From Xicha to Golaguan, how hard is it for Beijingers to eat Netflix food?

Editing | Zhao Lei

Operation | Yueyi

It seems that people living in Beijing have long since become accustomed to this scene: a newly opened A new Netflix restaurant, either a whole day's queue, or eat again in three months. What's more difficult for Beijingers to accept is why many Netflix brands, which have been on fire elsewhere for a long time and have opened many stores, always come to Beijing very late, but when they do, the queue becomes a kind of willingness to wait, which greatly increases the degree of hard work involved in queuing.

At the beginning of August, American frog hot pot Brother Lao Guan opened its first Beijing store in Chaoyang Joy City, and the queuing scene was once again in full swing. As a catering company established in 2014, Brother Lao Guan has opened more than 60 branches across the country, and when it was on the hot search for food safety, many people in Beijing still questioned what kind of store it was. Back in 2019, Brother Lao Guan opened a store in Tianjin to test the waters, and it was only recently that it came to Beijing, with many people leaving messages on its public number and microblog: "Hurry up and come to Beijing! If you want to eat Golao Guan, you still have to go to Tianjin to eat, it's too difficult!"

In addition to the queue is difficult, as a first-tier city in the top stream, Beijing is often flirted with by netizens jokingly referred to as " gourmet desert ". Many southerners come to live in Beijing after it is difficult to imagine, "walk all the way can not touch a convenience store even if, how do you want to seriously eat a meal are not more choice space?" By the time those little red book on the trend of food in Beijing, people have passionately queued up, seems to be more lurking in the wait-and-see brand to declare: "Do not wait for the fast come to make money!"

This can't help but confuse people, is Beijing with the "strength" to make foreign food no market, or the local catering is really afraid to go to Beijing to catch the test?

Mr. Lao came, the day is gone

10:30 to the store, in front of the 300 tables.

On the third day of the opening, a Monday morning, Zhang Quanliang, who has always been a part of the capital's major netizen restaurants and made a fortune by selling his number, came to the door of the Joy City early and waited for the opening of the mall to be the first to rush in. Expected that there may be a long queue, he specially hired a few helpers to rotate to take the number, ready to make a fortune from it.

But today there are some surprises. And so Zhang Quanliang with more than forty years of middle-aged man's beer belly running all the way to the old official store, many young people have been lined up into the S-shaped team turned several corners. Seeing the crowd in front of the great queue, Zhang Quanliang froze for a moment, did not react.

"This can still make any money?" Knocking his head he did not understand where he lost: "Not ten o'clock before opening? Where the hell did they jump up from?"

Less than two days after the opening of the small red book has been circulating a set of comments more than a thousand early queuing secret: to the supermarket under the Joy City to take the freight elevator upstairs, rubbing the tutorial institutions of the morning elevator upstairs, from the underground garage detour to take the stairs upstairs ... even if the mall's doors are closed, there are about two to three hundred people climbed up through various ways.

Wang Jie, who lives in Haidian District, has come to Pai Gao Lao Guan for the second time. On the first day of opening he took the order at 12:00 noon, and did not eat until about 10:00 pm. As Beijing's local foodie, in his impression, "as long as the food from abroad, not queuing instead of normal." Not long ago the Mudanyuan neighborhood opened a Guangzhou Shunde restaurant, Wang Jie three or four o'clock in the afternoon to take the number has been full, but also waited a full four hours to the table. This time, the time is a working day, Wang Jie special day off, seven o'clock in the morning to get up and drive across half of Beijing, from the west all the way to the east, only to take a 60th.

The Beijing store is not that big, and it doesn't necessarily have 50 tables. Although there are 2.5 hours of required dining time, but the frequency of turning over the table is still a little low, usually three hours to pass the number of a dozen tables, which means that take the number of the 200th table after the basic no hope to eat on the day. In this way, the generation row, scalpers have been sitting on the ground, the evening peak of a now seated scalper number ticket price speculation to 150 yuan.

