Author/He Yifan
Source/bento finance (ID: daxiong fan)
Recently, Haidilao released a performance forecast for the first half of the year, and it is expected that the company will lose money in the first half of the year.
Affected by the epidemic, the catering industry is generally depressed, and the income reduction, profit decline and even loss are expected. In order to cope with the epidemic, many catering enterprises have prepared Plan B to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. For example, the role of take-out has changed from assist to main force.
However, a hot pot chain is different. It has always refused to take out food, but it only tried for a short time in the epidemic. Although the business was hot, it was decisively removed after letting go of the restaurant food, preferring to lose this part of its income.
At present, it is the strongest opponent of Haidilao, and its stores in several cities are only one block away. The two sides are in close combat, but the tactics are very different from Haidilao.
Haidilao is famous for its "abnormal service", but it claims to Maimang that service is not its own characteristic, "hairy belly and mushroom soup are"; Since 2017, Haidilao has entered the period of high-speed expansion of opening stores, but although it has performance growth targets, it has refrained from setting expansion targets; Haidilao can become a profit center from the bottom materials to the main links of logistics, but it insists on making money only from stores; Haidilao is a popular hot pot, but it believes that someone will pay for a good product and insist on making a high-end hot pot.
This hot pot is called "Banu". Although it has been established for 19 years, it has never been known before, but it has a general appeal in the regional market. Some time ago, I deeply experienced this hot pot under the recommendation of a friend, and found that it is a somewhat stubborn hot pot brand.
Banu’s name is taken from the nickname of the porter on the Chuanjiang Wharf in Chongqing. This is a stubborn group, always bending over and carrying loads, but leaning back against the current.
Du Zhongbing, its founder, is also a stubborn person. Although his photo with a hairy belly appears on the publicity page of Banu, he is cautious and rarely interviewed. About his family history, only some fragments can be found in the circle of Henan entrepreneurs. This seemingly rough northern man is actually a super detail controller. His only pleasure comes from eating hot pot and studying hot pot.
Haidilao takes service as a breakthrough and has its own reasons. Hot pot is the most standardized category in Chinese food. It doesn’t rely on chefs, and the tastes are not much different. Most players are fighting for operational efficiency and marketing skills, but Du Zhongbing has to start with the most difficult part, emphasizing "productism" and trying to kill his way out from the taste.
This is a typical case of dislocation warfare. After listing in 2018, Haidilao’s current market value exceeds HK$ 180 billion, which is a peak of the Chinese food chain industry. Banu climbed from another road and thought that he also had a chance to reach the top.
one
Back to square one
No matter how long the road is, there is always an origin.
Even employees who have worked in Haidilao for a day know the quotation of Zhang Yong, the founder of this sentence, "Guests are caught by a table".
Although all the guests at each table come for hot pot, some are lovers, some are family gatherings, and some are business banquets. Different guests have different needs, and the methods of touching guests are not exactly the same. From buying vegetables, washing vegetables, ordering food, passing vegetables and frying the bottom materials to rinsing vegetables for guests, cleaning and collecting money to settle accounts, Zhang Yong, who has done every job in a hot pot restaurant, knows that guests have a variety of requirements, and standardized service can at most make guests not find anything wrong, but it will not exceed customers’ expectations.
At the beginning of his hot pot restaurant, some local cadres who were familiar with him came back from the countryside and went to the store to eat hot pot. Zhang Yong found that his shoes were dirty, so he arranged for a man to wipe them for him. This little move moved the guests, and from then on, Haidilao had the service of shoeshine for the guests free of charge.
An elder sister who lives upstairs in Haidilao praised Haidilao as a kind of hot sauce when eating hot pot. The next day, Zhang Yong sent a bottle of hot sauce to her home and told her to eat Haidilao at any time.
This is the beginning of a series of "abnormal" services in Haidilao.
How did Barnu’s productism begin?
When he was in junior high school, Du Zhongbing got good grades in sports. He thought he could take the special places and attend the best middle school in the county, but he didn’t expect to be topped. In a rage, he "ran away from home" and went to nearby Anyang, Henan.
