Many professionals believe that successful catering enterprises have no off-season. However, for hot pot enterprises, especially most hot pot enterprises operating in the north, business in summer is not as good as that in winter. Most hot pot restaurants are prosperous in winter, but deserted in summer. Operators believe that hot pot restaurants will not have a large number of customers in summer, and no matter how hard they work, their business will not be very good. In order to get through the difficult period, we chose to lay off employees, make profits at a discount, eat Chinese food instead, or even close down, and enter the off-season operation, resulting in a sharp decline in turnover. Therefore, there is a strange circle in which hot pot restaurants earn a barrel of gold in winter and lose half a barrel in summer.

It is not difficult to find the reason why hot pot business is frustrated in summer. Eating habits are the main factor. In hot summer, most people will feel the heat wave when they think of hot pot, and they don't want to eat it. Only in a few areas such as Sichuan and Chongqing, people will not refuse to eat hot pot because of the hot summer days. Even the hotter you get, the more you eat hot pot. In other areas, how to maintain the popularity of hot pot restaurants in summer has become a headache for operators. In order to keep hot pot restaurants hot in summer, hot pot operators mostly take the way of making profits and discounts. In winter, that is, the peak season of hot pot business, giving vouchers is more popular. Customers who spend more than 100 will get 50, and those who spend more than 100 will get 100. These vouchers can only be used in summer. Such a discount makes the hot pot restaurant have almost no * * in its summer operation. Therefore, reducing costs has become a magic weapon to reduce losses. However, without a cool dining environment, even a very low price will not let customers eat hot pot. Therefore, air conditioning is indispensable in any case, and high electricity bills cannot be saved. Therefore, measures such as laying off staff, reducing the weight of dishes, increasing the gross profit of drinks, increasing the cost of pot bottom, dipping materials and alcohol have become specific operation plans. What followed was the decline in service quality and the decline in food quality. Although customers save the cost of dishes, they increase the cost of drinks and the bottom of the pot. This operation is risky. For hot pot restaurants, the loss is not only * *, but also the loss of brands and customers. Such an approach is undoubtedly digging your own grave. So, how to do the summer marketing of hot pot restaurants correctly?

Customer demand is fundamental.

The reason why hot pot restaurants offer discounts in summer is mainly to retain customers and maintain good popularity. So there's a hotpot restaurant? Raising customers in summer? Said. The disadvantages of hot pot restaurant management in summer are no longer to be said. Does the customer need it? Raise? Yes We can't change the habit that people seldom eat hot pot in summer. But it is not immutable. It is not that we have lost our credibility and customers that we can come in winter and can't come in summer. We can try. Keep guests in winter? The way. In other words, in the peak season, a lot of customer information is collected. Make consumption judgments for customers with high return rate. Listen to customers' suggestions to our store in time, satisfy their consumption psychology, give certain preferential conditions, establish good relations with them, and prepare for summer operation. The author contacted the manager of a hot pot restaurant. At the beginning of his tenure, he encountered a summer crisis. He used to get five tables of customers' dishes, low-priced mutton and meal coupons for free every day. The advantage of price will naturally attract customers, but the more customers, the more losses, and the whole summer's business is not ideal. So in the hot pot season, he made a market survey of his frequent customers, and found that they can be mainly divided into three types of customer groups: first, family consumption customer groups, most of which are residents of nearby communities. Mostly young families. This group of people spend very little every time, for the purpose of pure catering, and patronize frequently. But I like choosing Chinese fast food in summer. The second is the official consumer customer base, most of which are middle-level cadres in nearby shopping malls, mainly receiving business personnel. Single rooms are frequently used. The dining time is short, the consumption of drinks is not high, and the overall dining standard can neither be high nor too casual, so I like to choose a special diet. Third, the working-class customers are mostly friends, and the consumption of drinks is greater than that of food. Pay special attention to the price of drinks. According to the characteristics of these three groups of people, the mall has formulated the summer management strategy:

1 April, the attendance rate of hot pot restaurants is still good this season. When the business does not decline significantly, Chinese food will be increased. Mainly based on home cooking, while operating hot pot dishes. The purpose is to let customers know that Chinese food is served in our store. Facts have proved that in the summer months, the customer groups of family consumption still maintain a good frequency of patronage, and it is not entirely Chinese food, and most of the time they choose hot pot to eat. The purpose of increasing Chinese food is not to change the business model of hot pot restaurants, but as a means to attract customers to eat. It is not as difficult for customers to eat hot pot in summer as we thought. In hot summer, it is very pleasant to enjoy hot pot in a cool and comfortable restaurant.

Because the guests in the room used a big hot pot at the dining table, it was inconvenient. So we changed the way of dining in a single room, changed the original big hot pot into a small hot pot for one person and heated it with a small electromagnetic oven. The content of room service process has been added, such as the waiter serving food for customers, adjusting the heating temperature of induction cooker according to the dining situation of guests, adjusting the room temperature and so on. Make guests feel convenient and casual when dining. According to customers' opinions, a clear soup pot bottom suitable for summer consumption was designed, and the variety of seafood in hot pot dishes was increased, such as fresh abalone, sea cucumber and hairy crab. Increased the variety of snacks with local characteristics. This measure meets the reception needs of our business customers, making the reception standard decent and not exceeding the standard. We have maintained a good relationship with this store all the year round.