Diners waiting in line for a number at the entrance to Gelao Guan. Figure / Fan Mengyue

Beijing residents to eat the hottest, trendiest food, than other places to be much more difficult. Paying out of pocket for an "admission ticket" has become the last resort for many.

Kaidong, a college student, is a member of the generation row crowd. Potentially a Beijing store scouting welfare group, he began to work part-time in 2019 on behalf of the row business of hot restaurants in Beijing. "The price per order depends on the row number and the degree of hotness of the specific restaurant, generally like the brother officer, take the number on behalf of the row for three hours to use the meal, the lowest is 80 yuan." Considering that he can double-check his money in the end, Kaidong tends to take the numbers of all table types. In his observations, larger tables will turn over faster than smaller ones.

At the same time, the business seems to be playing smart: row three seat number is relatively small, obviously four people in the center table, the clerk will also be arranged first two people to go in to sit. "Isn't this also a waste of resources? Let people deliberately wait outside?"

Looking at the crowd around him, Kaidong was in tears: "How delicious can you say it is? I tasted in Hangzhou, the flavor is normal hot pot flavor, row 7 hours is really not worth it. Thanks to this is Beijing, what foreign to the net red restaurant can fire for a while."

On a food-related platform, many consumers gave low marks to Gao Lao Guan because of the lack of queues and scalping.

Beijing food, can not come in or out

Beijing people want to eat eat can not eat net red store, not only the Lao Guan a.

If you want to eat a net red store, you can eat a net red store, not only can eat a net red store.

If you remember the opening of the first store of Xi-Tea in Beijing at the end of 2017, then the S-shaped queue of Gao Lao Guan can only be considered a small scene. In a sense, Xi-Tea's arrival "fired the first shot in the history of Beijing's online restaurant queues": according to reports at the time, the average queue at the Sanlitun Taikoo Li store and the Chaoyang Joy City store lasted more than four hours. The Xicha Chaoyue store has received 1,299 people in its 10 hours of operation, selling an average of 4.33 cups per minute with a limit of 3 cups per person.

The people of Beijing have been craving for Xicha for a long time. According to the official website of Xi Cha, this Guangdong tea drink brand created in 2012, first in Dongguan, Zhongshan and other Guangdong cities to fully roll out, in 2015 it was stationed in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanning, Guangxi. 2017 stationed in Hangzhou and Shanghai, Xi Cha before deciding to enter Beijing. That is to say, in the first-tier cities, the people of Beijing are the last to drink succulent grapes, even later than some second and third-tier cities.

Not only drinking milk tea is half a beat slower than others, recently invested nearly 100 million yuan by Tomato Capital's net red hot pot restaurant Barnu mawu hot pot, started in 2001 from Henan, focusing on Sichuan and Chongqing hot pot suitable for the taste of people in the north, and opened dozens of stores, came out from Henan in 2012 to first enter the Wuxi market, and did not set foot in Beijing until 2018, and only a year later opened a second Beijing branch. According to Meituan Dianping data, the two stores were selected 2019 must eat list - Beijing must eat restaurant and Xidan hot pot Top2. can not drink tea YanYueSi is just, even Zhengzhou people open Sichuan and Chongqing hot pot, Beijing people also can not taste "fresh".

In the field of new Chinese food, Grandma's, Green Tea, Nine Mau Nine and other super restaurant chain brands with more than 100 stores nationwide, are "late" in Beijing. Even the fortune teller calculated that "the sea will return, the Beijing will be sent" West Bay oat village owner Jia Guolong, started in Beijing after the expansion to the south, the current West Bay oat village in Shanghai, the number of stores has exceeded Beijing.