Many people in Anyang are engaged in pig iron and coke business. By 1995, he had earned his first million dollars in three years.
It is said that Du’s father was very strict with him. He was brought up to be "able to work and endure hardships", and he especially hated playing tricks. Father has a special affection for the land. Du Zhongbing and his father are angry and would rather be beaten and determined not to go to the ground. His reason is that the coke of a wagon is more than the harvest of wheat planted in a year, so even when the farm is busy, he would rather sleep at home than go to the ground, and dad is very unhappy.
Many years later, Du Zhongbing discovered that being unskillful and able to bear hardships was a business treasure left by his father, and he connected with the land in another form.
After 1998, Du wanted to change his business. It was best to face users directly, pay in one hand, deliver in the other hand, have good cash flow, and don’t have to ask for help. Later, he learned that this is called "C-end" business, while he used to do "B-end" business himself. He thought about selling clothes, selling electrical appliances and going to trade fairs all over the country.
Finally, he chose to make hot pot, because he loves to eat hot pot too much. When doing business in Changzhou, he goes to eat it several times a week and takes his wife, children, relatives and friends with him.
When he first entered the business, he still had a little mentality of playing with tickets and went to Chongqing to inspect several times. As a result, when I opened it, I found that it was not as simple as I thought. Opening a restaurant was much more complicated than selling coke.
2
Break the "rules"
Catering is diligent, from the upstream to the terminal, involving a very wide range and a very long chain, involving agriculture, industry and service industries, involving production, channels and brands. From different angles, it is a different company. It can be said that it is a human resources company, a labor service company, a production company, a brand communication marketing company and an engineering decoration company.
With so many details, if you don’t participate, you can’t get anything right. You don’t know where to buy a pair of chopsticks. It’s really impossible for the boss not to worry about it all the time.
Because he has true love for hot pot, from the first day, he started from the product and competed with the hidden rules in the hot pot industry: one is old oil, and the other is caustic soda.
Old oil is the oil that is used repeatedly, especially the spicy pot. One saying is that old oil tastes better. He firmly opposes that other people’s pots are free of charge, or at most 10 yuan. He accepted 18 yuan in 2001, preferring to sell them more expensively and pour them one pot at a time.
At that time, the most commonly used ingredients in hot pot were made with caustic soda, such as hairy belly, duck intestines, yellow throat and squid. In summer, formalin was poured to prevent the ingredients from rotting, and he realized that he had eaten these every day.
Behind this is the cost. After the hairy belly is made with caustic soda, one catty can become four catties, and the taste is still very crisp, but caustic soda is very harmful to people’s stomach.
It is not easy to buy fresh hot pot ingredients in the market, so Du went to the slaughterhouse and begged others to sell them to him. At that time, the meat joint factory had just been restructured by the state, and it was still high above the water. It was worthless to go into the water, and the hot pot restaurant didn’t consume much. People didn’t want to do his business at all, so he waited at the door, blocking the director’s story and saying that he was determined not to use caustic soda. Every day, the other party wraps the hairy belly in a plastic bag and puts it on the doorpost, so that he can take it away without money, forcing him to keep some money every time.
Anyang just opened a Quanjude. In order to supply it, a duck factory was opened nearby, and he ran to collect fresh duck intestines.
If we only solve the raw materials in this way, we can’t do business. He bought papain tenderizing technology from a professor at Southwest Agricultural University to replace caustic soda. The hairy belly made by this technology can only be 22 taels a catty, and others sell it for 12 yuan for a plate of 8 taels, and he sells it for 18 yuan for a plate of 4 taels. Can users pay the bill?
Fortunately, the first decade of the 21st century is the second consumption upgrade after China’s reform and opening up, with the fastest growth in catering, education, entertainment, culture and tourism. Although the price of Banu hot pot is expensive, it quickly won the recognition of customers because of the real material, and the diners were full.
