If the past six or seven years were the outbreak period of catering categories in China, it is now entering the low tide period of category development, and it is becoming more and more difficult to break through new categories. However, in recent years, a sub-category of Sichuan cuisine has developed against the trend, which is the intangible cultural heritage-Leshan Qiaojiao Beef.
This century-old famous food, which originated from Leshan, Sichuan, has a broad mass base in Sichuan and Chongqing. Previously, it was mostly operated by a single store, and few branded and chained stores were seen. In recent years, under the impetus of a group of main players represented by all-cattle artisans, stilted beef has gradually broken the situation of category and no brand, and developed rapidly.
In addition, with the improvement of consumer cognition, the concept of intangible cultural heritage has gradually become one of the trends in the consumer side, which is highly sought after by young people. As one of the intangible cultural heritages, the stilted beef has benefited from this trend dividend and also brought its own traffic in the consumer market.
It is worth mentioning that Leshan is also known as the treasure house of Sichuan cuisine. Besides stilted beef, sweet-skinned duck, steamed beef with flour, dervish chicken and spike potato are also very representative foods. Therefore, there has always been a saying in the Sichuan food industry that foreigners line up to eat in Chengdu and Chengdu people line up to eat in Leshan.
(Photo courtesy of the enterprise, issued by Yangguang. com)
At present, relying on all kinds of delicious food in Leshan as the representative, the whole cattle craftsman has played a new chain pattern in combination with modern catering positioning.
With a loaf of beef, the annual turnover of the 60-flat store exceeds 10 million.
The single store covers an area of 60 square meters, the daily turnover is stable at more than 30,000 yuan, the average monthly take-out is over 9,000, and the daily turnover is over 10 million.
This is the report card handed over by Beijing Wangjing Qilinshe Store during the epidemic, which has long occupied the first place in the praise list of Wangjing Sichuan cuisine and the TOP3 in the popular list.
Quanniujiang Beijing Wangjing Qilinshe Store (Photo courtesy of the enterprise, issued by Yangguang. com)
According to Hongcan. com, the whole cattle craftsman came from a man named Yuan Binhong from Leshan, Sichuan. He arrived in Beijing at the age of 18 and became a regional general manager from an apprentice in a well-known chain brand of Sichuan cuisine in China.
Under the influence of 15 years’ hometown diet and Beijing modern catering culture, Yuan Binhong has a deeper understanding of catering and has his own catering dream. He sincerely worshiped Zhou, the Qiaotou Stubby Beef in Suji, Leshan, and became the fourth generation inheritor of "Leshan Stubby Beef". He innovated with famous food in his hometown Leshan combined with modern catering trends, and created a "all-cow craftsman" featuring Stubby Beef, taking Sichuan cuisine as the foundation, and integrating authentic Sichuan famous food.
Then, in five years, we opened the store of Quanniujiang to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanning, Jinan, Hangzhou and other provinces and cities, and owned 80 brand chain stores including 30 direct-operated stores, and successfully explored the chain mode of light dinner, and established mature store opening models in first-,second-,third-and fourth-tier cities.
It is understood that at present, there are not only small and medium-sized stores in the office business circle such as Wangjing Qilinshe Store, but also large shopping centers such as Nanning Vientiane City Store with 116 square meters and Guangzhou Kaideleng Square with 170 square meters, and the results are equally eye-catching.
Quanniujiang Guangzhou Kaide Lefeng Plaza Store (Photo courtesy of Enterprise, Yangguang Net)
There are 17 stores in Nanning Vientiane City, with a monthly revenue of 600,000 yuan, with an average daily turnover of 12 rounds on weekends and 9 rounds on weekdays, occupying the first place in the hot list of Nanning Sichuan cuisine for a long time; Guangzhou Lefeng Store opened for one month, and then entered the top list of Sichuan cuisine in Haizhu District, with an average daily queue of 60 tables and monthly sales of 700,000.
As the main player of the category, the whole cattle craftsman is still rising against the trend and accelerating its development under the influence of epidemic fluctuation, which proves the development potential of stilted beef.
Stubby beef and Sichuan snacks have their own advantages: they are inclusive and easy to match.
When we carefully analyze the whole cattle craftsman, we will find that its achievements can not be separated from the unique advantages of the two categories of stilted beef and Sichuan snacks.
