"Hedgehog Commune" text
In 2023, freshly made yogurt has once become a track talked about by new consumer investors, and it has even been pinned on the high hopes of "the new top stream in the tea industry".
According to the big data of Red Meal, as of December 2023, the number of stores of freshly made yogurt brands in the country has exceeded 23,000.
Just a year later, the freshly made yogurt has either been caught in a food safety storm or has been criticized by vulgar marketing, and the former stars of tomorrow have collapsed. On the other hand, the players in the milk tea track are still high-spirited, riveting their efforts to hit the market, and they are piling up IPOs this year.
Not long ago, Zhang Junjie, the founder of Bawang Tea Ji, shouted the slogan of "Surpassing Starbucks China" in Shanghai, and recently there was news that he bravely entered the Hong Kong milk tea market, and Bawang Chaji, which has only been established for 7 years, has still become the most envied of yogurt brands.
It only took one year for freshly made yogurt to go from a star product and a capital darling to a downhill road, and the short life cycle makes people wonder why the crowded new tea market can't accommodate a yogurt?
Expensive yogurt, after the collapse of the house
In the summer of 2023, jasmine yogurt is popular.
Yu Xin, the store manager, told the Hedgehog Commune (ID: ciweigongshe): "At that time, the store often burst orders, not only the customers were impatient, but the takeaway brother's eyes were all about knives, and the turnover was more than 10,000 yuan a day." ”
2023 is also the fastest year for the expansion of Mo Yogurt, with data from Narrow Door Dining Eye showing that the number of new stores exceeded 1,300 this year.
Everyone said that yogurt was the drink of the summer. At that time, Yu Xin even wondered if milk tea would be replaced by freshly made yogurt?
However, jasmine yogurt has stumbled along the way, from non-dairy creamer, excessive sugar to expired materials, rotten fruits and other negative rumors, which not only lost the popularity of passers-by, but also made franchisees gradually lose confidence.
Yu Xin said frankly: "The three jasmine yogurt stores of the former boss are being packaged for sale. "Recently, the store's turnover has only been maintained at about 1,000 yuan, and the working day is occasionally only in the triple digits, and the number of store assistants has been reduced from four to two, and the salary has been reduced by 2,000 yuan per person. If you don't transfer it, the boss has to pay the money upside down, and you can't hold it anymore.
Especially this month, a new milk tea shop called "Jasmine Milk White" was opened near the store, and the business was very prosperous, but I don't know if they were all surnamed "Mo", and there were often takeaway brothers and customers who misidentified "Jasmine Yogurt" to get milk tea orders, which made the already dismal business worse. As a result, the friends in the store had to put a sign in a conspicuous position on the counter: "Not Jasmine Milk White." ”
Image courtesy of the interviewee
From the infinite scenery to the crisis, you don't even need to wait until the second summer after the explosion. According to the data of Narrow Door Catering, 142 stores of Mo Yogurt were closed in the first half of this year, which exceeded the total number of stores closed in the previous four years in half a year.
Yu Xin also left Mo Yogurt at the end of this month, she said that this year's business is too bleak, and the only thing waiting for her is to cut her salary and lay off employees. But deep down, Yu Xin still hopes that Mo Yogurt can survive the difficulties, she thinks: "After all, it is only the unscrupulous merchants of individual stores that affect the entire brand." ”
Perhaps it is true that as Yu Xin said, the rollover is not terrible, but it is the drawbacks of too fast expansion under the franchise model, but after the rollover, Mo Yogurt did not come up with the enemy, and took out the trend of "changing the past", neither announced the results of self-inspection and self-inspection, nor gave a more systematic and transparent management plan.
Food safety is a taboo for catering brands, once violated, the reputation will take a sharp turn, and the possibility of reversing the defeat is almost 0, not to mention that jasmine yogurt is not the first time to overturn.
Before March 15 this year, the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission issued a document questioning the problem of raw materials of jasmine yogurt, and sucrose and maltose were detected in unsweetened drinks, and the fat content was also 3.25 times that of protein, and such test results occurred after the creamer storm.
