier with their own hand of excellent cooking skills personally spoon, hard to the fly museum operating hot for more than a decade, and then gradually into the chain development.

But because of the private kitchen this trademark can not be registered, so set up a new brand called XXXX,

But, millions of dollars to cast down, this new brand landed on the ground, boiled a few years have been not hot.

So they invested millions of dollars to upgrade, re-planning to land a flagship store,

But the new store landed not only business did not meet expectations, while the performance of the original two old stores also gradually decline.

But the new store did not meet the expected business, while the performance of the two old stores also declined.

We then began to research the entire project.

Why is the first store doing so well, but the second store is not doing so well, and the third store is not doing so well? What was the problem?

We analyzed the research and came up with the following conclusions.

First, the new brand recognition is low.

The original private kitchen brand name is easy to recognize, easy to spread, said once can remember.

And the new brand name, XXXX, not only does not have any value orientation and positive associations. Instead, it is too connotative, resulting in this new brand name, high recognition costs, high memory costs, high communication costs. Secondly, coupled with a designer who does not understand brand marketing, in order to pursue the elegant aesthetics of the design, the new brand XXXX, the design of even the basic degree of recognition, including the brand's logo, but also the design of the cloud, the design not only did not reduce the cognitive burden on consumers, but also into the creation of information asymmetry.

Secondly, the brand has no unique value, no clear reason to buy.

We concluded through consumer communication and the distribution of 2,000 questionnaires:

XXXX is a kind of rough cognition in consumers' mind,

drowning in the homogenization of several Hunan restaurants, the overall dining experience has no distinctive value of the memory point. There is no differentiated reason for consumers to travel three to five kilometers to eat, and the existing customer base is almost exclusively random customers from the surrounding kilometers who crave convenience.

Previously, there was a problem of information asymmetry in the private dining room, such as unclear value claims and unclear reasons for purchase. But the reason why it has been on fire for so many years is firstly because the competition was not so fierce in those days, and secondly because it has accumulated a large number of repeat purchases from loyal customers through years of word-of-mouth precipitation. A new brand has no unique differentiated value, no clear reason to buy, and naturally no advantage to start customers.

Third, there is no advantage in product flavor.

The original private kitchen can continue to fire for so many years, the core of the real reason is the founder of the personal procurement, strict control of good ingredients, personally spoon, in the product flavor all year round adhere to the taste of Hunan soil dishes. However, once on the road of chain management, the whole set of product production system must be weakened on the chef's technical dependence, go standardized, industrialized, packet operation process, in the product taste is also forced by the original Xiangtan flavor, upgraded to a composite seasoning flavor. The composite seasoning flavor of the dishes with the original local dishes, the flavor of the dishes can not be compared.

Opening a couple of stores is okay, once you want to make it big to go to the chef, take the road of standardization, which inevitably creates the advantage of sacrificing taste. And once the sacrifice of taste advantage, the loss of the most core competitiveness. Only in the environment, model, brand, marketing, efficiency, price and other aspects of force.

This is why, we see a lot of Hunan cuisine chain brand, the sky smashed a lot of advertising, a variety of business model innovation, and a variety of high small fresh decoration environment, as well as a variety of promotional specials, etc.

But the final bill will find that the per capita only forty to fifty dollars, and a lot of them are even as low as thirty dollars, while many of the fly museums can be done! The reason for the passenger unit price of seventy or eighty.

Because the disadvantages of the chain Xiangcai brand are precisely the advantages of these fly taverns. So it is impossible to form a harvest of these fly houses.

Secondly, the whole back-end industrial chain system supply of Hunan cuisine is incomplete, the distribution system is not mature, the lack of large-scale high-quality raw material planting supply bases, but also the lack of large-scale characteristics of the auxiliary materials, seasonings, equipment and other stable and mature suppliers.

In other words, in Hunan, to put a single price of 100 yuan Xiangcai brand, to 100 directly-managed stores, mature suppliers are not, many have to rely on their own to rebuild a standardized supply chain system.

Fourth, the model is too heavy, the environment is old.