This advantage is not the advantage of the strong category in marketing and consumer attention, but the characteristics of the category’s inclusiveness and convenience, which is one of the main factors that attract many catering people in recent years.
Stubby beef: inclusive and plastic.
As a famous dish with a long history in Leshan, Sichuan, Qiaojiao beef is different from Sichuan and Chongqing dishes, which are known for their spicy taste. Clear soup is its characteristic.
According to legend, during the war years, an old Chinese doctor who was good at herbal medicine in Suji Town, Leshan, in order to help passers-by, picked up the beef offal left by a large family in the river and boiled it in a soup pot for boiling traditional Chinese medicine. He found that the taste was quite good, so it spread and gradually developed into today’s stilted beef.
This production process makes the stilted beef have both the delicious taste of beef and the fragrance of herbs. Diners can choose to eat in clear soup directly, and heavy-taste lovers can also choose to dip in dried Chili. In this way, the stilted beef can take into account the needs of most diners and let the light and heavy taste lovers "eat together".
(Photo courtesy of the enterprise, issued by Yangguang. com)
At the same time, beef is almost in all is forgiven all over the country, and it also has the basis for national expansion in terms of taste and ingredients. According to Yuan Binhong, the whole cattle craftsman uses the traditional secret formula of the stubble beef, and selects the beef stick bone and the beef spine for 4 hours every day to generate refined soup. At the same time, it is stewed with the beef bone in a large pot with 24 secret spices until the soup is bright; When eating, blanch the vegetables, beef and beef offal in the soup for a short time, then pour the boiled broth on the table. The operation is simple and the dishes are served quickly, which not only saves the manpower of the kitchen, but also is easy to standardize and chain.
Take Quanniujiang Beijing Chaoyang Heshenghui Store as an example. The store area is 90 square meters, and the kitchen only accounts for 20 square meters. It can serve 7,000 servings of stilted beef every month, and other stilted series such as stilted fat beef, stilted calf, stilted brain flower, stilted white belly and stilted hairy belly can serve more than 3,000 servings, which can be served in 5 seconds at the earliest.
The simple and quick way of eating makes the application scene of Tiaojiao beef more diversified, which is suitable for one person to eat and for seats. A single person can sell it by bowl, and many people can choose a large soup pot, which is also very friendly for foreign sales.
It is understood that the whole cattle craftsman Chaoyang Heshenghui store takes out 6,000 orders per month, and Wangjing Qilinshe store can reach 9,000 orders. From the official activities of the US Mission in July, it was seen that the representative of the whole cattle craftsman’s stilted beef was the guest of the US Mission’s 2022 takeaway high-quality development forum, and the stilted beef was becoming one of the representative meals of public health takeaway catering.
It can be said that stilted beef is a "big or small" and highly inclusive category. Especially in the context of consumers’ pursuit of eating healthier, the advantages of the taste and ingredients of the stilted beef are more prominent, and the potential for category development is more gratifying.
Sichuan Snacks: Good mass base and easy collocation.
The characteristic Sichuan snacks are another "magic weapon" for all-cattle-artisans and other brands to break through.
According to the White Paper on Catering Franchising Industry in China in 2022 jointly issued by the China Federation of Associations and Meituan, in the category distribution of chain stores in 2021, the number of snack and fast food stores accounted for 51.7%, ranking first in the number of stores in all sectors. Snack is a well-developed and fast-growing category in all sectors of catering at present, and all kinds of special snacks have been deeply loved by consumers.
Among them, Sichuan-Chongqing snacks are very popular all over the country because of the popularity of hot pot and Sichuan cuisine. Previously, many explosive items and chain brands originated from Sichuan-Chongqing snacks, such as Xiaomian, maocai, and Boji.
The whole cattle craftsman has a rich variety of Sichuan snacks (Photo courtesy of the enterprise, issued by Yangguang. com)
Now, more snacks are being continuously excavated, and spicy sauce, crispy meat, rabbit head, brown sugar, and night buns have also gained considerable consumer awareness throughout the country.
Light dinner mode, laying the foundation for chain expansion of stilted beef
In addition to the category advantage, the counter-trend development of the whole cattle craftsman is inseparable from its innovative light dinner mode.
Before the whole cattle craftsman, the chain brands of stilted beef in Sichuan and Chongqing were mostly fast food and dinner. Fast food stores choose to sell small portions and single bowls with stir-fried and cold dishes to attract consumers quickly and materially; In the dinner mode, the store chooses to present it in the form of soup pot, and can also order food for scalding, some of which are similar to hot pot.