After repeatedly overturning, Mo Yogurt still deals with it with such an attitude, which is inevitably a bit "raised high and gently put down", which makes the brand's reputation suffer a continuous blow.
The food safety crisis is not completely unsolvable, provided that brands are deeply aware of the seriousness of the problem and are willing to take responsibility for their problems and pay the price. The recent positive case is Fat Donglai Supermarket.
On the evening of June 25, some customers reported on Douyin that "Fat Donglai rolling dough processing place has a poor sanitary environment", and the next morning, the company immediately responded to set up an investigation team to implement the matter, and one day later it was verified to be true, rewarded the whistleblower with 100,000 yuan in cash, and was willing to compensate 1,000 yuan per person for all customers who had consumed during the period, a total of 8,833 copies.
Photo source: Xiaohongshu@Crane Fat Donglai
The compensation of nearly 9 million yuan is the price paid by Fat Donglai for his mistakes, and it also cleverly resolved a public relations crisis into an advertising campaign, but it is a pity that such an attitude and courage to admit mistakes are beyond the reach of most brands.
It has been more than a month since the "collapse" of Mo Yogurt, and the brand has quietly launched the sub-brand "GOOOLDEN", aiming at the business of "yogurt bowl", and seems to have made up its mind to "practice the big and scrap, and the small one continues".
From this point of view, franchise is not the original sin of the brand, there is no right or wrong business model, the brand's management and control ability, the life cycle of the category, and the team's sense of responsibility and responsibility are all very important and indispensable.
In the tide of low prices, the water and soil are not adapted
In 2024, it seems that the ready-made yogurt brands have started a collective "water reversal", with more than one yogurt collapsed, and Blueglass, the "Hermes of yogurt", is not having a good time.
First, it was accused of being a "new type of laxative", and many consumers said that they had gastrointestinal discomfort and diarrhea after drinking it; The new product "Aphrodisiac Yogurt" launched later was also deeply involved in the negative public opinion of edge marketing because of the "vulgar" advertising slogan.
Whether it's a "laxative" or an "aphrodisiac", it's clear that Blueglass is positioned as a functional yogurt, determined to integrate the periodic table into yogurt, and make consumers realize that "this is not an ordinary cup of yogurt" with dense formula labels. Concepts such as "enhancing immunity", "eliminating free radicals" and "anti-aging and anti-inflammatory" have all appeared in the product promotion of Mo Yogurt, and in 2021, Mo Yogurt was also fined 60,000 yuan by the Market Supervision and Administration Bureau of Chaoyang District, Beijing for false advertising.
But why does Blueglass have to be a "functional yogurt"?
When you see "the price of a cup of yogurt = a case of Moslian", the answer is self-evident. If it was just a regular cup of yogurt, no matter how beautiful it looked, who would willingly pay for it again and again?
Especially at present, milk tea is ushering in a "price reduction tide", coffee is mired in a price war, 9 pieces of 9 coffee, 16 yuan milk tea are all over the market, and expensive yogurt is even more unsuitable and out of place.
So why can't the price of yogurt be brought down? The industrial media "DataVision" once gave an analysis that a short shelf life + expensive supply chain + lack of bargaining power for raw materials constitute an expensive dilemma for freshly made yogurt.
Excluding these factors, even in the best of times, there is enough purchase volume of ready-made yogurt to negotiate prices, reduce costs with ordinary seasonal fruits, and even integrate the supply chain, quickly expand stores, and turn stores into "front warehouses" to spread out costs through scale effects...... Reducing operating costs under a series of theoretically feasible efficiency models is still difficult to make ready-made yogurt.
Taking the relatively affordable yogurt brand K22 as an example, K22 broke the world with a single product, reducing the SKU to four, and the SOP was optimized as much as possible - the cup size, sugar content, and ice content are all fixed and cannot be customized. In this way, it not only greatly simplifies the product procurement and production process, but also compresses the time for consumers to select, and achieves the ultimate efficiency first.
