Catering and prepackaging are not new topics. In the past, more attention has been paid to new catering retail in the industry, which is based on the perspective of catering enterprises. Just as a coin has two sides. If we re-examine the prepackaged food from the perspective of the consumer goods industry, we may have different thinking and judgment, even strategies.
Prepackaged food is a major trend. Whether catering enterprises or packaging food enterprises, or even upstream supply chain enterprises, should think about how to seize this trend and how to occupy a place for themselves, because even a small area has the opportunity to establish a large business in the Chinese market.
For food and beverage enterprises and packaging food enterprises, who is more likely to seize this trend and establish large-scale business, let's talk about it today.
One
What are the opportunities for catering enterprises?
No matter how large a catering enterprise is, if the scale of packaged food business can exceed the scale of catering service, it will be a completely different situation. Even if the packaged food business accounts for less than 50% and remains at about 20% - 30%, the business structure and development value of a catering enterprise will be greatly different.
We roughly divide the catering enterprises into three types, namely chain catering enterprises, innovative characteristic catering enterprises and time-honored catering enterprises. Next, we will analyze what kind of prepackaged food opportunities these three types of catering enterprises have.
A
Chain catering enterprises
Chain catering enterprises refer to those catering enterprises with large-scale stores, which adopt the mode of unified management and operation, such as Haidilao, Xibei youmian village, grandma's home, jiumaojiu, Xiabu Xiabu, Baisheng China, McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks, etc. Some time-honored catering enterprises also adopt chain operation, such as Quanjude, but the foundation and advantages are slightly different from other chain catering enterprises. We will focus on analysis in the category of time-honored catering enterprises.
Their advantages are: regional or national store network, good brand awareness, dishes, ingredients or beverage products with their own characteristics, based on the basis of chain operation and management, standardized central kitchen and food material supply chain, which are the basis for the development of packaged food business.
For example, Haidilao takes hotpot seasoning as its first prepackaged food product line, which relies on the reputation and consumption habits of the hotpot brand, and develops a composite seasoning product line and a self heating food product line on this basis;
For another example, McDonald's has developed instant coffee business and packaged retail coffee business on the basis of in store ground coffee business in the U.S. market. However, McDonald's did not operate these two businesses by itself, but authorized Coca Cola and JM Smucker respectively.
However, more chain catering enterprises do not carry out prepackaged food business at present, such as grandma's family, jiumaojiu, Xiabu Xiabu, Baisheng China, etc., although most of them have the foundation to vigorously develop the prepackaged food business, such as
Taier sauerkraut fish of jiumaojiu restaurant can be developed as a popular packaged food;
My grandmother's Mapo Tofu and the dishes of the whole chicken can be developed as pop food;
As Haidilao, Sipu can develop hot pot seasonings, condiments and self heating food like Haidilao, or focus on the development of frozen food products.
B
Innovating characteristic catering enterprises
This kind of catering enterprises specifically refer to Xicha, Naixue tea, Lele tea, wenheyou, Baman, long ago, Xi Shaoye, Wagas, xinelement, Yingji coffee, manner coffee, etc. The innovation features are embodied in the distinctive brands and products. The youth is well done. Compared with the same type of business, the brand and product service are innovative.
The advantage is the youth based on the characteristics and innovation, which is the basis for the development of the packaged food business. The business can be operated around the younger people and the innovative communication mode, especially in the early stage.
For example, relying on super wenheyou, wenheyou has established a very good reputation in the food circle, and has set up sub brand stores around crayfish and Changsha stinky tofu. Wenheyou's packaged food business is based on crayfish and stinky tofu.
For another example, Xicha created the type of cheese milk tea, and extended many special flavors in the tea store, such as Chizhi raspberry, brown sugar Bobo, etc.
Xicha was the first to enter the field of packaged food by authorization. With Unilever's ice cream brand and Luxue, Xicha launched Zhizhi peach and black sugar Bobo ice cream. With the help of authorization experience and market feedback, Xicha began to vigorously develop prepackaged food and beverage business, such as setting up a sub brand xixiaocha bottler, launching NFC juice and bubble water products, and Xicha's main product Brand also launched Greek yogurt, ice cream, tea bag products.
As an innovative characteristic catering enterprise, it should give full play to its own advantages, including characteristics, young groups, digital communication mode, focusing on the characteristic products and tastes, and taking the young consumer groups as the core to develop packaged food.
C
Time honored catering enterprises
Such catering enterprises are all over the country, including Quanjude, Guangzhou Restaurant, Xi'an Catering, etc., and wufangzhai, xinghualou, Louwailou, zhiweiguan, Changsha catering group, Chengdu catering company, etc. among them, Guangzhou Restaurant, wufangzhai and zhiweiguan are relatively mature in packaging food business; Quanjude and Xi'an Catering have a certain foundation, but the business is relatively aging, which is not well operated; many time-honored catering enterprises such as Changsha catering group and Anhui tongqinglou have not yet packaged food business.
As a time-honored brand, the core advantage lies in the cultural heritage, the taste inherited from history and the mass base, while the opportunity point lies in the aspects of youth, digitization and modernization. In the recent two years, Wufang has made great progress.
In fact, in addition to China's time-honored catering enterprises, there are some regional catering brands with a certain history, such as Shanghai wangjiasha, Changan big brand, Nanjing big brand, etc. These catering enterprises with a certain cultural heritage also have a good foundation of packaged food.
Guangzhou Restaurant is a successful case for catering enterprises to develop prepackaged food. Under the strong growth of overall revenue driven by the packaging food business, Guangzhou Restaurant has also increased from more than 4 billion yuan when it was just listed to nearly 16 billion yuan now.