However, the fast-food mode has some limitations in dining scenes and consumers, and the unit price of customers is limited, mostly in 30~50 yuan, which requires high turnover and profit rate. Under the background of rising costs of beef and other ingredients, franchise chain and long-term development do not have an advantage.
Although dinner can effectively increase the unit price of customers, passenger flow, passenger flow stability and take-out compatibility will become problems again, and the chain development of traditional Chinese dinner was not very ideal before, so stores could not run fast.
On the other hand, the whole cattle craftsman innovatively combines fast food and dinner mode. On the basis of stilted beef and snacks, around the core of flow, delicious and easy operation, he carefully selects classic Sichuan dishes and cold dishes, and puts forward a light dinner mode of "delicious, inexpensive and often small gatherings", which not only avoids some disadvantages exposed by the fast food and dinner mode in the previous development of stilted beef, but also highlights stilted beef, Sichuan dishes and snacks.
(Photo courtesy of the enterprise, issued by Yangguang. com)
Because the Tiaojiao series are all the same soup heads, with different meats and vegetables, it is inevitable to appear a little monotonous in the dinner scene, but the Tiaojiao beef+snacks+Sichuan cuisine made up for this deficiency with snacks and Sichuan cuisine.
Among the snacks, there are sweet brown sugar, ice powder, spicy alms chicken, explosive Leshan spike potatoes, and staple foods such as Dandan Noodles, beef patties and hot and sour powder. Sichuan cuisine is more typical of Sichuan-Chongqing stir-fry, which is a good supplement to light stilted beef. Consumers can even eat snacks, and they are all under the Sichuan cuisine system, which will not blur the brand focus.
In this mode, if consumers want to have dinner, they can order a large amount of beef soup pot with stilted feet, add Sichuan dishes that consumers are familiar with, such as stir-fried kidney, hairy blood, husband and wife lung slices, spicy chicken, etc., and then add Leshan famous dishes such as sweet-skinned duck, as well as Sichuan snacks such as iced powder and Dandan Noodles, which can match a table of traditional Chinese dinner with light and spicy taste and local characteristics; If you are dining for one person or two or three people, you can just order a small portion of beef or snacks and consume them as fast food.
Under the light dinner mode, the product mix is more diversified, and the price can continue the affordable characteristics of the stilted beef. The guest list is basically maintained at 50~70 yuan, achieving a high quality and price ratio. At the same time, it is also compatible with take-out and has strong anti-risk ability.
On the whole, the all-cow artisan’s light dinner mode not only gives full play to and magnifies the category advantages, but also gives consumers more choices and makes the store more inclusive and flexible. It can not only open in the community to face family consumers, but also serve as the main working meal in CBD, and it is a good choice to enter the shopping mall.
At the same time, this model has invisibly lengthened the business hours, allowing stores to operate around the clock and increase revenue. It is understood that the turnover of Nanning Vientiane City Store, a cattle craftsman, has reached 2.5 times that of a Sichuan-style snack chain brand in the original position, attracting the attention of all shopping malls. Some stores of the whole cattle craftsman can even be extended to the bistro mode that is sought after by diners at present.
Quanniujiang Nanning Vientiane City Store (Photo courtesy of the enterprise, issued by Yangguang. com)
On the other hand, compared with fast food, the light dinner mode has less pressure on passenger flow and cost, which also avoids the problem of heavy dinner, can run faster and makes the chain expansion of the brand possible. At present, the nationwide store expansion achievements of all cattle artisans are a good proof.
The process of stilted beef and snacks itself is not complicated, and the whole cattle craftsman further simplifies the post-cooking process through standardized processes, and standardizes non-core materials, saving labor costs and improving the profit cycle. It is understood that the average monthly profit of the whole cattle craftsman joining a single store is 100,000-150,000. A franchise store in Guangzhou has a gratifying profit after opening for three months, and franchisees have invested in opening a second store. In the whole cattle craftsman, there are not a few franchisees who have opened more than two stores.
According to informed sources, the whole cattle craftsman will be based on direct stores in the future, with direct sales and two-wheel drive by joining agents, and intends to expand the number of stores nationwide to 200 in 2023.
(Contributed by: Red Meal Network Chen Mo)
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