In 2005, Henan exposed the use of saliva oil by spicy shrimp, which not only closed the doors of spicy shrimp and spicy crab, but also affected the hot pot industry in Henan. At this time, Du Zhongbing noticed that there was a hot pot restaurant in Zhengzhou, which was not affected at all, and still needed to queue up. This is Haidilao, which was not sealed at that time. Du Zhongbing sat in Haidilao store for four hours, pondering its service.
In 2009, after studying in Haidilao for four years, Banu entered Zhengzhou, just across the street from Haidilao.
three
Looking for "narrow door"
The so-called "Haidilao you can’t learn" is the service system of Haidilao, which is really not easy to learn.
Haidilao was founded in 1994. In the eyes of founder Zhang Yong, hot pot is neither a resource monopoly industry nor a high-tech industry. As long as it is Chinese, he will rinse it at home, so he told a story related to "people".
Some people say that if the "abnormal" service of Haidilao is moved to Japan or South Korea, its advantages will be gone. However, Japanese-style or Korean-style services have been imported for a long time. Before Haidilao, China catering enterprises learned the form of "metamorphosis" at most, but did not learn the essence behind it. Because standardized processes are transplanted to China, customer satisfaction is often based on employee dissatisfaction.
The logic of Haidilao is that only when employees are treated as people can employees treat users as people.
Zhang Yong was invited to speak at a management innovation forum. Zhang Yong said, "Our management is very simple, because the employees are simple, uneducated, young and poor migrant workers. As long as we treat them as human beings. "
When Banu entered Zhengzhou, it was the same as all hot pot restaurants in Zhengzhou. At first, he studied Haidilao at the pixel level. Haidilao sent glasses cloth, monkey rubber bands and popsicles, and Banu also sent them. When Haidilao was in the same position, there were melon seeds and tea, and Banu also had it. Haidilao danced noodles. Banu’s employees didn’t sleep in the middle of the night and twisted toilet paper into rolls and practiced. But until 2012, Haidilao still left all its competitors, including Banu, far behind.
Fighting in the field of "service" is equivalent to entering the home of Haidilao, and followers will not have the opportunity to suppress it.
After investigation, Du Zhongbing realized that he stared at his opponent too much, but forgot his original advantage, namely the product itself.
In the winter of 2012, Banu put a bright yellow slogan on the dark red door: "Service is not Banu’s characteristic, hairy belly and mushroom soup are". At first glance, it can be seen that this is playing against Haidilao.
It’s easy to make a slogan with positioning difference from Haidilao, but how to make the slogan competitive is separated by Qian Shan. Service is explicit and easy to perceive, while "pure green" is implicit and has an explanation cost. If Du Zhongbing wants to become a leading player in the hot pot industry, it is not enough to rely on "no caustic soda and no old oil". He intends to embark on the road that few people took before the hot pot industry and independently develop products.
four
Productism
Du Zhongbing is a product madman. It is said that he is the only product manager of the company, and the pressure of the company’s R&D department is greater than that of the store. Everyone has been beaten by him. If you hear his "roar" in the corridor, it must be because of the product. He is full of energy, often has meetings until three o’clock in the middle of the night, and almost all his energy is spent on competing with products. Every new dish has experienced several times.
He also pays great attention to details. At the beginning of his business, it was said that he checked whether the air conditioner was clean and touched it with white gloves-not just the outer shell, but the cover of the machine.
The beef omasum is the signature of Banu. New Zealand beef omasum has already entered China, but it is usually dehydrated and salted. Banu uses New Zealand chilled beef omasum, which should be crisp and tender. They cooperated with Southwest University, and the research and development took 18 months.
In the central kitchen of Banu, you can see a brand-new 31-meter automatic bulging production line for hairy belly. At present, it has been iterated to all adopt steam, which makes the heating more balanced. A hairy belly can only be served after twelve processes.
At present, the whole industry almost no longer cooks soup on the spot. Du’s principle is not to standardize for the sake of standardization. He insists on using five kinds of Yunnan wild mushrooms, which are cooked in the shop every day. If they are not cooked, there will be no umami flavor. After boiling it out, if it can’t be sold within four hours, it will be dumped.
