In Beijing, there is a queuing rule circulating on the Internet: "If you want to sit at a table at an Internet celebrity restaurant at night, you have to go without eating breakfast."

Text | Zhou Zihao Li Xiaoqu

Editor | Zhao Lei

Operation | Yue Mi

People living in Beijing seem to have long been accustomed to this sight: a newly opened Internet celebrity restaurant , either wait in line all day, or wait three months to eat. What is even more difficult for the people of Beijing to accept is why many Internet celebrity brands have been popular in other places for a long time and opened many stores, but they always arrive in Beijing very late. But when they come, the queue becomes A kind of willingness, which also greatly increases the difficulty of queuing.

In early August, Meiwa Hotpot Brother Laoguan opened its first store in Beijing in Joy City, Chaoyang, Beijing, and the queues were once again a grand event. As a catering company established in 2014, Ge Laoguan has opened more than 60 branches across the country. When it was hotly searched for food safety, many people in Beijing still asked, what kind of store is this? As early as 2019, Ge Laoguan opened a store in Tianjin to test the waters. It was not until recently that he came to Beijing. Many people left messages on his official account and Weibo: "Come to Beijing quickly! If you want to eat Ge Laoguan, you can still eat it." You have to go to Tianjin to eat, it’s so difficult!”

In addition to the difficulty of queuing up, Beijing is often ridiculed by netizens as a “food desert” as it is one of the top cities in the world. It’s hard for many southerners to imagine after coming to Beijing to live, “Even if you can’t come across a convenience store when you walk all the way, how can you not have more choices if you want to have a serious meal?” Wait until those trendy delicacies on the Little Red Book are available. When people come to Beijing, they line up enthusiastically, seemingly declaring to more brands lurking on the sidelines: "Don't wait, come and make money!"

This can't help but make people confused. It is Beijing that relies on its "strength" to let other places Is there no market for delicious food, or are local restaurants simply too afraid to come to Beijing to take the exam?

Brother Laoguan is here, and the whole day is gone

I arrived at the store at 10:30, and there were 300 tables in front of me.

On the third day of opening, a Monday morning, Zhang Quanliang, who has been hanging out in major Internet celebrity restaurants in Beijing all year round and made a fortune by reselling ranking numbers, arrived outside the gate of Joy City early, waiting for the mall to open and be the first to rush in. Go in. Anticipating that there might be a long queue, he hired a few helpers to rotate numbers and prepare to make a lot of money from it.

But there was something unexpected today. By the time Zhang Quanliang, with his beer belly of a middle-aged man in his forties, trotted all the way to the Ge Laoguan store, many young people had already formed an S-shaped queue and turned several corners. Seeing the huge queue of people in front of him, Zhang Quanliang was stunned for a moment and did not react.

"How else can we make money from this?" He banged his head and didn't understand where he lost: "Didn't the door open at ten o'clock? Where did they come from?"

Less than two days after the opening, a set of early morning queuing tips with over a thousand reviews has been circulated on Xiaohongshu: Go to the supermarket downstairs in Joy City, take the freight elevator upstairs, and use the morning class elevator of the tutoring institution. Go upstairs, take a detour from the underground garage and take the stairs upstairs... Even if the mall's door is closed, there are about two to three hundred people climbing up through various ways.

Wang Jie, who lives in Haidian District, has come to Pai Ge Laoguan for the second time. On the first day of opening, he placed an order at 12:00 noon, but he didn't get it until around 10:00 p.m. As an authentic foodie in Beijing, in his impression, "As long as it's delicious food from other places, it's abnormal not to queue up." Not long ago, a Guangzhou Shunde restaurant opened near Peony Garden, and Wang Jie was already there when he took the order at three or four o'clock in the afternoon. It was a full house and we had to wait four hours for the food to be served. This time, it was a working day. Wang Jie took a special day off. He got up at 7 a.m. and drove across half of Beijing, from the west to the east, before picking up the number 60.

Ge Laoguan’s Beijing store is not very big, and there may not necessarily be fifty tables of large and small tables combined. Although there is a stipulated meal time of 2.5 hours, the frequency of table changes is still slightly low. It usually takes only three hours to check in a dozen tables, which means that there is basically no hope for those after the 200th table to eat on the same day. As a result, queue agents and scalpers have started to raise prices. During the evening rush hour, the ticket price of a scalper ticket for seated seats can be as high as 150 yuan.

Diners waiting in line at the door of Ge Laoguan. Picture / Fan Mengyue

It is much more difficult for Beijing residents to eat the hottest and most fashionable food than in other places. Buying an "admission ticket" out of your own pocket has become a last resort choice for many people.