XXXX's mode and decoration style is on the fast-fashion side, and the fast-fashion style itself is a short-term trend that can't withstand the precipitation of time. And the depreciation rate of the decoration space is very high, so only open two or three years the overall environmental experience will not have an advantage.

At the same time, the main customer group of the fast fashion model is the young people with light socialization, which is basically based on the four-person table. It is suitable to take Pinmao channel, relying on the turnover rate to win.

Channel to go and street store, street store main customer base and consumption scenarios are based on family dinners, friends gatherings, humane walking banquets, light business, as well as small banquets, that is to say, the community street store, the demand for round tables and private rooms is greater.

The 800-square-foot fast-fashion restaurant opened in the street store community, the result is that the four-person table in the hall is not enough to sit, the round table in the private room is not enough. The overall utilization of space area are not reasonable, so that the ping efficiency, people efficiency are low.

Including the product structure, the pricing system is not right. Because, in Xiangtan's neighborhoods and streets, open 800 ping of fast-fashion Hunan cuisine mode, this thing itself is not done right.

In summary. There are four core reasons for the performance growth bottleneck.

First, low brand recognition, low awareness, resulting in stores with low natural customer acquisition.

Second, the brand has no unique value, resulting in no reason for consumers to run from three to five kilometers away to eat, and can only pick up some of the neighborhood residents' business.

Third, there is no advantage in the taste of the product, resulting in a low repurchase rate.

Fourth, 800 ping fast fashion model opened in the community, resulting in the model is too heavy, people efficiency, ping efficiency are low and so on.

The above is just from the outside to the inside, a single dimension to analyze the conclusion.

If the spatial perspective is widened, from the macro-competitive pattern of analysis, the actual situation is even less optimistic.

The whole Xiangtan, store more people less, serious supply exceeds demand, Xiangcai brand homogenization is extremely serious, most of them are relying on heavy investment, heavy operation, cost-effective to build barriers, basically a single-store investment model are in 3 years or so back to the capital.

Can do within 1 year to recover the investment model of the Xiangcai brand, the whole Xiangtan not more than 5% (single store investment of more than 1.5 million stores) This is still the street store. The situation is even worse for Pin Pin Mao.

Finally, we decided to re-adjust the strategic positioning of the enterprise through many seminars and evaluations.

One, a single point of breakthrough, focusing on Xiangtan boiled live fish.

Why?

Because the core of management is balance, and the core of strategy is breakthrough. The core of breakthrough is firstly to identify and judge strategic opportunities, and secondly to solve internal problems.

It's called opportunity over value and value over problem.

So why the focus on Xiangtan boiled live fish?

There are several reasons.

1, there is a cultural force.

The Xiangtan boiled live fish dish was created in the Qing Dynasty during the time of Zeng Guofan's victory. It has experienced hundreds of years of precipitation and inheritance, with extremely strong vitality and cultural origin.

2, there is regional potential.

Xiangtan boiled fish is wonderful in the word "Xiangtan". It is the only Xiangtan dish in the Xiangtan city named local dishes, similar to Tianjin dog meat buns, Nanjing duck blood vermicelli soup, Peking duck, itself occupies a regional potential, is a mind **** knowledge of the public **** cultural assets. Have made into a local food business card, local characteristics of the signature gene.

3, there is the era of forward-looking potential.

Xiangtan Municipal Government, Xiangtan Industry Association is vigorously promoting the "one side of the landscape one side of the people, Xiangtan celebrities Xiangtan flavor" food culture strategy. Encourage all walks of life catering people, digging historical and cultural origins. Vigorous innovation and promotion.

At the same time, the government funded the full integration of financial resources to promote the image of Xiangtan food culture and tourism, and comprehensively build Xiangtan food, beauty, celebrities, folklore and other cultural and tourism industries.

The biggest core key of the strategy is to follow the trend, and the biggest potential is the opportunity of the times.

4, have the mind **** knowledge.

We have learned that 85% of consumers know and have eaten live boiled fish in Xiangtan through the distribution of 1,000 consumer mind research. When asked what are the best specialties in Xiangtan, 29.7% of consumers recommended this Xiangtan Boiled Live Fish to us.

