In recent years, restaurant owners have clearly felt: positioning, mode, operation, brand ... all kinds of courses and successful cases have been learned so much, but the more they learn, the more they pretend, and the restaurant business has not improved.

This is because the environment and stage are different from others, and the path of success is naturally different and the logic is different.

But about failure, the underlying logic is still relatively consistent.

Recently, Yi Ding, the founder of Chuanting Barbecue, a restaurant owner who graduated from Tsinghua with an MBA but gave up his million-dollar salary to do cross-border barbecues, shared the underlying logic of three failures in combination with different stages of catering entrepreneurship.

Success cannot be duplicated, but failure is alarming. I wish you less detours on the road of catering business and less pits that others hit with real money.

(Yi Ding, founder of Chuanting Barbecue)

1

Positioning a market that no one else has done, 99% is complacent and dead.

What catering bosses have learned most in recent years is positioning. Generally speaking, positioning is a "one book, many benefits" thing, not only in catering, but also in all commercial fields.

The most classic case is Wang Laoji. Through positioning, a very common product becomes highly differentiated, satisfying the pain points of users, occupying the minds of customers (only drinking herbal tea and Wang Laoji), and finally repositioning competitors (there are two kinds of drinks, Wang Laoji who does not get angry, and other drinks that get angry).

A profound study of positioning is conducive to forming a late-comer advantage and crushing others from the perspective of IQ. Therefore, the original intention of many white people who do cross-line catering is: "The current restaurants are too stupid, and there are always users who can't meet their needs, so I have to locate the blue ocean market that they haven't found yet and differentiate."

But is there really such a blue ocean market that can "profit" by positioning? Look at two cases first.

The first case is the SM-themed restaurant selling crayfish. Crayfish is a very popular item, and SM is also curious. After its launch, customers flocked to it for a while, which was successful from the point of attracting everyone's attention.

However, the scenes of customers eating are divided into fast food, parties, banquets and so on. And doing cultural sightseeing is not a common consumption scene in the catering industry. Therefore, such highly differentiated positioning has earned enough gimmicks, but customers have no reason to spend again.

The logic of refreshing the bottom of mint pot is:

In the end, it sold badly, because the hot pot was lively and the cold mint sounded strange, which violated the basic attributes of the hot pot and was highly differentiated. It seems that a blank market has been found, but the consumers in this market are almost blank. ...

Summary 1:

Through the above two cases, give a piece of advice to those cross-line entrepreneurs who want to stand out in their positioning: catering is a Red Sea market, and many tricks have long been played. If you choose a chess game that no one has played, 99% of you may be complacent.

Differentiation is ok, but you should see clearly whether your differentiation is for drainage or continuous profit. Is it short-term or long-term? Entrepreneurs, no one is smarter than anyone else. Don't fall into self-satisfaction and think that you have found something great. In this era of fierce competition, we must carefully examine our positioning.

2

If the business is good, can it be profitable, can it be financed, and can it open a branch? How naive!

After opening the store, entrepreneurs began to plan strategies. The most common idea is like a line in Stephen Chow's film The Gourmet:

"If it were me, I would turn one room into two rooms, two rooms into four rooms, four rooms into eight rooms, and eight rooms into sixteen rooms, and then go public, raise funds, follow the stock market, and then I will make a fortune!"

When business is good, you think there is nothing wrong with your product and service model, and then you think about expanding profits, opening branches, financing, crazy copying, and finally becoming a catering empire ... This idea is really naive.

Because from good business to profit, from profit to opening branches, from opening branches to getting more profits, there are countless bugs in every step, which is not a natural logical chain.

If we comb this chain carefully, we will find that there are too many misunderstandings:

This is of course wrong. The most important factor that determines whether your business is good or not is not your own competitiveness, but the relationship between supply and demand in the market.

For example, if the location of your restaurant is particularly good and the competition is not particularly great, business will be good as long as the products are not specially made. But this doesn't mean that your products, prices and services have great advantages compared with your peers.

Good business doesn't mean you can make a profit, which is actually something that many people who are new to the catering industry can't see through.

Good business means many people, but many people. Whether the account is counted or not is two different things. For example, in Sanlitun, the most prosperous business district in Beijing, there are hundreds of people around. You opened a mala Tang, with a per capita income of 20. If you survive with the strategy of low-price competition, your business will certainly be good. However, the rental cost is high, and it is difficult to make a profit by selling too much.

Everyone knows the story of grandma's house and green tea. It is not profitable to turn the channel three times, and it is profitable to turn the channel four times, so there is no natural connection between more guests and profit.