College student Kaidong is one of the people who arranged for the team. After joining a Beijing store-hunting welfare group, he started working part-time as a reservation agent for popular restaurants in Beijing in 2019. "The price of each order depends on the ranking number and the popularity of the specific restaurant. Generally, people like Ge Laoguan, who waits for three hours to get the meal, have to pay at least 80 yuan." Considering that in the end, it can be double insurance. After making money, Kaidong often takes numbers from various table types. In his observation, the turnover rate of large tables is faster than that of small tables.

At the same time, the merchant seems to be playing some clever tricks: when the number of seats for three people is relatively small, even if it is a middle table for four people, the clerk will arrange for two people to sit in first. "Isn't this also a waste of resources? Let people wait outside on purpose?"

Looking at the crowds of people around him, Kaidong felt dumbfounded: "Can you tell me how delicious it can be? I tried it in Hangzhou, and it tasted just like a normal hotpot. It’s not worth waiting in line for 7 hours. Thanks to this being Beijing, any internet celebrity restaurant from other places can become popular for a while. ”

A certain delicacy. On relevant platforms, many consumers gave Ge Laoguan low scores because of the lack of queues and rampant scalpers. Picture / mobile phone screenshot

Beijing’s food, you can’t get in or get out

Ge Laoguan is not the only one that Beijingers want to eat at but cannot find in Internet celebrity restaurants.

If you still remember the grand opening of Heytea’s first store in Beijing at the end of 2017, then Ge Laoguan’s S-shaped team can only be regarded as a small scene. In a sense, the arrival of Heytea "fired the first shot in the history of queuing for Internet celebrity restaurants in Beijing": according to reports at the time, the average queuing time at the Sanlitun Taikoo Li store and Chaoyang Joy City store exceeded 4 hours. Heytea Chaoyue store opened for 10 hours and has received 1,299 people. With each person limited to 3 cups, an average of 4.33 cups were sold every minute.

Beijing people have been coveting tea for a long time. According to the official website of Heytea, this Guangdong tea drink brand founded in 2012 was first fully rolled out in Guangdong cities such as Dongguan and Zhongshan, and then settled in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanning, Guangxi in 2015. After settling in Hangzhou and Shanghai in 2017, Heytea decided to enter Beijing. In other words, in first-tier cities, Beijing people are the last to drink meaty grapes, even later than some second- and third-tier cities.

Not only does it drink milk tea slower than others, Banu Maodu Hotpot, an Internet celebrity hotpot restaurant that recently received nearly 100 million yuan of investment from Tomato Capital, started in Henan in 2001 and specializes in Sichuan and Chongqing dishes that are suitable for northerners. After opening dozens of hot pot stores, it first entered the Wuxi market from Henan in 2012. It was not until 2018 that it entered Beijing. A year later, it opened its second Beijing branch. According to Meituan-Dianping data, the two restaurants were selected into the 2019 Must-Eat List: Beijing’s Must-Eat Restaurants and Top 2 Xidan Hotpot respectively. It’s fine if you can’t drink tea and it looks good. Even the Sichuan and Chongqing hot pot served by Zhengzhou people can’t be tasted “fresh” by Beijingers.

In the field of new Chinese-style dining, super catering chain brands with more than 100 stores across the country, such as Grandma's, Green Tea, and Jiu Maojiu, are all "late arrivals" in Beijing.

Even the fortune teller Jia Guolong, the owner of Xibei You Noodle Village, who predicts that "when encountering the sea, you will return, and when you encounter Beijing, you will leave", has expanded to the south after starting in Beijing. Currently, the number of stores of Xibei You Noodle Village in Shanghai has exceeded that in Beijing.

Not only are foreign Internet celebrity stores slow to settle in, but Beijing’s local catering brands are also finding it difficult to go global. Meizhou Dongpo, a catering chain brand founded in Beijing, currently has about 62 stores across the country. 45 stores have been opened in Beijing with great fanfare. There are only 2 stores in Shanghai. There are no such stores in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. According to Dianping data, Meizhou Dongpo has three stores in Meizhou, with an average rating of 4.6. As for the must-visit Beijing delicacies for foreign tourists, they include Hu Da Xiao and Siji Minfu Roast Duck. The former focuses on Guijie Street, while the latter only has 18 branches in Beijing and has not yet shown the momentum to expand to other places.

Another real "queue king" in Beijing is Huo Shao Yun Dai cuisine: ever since the first store opened in 2011, the long queue in front of Huo Shao Yun has been passed down from ancestors, appearing in front of the store every day. , rain or shine. According to the Tandian repo on Xiaohongshu, in Huoshaoyun, it is normal to queue for more than 2 hours on weekdays, and it is not uncommon to queue for 4 or 5 hours on holidays. Numbers are released at 16:30, and all the numbers have been taken by 17:00; meals will not start until the number of tables has reached 2/3, so you will have to wait if you come early or late. Perhaps, this is the confidence that comes from the "top-notch Dai flavor".

