Gansu traditional spicy strips attract investment and join the phone

Spicy strips set off a "national tide" revolution

Some young people today may not know about Luohe, but they must have tasted salty, sweet and spicy Wei Long spicy strips. Wei Long's "leading role" in the spicy strip industry can be described as unshakable. Even in the marketing circle, Wei Long has created a unique marketing phenomenon. It has had close cooperation with runaway comics and Weibo jokes, and it can create hot searches in Weibo every once in a while.

During the epidemic period, Wei Long announced through official micro that a batch of spicy strips and konjac were donated to Wuhan for refreshment, which were distributed to front-line medical staff. Moreover, during the epidemic period, Wei Long announced an average salary increase of 30% for employees returning to work, and planned to recruit 1000 people again, earning enough attention again.

Few people know that the birthplace of Wei Long spicy strips is Luohe City. This is the main producing area of spicy strips in China, and the total annual output value of spicy strips in Luohe can reach one-seventh of the whole country.

In Luohe, local people want to eat spicy strips, not according to the bulk retail of supermarkets. They want to buy two or three pounds of spicy strips at a time and eat them slowly at home. The way to eat is also more flexible. Whether it's sesame seeds, eggs, steamed stuffed buns or pancake fruit, spicy strips are definitely indispensable. Spicy strips that can eat anything were circulated in Luohe more than ten years ago.

If wine is indispensable for foreign parties, there are often spicy strips on the dining table of Luohe people. On holidays, a box of spicy strips can be used as a gift for them to visit relatives and friends.

The food culture of Luohe spicy strips has given Wei Long a growing soil. Wei Long spicy strips can be seen from the canteen near the school to the specialty stores in large shopping malls. This kind of small food-spicy strips, which is popular all over the country, has become a "national snack" in the new era.

Figure/vision china

No one expected that this 50-cent street snack could also make the American luxury food list and become another representative of "domestic products" after Laoganma. 20 15, 1 1, Wei Long spicy strips appeared on the Amazon website in the United States, and the unit price marked was as high as 14 US dollars, equivalent to more than 90 yuan.

Wei Long's internal staff attributed the success to the success of product taste. "Weilong has more than 60 kinds of spicy food, but they are not too spicy. This is because our research found that except Hunan cuisine and Sichuan cuisine, people's eating habits in more areas are not too spicy, so Wei Long also reduced the spicy degree of the original spicy strips from spicy to sweet, which is more in line with the public's taste. "

Wei Long began to enrich condiment categories, not only seasoning noodle products, but also extended spicy strips to bean products, konjac products, vegetarian products and meat products. However, with the continuous expansion of the product library, people also found that this previously spicy snack began to become a dessert.

"Guangdong is our largest sales area. Although it is closer to Hunan, Cantonese people have a light taste and do not like spicy food. "

"Blue Ocean" becomes "Red Sea"

Walking on the streets of Luohe, you can hardly feel the unique flavor of Luohe as the hometown of spicy strips. Only in supermarkets, shopping malls and shopping centers in individual communities can you see those spicy strips with colorful packaging. Before the rise of Wei Long, the streets and alleys of Luohe City were full of vendors selling beef tendon noodles. Walking in the street, the smell of handmade spicy strips makes people have nowhere to hide.

The people of Luohe grew up under the "moisture" of spicy strips very early. Compared with the familiar fragrance in the streets and lanes in the past, the hometown of spicy strips now presents more industrial flavor.

Wei Long headquarters, located in the private industrial park in the East Economic Development Zone of Luohe, can see the conspicuous logo of Wei Long Food Industrial Park when you enter the industrial park. In August this year, employees of Wei Long headquarters moved into the new park, and several production lines of Wei Long Food Phase II Industrial Park were put into production one after another, becoming the main food production base in Wei Long. In the original Wei Long Food Phase I Industrial Park, some buildings were labeled as "Wei Long College" and were only open to internal employees.

Compared with the previous park, the newly moved park building has more food production workshops, but in the view of Zhang Long, an internal employee, these outputs are not enough to support the long-term development of Wei Long. We have a three-phase industrial park under construction with a total investment of 3 billion. Luohe municipal government officials once said that the completion of the Weilong Phase III Industrial Park project bears the goal of "the annual output value will exceed 20 billion yuan, making it the second food enterprise in the city with a level exceeding 10 billion yuan".

In fact, taking advantage of the market downturn, constantly improving production technology and expanding the production capacity of spicy strips are the key factors for the development of Wei Long. For example, in 2004, spicy strips were labeled as "junk food" and sales were bleak. However, Liu Weiping, chairman of Wei Long, invested a lot of money in the supply chain and gradually changed the original semi-automatic operation to automation; 20 17, Wei Long further built a research and development center, equipped with various professional testing instruments.

Figure/vision china (Spicy Strip Processing Factory)

A native of Luohe commented that these operations were relatively advanced in the spicy strip industry at that time and even in local snack production enterprises. It not only improves the production capacity, ensures the safety of food, but also consolidates the brand advantage to a certain extent.