The answer is no, because every store has its own cost structure characteristics, unless you can find a place with exactly the same cost and passenger flow as your current location, but in fact such a place does not exist.

If we ignore this point and rush to open a branch, the customer base, cost structure and business strategy will be different, which is equivalent to starting a second business.

So if you want to open a branch, first study whether the profit model of the first store is universal and reproducible.

Even if the single-store profit model is suitable for multiple branches, does it mean that the more branches are opened, the more profits will be made? The answer is also no.

Because even if your restaurant is highly standardized, catering is a crowded industry, which means you have to invest a lot of management energy.

I often tell many people that when I open three or four stores, it's very cool because I can manage it myself and manage it well. But when I got to five or six stores, I had to hire a regional manager. The salary is 20 thousand yuan. He also said that he would supervise and train managers to cooperate. At the same time, financial and purchasing personnel also came out.

It is equivalent to the cost of the office of hundreds of thousands a year, and these expenses are not necessarily better managed than when you are alone.

So the restaurant chain operation is a big pit. In this case, the more stores you open, the less money you may make.

Because catering is a labor-intensive industry, even if every store is profitable, it may not be able to obtain financing, because in the eyes of capital, catering is difficult to copy, especially dinner.

Even if you are lucky enough to get the capital, can you open stores nationwide? There are also many bugs in this link.

For example, if you are a street shop, it is difficult to copy, because the location of the street shop is difficult to standardize, and each location is different. It will take a long time to talk, and it is difficult to implement the store opening plan.

Summary 2:

So looking back at every link in this chain, there will be all kinds of pits, which are difficult for those of us who have not been engaged in catering for a long time or have no personal experience.

But the more fundamental reason is that I always feel smarter than others and don't believe in these pits. Therefore, I advise you to learn more from those catering predecessors you "despise". Don't think that you will solve these pits better than them. Look at your career objectively and avoid naive ideas.

three

The catering industry is about to harvest, and it will die if it remains unchanged.

In this ever-changing business society, even if you have been an old catering gun for more than ten years, you may not be able to keep up with the market demand in your business thinking mode. I have recently discovered two obvious phenomena.

In the past, catering was a flow thinking. Instead of going online and offline, everyone is trying to get traffic.

However, when I visited Chaoyang Joy City (one of the most popular shopping centers in China) a few days ago, I found that every restaurant in it has a high level, from VI design to food structure to price, but only four restaurants have significantly higher business than others, and the attendance rate of the other dozens is similar.

Therefore, in the future, it is almost impossible to get average traffic and popularity by the differentiation of user experience and then make money.

In this case, there is no advantage of backwardness, and even if there is, it will be released within two or three months. So we should consider how to optimize the internal efficiency and cost structure. Under the same passenger flow and popularity, I can make money if others don't make money.

Before starting a business from scratch, there are many stories of getting rich now, but it will become more and more difficult in the future, because times are changing, and the times of Haidilao, Jiumaojiu and Xibei are gone forever!

In the past, resources could be developed and accumulated at the same time, but now the resources in the catering industry are more and more concentrated, leaving few opportunities for self-made entrepreneurs in terms of cost, scale and benefit. And I guess, the catering industry has become a harvest industry:

The first is the food supply chain, such as COFCO and Shounong. Why do they harvest restaurants?

Because catering has entered the era of meager profit, it is difficult for catering enterprises to survive, but it doesn't matter if they don't make money, because the store can supply raw materials, even if they earn 1% 2%, it is extra business.

The second is real estate tycoons, such as Vanke and Wanda.

Because of the commercial real estate competition until now, everyone has turned their attention to the last mile. Commercial real estate is more like a life service platform, which will introduce some catering brands. It doesn't matter if your restaurant doesn't make money. Through the drainage of your restaurant, the plot can appreciate.

The third is capital, such as Hongyi.

Such a big consortium can buy all kinds of restaurants, build an ecological circle, including front-end and back-end, and find opportunities for project appreciation through good ecological operation. In this mode, capital itself does not rely on the profits of restaurants to make money.

The fourth is the Internet giants, such as Meituan, Hungry, Alibaba and so on.

They cooperate with restaurants or set up their own smart restaurants to realize new retail online and offline.

The fifth largest boss is the traditional catering boss, such as Haidilao.

Haidilao once created its own brand, made a small restaurant and laid out an ecological circle, but at present, the national effect is not very satisfactory, and it may be appreciated by harvesting other catering brands.

Summary 3:

Therefore, without these forward-looking thinking, or a clear understanding of the catering industry, business thinking still stays in the past, then the future may be very depressed, because the past achievements can no longer be achieved. But this is the gift of the times, and we should embrace with open arms.