"When friends come from afar, eat Huo Shaoyun first." Huo Shao Yun is probably one of the few internet celebrity restaurants that started in Beijing. Since entering the Shanghai market in 2018, it has opened 3 branches in a row. The whole family reproduced the crazy queue scene in Beijing. However, the invincible long queue has not been able to stop its lonely pace: in 2020, Beijing Huoshaoyun Gulou store will be closed, leaving only the slightly located Jingguangqiao store and Blue Harbor store to continue to operate.

Quanjude is probably one of the few Beijing gourmet restaurants that have gone global, but this leading restaurant, which was successfully listed more than ten years ago, has still not become an "Internet celebrity gourmet" that people queue up for more than ten hours. Narrow-door dining data shows that Quanjude currently has 90 stores in China, 24 of which are exclusive to Beijing. Financial reports over the years show that after 2011, Quanjude’s store revenue has declined year by year, and brand innovation has always been a development bottleneck. In Shanghai, the Quanjude Tianmu West Road store's Dianping score is only 4.1 - a "time-honored brand" is not easy to use in the face of word-of-mouth among diners.

According to DT Finance statistics, when searching for "food desert" on Weibo, Beijing ranked C with more than 800 mentions. On the Amap map, IKEA's restaurant was once rated fifth in the "Beijing Food Ranking". This is not surprising: Huguosi snacks with regional characteristics and Yaoji fried liver taste too "unique". Meizhou Dongpo and South Beauty, which target the mid-to-high-end market, lack recognition. The most anticipated "potential stock" Hu Maxiao If you can't get out of Guijie, you can't get out of the alley. Beijing’s specialty food is trapped within the Sixth Ring Road.

IKEA’s catering ranks fifth in the “Beijing Food Ranking”. Picture / Visual China

Beijing is very noble, but Internet celebrity restaurants are not worthy of it

Beijing and Internet celebrity restaurants are destined to lack some fate. No matter whether you queue for a day or scalpers grab an account, the initial popularity will not necessarily bring profits: catering companies that come to Beijing to take the exam must be cautious. Firstly, the cost of opening a store in Beijing is too high. Secondly, the competition is too fierce. One thing is that the people in Beijing will always "like the new and hate the old" after seeing too much.

Ge Laoguan’s main battlefield is in East China. Usually, when a catering company moves into a new area, it will set up a separate branch for management. According to Qichacha, Ge Laoguan established a Beijing catering branch in 2019 with a registered capital of 1 million yuan. However, the high operating costs make it necessary for a strong company like Ge Laoguan to "wait and see" for two years before officially settling in.

A Ge Laoguan staff member told Daily People that Beijing’s high operating costs are one of the main reasons why the company has been unable to move north.

In terms of raw materials, except for vegetables, which are delivered by suppliers in the Beijing area, the rest of the meat and other meats are delivered to Beijing from the Shanghai regional headquarters. The cost of cold chain transportation is high. It is understood that the cost of each bullfrog in Ge Laoguan is 2 yuan more expensive than in other regions.

In addition, land rent costs are also an important reason that hinders online celebrity stores from entering Beijing. "Ge Laoguan was originally invited by Chaoyang Joy City to settle in. There are not many core business districts in Beijing, and a good location is at least eye-catching." The above-mentioned staff member said that at first, after Ge Laoguan opened a store in Tianjin in 2019, the response was relatively good. Well, it attracted the attention of the Beijing business circle and proactively contacted them hoping to settle in. And they were able to settle in the prime location of Chaoyang Joy City because the previous restaurant divested its capital and left.

According to Daily People's verification, the price of street shops for sale near Chaoyang Joy City is about 10 yuan/day. In Chaoyang Joy City, where land is at a premium, the annual occupancy rate remains at 98 Above, it is hard to find a "hole", and rents have been rising year after year. If you include labor, water, electricity and other costs, without the preferential policies of the mall, it is indeed difficult to guarantee profitability.

When Dishes came to Beijing in 2016, there were already fifty or sixty stores across the country. Dieziwei chose a location of 500 to 600 square meters in Beijing and started the business of its first store. However, not long after its opening, it was felt that the competition in the Beijing area was too great, and the dish flavor of the older brand could not compete with other powerful new restaurants in Beijing. By the end of 2018, the number of Dianziwei stores nationwide had exceeded 130, with more than 60 new stores added in a year. The 400-square-meter direct-operated store in Kashgar, Xinjiang, achieved a turnover of more than 1 million in 28 days. At the same time, they also reduced their front lines, closed their stores in Beijing, and officially withdrew from the Beijing market.

