Aiming at the business of "cooking", in the past two years, the pre-made cuisine industry has poured in a large number of new players, and many traditional catering brands have also begun to focus on pre-made dishes.
From the consumer side, the emergence of various types of semi-finished products of prepared dishes has made cooking simple and efficient, and the acceptance of prepared dishes in the public's minds has increased rapidly. Products tend to be refined and cost-effective, and the target group of prefabricated dishes has also undergone tremendous changes, from the past B-end merchants to the larger C-end market.
After experiencing the expansion of categories, the competition for shelves, the improvement of the cold chain and the improvement of distribution timeliness, the pre-made dishes have successfully occupied the minds of consumers at the experience level, what is the next pre-made dish to fight? It can be seen that the current prepared vegetable industry has not yet run out of the head player. Being quickly pushed to the new outlet, prepared dishes also need to solve cost and standardization problems from the supply chain side, while facing complex downstream management SKUs.
With pre-made ingredients and quick cooking dishes cutting into the market, Tip Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Tip of The Tongue Technology") launched its home business "Tip of the Tongue Workshop", and its first store opened in Beijing last week.
Exploring an effective single-store profit model is the beginning of the tip of the tongue technology to scale. Previously, Tip of the Tongue Technology launched a sub-brand "Fun Bayu", which was regarded by the outside world as an attempt to lay out the catering industry for the store business. For the development of new business, Li Yingbo, rotating CEO of Tip Technology, explained why he chose to enter the prefabricated dish track at this time from the dimensions of organizational ability and business model, as well as the next step of Tip Technology.
Focus on home business from store to store
The outlet of pre-made dishes has lasted for nearly two years, and the first "supermarket 3.0" store of the tip of the tongue workshop landed in Beijing last week.
As a young company, founded in August 2020, most of the members are from the founding team of China Car Rental, Chauffeur and Luckin Coffee, with deep technical background. Luckin Coffee founder Lu Zhengyao served as the chairman of the strategy committee and was responsible for strategic decision-making, and Wang Peiqiang, former COO of UCAR, served as the chairman of the board of directors, responsible for the technical system and back-end operation related matters.
Li Yingbo, rotating CEO of Tip Technology, previously worked at Ogilvy Taipei, engaged in brand strategy and marketing strategy and other related work, cooperated with the shenzhou and Luckin teams for seven years, and served many international consumer brands and Internet industry companies. After observing many business models and product forms, optimistic about the prospects of prefabricated dishes, Li Yingbo joined Tongue Technology in September last year, mainly responsible for product, marketing and commercial expansion.
(The picture shows Li Yingbo, rotating CEO of Tongue Tip Technology)
From Internet travel to catering, including car rental, chauffeur-drive and Luckin Coffee, Li Yingbo believes that the common denominator is to focus on new lifestyles and provide new solutions according to the new needs of consumers. In fact, the core of Tip Tech is an Internet technology company that excels at creating business models for new lifestyles.
In the business line, according to different dining scenarios, Tongue Tip Technology is divided into two major businesses, one is the home business, that is, the current "Tip of the Tongue Workshop"; the other is the store business, including the previously launched sub-brand "Fun Bayu".
Based on the team's advantages, namely ground expansion capabilities and store operation capabilities, Tip Technology chose to take the lead in developing the store business. Realizing that the normalization of the epidemic has affected the store business, the demand for customers for the home business is more intense, so The tip of the tongue technology has made strategic adjustments to tilt resources to the home business.
Li Yingbo believes that emergencies such as the epidemic have catalyzed the need to cook at home. "Both the infrastructure and the needs of consumers have made us realize that at this moment, the kitchen revolution has become impatient."
Domestic consumption of prepared dishes is entering a new stage. Referring to the development of the foreign prepared vegetable industry, for example, in Japan, the penetration rate of pre-made dishes has reached more than 60%, which is derived from advanced freezing technology. With the improvement of domestic freezing technology and the gradual improvement of cold chain layout, coupled with the epidemic to promote the demand for family dining, pre-made dishes are becoming the protagonists of many people's tables.
Appearing on various fresh platforms and offline retail channels, pre-made dishes have become quite popular, and Li Yingbo believes that there are still many opportunities. "All of our product forms now, whether new or old, or optimized and adapted, are designed based on clear consumer needs. Whoever adjusts the fastest according to the change and satisfies the most will win. ”
When talking about the vision of Tongue Technology, Li Yingbo said that the first is to focus on changes in customers, including changes in taste, life concepts and consumer behavior. Secondly, through technological innovation, focus on the changing living habits of consumers and become a new generation of catering solution providers.
At present, the strategy adopted by Tongue Tip Technology is to first invest a lot of resources from the home business, use the home business to make the information platform and supply chain platform quickly reach an ideal scale, and then empower the store business.
In Li Yingbo's view, going home and going to the store are only business forms, and the real base lies in its own information platform and supply chain platform. "The most important thing in the whole business model is the base, to build a platform with the best cost structure, to produce the best customer experience, with the platform to produce content, external APP online traffic, and store offline traffic, whether it is to the store and home business can be rapidly expanded, forming a flywheel cycle."
