Wen Heyou laid off employees, and the weakness of Internet celebrities after they came out of the circle

Wen 丨 Internet List

Shortly after the New Year, another catering company was exposed to the news of layoffs.

It is reported that Wen Heyou, a new consumer catering culture enterprise, began a round of large-scale layoffs as early as a few years ago, and the proportion of layoffs in some departments exceeded 60%; years later, the new round of layoffs continued. The layoffs of Wen Heyou are mainly immersive theater projects involving Nanjing projects and Changsha, in addition to layoffs, Wen Heyou was also exposed to the news of deducting employees' wages, and 10% of the performance wages were not issued as the year-end bonus in 2021.

Although Wen Heyou responded that the layoffs were normal personnel changes, after Wen Heyou was dissatisfied with the water and soil in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and the postponement of the landing of the Nanjing project, it is difficult not to think that this layoff is a continuation of Wen Heyou's expansion failure.

You should know that last year's Wen Heyou was still the darling of capital and consumers, but in less than a year, this "Disney of the food industry" seems to have prospered. Moreover, as a bridgehead under the new wave of consumption in the catering industry, it is still difficult to predict whether Wen Heyou can still maintain his position, but for now, Wen Heyou only lives in Changsha.

Gourmet or commercial real estate

Wen Heyou's predecessor was the roadside stall founded by founder Wen Bin in 2010, which took only one year to make a blockbuster, and then co-founded a fried company, and Wen Heyou's brand was also founded. In the following years, Wen Heyou became bigger and bigger, in addition to the fried society, but also added lobster, sausage, stinky tofu, toast and other sub-brands, and in 2015, Wen Heyou's revenue exceeded 100 million yuan.

In 2017, due to the demolition of Wenhe Youde in the transformation of the old city, in order to reduce the loss of regular customers, the new store was located in Hisense Plaza near the old store, but it was necessary to prove that its passenger flow was large enough to enter. To this end, Wen Heyou has constructed a nostalgic food city modeled on the old Changsha streetscape and mainly featuring city snacks, which has been recognized by Hisense Plaza, and this transformation has also become an opportunity to build a super Wen Heyou.

In 2018, the Wenheyou Super Lobster House spanning 7 floors and an area of nearly 5,000 square meters opened in Hisense Plaza, and was upgraded to a 20,000-square-meter Super Wenheyou the following year. Super Wenheyou not only has its own incubated stinky tofu, sausage and other snack brands, but also invited famous local snack merchants to settle in, but also barbershops, pubs, dance halls and other life and entertainment scenes with different characteristics of the times, coupled with the help of social media, consumers rushed forward.

Super Wen heyou not only gained greater passenger traffic, but also saved hisense plaza, which was slightly less competitive, and even exploded out of the circle to become an Internet celebrity punch card in Changsha.

Although Super Wen Heyou has transformed a simple restaurant into a gourmet market space that integrates cultural experience and many snacks, the novelty and strange dining atmosphere has gained huge traffic, but it is actually more like a commercial real estate, but the clothes inside are replaced by snacks, and it is no wonder that the outside world considers Super Wen and You to be a large shopping mall-style food city.

However, Wen Heyou does not regard it as a "food city", but defines it as a cultural company, interpreting Super Wen Heyou as providing consumer groups with a cultural experience including food and food in retro scenes. The story of "food + culture" told by Wen Heyou is obviously more imaginative than the simple catering story, and it also attracts the attention of the capital market.

In less than a year after receiving nearly 100 million yuan of A round financing from Jiahua Capital, Wen Heyou completed a financing of nearly 500 million yuan composed of sequoia China, IDG Capital, Warburg Pincus Investment, Country Garden Venture Capital, GIC, Yikai Fund and other well-known institutions in August 2021, and the valuation of Wen Heyou reached 10 billion yuan after the financing was completed.

The pace of Super Wenheyou has also expanded to Shenzhen and Guangzhou, attracting consumers to queue up overnight during the opening period, and the lively scene has been on the hot search several times. Although Wen Heyou has also become a high-quality target under the two-way blessing of capital and consumers, what really goes out of the circle is the market culture behind the catering.

Cultural selling under catering

Wen Heyou, who regards himself as a cultural company, obviously does not want to simply do catering enterprises, and there is a cultural operation behind catering. In addition to the theme of Changsha's well culture in the 1980s, the layout of space and details is also key. For example, the small market formed by the slow lifting of the ramp at the entrance of Changsha Super Wenheyou, people in it will have a sense of exploration; and the two large pass areas formed by the main beam of the atrium area can not only connect different scenes, but also form a deep and large field of vision, which attracts many consumers to punch in and take photos.

In addition to the intentional hierarchical arrangement and combination of space, Super Wen and You's control of details is also key, such as restoring the objects and scenes of old Changsha more realistically, and then creating an atmosphere of the 80s through the lime road floor, peeling wall skin, and even the dilapidated door panels to achieve the purpose of emotional resonance.