According to catering brand planner Bai Mo, the effect of opening and expanding stores in third- and fourth-tier cities is not necessarily worse than in Beijing, because rents there are low, costs are low, and residents’ spending power has not been weak in recent years.

The lack of Internet celebrity stores in Beijing also reflects the plight of the catering industry itself. The "2020 Catering Industry Annual Report" published by the China Hotel Association shows that in fiscal year 2019, the average net profit margin of the surveyed companies was only 10.46, and the "three high" problems of catering companies are still obvious: raw material purchase costs, labor costs, and three expense costs They are the three items with the highest proportion of costs. "Small profits but quick turnover" is a characteristic of the catering industry, but in Beijing, due to the substantial increase in land rent, purchase and labor costs, the already small profits have been compressed again.

"Finance" magazine once interviewed Tomato Capital founder Qing Yong, Wen Heyou investor Song Xiangqian and others on catering investment issues. Qing Yong mentioned that the annual mortality rate in the catering industry is about 30. In 2020, more than 3.5 million stores in the catering industry will close and more than 2.5 million will be opened. Song Xiangqian said that only 20% of people in the catering industry make money. In such a market with a high entry rate and high elimination rate, entering a city like Beijing with high costs, high population mobility, and fast pace of life means higher risks. If it cannot satisfy the appetite of Beijing diners who prefer the new but dislike the old, they will inevitably encounter a "mid-life crisis" like Xibei, Xiabuxiabu and other companies.

Xiabu Xiabu has transformed from a one-pot-for-one bar counter to an ordinary restaurant booth. Picture / Dianping

For chain brands, "connecting interests and locking in management" is also the key to success. In addition to category selection, it is also necessary to design direct sales, franchises, and franchises to distribute benefits and improve operational levels. "Chain brands need a combination of giant supply chains and standard store management levels. This industry may seem to have a low entry barrier, but it is actually very high." Song Xiangxiang said in the interview. High-quality restaurants like Ge Laoguan and Banu Maodu Hotpot, which only allow direct operation and use unified suppliers and transportation chains, often cannot compete with Malatang, ramen and Yunnan rice noodles that allow franchising and can reduce purchase costs.

In recent years, there are not many Internet celebrity stores that have entered the Beijing market with high profile but ultimately failed.

In 2020, Jiumaojiu Northwestern Cuisine, which ranks third in the country in terms of store count and has been listed in Hong Kong, announced that it will withdraw from the Beijing and Tianjin markets. According to its official announcement, due to the impact of the epidemic, brands need to "reduce rent, the cost of raw materials and consumables, and other operating expenses." However, Beijing and Tianjin stores generally have less traffic, making them the first choice for optimization.

It is difficult for even Internet celebrity stores to survive in Beijing, let alone time-honored brands that have been criticized as "expensive and unpalatable". In March this year, Goubuli’s store on Dashilan Street in Beijing officially closed. This store was Goubuli’s last directly-operated store in Beijing. The closure of this store means that this century-old brand has officially withdrawn from the Beijing market.

The survival of high-quality catering in Beijing requires higher management wisdom, lower operating costs and stronger risk resistance, which means careful design of expansion strategies and the support of low-cost cold chain logistics , as well as heavy participation of capital, and snacks and fast food are far better than mid-to-high-end quality catering in these aspects. Therefore, Beijing has become the world of Shaxian snacks, Lanzhou noodles and Zhangliang Malatang, rather than a battlefield for senior officials.

However, there is no need to be too "poor" to the stomachs of the Beijing people: there are no popular Internet celebrity restaurants and the iron-clad Beijing Office.

The large plate chicken served at the Jinsite Restaurant of the Xinjiang Bazhou Office in Beijing is considered to be one of the most authentic large plate chickens in Beijing. Picture/Dianping

Reference materials:

1. "A long article of 10,000 words: Five years of data insights into the major trends in China's catering", internal reference for restaurant business owners

2 ."Hot Catering Investment: The Best and Last Ten Years", excellent reading

3. "Catering stocks are in recession, who is swimming naked?" ", Outside and Inside

4. "China's top ten "food deserts", the number one is expected by everyone", DT Finance

5. "Queue to the door of Starbucks on the first day of opening in Imperial City ! How far is Heytea from becoming a “giant”? ", internal reference for restaurant company owners

6. "2020 Catering Industry Annual Report", China Hotel Association

7. Quanjude Financial Report 2011~2020

Part The data comes from Zhaimen Dianyan and Qichacha

The article is original by Daily People, and any infringement will be investigated.