However, many consumers told the Hedgehog Commune: "The taste (K22) is no different from ordinary yogurt, and I feel that I can reproduce it with yogurt + frozen strawberries at home." ”
In fact, the consumer's feeling has revealed the mystery of the affordable price, K22 cooperates with large dairy companies, and the milk source is flavored fermented milk, which belongs to the low-temperature yogurt on the supermarket shelf, and the raw material selection of ready-made yogurt such as jasmine yogurt and Blueglass is completely different. In the pursuit of cost-effective consumption cycle, consumers can spend the same amount of money and buy the same fermented milk in large vats in supermarkets.
In the traditional supermarket channels, big brands such as Yili, Mengniu, Sanyuan, and Guangming are still the top players in yogurt, and brands such as Jane Eyre, Lechun, and Kashi are also grabbing market share with their respective products.
In this way, the price reduction of Heytea and Nai Xue is a step back to open the sky, and the price reduction of freshly made yogurt is a step back in the abyss - if the raw materials are replaced for the price reduction, the freshly made yogurt will compete with all kinds of low-temperature yogurt and room temperature yogurt in supermarkets and convenience stores.
At this point, whether to reduce the price or not, or to advance or retreat, the ready-made yogurt seems to be in a dilemma.
Yogurt stalls, milk tea insomnia
In 2024, in addition to the jasmine yogurt collectively entering the stall stage, the new tea drink is also experiencing unprecedented "insomnia" anxiety.
As we all know, this year has become the "listing year" of the milk tea brand in history, in addition to the successful listing of Nai Xue's tea and tea Baidao in Hong Kong stocks, Gu Ming, Mixue Bingcheng, and Shanghai Auntie have submitted prospectuses, and Bawang Tea Ji has also reported the news of going public in the United States.
After the new tea beverage industry entered the stage of stock competition and bayonet red, the mentality of investors has also changed. In the past, investors valued the high growth potential and huge market space of the brand. However, with the intensification of market competition and the continuous change of consumer demand, investors have begun to pay more attention to the profitability, operational efficiency and innovation ability of brands.
This is also one of the reasons why the young Bawang Tea Ji broke out of the encirclement with the market gap of raw leaf fresh milk tea, as well as the extreme efficiency of large single products and fixed SOPs. Bawang Tea Ji announced a sales volume of 10.8 billion yuan in 2023, which has surpassed Hey Tea, is on par with Shanghai Auntie, and can firmly rank in the top 4 of new tea drinks.
Such a result is enough to make it elated, eyeing and ambitious, and it is also enough to give it the confidence and courage to call Starbucks.
Bawang Chaji Headquarters丨Source: Xiaohongshu @ula Shanghai office location
Of course, there is also a strong capital support behind such a magnificent ambition, so listing and financing is also the only way for Bawang Chaji. However, listing does not mean that everything is fine, Nai Xue's market value has fallen nearly 7 times, and the listing of Chabaidao is broken, and the stories of the predecessors prove that listing is only the middle game of this game.
In the world of new consumption, the life cycle of a brand seems to be accelerated tenfold. When it appears, each one is a rising star, soaring like a rocket; When it falls, it is like a wind and clouds, and it can't even wait for the next summer.
Consumers will love you when you have a big hit item; Consumers will also abandon you when you are no longer attractive. Bawang Tea Ji is now the darling of consumers and investors, and the next anxiety is how to continue to sit in this position, just like a little bit, Nai Xue, Hey Tea, Lele Tea, and Tea Baidao have been anxious - next year, will the original leaf fresh milk tea still be everyone's favorite drink?
Under such involution and anxiety of new tea drinks, it is very difficult to be alone.
Lu Liang, the founder of Chayan Yuese, once had a famous saying that has been circulated for a long time - "I am more pessimistic, either expand to death, or not to expand to death." At least (not expanding) this way of dying, we have more dignity. ”
In April this year, Pan Pan, the former managing partner of Tiantu Capital VC Fund, joined Chayan Yuese as the company's strategic leader, which was once regarded as one of the important symbols of Chayan Yuese's listing, but soon Chayan Yuese's equity information changed frequently, and many old shareholders "cleared their shares".
In the end, a different choice was made, but no matter whether it expanded or not, tea was always in "insomnia".
Even if it is already the most "long-lived" category in the new consumer field.
(At the request of the interviewee, Yu Xin's name has been changed.) ）