Recently, the catering circle has been discussing two "online celebrity" Lanzhou Lamian Noodles stores: Chen Xianggui and Ma Jiyong, both of which have been valued at 1 billion, especially Sequoia Capital.

At present, these two brands have only a dozen stores. How did they achieve such a high valuation without meeting the requirements of the number of stores of these big brands in the market?

Two new faces of Lanzhou Lamian Noodles appeared in Shanghai, with exquisite and fashionable decoration, which refreshed everyone's understanding of the traditional ramen noodle restaurant, and the unit price of customers rose from ten yuan to 26 yuan at once.

according to the observation of catering O2O, the core element of Lanzhou Lamian Noodles's capital attention and heavy investment is image upgrade+product mix, which improves its profitability.

In 22, the Shanghai catering research group organized by catering O2O entered Chen Xianggui. At that time, there were only three stores, and the highest monthly performance was one million.

1

Street snacks are well-known in the world

There are nearly 2, super-first-tier cities

Starting from the street snacks of "two pots on one panel, two benches and one table", Lanzhou beef noodles have developed from a small store in the market into a big industry with more than 5, stores and a big market with operating income exceeding 8 billion yuan.

Lanzhou beef noodles, with a history of 1 years, have spread all over major cities in mainland China, enjoying the reputation of "the first face of China", from simple workshops set up on the street to well-decorated food culture labels.

according to statistics, there are nearly 2, Lanzhou beef noodle shops in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other super-first-tier cities, including more than 52 in Shanghai, accounting for more than a quarter.

according to the catering O2O research group, the reason why there are the most Lamian Noodles in Lanzhou in Shanghai is that: firstly, Shanghainese love noodles, especially fine noodles; Second, in the early years, many Anhui people in Henan Province opened many noodle shops in Shanghai, integrating the new noodle shops on the outside, especially in Lamian Noodles, Lanzhou.

Lanzhou beef noodles, which was founded in 1915, is world-famous for its unique style of "the soup is clear, the meat is rotten, and the noodles are fine."

authentic Lanzhou Lamian Noodles pays attention to "one clear, two white, three red and four green", one clear (soup clear), two white (radish white), three red (Chili oil red), four green (coriander, garlic green) and wuhuang (noodle Huang Liang).

Lanzhou Beef Lamian Noodles has already gone abroad, even more so. According to official statistics, there are more than 1 "Lanzhou Beef Lamian Noodles" noodle restaurants in Lanzhou Beef Noodles, which are distributed in more than 4 countries and regions such as Russia, Canada, Singapore, Japan, the United States and Brazil.

Ordinary white dough was pulled out of noodles with different widths and shapes for more than ten seconds, and with the pure taste of China, foreigners exclaimed that Lamian Noodles was an artist.

2

Chen Xianggui, who is good at finding out genes

upgrading Lanzhou Lamian Noodles category

Chen Xianggui brand was founded in 22. Since its inception, it has a hot business opportunity and a good entrepreneurial market, which has been unanimously loved and recognized by many consumers.

Jiang Jun, the founder, has experienced ups and downs in Shanghai's catering industry for many years. He is good at studying and loving learning (he joined the catering O2O Xijiade research group in 219). In addition, he is a native of Gansu, and he has given full play to his genes and expertise to upgrade the Lamian Noodles category in Lanzhou.

according to public comments, Chen xianggui has opened 22 stores in Shanghai, and 3 more will open, which is very fierce.

insiders summed up Chen Xianggui's success:

1. Naming is strategy? Seize the commanding heights of Lanzhou Lamian Noodles

Brand name is the first contact point between consumers and brands, and the names of founders give people strong authenticity, such as Wang Laoji, Zhong Xuegao, Ye Maozhong, Ma Jiyong and so on; Chen Xianggui's name gives people a sense of authenticity.

let's talk about the brand name of Lanzhou beef noodles again. Lanzhou has been synonymous with authentic beef noodles since ancient times, grabbing the brand name of Lanzhou beef noodles and directly grabbing the commanding heights of the category.

