Image source @ Visual China
Text | The Internet refers to the north, the author | Meng Chaohui, Editor, | Pu Fan
As one of the few industries that can maintain growth in the post-epidemic era, "milk tea" has gradually become an important research sample in the current business field. People try to find a way out for their business by clarifying the reasons why "milk tea" can be "counter-cyclical", "no need for dine-in", "low technical threshold" and "large marketing investment" are the hottest alternative answers. Star milk tea brands such as Xicha, Naixue, and Michelle Ice City also have a "big factory background" in this process, the valuation starting line has reached "tens of billions", and the scale of directly managed employees has touched a five-figure threshold.
What is even more valuable is that when the head brands began to weaken and began to appear in the media headlines together with negative words such as "layoffs", "milk tea" did not enter the overall recession period, there were always "substitute" team members who could make up for it in time, Lele Tea, Shuyi Burnt Immortal Grass, and Bawang Tea Ji almost filled the potential pain space with a "seamless" posture, so that the commercial reporters of ScrewBa did not spend much time to tangle with "tea color annealing, is it indicating that the milk tea bubble has burst."
However, for many young people, the biggest practical significance of "milk tea" is that it just plays the role of a "recycle bin": the overall recession of the Internet economy has taken away tens of thousands of decent jobs, and the career plans of many young people have almost been "scrapped" - and the timely rise of "milk tea" just accepted all of this, and then described a quite faith business model to everyone:
"We are not a restaurant, nor a traditional industry, but a collection of all the characteristics of the new era of consumption. The epidemic is just an accelerator, and it will always come. ”
Store
Lu Cheng's shop opened in a commercial street near Jianshe Road in Chengdu. According to the real estate self-media in Baidu search results, here is a famous failed project:
Although as early as September 2016, it was announced that "investment promotion was completed" and "officially opened the street", positioning itself as a community business supporting the middle-class community next door, but the entire block was in a large-scale vacant state for most of the time, and the survival cycle of sporadic merchants was within half a year. By the second half of 2019, the developer simply chose the "secondary listing", using the soon-to-be-completed subway line 8, and the Eastern Suburbs Memory Art Park across the street to repackag, but the epidemic only left time for the street to "liquidate", and the commercial development process was forced to go down for half a year just after restarting. It wasn't until the summer of 2020 that new merchants entered on a large scale.
The new merchants have also suffered two serious collective crises. Once occurred at the end of 2020, Chengdu broke out a more serious outbreak, the risk area pointed to by the flow is less than 500 meters away from the block, resulting in the block forced to collectively close down - at this time most of the bosses did not achieve "profit", generally holding the idea of "raising popularity, to the Spring Festival holiday should be good" to resist the pressure - watching the traditional theory of the "consumption window period" slipped away, many people chose to terminate the contract in advance, and the roller shutter door was plastered with "Wangpu Rent".
The second time occurred in the summer of 2021, the urban management department began to concentrate on the management of the "external swing", has been the small area of catering shops as the main format of the block has become the "main target", hot pot, skewers, barbecue, crayfish and other "fireworks" too strong merchants have been greatly affected, the shop once again appeared large-scale lease withdrawal. It is said that the landlords of the shops once tried to "collectively defend their rights", because the "secondary listing" of the block originally played a copywriting that "can be placed" in the publicity, which some people think may be suspected of "false publicity".
Some people also said that the plan provided to them by the property at that time was "wait a minute", because Chengdu was preparing for the upcoming 8th National Sanitary City Review, which probably needed to wait another 2 or 3 months, "after which it will definitely be relaxed."
(Many merchants asked for help through the mayor's hotline and got such a reply)
The property was basically correct in its judgment. After a few months, the management intensity was significantly "relaxed", and the block merchants were allowed to carry out "limited" swings - the need to lay sanitary facilities such as floor mats, and at the same time made requirements for the number of tables and orientation, as far as possible to "not affect the community residents" - urban management personnel will initially be stationed in the block to take turns on duty, and then basically handed over to the property and street self-supervision.
However, the impact is irreversible, and the block has become a famous "value depression" in the construction road business circle. In the case that other shops can hang out 150-200/month per square meter in the same period, the rent is maintained at a level of about 100-120/month for a long time. According to the price of the second opening at the end of 2019, a shop of about 50 square meters can only provide landlords with a return rate of about 3% per year, barely outperforming the balance treasure and worrying about the surrounding real estate agents.
Lu Cheng should be the first to make money on this "failed commercial street".
His small shop specializes in Thai tea, the listing surface is barely more than 20 square meters, the opening room is very cramped, two adult men side by side to eat will appear crowded, the only more complex transformation is to divide the 8 meters into two areas, the back area as a warehouse, the front area plus the outside swing left for customers to "wait for it". Several large PVC menus define the décor of the shop, printed with some of the most common bags of milk tea on the streets of Thailand, with highly saturated red and green in the background.
