The life cycle of this type of “fast fashion catering” is shortening.
Editor’s note: This article comes from Jiemian News, reporter: Ma Yue, editor: Zan Huifang.
The green tea restaurant, which has positioned itself as a “fast-fashion restaurant”, is planning to go public.
According to the Hong Kong Economic Times, a source disclosed that Green Tea Catering Management plans to go public in Hong Kong this year. It has negotiated with the listing team and initially plans to raise approximately US$200 million. However, there are still variables in the timetable for listing and the scale of fund-raising.
Tianyancha APP shows that Hangzhou Green Tea Catering Management Co., Ltd. was established in February 2008 with a registered capital of RMB 500,000. The legal representative and sole shareholder of the company is Wang Qinsong. The company had carried out strategic financing in 2017, and the investor was Hezhong Group.
The news reporter of the interface called the Green Tea Catering Group, who did not make a specific response to the timetable for listing and the scale of fundraising. And its official website shows that Green Tea Catering started its listing plan as early as 2017.
The official website of Green Tea Restaurant shows that the Green Tea Restaurant originated from the Green Tea International Youth Hostel founded by Wang Qin Song Lu Yan and his wife in 2004. According to the restaurant location information on its official website, the current number of green tea restaurants in the country has reached 188, with Beijing, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen having the most dense stores, reaching 41, 25, and 23 respectively. Other restaurants are widely distributed in other locations. More than 20 cities including first-tier, second-tier and third-tier cities. So far, green tea restaurants have not been open to franchise, and all have adopted a direct sales model.
The green tea restaurant, which started in Hangzhou, not only specializes in Hangzhou cuisine, but also includes dishes from different Chinese cuisines such as Sichuan, Cantonese, Shandong, and Beijing cuisine.
For consumers, “parity” is the most distinctive label of this chain restaurant, which is mostly opened in shopping malls. Jiemian reporters inquired on the Dianping platform and found that the per capita consumer price of green tea restaurants in Beijing is generally around 75-80 yuan, while the per capita consumer price in Hangzhou is slightly lower, around 67-77 yuan.
Beijing Green Tea Restaurant
Hangzhou Green Tea Restaurant
And “high cost performance” is not only the positioning of Green Tea Restaurant, but also one of its most important business strategies for more than a decade.
At the beginning of its opening, green tea was once famous for its cheap dishes such as “five yuan for cucumbers and ten yuan for fried rice cakes with steak bones”, and the per capita consumption was around 50-60 yuan. Brands are good at gathering popularity with cost-priced dishes to ensure a certain passenger flow, and then reduce costs in terms of rent, manpower, and raw material procurement through chain operations.
The key to Chinese food chain is standardization. The Green Tea Restaurant uses a central kitchen model to purchase and process some dishes, and then distribute them to the branches. While scaling down costs, it can also ensure the supply and stability of dishes.
In terms of pricing, the founder of Green Tea Restaurant, Wang Qinsong, publicly stated in 2014 that he would refer to the per capita consumption price range of the most popular merchants on Dianping TOP10 in the city where the store is located. The final price of green tea restaurant will not exceed the average per capita consumption price. 15% of the price range.
The large passenger flow is also a major feature of this restaurant for many years.
This is related to the high turnover rate of green tea restaurants. “We are 50 yuan per capita, but we spent 5 million yuan in decoration costs. Unlike other catering companies, people may make money when the restaurant is full of customers, but after the green tea is full, it starts to make money.” Green Tea Wang Qinsong, the founder of the restaurant, said, “We are using low prices that are close to cost in exchange for passenger flow, so restaurants like ours must pay attention to the turnover rate.”
According to its public data in 2014, the average daily passenger flow of a single store of Green Tea Restaurant exceeds 1,500.
The dining environment is distinctive, cost-effective, with explosive items, fast circulation, and a certain chain scale. This is why Green Tea Restaurant has positioned itself as a “fast-fashion restaurant” many years ago.
“In fact, ten years before the start of Green Tea Restaurant, it coincided with the stage of upgrading the domestic catering industry to refined and fashionable consumption, and enjoyed the large-scale growth of domestic shopping malls and the dividend of the population.” Food and beverage industry analysts told Jiemian News.
But the current trend is that in the context of the influence of social networks and the increasing disloyalty of young people to brands, the trend of food and beverage categories has become more and more elusive like fast fashion, and the life cycle is shortening. .
A previous report from the media “Restaurant Boss Internal Reference” mentioned that the current elimination period of catering in shopping malls has gradually shrunk from 5 to 3 years to 1 year. In some A-type shopping malls, even one restaurant has been withdrawn. The fastest phenomenon is only 1.5-3 months.
While population growth is slowing down, shopping malls are surplus, commercial complexes are approaching saturation in first-tier cities, second-tier and third-tier citiesThe increasing density of cities has resulted in customer diversion, more and more catering stores have opened, and competition has become more intense.
For green tea restaurants, the potential hidden dangers brought about by capital intervention are also worth noting.
Although opening a store quickly can increase the total turnover, the profit of a single store will be diluted and the return on investment will also be lower. It is not easy to maintain high passenger flow and high turnover rate. In the future, competition in the catering industry has risen from the product dimension to the comprehensive dimension, including supply chain, efficiency, environment, marketing, experience and so on.