2. Enlarge the reason for "free noodles" to enter the store

In the middle of the store, the word "free noodles" is clearly seen, which solves the pain point for those who want to eat noodles but are afraid of not having enough.

It is worth noting that the words "free noodles renewal" are not on the menu, but on the most conspicuous decoration of the store. The enlargement of words and pictures makes this reason for entering the store more authoritative.

3. poster main KV product? Clear trust

In addition to displaying the core products of the brand, the core function of the main KV is to let consumers order quickly.

Chen Xianggui's main poster is to ask consumers to order beef Lamian Noodles and then mutton kebabs, and at the same time, a letter of confidence is also indicated under the product to dispel consumers' purchasing doubts.

4. Decorative presentation of signboard products

Three ceiling billboards at the door further strengthen the product types, such as steel beef skewers, Lanzhou snacks and hand-grabbed mutton. These three displays are to let consumers make choices quickly.

A similar display method was used to display its signature products long ago.

5. Advertising language strengthens Lanzhou attribute

Chen Xianggui's advertising language is "Dream back to Lanzhou", which also emphasizes its authentic Lanzhou Lamian Noodles attribute.

Chen Xianggui, a descendant, left Lanzhou and the Yellow River, which means that the founder, a sturdy northwest man, turned his thoughts of "hometown stomach" into bowls of beef noodles.

3

A bowl of Lamian Noodles is sold to 26 yuan

The layout of the shopping mall is being accelerated

The internal reference visits Majiyong Lanzhou Beef Noodles, which is different from the store on the street, and this place is located in the negative food area of the shopping mall next to the Shanghai Lianhua Road subway station.

First of all, the image of the store is refreshing.

The style is made of saturated blue and wood color. Whether it's the store's tricks, decorations or the staff's work clothes, the bright blue is very eye-catching in the whole food layer.

Secondly, the overall dining space is clean, bright and exquisite.

The Lamian Noodles booth is directly placed on the open surface, and you can see it as soon as you enter the door. What you see is what you get.

all the tables, chairs and benches in the store are completely changed, which are in line with the overall style and have a sense of design, which breaks the impression of the low-end Lanzhou Lamian Noodles store and gives people the feeling of a big-name chain restaurant.

thirdly, the tableware has also been upgraded.

The tableware is a large celadon bowl with a delicate wooden pallet under it.

kebabs are placed in red-brown wooden plates instead of stainless steel plates commonly used in fast food restaurants, and the texture is very advanced. The red jujube tea provided by the restaurant also uses brass cups.

fourthly, customers order in an electronic way, sitting in the position and scanning the code to order food.

after the meal, it will be delivered directly to the front by the store attendant. Customers can directly check out online after eating, which is a self-service ordering and checkout process.

The beef Lamian Noodles in this store is not cheap. The beef Lamian Noodles is about 26 yuan, and there are 8 kinds of noodles to choose from, such as capillary and leek leaves.

In addition, there are snacks such as kebabs, cold dishes and Chinese buns, as well as a few desserts such as egg mash and sweet embryos, all of which focus on northwest cuisine.

Picture

The "innovative" Lanzhou Lamian Noodles, headed by Ma Jiyong, Chen Xianggui and Zhang Lala, is "reinventing himself" and entering the shopping mall to open a shop. Ma Jiyong has opened 14 stores in Shanghai, and 17 more are to be opened.

Personally, I think Ma Jiyong has made great efforts in product promotion design. The combination of modern elements and traditional culture is good, but the quality control of signature noodles needs to be strengthened. After all, noodle restaurants are king only if they make the noodles themselves well, and everything else is icing on the cake.

4

Same frequency as the market

Active change is better than passive adjustment

As the largest subdivision of the catering industry, specialty snacks are well-deserved "gold-sucking kings", and many brands have rushed to the Red Sea with fierce competition.

and what we can do is to think about individuals by exploring the essence, and stick to the same frequency as the market. Active change is better than passive adjustment.