"Thai" is the key word in the Chengdu tea market in the past two years, inherited from a generation of tea drinking Internet celebrity single Cantonese hand-played lemon tea, from Wangping Street to Jianshe Road, everywhere you can see signs that read "Laos", "Thailand", "lemongrass" and "lime". The taste and visual Nanyang style brings enough nostalgia and exoticism. Many young people are keen to use these small shops as filming locations, wearing sunglasses, applying dark lipstick, and mass-producing "Hong Kong style ootd" with the help of filter software.
Lu Cheng carefully analyzed this new consumption scene, with the results of thinking from the beginning of last year to choose the façade, and finally looked at the "rotten tail" here: "If it were not for this (development failure) I would not have been able to rent here at this price, nor would I need them to develop, I have my judgment." ”
According to my observation, "judgment" should refer to the "home workshop" model. At the beginning, he limited the selection on the menu to single digits, did not hire a clerk, did not log on to any takeaway platform, and pinned all the customer flow on the just need community 100 meters away, the art park 200 meters away and the Chengdu University of Technology 1 kilometer away, as far as possible to reduce the cost on the rent and raw materials. Then "stipulate" that you and each customer can talk more than two sentences, and strive to be like the Southeast Asian shopkeeper in the "Thai Emirates Airlines" and "Thai Fat Cat" shots on Kuaishou, "have a sense of the original people of the neighborhood, and become the representative of the character of the neighborhood".
Until one day at the time of the settlement, he found that "the profit was enough for him to give himself two months of leave a year", he decided to upgrade the store - that is, after the Spring Festival holiday in 2022, he increased the options on the menu to more than 20, the milk tea shop also purchased a battery car, he and his father took turns to act as a takeaway, the delivery range was "unlimited", and customers were supported to place orders through the boss's personal WeChat.
Lu Cheng gave me a thorough bottom, the current daily flow can be about 2,000 yuan. I roughly searched the Internet for the average gross margin of a milk tea shop, calculated at a relatively "conservative" 60%, which means that his monthly income is close to 40,000 in the peak season.
"But it's really too tired." The small shop opens at 1 p.m. every day until 2 a.m. During the period in addition to playing the role of the clerk, follow up the orders that continue to jump out, but also need to set aside a part of the energy for "research and development", the near-term goal is to improve the "milk green", there are constantly familiar customers said that this product is too greasy to drink, "milk green (the status in the Thai tea drink) is equivalent to Starbucks's star ice, do not do well will make people laugh." ”
Moreover, Lu Cheng is not the only "milk tea entrepreneur" on this street. After the epidemic, there have been two new milk teas with the theme of "low calorie health" in the neighborhood, which are located closer to the memory of the eastern suburbs and the storefront is larger. They had a fierce competition with the books a hundred meters away, and marumotodo, and the leaflets full of preferential information were spread out in all the shared bicycle baskets nearby.
Lu Cheng still remembers that time, when he was very anxious every day, "As soon as I opened the mobile phone, someone told you that 0 sugar 0 card was a new consumption, and I couldn't help but think about whether I was gambling wrong." The owner of the convenience store next to him also confirmed Lu Cheng's statement, he found that in the past two years, he was "looking for sugar-free", "the green packaged jasmine honey tea is all bought by nearby intermediaries and migrant workers", "(drinking sugar-free) Girls have also become more, it is estimated that they are afraid of fat."
Fortunately, the inner volume of the block did not last long. Two "low-calorie milk tea" one closed, the other stopped pushing, seems to have embarked on the route of private domain operation - in a total of 9 valid reviews on the public reviews, only one "bad review" expressed an opinion on "taste", and other customers were talking about "the boss is very good", "the boss lady is very good", "the stem is too funny haha", "there is no guilt to drink".
Books and burnt fairy grass have grown into a behemoth that the community shop cannot shake at all. In November last year, they titled Hunan Satellite TV's variety show "Night in Greater Wan Chai", and milk tea from Sichuan became the designated drink for Hong Kong stars' self-operated tea restaurants, and the offline stores linked up with the "brother with the same style" signboard, bringing goods with a burst of desire. In February this year, they announced that they had received investment from Absolute Taste, Chacha, with a scale of more than 600 million yuan and an overall valuation of more than 10 billion, according to the narrow door restaurant eye data, the size of the store was second only to the honey snow ice, and the local media in Chengdu excitedly shouted "the birth of a new unicorn".
