Will Guizhou sour soup hot pot become the next hot pot category going to the whole country?
This article was originally published by Hongcan. com (ID: hongcan18) by Zhou Lich; Editor: Jing Xue.
From Wenchang Chicken in Hainan to Pot-stewed in Northeast China … More and more local specialties have been exported from the region, opening a nationwide development path.
Among them, Guizhou Sour Soup Hot Pot has been popping up in many places all over the country since last year. In 2024, the development momentum of this niche hot pot, which was once settled in Guizhou, is still increasing.
Young people have to wait in line for more than 2 hours to eat, and some stores earn more than 2 million yuan a month.
At the beginning of February, Jiumaojiu Catering Group launched a new brand "Shanwai Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Soup Hot Pot". With the entry of big brands, many catering people began to look at this niche hot pot category. But in fact, Guizhou sour soup hot pot is not a new thing.
The climate in Guizhou is warm and humid, which provides unique conditions for natural fermentation and colony formation, and also makes a number of delicious foods featuring "sour soup". Guizhou Sour Soup Hot Pot is a hot pot soup base with bright red color and rich sour taste, which is made by salting and fermenting Maospicy fruit (local wild tomato) and adding red pepper and other main raw materials.
△ Image source: Red Meal Network photo
Guizhou sour soup hot pot, which was almost always settled in Guizhou, is not common outside Guizhou Province. But since last year, in Shanghai, Chengdu and other places, Guizhou sour soup hot pot began to stir up frequently.
For example, in Shanghai, there are many brands such as Wangfu Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Sour Sour Beef Hotpot, Shanwanshan Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Sour Beef Hotpot, Barili Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Beef Hotpot, and Wangfendou Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Beef Hotpot. Among them, Wangfu Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Soup Hot Pot was also listed on the must-eat list of Shanghai public comment in 2023.
Wang Fendou, who opened his first store in October last year, opened nearly 50 stores in just four months. Hongcan. com learned from Huang Qingjie, founder of Wang Fendou Guizhou Sour Soup Beef Hotpot, that the monthly turnover of some newly opened stores can reach more than 2 million yuan.
△ Image source: Wang Fendou Guizhou Sour Soup Beef Hotpot
In Sichuan and Chongqing, not far from Guizhou, Guizhou sour soup hot pot has also developed rapidly. Jiang Yi, the founder of Sichuan Haoxia Chuan, said that since the second half of 2023, a number of stores specializing in Guizhou sour soup hot pot have sprung up in Sichuan and Chongqing, and most of them appear in the form of "Qian xx hot pot" stores, such as Qian Sanyi Anshun grabbing powder hot pot and Guizhou sour soup hot pot.
According to the big data of red meal, up to now, there are more than 60 stores in the country that have won the powder hot pot in Anshun. The total number of stores in Guizhou’s sour soup hot pot has also reached more than ten. From the very beginning, these brands opened more stores in business districts and communities with a large number of young people, attracting many young consumers to queue up for tasting.
Chain hot pot brands have added product lines, and there are many sour soup hot pot products. In addition to the above-mentioned 99 cents, roadside and Haidilao also added sour soup products to their stores last year. In September 2023, the bottom of sour soup pot was put on the roadside, combining Guizhou acid with Sichuan and Chongqing spicy; In November last year, Haidilao also added a new "Guizhou red sour soup" pot bottom in the region.
On the market demand side, consumers’ enthusiasm for Guizhou sour soup hot pot continues to rise.
Hongcan. com noticed that after the official opening of Jiumaojiu’s "Guizhou Sour Sour Sour Sour Soup Hotpot" in Guangzhou and Foshan, the store business has been good. When Hongcan. com visited its Guangzhou store on the spot, it was found that during the dinner time on weekdays, the queue time of the store was basically more than 2 hours.
△ Image source: Red Meal Network photo
Up to now, the topic of "Guizhou Sour Soup Hot Pot" has been broadcasted more than 20 million times in Tik Tok.
The taste recognition is high, the consumers are extensive, and the standardized soup base supply promotes rapid replication.
Hot pot has already entered the Red Sea market, and the competition is fierce, the market is becoming more and more saturated, and consumers are becoming more and more picky. Then, why can Guizhou Sour Soup Hotpot, which came out of Guizhou, be deus ex?
We have to start with internal and external factors.
From the external environment, the popularity of Guizhou sour soup hot pot is not unrelated to the tourism economic boom in Guizhou last year. According to the data released at the press conference on the economic operation of Guizhou Province in 2023, the total number of tourists and the total income of tourists in Guizhou increased by 29.2% and 41.2% respectively over the previous year.
Tourists will not miss any delicious food, and the unique sour soup base is sour and spicy, appetizing and highly recognizable. Therefore, the hot pot of sour soup has become one of the representatives of local food in Guizhou, which is widely praised by tourists. Many tourists are obsessed with it and spread it widely on social platforms. With the enlargement of social platforms, the heat of hot pot of sour soup in Guizhou naturally rises.