Not only is the entry of foreign online stores slow, Beijing's local restaurant brands are also difficult to go out. Meizhou Dongpo, a restaurant chain brand founded in Beijing, currently has about 62 stores across the country, with Beijing booming 45 stores, Shanghai has only 2 stores, and Shenzhen and Guangzhou have no such stores. According to the popular review data, Meizhou Dongpo in Meizhou, opened 3 stores, an average score of 4.6. And foreign tourists must hit the Beijing gourmet food of Hu Hu marijuana small, four seasons of Minfu roast duck, the former focus on Guijie, the latter only opened 18 stores in Beijing, has not yet had the momentum to the field.

Another real "king of the queue" in Beijing is the fire cloud Daijia Cuisine: from the first store opened in 2011, the long queue in front of the fire cloud as if it were an ancestral general, appearing in front of the store day after day, rain or shine. According to the small red book on the store repo, in the fire cloud, weekdays queuing for more than 2 hours has been the norm, the holiday line 4, 5 hours is not unusual. 16:30 release number, 17:00 day number has been collected; number table number to reach 2 / 3 to open dinner, to come to the early to late have to wait. Perhaps, this is from the "Dai flavor top stream" of the bottom of the air.

"Friends come from afar, first eat the burning clouds." Fiery Cloud is probably one of the few net red restaurants that started from Beijing, and since entering the Shanghai market in 2018, it has opened three branches in a row, each of which replicates the crazy queue picture in Beijing. However, the invincibly long queues have not been able to stop the pace of its decline: in 2020, the Beijing Fire Cloud Gulou store closed, leaving only the Jingguangqiao and Blue Harbor Bay stores, which are slightly less well-located, to continue to operate.

Quanjude is probably one of the few "go out" of the Beijing cuisine, but this in more than a decade ago on the successful listing of the catering leader, still has not become a queue of more than ten hours of "net red food". Narrow door dining eye data show that Quanjude in the domestic **** there are 90 stores, Beijing alone accounted for 24. Calendar year financial reports show that after 2011, Quanjude's store revenue declined year after year, brand innovation is always the development bottleneck. In Shanghai, Quanjude Tianmu West Road store's public review rating is only 4.1 - in front of the word of mouth of diners, "old" is not good.

According to DT Finance statistics, in the microblogging search " gourmet desert ", Beijing with more than 800 mentions of the fault to obtain C position. And on Golder Maps, the IKEA restaurant was once ranked fifth in the "Beijing Food Chart". This is not surprising: the regional characteristics of the Guiguo Temple snacks, Yaoji fried liver flavor is too "unique", targeting the high-end market Meizhou Dongpo, South Beauty and lack of recognition, the most promising "potential stocks" Hu Cannabis small can not go out of Guijie, the four seasons of the people's welfare can not get out of the Hutong. The most important thing to remember is that you can't be a good person and you can't be a good person.

Ikea's food and drink ranked fifth in the "Beijing Food Chart".

Beijing is very noble, Netflix restaurants do not deserve

Beijing and Netflix restaurants are destined to be less destiny. The first time I saw this, I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night.

The main battleground for Golokan is in the East China region. Usually, when a catering company enters a new region, it will set up a separate branch to manage it. Enterprise search shows that in 2019 Golao Guan has set up a Beijing catering branch with a registered capital of 1 million yuan. But the high operating costs, making the strong such as Lao Guan, also need to "wait and see" two years before officially settled.

A staff member said to the Daily Person that the high operating costs in Beijing is one of the main reasons why the company is slow to move north. In terms of raw materials, in addition to vegetables are distributed by suppliers in Beijing, the rest of the meat is delivered to Beijing by the headquarters in Shanghai, and the cost of cold chain transportation is high. It is understood that the cost of each bullfrog into the Beijing of Gao Lao official is more expensive than other regions on the 2 yuan.

