According to the data of Tianyancha, in 2020, there will be nearly 3,400 related enterprises registered in hot pot food supermarkets within one year, with a year-on-year increase of 2 16%.

"Entrepreneurial experts" such as Pot Circle Food Exchange and Lazy Bear Hot Pot, "professional players" such as Haidilao and Sanquan, and "cross-border bosses" such as Mengniu and Gome gathered at the track, which was very lively!

Why is this cake in the hot pot food supermarket so attractive, attracting capital to compete with the bosses?

Image source: Lazy Bear Hotpot official website

What set off the retail market of hot pot ingredients?

The author's hometown is located in a provincial county with a total population of 1.22 million+. Meituan locates the county seat and searches for hot pot ingredients. * * * There are 45 results. Among them, there are three stores in the county town of * * *, which is less than 1000 meters away from the street where the author lives, and there are three hot pot food supermarkets, namely, pot ring food store, fast-food store and lazy bear hot pot.

Screenshot of the search results of Meituan Positioning County

In addition to online Meituan's brands such as Pot Circle Food Exchange, Shuan Convenience, Sichuan and Sichuan Food Exchange, etc. This small county has also assembled retail brands of hot pot ingredients such as Lazy Bear Hot Pot, Speed Match, Jiupin Pot, Chuandinghui and Grassland Xingfa. In this way, there are no less than 10 retail brands of hot pot ingredients in this county, and dozens of stores have been opened.

Taking the county town as a microcosm, the popularity of hot pot ingredients retail can be seen. So, what kind of "wind" has blown up the retail boom of hot pot ingredients?

1, domestic hot pot demand

Before the popularity of hot pot food supermarkets, the family consumption demand of hot pot has always been there. Every winter peak season, almost every large supermarket will set up a frozen hot pot food area to meet the needs of family hot pot. Demand is extensive, consumption habits have been fully developed, and the success rate of digging subdivided tracks in such areas is great. Facts have proved that this track has not only been successfully opened, but also has a huge space. Ai Media Consulting data shows that the overall market size of hot pot ingredients has reached 9 billion yuan in 2020.

You don't have to travel in a big way. You can buy some ingredients on the way to work, and you can have a steaming hot pot with the elderly and children when you get home. It is convenient and cost-effective. With the goal of family consumption and the advantage of "one-stop" shopping, hot pot food supermarkets quickly occupied the surrounding areas of major communities.

2. Capital

A few days ago, Lazy Bear Hot Pot completed a new round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan. The investors are Xingtuo Capital, Guo Sheng Capital and ByteDance. This is the fourth round of financing for Lazy Bear Hotpot since February 20 19.

Lazy bear hot pot financing Tianyancha search screenshot

According to the data of Tianyancha, Lazy Bear Hot Pot was established on 20 1918 October, which means that Lazy Bear Hot Pot got the first round of financing only two months after its establishment.

The brand that is also valued by capital is the pot circle food exchange. During the year from August, 20 19 to July, 2020, Guoquan Food Exchange * * * completed four times of financing, with a total financing amount of nearly 6,543.8 billion yuan.

The presence of capital has provided important support for the brand expansion, supply chain construction and digital management of hot pot food supermarket. Lazy bear hot pot said that the new round of financing will be mainly used for digital system research and development and market expansion. The hot pot food supermarket, which is favored by capital, has a wide audience of hot pot categories, a large space for innovation in sub-categories, and an easy-to-copy operation mode, which can easily nourish large chain brands in this field.

Facts have proved that, with the help of capital, pot circle food exchange and lazy bear hot pot running all the way. On June 5438+ 10, 2020, there were more than 5,000 stores in the country, and Lazy Bear Hot Pot currently has 1 100+ stores. The first store opened in June of October17, with an average of more than one store per month 100.

3. Market

The rise of hot pot food supermarket is based on the perfection of the market, which comes from two directions: the prevalence of lazy economy and the prevalence of traditional hot pot industry.

If family consumption is the main scene of hot pot food retail, then family hot pot consumption mainly comes from lazy economy. You can eat delicious hot pot without leaving home, and you don't have to work hard to prepare ingredients. The "lazy" group has delivered a steady stream of customers for the hot pot food supermarket. Hot pot food supermarkets are also trying to attract "lazy" and "homebody" groups as much as possible. Compared with large meat rolls and whole dishes in supermarkets, dishes in hot pot food supermarkets are generally packaged in small packages. The price of a mutton roll generally ranges from 10 yuan to 30 yuan, which looks very cheap. In fact, most of the weight is only half or even less than half of the hot pot restaurant. But such a small portion just meets the dining needs of small groups. By reducing the quantity and price, while further highlighting the advantages of high cost performance, small groups can also enrich the ingredients as much as possible, thus attracting a wide range of three or even one-person groups.

In 2020, in sharp contrast to the triumph of hot pot food supermarkets, the business of traditional hot pot restaurants is becoming more and more difficult to do. After increasing take-out and price increase, Haidilao's revenue in 2020 still decreased by 90% year-on-year. Although there is an epidemic behind this, the deeper reason is that the traditional hot pot industry has "peaked". In the field of traditional hot pot, the space for innovation has been extremely reduced. The overall industry situation forces hot pot people to explore hot pot business from other angles, such as retail of hot pot ingredients and take-away. This is also reflected in the head brand Haidilao. In 2020, Haidilao not only continued to promote the take-away business, but also opened the first hot pot food supermarket in Beijing, named "Haidilao Food Delivery Station".