Hot pot is a popular food, and the consumption of working class still accounts for the majority. People in this area have a habit of choosing barbecue and other foods in summer. Eating barbecue food means eating beef and mutton around the stove, and eating hot pot means eating beef and mutton around the hot pot. Although the taste is very different, it is not very different in essence. Barbecue shops can do business in summer, but hot pot restaurants don't make sense. Summer is the peak season for beer consumption, and the store adjusted the beer price appropriately in April. And extended the business hours of dinner. Compared with low-priced mutton, cheap cold beer is more attractive to the working class. And the impact on the hotel is not serious.

After full preparation, it meets the consumption needs of three types of customers. ? Keep guests in winter? Our strategy is successful. The store's operation in summer improved obviously compared with the previous year, and it turned losses into profits in summer. Explain that different regions have different eating habits. Grasping customers' consumption demand, making the best use of the situation and quietly changing customers' attitude towards eating hot pot in summer is one of the good strategies in summer hot pot management.

Second, focus on hot pot varieties.

The lack of varieties and single taste of some hot pot restaurants are also the reasons for the frustration in summer operation. Through investigation, the author found that hot pot restaurants are mostly instant-boiled mutton or Sichuan-style hot pot. As a traditional winter diet, instant-boiled mutton has been deeply imprinted in people's minds. Sichuan-style hot pot, except Chengdu and Chongqing, has encountered troubles in the north and south and in summer. All kinds of fish, fish, seafood, chicken, duck, sour soup, beef bones and other non-mainstream hot pot foods, some people are happy and others are sad. The fiercer the competition in the hot pot industry, the more and more new varieties of hot pot. Some are thriving, others are just a flash in the pan. Therefore, it is a problem that hot pot operators must seriously consider what kind of hot pot varieties to choose to maintain prosperous business all year round.

I once contacted a hot pot restaurant owner. His store is a franchise store, and its brand has a certain popularity. The variety is mainly Yuanyang hot pot. At the beginning of its business, it quickly opened the market with its low price, the quality of hot pot and the advantages in winter. But it didn't last long. By May, although the charging standard has been low and the quality of hot pot is stable, the frequency of customers' patronage is getting lower and lower. When the boss visited the customer, he got the answer: hot pot tastes good, but he is tired of eating it. And the weather is hot, eating this hot pot has a warm feeling. Since the production technology of this store's hot pot is all provided by the headquarters, the base material and soup material are also the finished products provided by the headquarters. The kitchen staff are all processed according to the technological process, and the operation is very difficult, so no professional hot pot master is hired. It is impossible to update varieties at one time. In order to maintain the brand image, the headquarters does not allow franchisees to change their business varieties without authorization. In July, it has reached the point where no one patronizes. Helpless, he can only end the operation of the store awkwardly.

Confucius said:? Every now and then, no food? . With the improvement of living standards, people's requirements for diet are getting higher and higher, and different seasons have different requirements for diet. Introducing the concept of summer health preservation into hot pot restaurants has become the goal pursued by many people in the hot pot industry. The variety of hot pot needs to be closely related to people's nutritional needs and the taste changes corresponding to the seasons.

We look at the choice of hot pot varieties from the food suitable for summer consumption. Vegetables suitable for summer consumption include some leaves, cauliflower and some fruits and vegetables, such as lettuce, celery, moss, medlar seedlings, shepherd's purse, purslane, kohlrabi, arrowhead, fresh lotus root, mung bean sprouts, tomatoes, asparagus, water bamboo, sugarcane, loofah and so on. In traditional hot pot, this ingredient is not common. I have tasted such a new type of hot pot. The traditional wax gourd cup is put in the hot pot to clear the soup, supplemented by seafood, vegetables, fungi, duck and so on. Use an induction cooker to heat. When heated, the soup in the wax gourd cup rolls and the outside is as calm as water. It tastes fresh and refreshing, and there is no hot feeling after eating. Interested parties may wish to have a try.

Porridge is a simple and nutritious food, such as barley porridge, mung bean porridge, black fungus porridge, lily porridge, buckwheat porridge, glutinous rice porridge and so on, which is both heat-clearing and nutritious. It is the * * of summer food, as well as yam porridge and jujube porridge, which are good tonics for people with weak spleen and stomach in summer and can effectively resist the decline of immunity caused by summer heat. So, in recent years, hot pot upstart? Hot pot with porridge bottom? It is logical to be popular all over the country. The success of hot pot at the bottom of porridge lies not only in its novelty in form, but also in its health-keeping style, which is also the main reason why diners chase it.

It should be noted that due to China's vast territory and complex summer climate, everyone's physical condition also has similarities and differences, and diet conditioning cannot be generalized. Therefore, the design of hot pot varieties in summer should be tailored to the time, place and person. You can't take the habits of people in place A and make it difficult to adapt to the food in place B. No matter how good the brand is, no matter how good the marketing strategy is, no hot pot variety recognized by diners can stand on the market. ? New measures? It has been unable to keep consumers' appetite. As a traditional hot pot in winter, if there is no seasonal variety innovation, there is no advantage in the operation of hot pot restaurant in summer. Bankruptcy has become a matter of course.