It's not just about the price/performance ratio
In the past, the performance of pre-made vegetable products sold to the B-end was flat. What is stirring up the trillion-dollar market today is that consumers have formed a new understanding of the prefabricated dish category and are willing to pay for it.
Buying prepared dishes is fundamentally to solve the problem of cooking. "You can imagine that in the past 100 years in the kitchen, the whole cooking pattern has not changed, and cooking is still a troublesome process. In addition, people go to supermarkets to shop, and the goods go through layers of distribution channels, resulting in higher prices. Whether it is the kitchen or the supply chain format, there are great challenges for consumers who want to cook at home. Li Yingbo said.
Li Yingbo analyzed that in the matter of cooking, different groups of people have different pain points. For a type of person who is good at cooking, it takes a lot of time to deal with ingredients, and for a type of person who is not good at craftsmanship or cannot cook, cooking is even more difficult. There is also a third category, which is a group of people who pursue faster, more hygienic and cost-effective under the "lazy economy".
According to the characteristics of the corresponding consumer group, the tip of the tongue workshop divides the product form into pre-made ingredients and quick cooking dishes. Among them, prefabricated ingredients include pre-cut ingredients, basic pickled ingredients and deeply processed ingredients; instant cooking dishes are divided into ready cooking and instant heat products to meet the various cooking needs of different consumers.
Tip of the tongue technology chooses to take a cost-effective route. In the tip of the tongue workshop, the price range of home-cooked dishes is concentrated between 10 and 20 yuan, and the price of all items is much cheaper than that of restaurant ordering, and it is also very cost-effective compared to similar products of other brands.
Achieving the ultimate cost performance means controlling costs from the source of the supply chain. The approach of tongue technology is to reshape the industrial chain, from the field to the table, there is no middleman layer by layer. "The reason why we talk about the ultimate cost performance in product design is to let the prefabricated dishes first return to the more daily dimension that consumers can really accept in terms of price and experience." Li Yingbo said.
Landmark flavors and master flavors are the main features of Tip Tech. The first is the main landmark ingredients, the best ingredients from various local characteristics in China will be launched in the tip of the tongue workshop. The product team is divided into eight regions such as North China, Northeast China and South China, with a group of 10 people as a unit, focusing on excavating local cuisines and reproducing flavors, and carrying out combined innovation.
The second feature is to create master flavors. Led by Liu Yiwei, chef flavor group provides product solutions for Tip Technology. Including professional chefs in each region, using the standardization ability of Chinese cuisine, the special tastes of each place are highly reduced.
In addition, at the level of food safety control, Tip Technology monitors the whole process through the information platform, from origin, processing plant, cold chain transportation to store operation, so that each link can be traced and managed.
Layout to the platform
In the store model of the Tip of the Tongue Workshop, only 8 square meters can become a channel for user experience and product sales. Moving in the direction of lighter models and lower operating costs, Tongue Technology has made an innovation in the form of stores.
It covers 5 kinds of stores with an area of between 8 and 60 square meters, of which the A-class store is a store-in-shop and a stall store, with a minimum of only 8 square meters; the B-class standard store is about 30 square meters; and the C-class store is a large-scale store of more than 60 square meters, including experience restaurant stores and fresh supermarket stores. The investment cost starts at 30,000 yuan, which on the one hand reduces the investment threshold and the difficulty of site selection, and also creates conditions for the large-scale layout of tongue tip technology.
Not only through the natural traffic that comes with the store, but also through the online APP for offline diversion, Tongue Technology has also added more ways to obtain customers. In addition, live broadcasts and content from platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu are planted, and traffic is pooled to the APP side, and all of them are directly distributed to offline stores.
All online traffic will be transferred to offline stores, and self-pick-up, takeaway and catering services will be provided offline, with the aim of allowing stores to cultivate the ability to gather new customers. In addition, providing offline cash subsidies for customers, entrepreneurial loans with a ceiling of 500,000 yuan, and an open and intelligent operation and marketing system, Tongue Technology will empower channel partners through a variety of ways.
Li Yingbo revealed that as of now, the number of franchisees signed by Tongue Tip Technology in the country has reached 2500. Starting in March, these signed stores will be launched one after another.
Combined with the positioning of the tip of the tongue workshop, as a company focusing on supply chain, brand power, product strength and technical capabilities, from operation, lowering the entry threshold to new customer subsidies, it provides channel partners with support in order to achieve the best amoeba system.
Unlike many catering companies, Tip Technology invests a lot of time in the early stage of business model carving, while the internal IT team of more than 200 people focuses on platform construction to ensure that the products are truly landed. The currently launched "Tip of the Tongue Workshop" APP, the first interface is called "what to eat today", recommending packages for users, rather than a simple list of goods; the second interface is "quick order", users can choose to deliver or pick up after placing an order.
At this stage, the choice to expand stores offline is ultimately to build a platform service. "The core of the entire business model lies in the most solid base, whether it is an APP or a store, it is a traffic entrance, and a large number of products and content are generated through the platform, which can spawn more brand matrices." Li Yingbo said.