Guoquan has 5,000 stores in 3 years, and the 400 billion yuan market battle royale

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"I don't think it has solved my pain points," Feifei (pseudonym), who came here to purchase from the Guoquan store, told TideSight (ID: TideSight).

According to Feifei, if you consider the cost-effectiveness, the price of the ingredients in Guoquan does not have an advantage over ordinary supermarkets, and even vegetables are obviously more expensive.

"The mushrooms (from the pot ring) cost 7 or 8 yuan for less than 150 grams, and a small box of Chrysanthemum chrysanthemum for 10 yuan.
You can buy several stacks at the same price in the supermarket.
"

Feifei bluntly said that she is a loyal fan of "1516 Chuanchuan Incense Hot Pot" and "Haidilao".

Take a family hot pot set meal for 5 people as an example.
The delivery price of "1516" is 198 yuan, which is only 42 yuan higher than a pot ring of the same size.
As for this extra premium of about 25%, Feifei is willing to pay for the taste of hot pot.

"In fact, there is no obvious difference in hot pot ingredients.

The main difference lies in the bottom of the pot and the seasoning.
At least for the tomato pot, Haidilao is much better than the pot ring.
"

Source of the price list of the pot ring part: Feifei

The prerequisite for the success of entrepreneurial projects is largely inseparable from the filling of "market gaps".

At the beginning of its establishment, Guoquan put forward the concept of "national hot pot" and "good food is not expensive".
With half the price of hot pot stores and over 600 SKUs of self-developed ingredients, it has stuck between hot pot stores and farmers' markets.
.

The per capita consumption of users in a chain hotpot restaurant in a third- and fourth-tier city reached 80-100 yuan, and Guoquan successfully reduced this price range to 30-50 yuan.

However, this "more expensive than ordinary supermarkets, cheaper than well-known brand hot pot delivery" price segment card slot, compared with the Hema on the same track and Daily Youxian still looks tasteless.

Regardless of the price/performance ratio, it is not necessary to choose a pot ring just from the point of view of convenience.

After comparing Daily Youxian and Guoquan, the new consumption of Guanchao found that the prices of conventional hot pot ingredients of the two are basically the same.

And from the distribution point of view, Daily Excellent Fresh benefits from the widespread pre-warehouse, the distribution range can cover the entire Beijing community, and the distribution radius of Guoquan’s own mini program does not exceed 4 kilometers.

Although Guoquan is deeply bound with Meituan Waimai in the delivery field, both the starting price and the delivery cost of Meituan Waimai are significantly higher than the daily excellent and fresh food-Meituan Waimai starts at 59 yuan, and the delivery fee is expected to exceed 13 In the "Home Hot Pot" section of Youxian Daily, the delivery fee is free of 39 yuan.

Guoquan Meituan takeaway interface

There are also consumers who have encountered the situation that the pot circle applet placed an order when no one took the order and was cancelled during the repurchase.

More than twice, consumers will naturally give up.

In addition, the purchase checkout in the store does not need to be done in the mini program.

In addition, Guoquan stores do not have their own user communities, which means that they may not be able to completely rely on their own "private domain traffic" to form user deposits.

Guohuan is more like an offline business.

First-tier cities "wandering in the suburbs"

First-tier cities "wandering in the suburbs"

Mini programs, private domains, traffic pools.

.
.
Wash away the glamorous concept of the Internet.
Offline business that has existed for thousands of years is much more barbarous-the input-output ratio of every second determines the store The survival of the next moment.

During the 9 months from February to November 2020, Guoquan opened an average of 12.

2 stores a day, but how fast can it be closed?

"The original Guoquan near 798 has been closed," Bei Bei (pseudonym), a clerk at a Beijing store in Guoquan, told Guanchao New Consumer (ID: TideSight).

According to Beibei, Guoquan currently all adopts the franchise store model, and Guoquan headquarters does not charge franchise fees, nor does it conduct business commissions.

The fees collected by the head office are mainly concentrated in the fields of decoration, equipment, marketing, branding and services.

In order to understand the investment in Guoquan's franchise, Guanchao New Consumer made a special call to the franchise service provider of Guoquan in Beijing.
According to reports, the investment in a single store in Beijing Guoquan store is about 150,000 to 200,000, which mainly includes decoration, equipment and the first batch of payment.
Among them, the cost of the first batch of goods accounted for about 50%, including 300 SKUs, but the vegetables need to be purchased by the franchised store owner.