Banu is no longer obsessed with how to dance noodles. Its starting point is "good noodles don’t need to dance", and it can’t dance, except flour and a little salt, and nothing is added. Although Henan is a big pasta province, it is difficult for the R&D manager to make noodles that are not broken and do not put additives. After Du Zhongbing reprimanded many times, it was finally developed successfully after nine months and dozens of improvements. Du also insisted on making a dough that can be eaten by rinsing, and finally used 100 kilograms of gluten protein that can only be extracted from 8 kilograms.
For this reason, Barnu should be deeply involved in the industrial chain, not just playing the role of procurement. Sichuan flour looks like staple goods, but Banu’s Sichuan flour is not narrow and dry, but broad and fat. It was purchased from a small factory with traditional technology in Sichuan. Because of insufficient production capacity, Banu spared no expense to invest millions to help the other party expand production, and paid the annual purchase price in advance every year, so that the manufacturer could concentrate on production. In order to serve fresh potato powder directly, Barnu and the manufacturer developed it together for 7 months.
Banu’s mutton doesn’t need dipping. It’s mutton directly picked by Du from Inner Mongolia grassland. Even if it is rinsed in white water, it doesn’t smell like salt, and it can taste fresh and tender. The process of purchasing mutton is very tortuous. This action lasted for 18 years. He went to Inner Mongolia many times. But in the last five years, he found that Inner Mongolia was flooded with "feed sheep" and had to go deep into more primitive pastoral areas every year. So he repeatedly communicated with the local government and suggested to protect the natural sheep in Inner Mongolia grassland.
Haidilao and Banu fought head-on because of a bowl of duck blood. Barnu developed fresh duck blood in 971 days. In September 2017, Haidilao’s official WeChat tweet "Why Haidilao only sells blood?" ",comparing fresh duck blood with blood flourishing, saying that fresh duck blood" is delicious, but the quality is difficult to control, and it is easy for bacteria to exceed the standard. "Barnu quickly published a tit-for-tat article:" Why can Barnu sell fresh duck blood? ",said that the country took the lead in developing" fresh duck blood that meets the national quality inspection standards ",and it has an ID card.
This time, it’s not that Barnu touched porcelain, but Haidilao took the initiative to attack, which symbolizes Barnu’s offensive on products and has aroused Haidilao’s vigilance.
Haidilao doesn’t neglect products, and Barnu doesn’t neglect services, but each has established its own "conceptual power", that is, the ability to build brands. After a clear positioning, in order to cooperate with "productism", Du cut off franchise stores, cut dishes from more than 100 to less than 40, and concentrated resources on products.
On the hot pot track, no rival has ever posed a threat to Haidilao, but in Zhengzhou, Banu is a rare competitor that Haidilao has to face directly.
In the secret, you are constantly competing with each other. In three years, the number of stores on both sides has increased from less than 10 to more than 20. Interestingly, the two sides have also begun to compete fiercely in site selection. In Zhengzhou’s well-located business districts and shopping malls, both stores can be seen, and there are more than a dozen stores that are less than a few hundred meters apart.
In addition to site selection, efforts in customer base are also the focus of contention between the two sides. At first, the customer unit price of Banu was 30-40 yuan lower than that of Haidilao, but now the customer unit price of Haidilao is 20-30 yuan lower than that of Banu. Although the customer unit price is higher, Banu’s business is still booming, and it can quickly return even in the shadow of the epidemic, which shows the accumulation of its brand skills.
The price determines the customer base, and the customer base of Haidilao is more oriented to the public. Zhang Yong once said that Haidilao "wants to be cheap and good", so he specially launched discount activities for college students, which are very popular among young people, especially college students. Barnu, on the other hand, is positioned in the middle and high end, choosing the middle class with more consumption power and pursuing quality of life, and the two sides have formed differences in customer base, which can be said to have gone out of different ways.
five
Midcourt battle
Du has a very clear sense of boundaries and doesn’t even sell the bottom materials.
