In the view of the founder of LROOM, the trend of online celebrity catering has become a reality, but some shops that have passed the quality test have no “marketing footing” on the issue of “becoming a celebrity”.
LROOM, established in 2018, is a company committed to building and incubating online celebrity catering brands. Its predecessor was the LROOM online flower sales platform. Now it has successfully hatched an LROOM Cafe, a flower-themed experience store with desserts, coffee, and flower sales in New York. Based on the incubation and operation experience of LROOM Cafe, the team’s new business direction is incubation of private labels and incubation of service catering brands.
LROOM chose to open its first floral dessert shop in New York with a resident population of 8.5 million and Chinese and international students close to 800,000 per month on the basis of the high-spending international student customer base obtained through high-end flower custom websites. 70% of current customers are foreigners, of which 40% are overseas tourists who come to check in every quarter. The related Instagram posts have been read over 100 million. Commercially, LROOM Cafe has recovered costs and achieved profitability by December of this year.
In the view of the founder of LROOM, the trend of online celebrity catering has become a reality. Users need high-quality, good-looking and delicious places to consume, but traditional food and beverage brands lack sensitivity to trends and marketing, which means some quality. The shops that passed the customs lacked the “slamming door” of marketing in the matter of “becoming an Internet celebrity.”
By operating LROOM Cafe, LROOM has summed up its own celebrity catering strategy. The online celebrity restaurant incubation brand created by the designer-born LROOM and founder Ling Xue is to show his design in different forms and run through the entire brand incubation process and guest experience.
The three elements of “beautiful food and beauty” are the most basic requirements of online red shops. Based on this, the Lroom team designed different stories of the four seasons of “Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter”, and based on these stories to create an aesthetic experience space. Most online celebrity shops in the market usually imitate each other, and the homogeneity is serious. Before the Lroom team builds, they will investigate and evaluate the stores in the region and the market of the same industry, create a brand story according to customer needs, and have a highly discernible R & D And full of ceremonial explosive products.
Many online celebrity shops have a life cycle of only 6-12 months. Because the products are single and of average quality, many people come only once to take pictures. Lroom believes that quality is the lifeblood of online red shops. The research and development team strictly controls quality control, establishes a training supervision system, regularly arranges chefs to study, and changes dishes every month according to the season and trend. Unlike most online red shops that rely on public accounts and Douyin’s viral promotion, the Lroom team actively collaborates with various high-end fashion brands to co-operate online and offline with each other, increasing their own brand value, while cultivating a large number of high-quality customer groups. . Based on LROOM Cafe’s operational experience, the team’s next plan is to output this set of play.
In general, LROOM divides its business model into private label operations and incubation on behalf of others.
Private brand operations include direct store, franchise, and online website operations. The incubation business serves entrepreneurs who have economic strength, want to build online celebrity catering brands, and catering companies who want to upgrade their brand image and scale. For incubation on behalf of others, its pricing strategy is divided into: service fees, management fees and share dividends. For entrepreneurs who want to open their own shop but have no clue, they can charge upfront creative design fees. In the later period, you can collect management fees or share dividends from long-term catering companies to complete the profit.
LROOM promotional shooting
At present, the LROOM team has successfully cooperated with a hotel in Washington. The team focuses on the historic “Old Silk Road” in the Northwest, and focuses on the renovation of the store’s decoration design and installation art. The dishes focus on the characteristics of Northwestern cuisine: “heavy beef and mutton, with outstanding flavor and spices.” The overall packaging, from menus to publicity, makes use of China’s unique “chopstick culture” and “ethnic flavor” to make foreigners attracted to Chinese food culture.
In terms of team, LROOM and its founding team are from Parsons School of Design and Columbia University, respectively, and have working experience on Facebook.
LROOM currently plans to raise millions of dollars for team expansion, brand upgrades, network incubation and self-incubating brand expansion.