Through a series of technical iterations, the output value of Wei Long spicy strips has increased year by year. But competitors are coming. China food industry analyst Zhu Zeng said, "In 20 18, the scale of spicy strips industry in China was 58 billion yuan, and the average gross profit margin of spicy strips was close to 50%. High gross profit naturally attracts the participation of capital. " At present, three squirrels, good shops, herbs shops, gold shops and other online celebrity snack brands all regard spicy strips as a member of the product matrix.

Wei Long, aware of the competition pattern, also began to gradually change its strategy for dealers. According to the insiders of Wei Long, "Wei Long has three main requirements for dealers: First, it must be a dealer with certain vehicle transportation capacity; Second, the dealer bears the risk of pressing the goods. For example, if the annual order volume is 6.5438+0 million, the dealer should ensure a certain coverage capacity and independently undertake after-sales service; Third, if you exceed a certain amount, you cannot sell other kinds of spicy food at the same time. "

In the arrangement of channel layout, Wei Long has also made adjustments. Dealers can only do terminal sales as agents, and will not do wholesale in the future. "In the past, our company had wholesale, but now the company has been restructured and started to implement the partner model, so we will pay more attention to terminal stores."

This strategic adjustment has repelled the enthusiasm of some dealers. "Wei Long spicy strips have had a round of price increases after the epidemic this year, plus resale channels and certain sales category restrictions, which is too harsh for us."

Another local dealer in Luohe also said that he did not understand this. He believes that the characteristics of leisure snack products determine that its performance contribution pool is mainly offline, and online is mainly used as a platform. At present, nearly 90% of the sales performance of Wei Long spicy strips comes from offline terminal stores, and the rest 10% comes from e-commerce.

Photo/Photographed by Li Dou

However, in the disorderly spicy market, some people are willing to pay for their brand premium. A number of store sales staff told Ai Caijing that compared with other similar spicy foods, the wholesale price of Wei Long spicy foods is the most expensive, and the average purchase price of each packet of Weilong spicy foods is 3-5 cents more. "Although the price of spicy food in Wei Long is the highest, it sells the fastest. Compared with similar spicy strips, Wei Long spicy strips can sell 500 pieces a month, while others can only sell 50 pieces. "

Made in Luohe, waiting for new life.

Guangming Road, not far from Luohe Economic Development Industrial Zone, is a leisure street with the nature of department stores, supermarkets and food wholesale. Most customers who come here often buy in bulk. Wei Long's flagship food store in Luohe, the only one in China, is here.

"I'm here because I hope to reach out to businesses I haven't touched before and provide them with some small-batch purchase services. It will be easier to talk about business in the future. " Chen Ying, the marketing staff of Wei Long flagship store, said. However, within half an hour, only one customer came to the store, bought 20 kinds of Bao Butong Wei Long spicy strips and left quickly.

Compared with other stores in the wholesale market, this achievement is optimistic. Throughout the large wholesale market, only two or three pedestrians pass by occasionally.

In recent years, with the rise of food industry in various places, Luohe food industry, which is dominated by traditional snacks such as spicy strips and ham sausages, is experiencing an impact. Such as Hebei, Shandong, Fujian and other agricultural provinces, county-level food industrial parks have mushroomed, gradually forming an obvious phenomenon of food industry agglomeration.

The rise of spicy strip industry has given confidence to the development of Luohe. The maturity of spicy strip supply chain has brought the development of related upstream and downstream industries, such as pepper, pepper and rape in the upstream, food industry, packaging and printing, machinery manufacturing, logistics, e-commerce and other industries in the midstream. More importantly, it also plays an important role in stimulating GDP. At the partner conference in 2020, Liu Weiping, chairman of Wei Long, also revealed that the overall revenue of Wei Long in 2065438+2009 was 4.909 billion yuan, and the annual tax contribution was 400 million yuan.

Figure/vision china

In addition to the spicy strip industry, the brightest food pearl in Luohe is Shuanghui and Nanjie Village.

Another undeniable fact is that, as a famous food city, the annual output value of food industry in Luohe, Henan Province reaches 200 billion yuan, and there are more than 7,000 related enterprises, but most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises, with weak innovation and R&D capabilities and serious product homogeneity, which has become a bottleneck restricting the transformation and upgrading of food industry in Luohe.

According to the official news of Luohe City, the added value of the food industry above designated size increased by 7% in 20 19, accounting for 47.3% of the industries above designated size. Although the food industry still accounts for half of the city's economy, compared with 20 18, both the growth rate and the proportion have declined slightly.

Some people in the food industry in Luohe pointed out that "at the moment when the food industry is focusing on health strategy, the products launched by local food enterprises in Luohe are still the same as those of more than a decade ago, and have not changed much compared with many new foods."

"The food industry has changed from food and clothing consumption to healthy and pleasant consumption. Whoever opens up obvious differentiation will be able to break out a new blue ocean. " Liu Zhi, executive vice president of China Food Industry Association, said in a speech at the Food Expo.

Affected by the epidemic, the Luohe Food Expo originally scheduled for May was postponed to this year 165438+ 10. The upcoming18th Food Expo bears the glory and dreams of this famous food city. Since the first food festival, Luohe City has regarded attracting investment as an important symbol to measure the success or failure of the food festival. However, under the downward trend of the output value of the food industry, the task of attracting investment in 2020 will be more arduous than in previous years.