However, the operators are all aware that the bulk of the expenditure for such joining is actually the rent.

According to Guohuan franchised service providers, the area of ​​Guohuan offline stores in Beijing is required to be between 40-100 square meters, of which 70-80 square meters are more.

Take a store in Guoquan as an example.
The area of ​​the store is about 70 square meters.
According to Beibei, the rent cost of the store alone exceeds 200,000 yuan a year, which is almost the same as the cost paid to Guoquan.
In other words, the annual basic investment of a Beijing Guoquan store is basically between 350,000 and 400,000 yuan.

"The rent of the 798 store was about 300,000 yuan, and it collapsed after only a few months of work.
" When the new consumer of Guanchao asked about the profitability of the store in Guoquan, Beibei was uncomfortable.
When it comes to former competitors, Beibei seems calm.
Based on this inference, if Guoquan's stores in Beijing are to break even, the red line for rent should generally not exceed 300,000 yuan.

Just as bad as being unable to get rid of the fate of "working for the landlord", there are also thin profit margins.

According to the new consumer observation of Guanchao, some of the ingredients in the pot ring that win at low prices have indeed been reduced to the "lowest in the whole network.
" Still taking the aforementioned Guoquan store as an example, 340g of "Meiling Canned Luncheon Meat" is only 14 yuan in Guoquan store, which is about 20 cheaper than mainstream shopping platforms such as Daily Fresh, Hema, and Meilin online official flagship store.
%.

Beibei revealed that the profit margin of a considerable part of the ingredients in the store is less than 30%, which undoubtedly further narrows the profitability of Guoquan physical stores.

The double squeeze of high rents and meager profits determines that Guoquan can only linger in the "outskirts" of first-tier cities.

According to Dianping, there are currently 48 Guoquan stores in Beijing, almost all of which are located outside the Fifth Ring Road.
The Guoquan Baiziwan Store, located outside the East Fourth Ring Road in Chaoyang District, Beijing, is already a "core store.
"

This situation also basically fits the "sinking strategy" of Guohuan.
According to Guoquan’s official website, Guoquan is “committed to upgrading the consumption of food materials for the people in 830 million counties and townships”.
The brand currently covers 15 provinces, 3 municipalities, 200 prefectures and 1,000 counties.

"It's not easy to make a store like ours, because the rent is high and the location is not so good, it can only fight back customers," Beibei said.
In Guoquan's profit "promise" of "returning costs within 8 months to one year at the fastest", countless stores fell before dawn.

Self-venting

Self-venting

2020 is called the "first year of take-off" in the hot pot food supermarket track.
But in fact, many people don't understand why the meat and vegetables that can be bought in vegetable markets and general supermarkets can be broken up into a business of 100 billion yuan?

The pot circle can move the capital circle, and we have to thank the epidemic for assists.

Catalyzed by the new crown epidemic in 2020, home cooking has gradually become the mainstream way of eating, and hot pot, which is already highly popular in China, has naturally become a winner in the home food category.

Among them, Taobao's "self-heating small hot pot" entry has increased by more than 30 times; the leading quick-frozen hot pot food "Anjing Food" achieved both revenue and net profit increases during the epidemic, and its stock price rose correspondingly by more than 364%.
In this context, the "hot pot ingredients supermarket" represented by Guoquan has also taken advantage of this wave of "home hot pot outlets.
"

Data show that in 2020, when the epidemic broke out, the number of Guoquan stores exceeded 5,000 in just 9 months, a sudden increase of 2.
9 times compared to the 1,700 stores at the end of 2019.

Franchisees are struggling, but these have not affected the capital's enthusiasm for the pot circle.

As mentioned earlier, Guoquan’s current financing amount has reached 3 billion yuan.
By September 2020, Guoquan, which is not bad for money, has the strength to directly sign the well-known cross talk actor Yue Yunpeng as its brand spokesperson.
According to people familiar with the matter, Yue Yunpeng's endorsement fee reached 10 million yuan.

Tuyuan Guoquan Investment Promotion Manual

Driven by the pot ring, players from all walks of life have stepped in, and the hot pot ingredients supermarket is ushering in a full-scale explosion as a track concept.

Regarding hot pot ingredients franchise stores, Lanxiong Hot Pot, Natural Gourmet, Shabu Convenience, Chuan Xiaobing, Ding Huifeng, First Stew, Jiu Pin Hot Pot, My Pot Hot Pot, Chuan Ding Hui, Dayu Family, Hot Pot Story, etc.
online.