1, brand chain

marketing guru philip kotler said: "A brand is a name, a noun, a mark, a design or a combination of them. Its purpose is to identify the products of a seller or a group of sellers and distinguish them from those of competitors. "

In this competition in the Red Sea market, the catering mode with serious homogenization makes practitioners start to think that only brand power is the moat that is the most difficult to replicate, whether it is an emerging brand or a traditional brand.

only by making a brand can we stand out from the crowd and lead the industry.

However, snacks have great market demand, high consumption frequency, easy standardization of products and easy replication of models, and have the genes and potential to make brands, which many other categories do not have. At the same time, most enterprises with brand scale have strong bargaining power.

On the one hand, it can gain more recognition from consumers through scale brand premium; On the other hand, through large-scale procurement, the supply chain can be forced to obtain the bargaining power of raw materials.

In addition, snack brands with large brands also have certain bargaining power and resource support on platforms such as food and beverage take-out, which is more advantageous than ordinary merchants.

Take Mala Tang as an example. As a classic category of snacks, Mala Tang's raw materials, cooking techniques and production procedures all have fast-replicating genes, which are easy to standardize. Therefore, it is the first to step out of national brands such as Yang Guofu Mala Tang and Sean Mala Tang.

2. Characteristic minority wins

It can be said that "seeking common ground while reserving differences" will become the mainstream pace of fast food development-standardized "seeking common ground" and characteristic "reserving differences" will be synchronized to support the development of brands. It can't be ignored that local specialty snacks, as the key type of snack industry, are being excavated and constantly enlarged.

Of course, in the face of nearly 3, snacks in China and no less than 1 well-known snacks in each city, choosing differentiated competition does not mean blindly entering a certain category. Choosing what is popular can often cost you a high tuition fee.

A few years ago, mutton powder in Guizhou was very popular, but except Guizhou, many people basically cried out after going in. We can see through the Baidu index that the hot cycle of mutton powder is only from the beginning of 216 to the end of 217; And if you compare hot and sour powder, you can find how insignificant mutton powder is.

In addition to choosing appropriate categories, specialty snacks should also achieve differentiated competitive advantages in terms of products, services, decoration, tastes and culture.

In fact, the characteristic of catering is not the taste. After all, the essence of food in the mouth is still the same. The reason why some specialty snack brands rise is that they amplify the competitiveness of these dimensions, thus bringing word-of-mouth effect.

It can be seen that the snack field in the future will not only be as simple as local snacks, but also be a platform-based industry of "basic function+theme culture+consumption experience" of catering service, and these added values loaded on products are the essential elements to achieve a brand.

3. "Big items+explosions" win

Many traditional catering people have a misconception that more products can attract more passengers and transform more consumption.

but imagine that you just want to have a simple and quick working meal, but you get lost in the menu bar of hundreds of SKUs. Do you still have patience?

therefore, the products of snack categories must be simplified to ensure the basic richness. However, it should be noted that although taste is the first concern factor of snack category consumption, "delicious" is too abstract and needs to be supported by explosions.

especially for local specialty snacks, the strategy of "big single item+explosion" is more likely to occupy customers' cognition, and the internal efficiency will be effectively improved.

on the one hand, there are many categories of single products, so the procurement of ingredients will become much simpler, and the product center will develop and practice individual dishes more frequently, so the quality is more controllable. At the same time, focusing on single products is more conducive to brand communication and has a better chance to seize the first category.

on the other hand, hot items attract traffic, and high-quality materials are selected to keep customers. The core of explosives is "single point cutting", that is, cutting into a single point of the product, and even making it very deep and strong.

this extreme single product and extreme single point model has become the core business model of the company. At present, most companies with high market value are successful by the ultimate single product model.

Summary:

At present, there are 183 beef noodle brands in Lanzhou, including 242 chain brands (with at least 2 stores), with 85 stores, and the average number of stores opened by brands is 3.5; 841 non-chain brand stores.

The old category, redone, is becoming a new weather vane in the catering industry.

"category redoing" does not mean abandoning all the elements of the category, but keeping pace with the times and upgrading the category with branding on the basis of category genes.

to be precise, it is to use the high awareness of this category in consumers' minds to give some content that can keep up with the trend of the times, whether it is from restaurant environment to dining experience, or marketing and interaction.

this may also be a point that capital values.