Lu Cheng was glad that he was not too affected by emotions. On his console was a charm, a yellow paper danshu, which was said to have been requested by a friend for him. I asked what the specific meaning of this symbol was, and he pointed to the goldfish tank at the door: "This is also a feng shui, I rarely change the water, the dirtier the water, the more prosperous it is." ”
Big factory
Iron Head and I met at their corporate headquarters. On that day, Chengdu was more than 30 degrees, and there was no direct subway connection from my location, so I needed to take a bus to Yanshikou first, and then walk through the "Diyi Avenue". The cheap bags and clothing piled up in the underground shopping mall accelerated and volatilized under the action of high temperatures, and almost all passers-by subconsciously pressed the mask.
For Chengdu media people, this is the classic "treasure house of topic selection". Some people are keen to explore the "feng shui problem", believing that the reason why several major commercial real estates on this street are depressed and constantly sell themselves must have mysterious forces other than the "laws of economics". Participants covered real estate media to subculture accounts, "field public opinion" and "murder house exploration" flew together, "ghosts hit the wall" and "hidden wind and gas" a color.
Some people use the "underground mall" as a theoretical model, sometimes used to gain insight into changes in consumer psychology, and sometimes to demonstrate the complexity of marketing strategies. The most common story synopsis is: this several-kilometer-long underground commercial street was originally called "Tianza Shopping Mall", which was originally a grand project similar to "Third Tokyo", accompanied by the development of the small commodity economy and the tension of urban land, and was very prosperous in the late 90s, and the tightness of shops was close to chunxi Road on the ground - the decline occurred after 2008, e-commerce diverted a part of consumers, and the acceleration of urban infrastructure reduced the charm of "downtown".
By 2010, the "Tianzuo Shopping Mall" was transformed into the "Diyi Avenue", which is known as the "largest commercial pedestrian street in Shudi", and the project was almost left with the meaning of "capital speculation": according to the "Daily Economic News", the project party and the business acquired the operating rights for 289 million yuan in April 2010, and announced the transfer at the end of 2010 at an agreed price of 2.372 billion Hong Kong dollars. According to the calculation of the final payment of the buyer's payment announced by the official announcement in March 2011, less than a year of patience with the project, chengdu city center left a "ghost street" with a vacancy rate of more than 80%.
(There is a UP master who adapts the story of this street into "urban weird talk")
Iron Head took a long time to adapt to the office environment here. The economic structure of the office buildings where they are located is very traditional, with most financial enterprises and real estate enterprises second. As a new front-line city center, there are very few "new" colors.
"There is also a real estate trading center inside, if it were not for the fact that they recently changed to the other side of the elevator (as an entrance), there are many agents who bring customers to sign contracts every day, (elevator) and so on several trips can not go up." Tietou worked on Tianfu Third Street before, doing operations in Internet companies, which is the "most Beijing" place in the hearts of many Chengdu people, "You look at the outside, it is not a foot massage, it is a Nike discount store." ”
Fortunately, as long as he returns to his workstation, he can wander the sea of stars.
His company began to accelerate into a "big factory" after the epidemic, and the milestone was in 2021, when the boss accepted the invitation of the local government department to become a "Sichuan brand". Compared with its hometown of Kunming, Chengdu's performance in financial indicators is much better, which theoretically means that consumers here have stronger purchasing power and a consumption concept closer to first-tier cities, which can provide a sufficiently specific reference for the vision of "building a head brand". At the same time, it also means that Chengdu is more likely than Kunming to become a "talent return place", and brand planning and brand operation, which are the work skills that sprout with the development of the new economy, are easier to pick up "ready-made" here.
In more than a year, the team expanded to more than 300 people, generally got the treatment of "the middle and upper level of the industry in the same region", and temporarily did not experience "optimization" or "cost reduction and efficiency increase". Tietou reviewed the boss's mentality, "The new team is not long built, there is no need to disperse the cohesion that has not been formed easily." Not to mention that people are really needed now. ”
"Going to sea" is a very understaffed business line. They are very "early" in the matter of "going to sea", as early as 2019, when there were less than 100 domestic stores, they tried to open stores in Malaysia. According to news reports, it was a very successful attempt, they set a new record for a single sunrise cup in the Malaysian milk tea industry, with a single-day turnover of nearly 500,000 yuan.
After the epidemic was normal, they further raised the priority of "going to sea" and shouted out the goal of "opening 100 stores in Malaysia and surpassing Starbucks". The brand image has also been transformed in accordance with the consumption habits of overseas markets, the LOGO is more flat and national, and the brand name has changed from the original Hanyu Pinyin to Roman Zhuyin.