△ Image source: Juhui Meal Tone
More importantly, the supply chain behind Guizhou sour soup is becoming more and more mature, which, to a certain extent, has also boosted Guizhou sour soup hot pot to the whole country.
It is understood that the sour soup in Guizhou is particularly "stingy", and the fermentation will fail with a little carelessness. But nowadays, a number of catering supply chain enterprises, including Juhui Cuidiao and Qianwei Gaotang, have been able to provide merchants with standard and stable sour soup bottoms, and even customize the sour soup bottoms according to the individual needs of catering enterprises.
This solves the biggest problem of scale and rapid replication of Guizhou sour soup hot pot. In addition, a manufacturer specializing in the production of hot pot bottom said that the cost of butter pot bottom can reach more than that of 40 yuan, while the cost of sour soup hot pot bottom is lower, which also brings more profit space to catering businesses.
Judging from the characteristics of Guizhou sour soup hot pot, firstly, it has universal taste and can bring freshness to consumers. Yao Zhe, founder of Hezhonghe, said that Guizhou Sour Soup Hot Pot will be more refreshing than Sichuan-Chongqing Hot Pot. This makes sour soup hot pot more universal, which can not only attract young people, but also be acceptable to some family customers.
On this basis, many sour soup hot pot restaurants in Guizhou will also provide snacks and drinks with Guizhou regional characteristics, such as soft whistle, potato Baba, Rosa roxburghii juice, and even prepare dipping materials with local characteristics such as broken ears, litsea nut oil and burnt pepper for customers, which will bring more freshness to consumers.
△ Image source: Wang Fendou Guizhou Sour Soup Beef Hotpot
Secondly, most of the hot pot restaurants with sour soup in Guizhou, which are emerging on the market, have the characteristics of "high cost performance".
Wang Fendou Guizhou Sour Soup Beef Hotpot Restaurant has a package activity of "18 yuan Air Transport Wild Vegetables for Unlimited Eating"; The per capita consumption of Wangfu Guizhou sour soup hot pot is about 60 yuan; Outside the mountain, the price of the main sour soup pot bottom in Guizhou sour soup hot pot restaurant is only 29 yuan, and the per capita price is only around 80 yuan … Compared with Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot, Guizhou sour soup hot pot is obviously close to the people, which is in line with the current trend of paying more attention to "cost performance" in catering consumption.
The first round of "scale competition" has started, and the category bonus has yet to be tapped.
Nowadays, in the eyes of many catering practitioners, this wave of consumption boom of Guizhou sour soup hot pot will continue in 2024, and the dividend of Guizhou sour soup hot pot has yet to be tapped.
"At present, Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot is especially involved. From products, decoration to marketing activities, bosses will not let go of any details. On the contrary, it is a more differentiated and cost-effective Guizhou sour soup hot pot, and there may be opportunities to run out some large-scale and influential brands in the future. " The founder of a Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot brand told Hongcan.
According to it, many catering practitioners are looking for suitable pavements to open Guizhou sour soup hot pot restaurant, and operators of other hot pot restaurants are planning to add Guizhou sour soup and other related products to their stores.
Judging from the current operation of Guizhou Sour Soup Hotpot Restaurant on the market, everyone seems to be riveting hard, ready to start the first round of "scale competition" and want to seize the head position of the track. After all, only when the scale and volume are large enough can we further promote the formation of back-end procurement advantages and compete with peers for cost performance.
△ Image source: Qian Sanyi Anshun grabbed the powder hot pot official website
Jiang Yi told Hongcan. com that there is no absolute head brand in the field of sour soup hot pot in Guizhou. Whoever can take the lead in running out of scale in 2024 will eat up the dividends of this category in the following years. "Almost all teams that want to be large-scale want to find a super category that can be replicated and expanded nationwide in 2024, and" sour soup+beef+hot pot "just caters to this fanatical expansion demand!"
However, behind the racetrack in Qian Fan, some "cold thinking" is also needed.
Jiang Yi said that there is still a question mark about how high Guizhou sour soup hot pot can reach. Although sour soup can stimulate taste buds, it is not addictive enough. The ceiling of Guizhou sour soup hot pot can only achieve the degree of development of Chaoshan beef hot pot in the country at most, and finally it will probably shrink back to the regional market and become a regional category, which is difficult to become a national strong category.
Yao Zhe also pointed out that when a category is on fire, it is inevitable that there will be many followers. In this way, although the categories are expanded and popularized together, it will also cause excessive supply and fierce competition, forming a competitive pattern in the Red Sea.
"Sour soup hot pot has come out with regional characteristics and established a certain market awareness. However, at present, sour soup hot pot is mainly engaged in young people’s business. Young people are too changeable. How can brands attract this part of consumers for a long time and achieve long-term ism is still a problem that operators must think about." Yao Zhe said.