Guangzhou restaurant also mentioned its development strategy in its annual report in 2019, that is, "catering establishes brand and food creates scale", which is one of the successful examples for catering enterprises to develop prepackaged food business. The business data reflected behind this is that the growth rate of packaged food business was 21.07%, and that of catering business was 10.95%. The growth rate of moon cake in packaged food business was 14.79%, and that of quick-frozen food was 34.79%.
Imagine, if a catering enterprise, catering service business scale maintained at more than 1 billion scale, packaged food business also maintained at more than 1 billion scale, in the future development, catering and packaged food can interact and promote each other, even if the catering business development is slow, the packaged food business can have its own vitality after reaching such a scale, and this business structure will also be able to have its own vitality Make a catering business very different.
The development and expansion of packaged food business will become the mainstream trend in the future, which will greatly change the competition pattern between catering industry and food industry.
In this case, as a catering enterprise, it is necessary to consider the issue of how to pre package, and take this as one of the company's core development strategies. The business should be parallel with the catering business, with an independent team and a relatively independent organizational structure. It can directly report to the chairman or general manager, or even be directly responsible by the chairman or general manager.
Two
In addition to convenience food, frozen food
Compound seasoning is also an opportunity for packaging food enterprises
For packaged food enterprises, we can divide them into two types: one is consumer goods company, and the other is upstream food supply chain company. The former includes large food companies such as Master Kang, uni president, CJ Xijie, Pu Meiduo, etc., and also includes start-up food companies such as zihiguo, ramen, single grain and liziqi, and the latter includes new hope Liuhe, Zhengda Group and Jiajia Jilin group, Shuanghui and other agricultural and animal husbandry enterprises.
No matter what type of packaged food enterprises, it is important to choose the direction and category, focus on and focus on it, because the large single product strategy is one of the core strategies that consumer goods companies must consider. At the same time, to establish an advantage in a certain direction and category, we need to continue to plough and invest in product R & D & technology, supply chain, channel, brand and consumption The advantages are gradually established in the dimensions of consumer cognition and team.
Why is it important to focus on a specific direction & category?
By combing the types and representative products of prepackaged food products in China, we can know that:
Take frozen and refrigerated food as an example, in this direction, it can be divided into food ingredients and cooked & ready to eat. If the frozen food category is selected, the core is based on the upstream supply chain, and different food categories are very different for the supply chain. For example, pork breeding, beef breeding, mutton breeding, poultry breeding and aquatic seafood are very different agricultural fields and supply chain links If we choose this direction, it will be a competitive disadvantage if we do not have our own agricultural and animal husbandry supply chain for a long time.
If we take the frozen and refrigerated cooked food & ready to eat products as an example, regardless of the basis of the food supply chain, because cooked food & ready to eat products are heated or directly consumed and do not need to be cooked again, seasoning is very important. Whether the product can be continuously iterated on the basis of seasoning has very high requirements on R & D and technology. However, it is not possible to establish advantages in seasoning and new dishes research and development in the short term, which requires continuous and long-term investment.
Take convenience food as an example. Whether it is instant noodles, self heating food or instant noodles, how to establish a wide range of consumer awareness is very important. At the same time, the establishment of channel network is also very important. In order to penetrate the products into various types of retail channels and circulation channels, it also needs long-term investment, whether it is for the start-up packaging food enterprises This is especially true for large-scale packaging enterprises that have entered the new type of convenient food.
Three
Who has more opportunities for catering enterprises and packaged food enterprises?
Around the trend of deep integration of catering and prepackaged food, the expansibility of catering enterprises is more and more extensive than that of packaged food enterprises, which is embodied in the fact that there are many entry points for catering enterprises to develop packaged food. They can start from special dishes, classic food materials, and special flavor, and the extensibility of special flavor in packaged food Very extensive, can be extended to condiments, drinks, snacks and so on.
Packaging food enterprises should look for opportunities around pre packaged food, and focus more on the main course and convenient food. Relatively speaking, the choice of entry direction will be narrower. If they want to expand into other categories, they also need to have a certain foundation and recognition of the core product line.
From this point of view, catering enterprises have more foundation and advantages than packaged food enterprises in the initial stage, which can play a key role in the early stage and business growth period. However, packaging food enterprises do not have such advantages and need to be established from scratch.
However, on the other hand, catering enterprises have a certain foundation, but if the foundation is not so good, it will not bring good value to the development of packaged food business, on the contrary, it may bring some bad effects, that is, brand potential and consumer influence can not support the good development of packaged food business in the early stage, so catering needs to be considered at this time Brand and packaged food brand should be invested in both directions, or the investment and development of packaged food business should be suspended.
Correspondingly, packaging food enterprises do not have such a burden. They can start from scratch, find market gaps, conceive brands and product lines from scratch, and realize early and good development by using the experience of packaging food enterprises in consumer goods.
The above is from the early stage of food and beverage prepackaged food business. From the perspective of medium and long-term development, the opportunities of catering enterprises and packaged food enterprises are almost equal, because whether it is catering enterprises or packaged food enterprises, it is always a matter of food consumer goods.
When the business scale has a certain foundation, to further increase, it needs to have the ability, including supply chain ability, product development and innovation ability, brand building ability, marketing ability, and omni channel operation ability. These are on the same level for a certain scale of catering enterprises and packaging food enterprises. At this time, it depends more on capital strength and team ability, which will determine who has the ability to win in the end.
However, driven by prepackaged food, catering enterprises and packaged food are not competitive, but how to jointly expand the market. Although it is the general trend, different types of companies are also needed to cultivate the market. When the market becomes bigger, it is a small piece of cake and a large-scale business.