At the same time, the research found that Xiangtan boiled live fish has a very high value recognition in cities other than Xiangtan, such as Changsha, Zhuzhou, and even Shenzhen and other markets. And it has the foundation to go to the whole country.

5, not occupied.

Xiangtan boiled fish this public **** cultural assets, has not been found by other brands in the market, identify and occupy, can be said to be a huge strategic gap in opportunity.

6, high sense of value.

Xiangtan boiled live fish occupies the unique Xiangjiang River water advantage in the Xiangtan basin, which has a high sense of value and is a good seed.

7, high-frequency and widespread demand.

For young and old alike, the customer base is widespread. And no fish is not a banquet, with the explosive properties of the banquet scene.

8, supply chain stability.

Compared with chicken and duck categories, the risk factor is lower, compared with cattle and sheep categories, the price factor is more stable. And breeding and supply chain system is more stable. It has the basic support to make it bigger and stronger to open hundreds of stores. To sum up, Xiangtan boiled fish has the advantages of cultural origin, regional potential, sense of value and stable supply chain.

We finally decided to focus on Xiangtan Boiled Fish and use this product to take on the whole strategic breakthrough task,

But Xiangtan Boiled Fish is only a dish with cognitive ****, to really take on the task of strategic customer acquisition, in addition to the need to give it a cultural story, and more importantly, to give this product a unique differentiated value. Therefore, we recommend retaining the genetic basis of this product, which needs to be de-innovated.

Two, through product innovation, give the product a unique value.

1. Another major specialty of Xiangtan, lotus seed and bamboo fungus, is added to this dish. At the same time, some innovations have been made in the development of product technology;

2. Preferring the most tender fish with meat around 2.5 catties, as well as building its own three-stage breeding base to purify the meat quality and taste of the fish;

3. Cooking in a small pot with a bright stop; a single pot is ready to be burned,

4. Developing and designing a tableware with the shape of a golden yuanbao;

5. Designing a ritual of experiencing a dish by tasting soup first and then eating the fish. then rice, and then experience the ritual and serving words, and so on.

Focusing on Xiangtan's signature dish of boiled fish is just a strategic breakthrough that gives consumers a clear reason to buy and gives the brand a better chance of gaining customers. However, to truly sustained and stable growth, the core of the key or rely on the entire value chain of resource allocation.

Three, the main "banquet" scene, to promote the "delicious" strategy, reconfigure the value chain.

Why?

Because the unsatisfied consumer demand is the center of gravity of the enterprise's strategic strength, and the origin of the resource allocation of the entire value chain. Xiangtan's Hunan food market can be broadly categorized into the following four types of businesses.

1, super brand

Main clientele: salaried families, white-collar young class. Consumption scenario: small family dinners, eating, drinking and playing, leisure and light socializing.

The advantages of the brand are channel protection and high brand exposure. The disadvantage is that the product is weak, the rental property is high, and limited by the customer base, the traffic is limited, and there is not much porridge.

2, fly house

In fact, the third and fourth tier cities really have the spending power of the clientele, is rarely run complex to consume. They like to run fly tavern, because many fly tavern owner himself is the chef. At the same time, their own procurement, their own spoon, see the food order, fresh ingredients, taste really do better.

But fly taverns, most of the environment is simple, poor experience, food safety and hygiene is not guaranteed, can not meet the needs of social banquets. If, that is, you want to eat and want to invite guests to have face, then you have to go to the high-end clubs.

3, similar to the Grand Hotel, private custom club

This type of restaurant, the main clientele is to Xiangtan high consumption of business and political people, the consumer scene to pure business banquets, government receptions. Advantage is that the ingredients are fresh, the chef technology is good, good service, the environment is also good; disadvantage is that the unit price is too high, basically in the 200 up to go, the cost-effectiveness is low, so the base of the customer base is also small.

4, community store brand

Similar to XXXX this kind of brand. The main clientele: families in the surrounding neighborhoods. Consumption scenarios to family dinners, friends gatherings, people walk around the banquet, light business and small banquets.

The advantages are good environment, good service, cost-effective, face. Weaknesses are weak product power, composite flavor, seasoning flavor, packetization,