It is worth mentioning that Lanxiong Hotpot announced in late February that it had completed a round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan.
The investors were Xingtuo Capital, Guosheng Capital and Bytedance.
Among them, ByteDance once invested in Lailai Hotpot Angel Round in May last year, and continued to invest in the next two rounds.

Gao Fei, CEO of Lanxiong Hotpot, said in an interview that the reason why ByteDance invests in Lanxiong is mainly to accumulate offline resources.
A few days ago, Douyin launched the "group buying" function in some regions to accelerate the deployment of local life services and find a new growth curve.
Offline physical stores have become an important part of its layout.

In addition to franchised hot pot ingredients stores, major fresh food retail platforms and traditional hot pot catering brands are also making hot pot ingredients.

Representatives of the former include the sub-menu "At Home Hot Pot" of Daily Youxian, the "Hot Pot Daojia" area business opened by Dingdong Maicai, and the "Hema Hot Pot" registered by Hema Xiansheng.
The latter is based on well-known brands such as Haidilao, Xiaolongkan, Xiabuxiabu, etc.
, which have increased the proportion of hot pot takeaway and retail products.

Even the quick-frozen noodle brand Sanquan will cross-border hot pot ingredients supermarkets in 2020, and Mengniu and Wanglaoji have launched related brands to specialize in hot pot ingredients chains.

future

future

According to industry estimates, the market size of Zhaijia hot pot can reach 400 billion yuan in the future, but the pot circle, which is already in the vast market space, does not seem to be content with this.

After completing the new round of financing, Guoquan will further increase its market share by opening stores.
If you want to realize the "US Foods of Chinese Families", Guoquan has to expand the categories of fresh and pre-made dishes and move to deeper and wider waters.

Along with the expansion of enterprises, new problems also followed.

The first is that the threshold for hot pot ingredients is too low, and there are many competitors.

According to data, there are currently more than 8,000 "hot pot ingredients" and "hot pot supermarkets" related companies in China, and 60% of the companies were established within one year, an increase of 216% compared to 2019.
After the outbreak, the hot pot food supermarket that was originally a new track became very crowded.

Surrounded by wolves, Guohuan is facing profitability pressure when it breaks through the first-tier cities where it has a lot of money.
The sinking market retreats and faces the blockade of "local snakes".

Take the Shenyang market as an example.
Long before Guoquan, there were already local hot pot brands such as "Ding Huifeng" and "Mijin" with low per capita consumption and stable passenger flow.
Among them, Ding Huifeng's per capita consumption was only 39 yuan.
In 2016, Ding Huifeng opened a barbecue hot pot ingredients supermarket, as well as a self-built hot pot base and dipping processing factory.
This means that if Guohuan wants to expand new territory here, a tough battle will be inevitable.

Second, industry barriers are not high, and homogeneity is serious.

At present, the hot pot fresh food track has reached a highly homogenous stage from stores to products, prices, and packaging.
Consumers have not yet formed brand loyalty, and the pot circle favored by capital does not appear to be that outstanding right now.

Investor Li Jingyi pointed out in an interview, "Hot pot is the scene with the lowest barriers.
Because it is mostly standard products, there will be a lot of opponents coming in.
Therefore, I am not optimistic about the pure hot pot food restaurant.
Kitchen standardization may be required, such as pre-made dishes.
In this process, who can keep up with product R&D capabilities and supply chain capabilities will have great opportunities in the future.
"

A deeper problem is the supply chain integration problem faced by external expansion.

Fresh products such as vegetables are not easy to preserve and have a high loss rate, but they are indispensable categories in the hot pot scene.
If these needs cannot be met, the consumer experience will be greatly reduced and the competitiveness of the "pot circle" will also be weakened.

Although Guoquan has built its own production base and food supply chain, it is obviously not enough, otherwise there will be no requirements for franchisees to "bring their own vegetables".

As China’s food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng said: “The key condition for each player to break through is to look at the capabilities of branding, scale, and capitalization.
The integrity of the supply chain will determine the success or failure of hot pot food retail companies.
It is also very competitive.
A link that is difficult to replicate in a short time.
"

Before the epidemic, eating hot pot at home was a low-frequency demand, and the dividends of the epidemic were not sustainable.
To re-release the value of the kitchen and create a new scene of modern family dining through "family hot pot", there is still a long way to go for pot circle.

Source: Watching New Consumption

Note: All pictures in the article are reprinted on the Internet, and infringement will be deleted!

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