This series of creations does indeed make consumers have a sense of participation and experience in the 80s in Super Wenheyou, with a patchwork of shops and space arrangements, coupled with conflicts with the surrounding environment, and a novel atmosphere that enables consumers to meet in addition to normal catering needs in Super Wenheyou, as well as cultural and emotional experience needs.

This is also a new catering format built by Super Wenheyou, which integrates cultural experience into the normal diet of consumers, increasing traffic and generating additional revenue. However, this cultural expression of "food + space" has become the commercial operation mode of Wenheyou, which is still achieved by traffic.

The mode of running as a super wenheyou in the form of a shopping mall not only requires a huge amount of investment in the early stage, but also requires more passenger flow. Although founder Wen Bin claims that Wen Heyou will be the Disney of the food industry and provide consumers with a better dining experience, this is obviously a gimmick and a means of attracting traffic.

It is reported that the exposure of Changsha Super Wenheyou in 2020 has accumulated as many as 6 billion times, and there are more than 50,000 notes in the Little Red Book. Guangzhou Wenheyou invited snack merchants such as Fried Luoming, Feng Chuanhui, Shawan Milk Queen, etc. to be famous for their marketing play, and it is obvious that before entering the super Wenheyou, the merchants were already the traffic explosion in the snack industry.

Obviously, Wen Heyou's internet celebrity marketing style attracts more consumers, and the culture is more like a gimmick under the catering, but the cultural experience is indeed the key to Changsha Wenhe you out of the circle. The super Wenhe youshui and soil dissatisfaction in Guangzhou and Shenzhen also shows from the side that the cultural sales under wenhe you restaurant are not as optimistic as imagined, especially whether the cultural experience outside the catering is worthy of large-scale replication is still an important issue.

The super wen and friends are more based on various types of snacks, such as photo studios and other scenes and cultural atmosphere experience is more like for the consumer's catering experience to create additional emotional empathy, increase consumption desire while achieving an alternative income-generating purpose.

Culture is culture, and dining belongs to catering

First of all, do not consider whether Wen Heyou can become the Disney of the food industry, the successive failures in the expansion of Shenzhen and Guangzhou and the delay in landing the Nanjing project can show that the cultural marketing style of super Wen Heyou has not been able to play as imagined, like Shenzhen Wen heyou's sign has become "Old Street Oyster Square", the signature dish has also changed from crayfish to oyster, and Guangzhou's Wen Heyou has not changed its signboard, but it has also increased the seafood market.

The reason is that in addition to the dissatisfaction of the scene culture, the main reason why the super wen and friends of the two places are high and low is because the cultural marketing style has yet to be verified. For example, the initial consumption potential of Super Wenheyou is amazing, and there are some Internet celebrity brands settled in, but the duration is not long.

Coupled with the super Wenheyou business settlement conditions are not high, you can pay part of the turnover to Wenheyou, and do not need additional costs such as rent, the stability of the merchants has been greatly weakened, especially with the overall traffic and reduction, many merchants have chosen to withdraw, like Shenzhen Wenheyou's tea beauty pop-up store and other stores.

In addition to the impact of the epidemic, the frequent changes in IP themes are also important reasons, such as the announcement of the ming dynasty culture at the end of last year to the six dynasties culture, and earlier its theme was the cultural and entertainment trend route.

If Wen Heyou's march into these three places is restricted, then Zhuzhou Wen and You, who are only 40 kilometers away from Changsha, have also encountered the same problem. From another point of view, that is to say, Wenheyou in Zhuzhou, Shenzhen and other places is normal, while Changsha Wenheyou is special.

Moreover, from the perspective of Wen heyou's market expansion performance, it is clear that its cultural marketing play is more restricted than other traffic playing methods, and the cultural empathy of the city is very affected by the region. According to some data, most of Changsha Wenheyou are foreign tourists, and Changsha locals on social platforms do not seem to be interested in it.

Whether the layoffs will be widespread is still difficult to predict, especially the recent catering market has entered the wave of store closures and layoffs. For example, the proportion of layoffs in the Mo mo dim sum bureau has reached 40%, and it also involves the finance and personnel departments; Lele Tea has also recently closed the last store in Guangzhou, which also means that it has completely withdrawn from the South China market.

According to the data of enterprise investigation, the number of restaurants that were suspended and cancelled in 2021 reached 885,000, and nearly 400,000 fast food restaurants were cancelled. Under the premise that the overall catering market is not optimistic, Wen heyou's layoffs do not seem to be difficult to understand, but as a company with snacks as the main source of revenue, it claims to be a cultural company, and it is difficult for Wenheyou to reproduce the same consumption scene as the base camp except Changsha, and it is obviously difficult for Wen heyou to be understood as a "cultural company" with optimistic prospects.

When the food and culture collision of Wen Heyou only has a good market performance in one place, the impression left on the outside world is more like a snack-themed experience hall, not a gourmet enterprise, and the deliberate oldness of culture and the novelty brought by the sense of conflict are obviously difficult to maintain the flow of customers, and the market failure has obviously become a matter of course.