4. New Retail under the Epidemic Situation

In 2020, the epidemic situation catalyzed the rapid development of new retail. As a new track formed by the superposition of hot pot track and retail track, hot pot gourmet supermarket just hit the outlet of new retail, and hot pot gourmet supermarket is called "one of the hottest tracks" of new retail.

Gao Fei, the founder of Lazy Bear Hot Pot, said that in 2020, Lazy Bear Hot Pot has completed the expansion of thousands of stores, and in 20021year, the main energy will be put on store operation to realize the opening of online e-commerce and offline stores.

Taking the new retail as a model and opening up online and offline can help the hot pot food supermarket break the data barrier in the industrial chain and build a digital system of operational iteration and precision marketing.

The competition of hot pot food supermarket is itself.

Nowadays, on the track of hot pot ingredients, the pot circle food exchange and lazy bear hot pot lead with capital strength. However, as a new track, the brand echelon in the field of hot pot ingredients still has unlimited imagination. The presence of business leaders such as Haidilao, Shu Daxia, Boxma Xiansheng, Sanquan, Mengniu, Gome, Haixin and Wang Laoji has made the market structure unpredictable.

With the blessing of capital and business leaders, the future of hot pot ingredients is destined to be full of cannon fodder. But for the contestants, the biggest competition is not other players, but themselves. There are still too many places for hot pot food supermarkets to polish and surpass themselves.

1, mode

Every hot pot food supermarket is facing siege from all directions, and the sniper that affects its performance may be launched in newly opened cheap hot pot restaurants, new supermarkets and increasingly perfect hot pot takeout. This means that as far as the mode is concerned, the hot pot food supermarket has not formed a solid barrier.

Lazy bear hot pot is being actively launched. Mengniu's "freezer" has attracted enough attention with the combination of "ice cream+hot pot". Some brands adopt the mode of "fresh+chilled" to introduce fresh fruits and vegetables into hot pot food supermarkets ... Almost all brands hope to explore and polish a model with higher competition barriers and more stable income structure.

2. Supply chain

At present, the competitive advantage of hot pot food supermarket is still "one-stop" to meet the needs of family hot pot, but its product quality advantage as a sub-category is not obvious. However, today's consumers not only pay attention to the convenience of dining, but also increasingly pursue the sense of quality of dining. How to ensure the quality, freshness and high cost performance of ingredients from the source of supply chain and obtain the competitive barriers of brands and even categories from the product level is the key to the hematopoietic capacity of hot pot ingredients supermarket. This means that there are still many "hard battles" in the supply chain of hot pot ingredients retail.

Meat from frozen to refrigerated.

At present, the main products of hot pot food supermarket are all kinds of frozen meat, among which frozen beef, mutton and meatballs are the main products. Compared with fresh-cut and ready-made products, this kind of frozen products not only taste greatly reduced, but also means that the hot pot food supermarket has not achieved much differentiation advantage compared with the comprehensive supermarket.

In order to gain product advantages, it is unrealistic for hot pot food supermarkets to switch from freezing to fresh cutting, which will pose new challenges to chain standardization model and supply chain system. However, the evolution from freezing to chilled has some room for implementation. If we try to "lock fresh" on the basis of the standardized specifications output by the central kitchen, the retail of hot pot ingredients will further narrow the distance with hot pot restaurants.

Seasons and vegetables are from good to good.

Seasonal vegetables and mushroom vegetarianism are not the main products of hot pot food supermarket, but they are the necessary "embellishment" of hot pot. In fact, the hot pot food supermarket without seasonal vegetables can't really "one-stop" solve the family hot pot dining demand. But for most hot pot food supermarkets, it's not that seasonal vegetables don't make money or even lose money.

Limited by the types of stores, the fluidity of vegetable products in hot pot food supermarket is not high. If you don't sell it when it is fresh, it will be broken in your hand, and the loss rate is high. The "freshness" of vegetarian products is also a difficult problem for hot pot food supermarkets to improve their services.

Step 3 manage

As an easy-to-copy category, there is almost no big difference between the major brands of hot pot food supermarkets in terms of models and products. So, how do they seize the market opportunity? By speed! At the time of the rise of categories, major brands began to race around.

Every month 100, hot pot gourmet supermarkets with capital blessing will usher in a more rapid opening speed on 202 1. The crazy expansion challenges the management, and whether the management team can match the expansion speed determines the development trend of the hot pot ingredients brand chain empire. In the catering industry, there are a large number of cases that once the franchise management lags behind, the brand may fall into the curse of faster development and faster extinction.

In the street where the author is located, the first hot pot restaurant supermarket was overcrowded when it opened, and it needed to be recharged in line. However, with the opening of several brand stores one after another, the front of the first brand store has long been overcrowded, and other brand stores are usually deserted outside holidays.

Capital and big brands are hot, but how much space is really left for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs is worth thinking about! The more obvious the branding and chaining, the less opportunities there are for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. At the same time, just like the hot pot takeaway, tea brand, hot track, investment entrepreneurs flocked to me. When I looked back, the smoke was filled with cannon fodder. In the future, there will be dark horses coming on the track of hot pot ingredients, and a large number of brands will make wedding dresses for others.