This is different from the strategy of Haidilao. In July 2016, Yihai International (01579, HK), a hot pot bottom material supplier of Haidilao, was officially listed. Shuhai, a supply chain service company, initially provided back-end supply chain services for Haidilao, such as food procurement and clean vegetable processing, and later gradually opened to other catering enterprises, as well as supply chain financial services, benchmarking Sysco, an American supply chain giant with annual sales of 40 billion US dollars.
At the same time, he expanded the category and accelerated the sinking. In 2020, he bought Youdingyou for 200 million yuan to enter the vegetable market, added a fast food brand "Shibama", and planned to buy two Michelin Chinese food brands "Hanshe Chinese Food" and "Hao Noodle" noodle restaurants, and eyeing the new retail of catering, launched semi-finished dishes on several e-commerce platforms and launched a series of semi-finished products.
Du Zhongbing shows his concentration and determination and sticks to the product itself. There is no right or wrong strategy, only suitability and effectiveness must pass the test of time. At present, Haidilao has reduced costs and expanded profit channels through the extension of the industrial chain, while Banu has "broken the sky" and returned to the source of user value.
Haidilao was founded in 1994 and has stood for nearly 30 years. The "abnormal service" that it used to be good at, with the expansion, it is difficult to avoid cultural dilution.
When I visited Zhang Yong in July 2015, I felt his pressure. At that time, both Haidilao and Zhang Yong were faced with a series of adjustments-organizational structure adjustment, distribution and income mechanism adjustment, senior management adjustment, and store opening strategy adjustment. With the aura of "family culture", these adjustments will be like being placed under an external microscope.
Zhang Yong’s problem is that Haidilao needs to take off the crown of "Hai Family" which has been formed unintentionally and has been over-deified, but it can’t make the company lose its unique flavor.
On the supply chain side, personalization and standardization are the two main threads of the catering industry in the past 30 years. No personality is not enough to be strong, and no standards are not enough to be big, but where is the balance point? Especially in the last decade, the balance has become more and more standardized, because of this, we can get a valuation in the capital market.
Du tried to jump out of the dispute between "standardization" and "personalization" and return to the essence of food. His ambition is to establish the third generation supply chain of catering industry and promote the reform of the whole chain. The starting point is "it can be chilled without freezing, it can be added naturally, and it can be the same day without overnight".
"Why add a’ can’? Because we can’t do it now, "he said in a speech.
As the ultimate pursuit of products, Barnu pays special attention to the construction of supply chain. After cutting off the franchise stores, its first big move is to build a central kitchen. All the dishes in the store must be purchased by the central kitchen and meet the quality requirements before they can be delivered to the store.
Its new central kitchen, which has just been put into operation, has an investment of 150 million yuan, which can meet the same-day supply of nearly 100 direct-operated stores within 300 kilometers after completion.
The third-generation supply chain that Du concentrated on building is different from other catering standardization models in the past. It pursues nature and freshness through customized production of central kitchens, and then preserves it by adding cold and fresh methods.
The shelf life is as short as possible, not through freezing technology and packaging, but through the change of planting methods, the choice of origin and the reform of supply chain, fresh and original products are put on the table. Of course, the price will be more expensive, and he firmly believes that more and more people will pay for good products.
At present, Banu has achieved a competitive position with the industry giants in Zhengzhou, Wuxi and other places, and has also gained a foothold in Beijing. The model has been verified by the market, and its operation ability is also very strong. The supply chain is solid and the soldiers are stronger than Ma Zhuang. What is needed next is to replicate this model through the rapid expansion of stores across the country.
The catering industry has entered the midfield battle, and its rise and decline may all occur intensively in the next three years.
The era of Chinese food has just arrived. There are only about 10 listed catering companies in mainland China, and there are about 50 listed catering companies in the US catering market, which is close to China. There is more than one way to excel. Can Barnu’s stupid method run longer?
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(Editor: Wang Zhiqiang HF013)