("Store Opening Information Express" for Foreign Consumers)
In the huge business, only the operation is handed over to the local team, and the tasks of supply chain, design, research and development are entrusted to Chengdu. Chengdu even needs to be responsible for "shop decoration", they specially divided a large office for the "space design team", the teachers in it are generally "big", or from the top 2 factories in the same industry, or have served large restaurant chains or consumer brands, including many "returnees" background. I subconsciously think that this "all-round micro-manipulation" is very costly, and it is implied that the founder is "very controlling". Ironhead denied my speculation, "[Do it yourself] instead of saving costs, outsourcing is not cost-effective." ”
In contrast, they appear to be very "Buddhist" in the domestic market, and even the progress in chengdu can be called "slow", and the number of stores has not exceeded 30 so far. But this state of affairs also gives them the confidence of "not optimizing": their cash flow is relatively free, and the franchise and joint venture model further hedges costs.
The only possible additional cost may be that the owners of the joint venture and franchise will consider the problem of "ping efficiency ratio" and they will have to cooperate with the addition of SKUs to meet the demands. Their national tide cultural and creative surroundings were inspired by the proposal of a Shanghai associate store owner. Before this, they were more inclined to use "peripherals" as "influence dissemination" schemes, and did not think of using them to "operate under pressure stores".
I wondered what form the epidemic would bring them a "direct negative impact", and the iron head patted their thighs, "Brand communication is too easy to drift." ”
The latest lesson occurred in March, Chengdu's new round of epidemics throughout Taikoo Li, Wangping Street, 339 and other Internet celebrity catering concentrations, the epidemic prevention department on dine-in, takeaway has formulated strict control, "brands have a hard time to save the heat, this is slowly dissipated, the original brand budget has been reduced a lot." ”
Of course, Tietou is still full of confidence in "brand building". Because even in the special environment, people have to think more about short-term ROI, repeatedly entangled in "transformation" and "amount" rather than "creativity", but he believes that "doing brand" has been engraved in the DNA of Chengdu catering enterprises. "Catering can be said to be one of the few industries in Chengdu that is willing to 'hug the group'."
To prove this to me, he swiped open his phone and flipped out a circle of friends. According to the remarks, the owner of the circle of friends is running a marketing college similar to "Lakeside University", mainly for the brand people of Base Chengdu, "the must-eat list of reviews, there are Chengdu's Letian and roasters, (the list) that day is all congratulations, all in the savings of Zhang Luo celebration, really called the grand event." ”
In the latest reports, the "joint event" in Chengdu's catering circle is also slowly moving closer to the tea market. On May 25th, the Tea Drinking Branch of Chengdu Restaurant Association was officially established, and the first batch of member companies included Shuyi Roasted Immortal Herb, Tea Hundred Ways, Bawang Chaji, Bing Liwang, Nai Xue's Tea, Xi Tea, A Yogurt Cow, Shanghai Auntie, Chen Duoduo, YuanZhenzhen, Chayu, and Natural Stay.
Tietou's interest in industry exchanges is very strong, and in his eyes, "lack of learning opportunities" is the biggest shortcoming that distinguishes Chengdu from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou: "Chatting here, there is no amount of information at all." ”
When talking about this topic, I actually intend to export a prejudice to him: too much emphasis on "brand communication" and "communication effect" is not an inversion of the catering industry? Will it make the market form a "wrong perception" of the entire industry, so that brands roll up in the "irrational" link, and finally overdraft the confidence of the entire industry in advance.
But this sentence was still swallowed by me in my stomach, "taking pictures and sending circles of friends = the main consumption scene of milk tea" is a consensus that has been repeatedly verified by the market, with the perspective of "catering" to evaluate this phenomenon, there are only two results: either I have a stereotype of marketing, or I am not the core audience of milk tea at all.
I confess that I'm in the gym and don't drink milk tea.
yearning
At the suggestion of Tie tou, I deliberately chose a bus line that would pass through Chunxi Road for the return trip.
In their circle, Chunxi Road is a very good model room, only need to "count stores" to roughly judge the next mainstream trend of the consumer market. I looked out of the car window with this idea, and after eliminating the local OGs such as ChaBaidao, Shuyi Burning Immortal Grass, and Maru Motang, I counted out three bing li kings and two Shanghai aunts.
Aunt Shanghai is a tea brand from Shanghai, and Bing Liwang is from Deyang, Sichuan, a fourth-tier city with a population of more than 3 million all year round. The two have a very different visual style: The Shanghai aunt is not "aunt", and the girl on the LOGO is "qipao + pill head + wink"; The King of Soldiers is easily reminiscent of the "Strongest Soldier King", who decorated the console as an "armored vehicle", and the tracks and wheels brought a strong sense of machinery - it is difficult to imagine that they will become a "competitive relationship", at least as a circle of friends picture they do not provide the same set of aesthetics.
I told Lu Cheng the theory and observations of the "model room", hoping to help his entrepreneurship. After dinner, I received a reply with a question:
"Do you think the entrepreneurial advantages of big cities are getting more, or are they getting less?"
*Characters in this article are pseudonyms.