In addition to this, the cost of land rent is also an important reason to hinder the net red store into Beijing. "Brother Lao official initially Chaoyang Joy City invited us to move in, Beijing's core business district is not much, a good location is at least eye-catching." The above staff said that initially, after the opening of the store of Brother Lao Guan 2019 in Tianjin, the response was better, and only then attracted the attention of the business circle in Beijing, and took the initiative to contact them to hope to be stationed in the area. And they can be stationed in Chaoyang Joy City, a prime location, is also due to the withdrawal of the last restaurant left.

Checked by the Daily People, Chaoyang Joy City near the public sale of street stores, the price of about 10 yuan / / day, and in the inch of land in Chaoyang Joy City, the year-round occupancy rate of more than 98%, a "pit" hard to find, the rent has risen year after year. If you count the cost of labor, water and electricity, without the preferential policies of the mall, profitability is indeed difficult to guarantee.

In 2016, when the dish flavor into the development of Beijing, then the country has 50 or 60 stores. Dish flavor in Beijing to choose a site to take a five or six hundred square feet of store, began the first store business. But soon after opening, it felt that there was too much competition in the Beijing area, and the brand's aging Dish Taste couldn't compete with the rest of Beijing's powerful new restaurants.By the end of 2018, the number of Dish Taste's stores across the country had surpassed more than 130, with more than 60 new stores added in a year. The 400-square-meter directly-managed store in Kashgar, Xinjiang, surpassed a turnover of 1 million yuan in 28 days. At the same time, they have also shrunk their battle lines, closing their Beijing store and officially withdrawing from the Beijing market.

In the opinion of Bai Mo, a restaurant brand planner, the effect of opening stores and expanding in third and fourth-tier cities is not necessarily worse than in Beijing, because the bottom of the rent there, the cost is low, and the spending power of the residents over the years is not weak.

The scarcity of online stores in Beijing also reflects the plight of the restaurant industry itself. China Hotel Association published "2020 Catering Industry Annual Report" shows that in fiscal year 2019, the average net interest rate of the research enterprise is only 10.46%, catering enterprises, "three high" problem is still obvious: raw material purchase cost, labor cost and three expenses cost is the cost of the highest proportion of the three.

Finance magazine has interviewed Qing Yong, founder of Tomato Capital, and Song Qianqian, investor of Wenheyou, on the issue of restaurant investment. Qing Yong mentioned that the annual mortality rate of the catering industry is about 30%, and in 2020, the catering industry will close more than 3.5 million stores and open more than 2.5 million new ones. Song Qianqian, on the other hand, said that only 20% of the catering industry makes money. In such a high entry rate and high elimination rate of the market, moving into a city like Beijing, which has high costs, high population mobility and a fast pace of life, means higher risks. If you can not meet the Beijing diners "like new and old" desire, it is inevitable that like Xibei, sip feed and other enterprises to encounter a "mid-life crisis".

Gluttony feed from the previous one-person pot bar to sit, transformed into an ordinary restaurant card seat. Figure / Dianping

For chain brands, "connecting interests, locking management" is also the key to success. In addition to category selection, it is also necessary to do the design in the direct management, franchise, franchising, benefit distribution and operational level improvement. "Chain brands need a combination of giant supply chain, standard store management level, this business seems to be a very low barrier to entry, but in fact very high." Song Qianqian said in an interview. Quality food and beverage like Gao Lao Guan and Banu Maodu hot pot, which only allow direct operation and use a unified supplier and transportation chain, are often unable to beat the spicy hot pot, ramen and Yunnan rice noodles, which allow franchising and have compressible purchasing costs.

Over the years, high-profile entry but ultimately lost the Beijing market is not a small number of net red store. 2020, the number of stores ranked third in the country, has been listed in Hong Kong Jiumaojiu Northwest Cuisine, announced its withdrawal from the Beijing and Tianjin markets. According to its official announcement, the brand affected by the epidemic need to "reduce the rent, the cost of raw materials and consumables used and other operating expenses", and the Beijing and Tianjin stores generally less traffic, become the first choice to be optimized.

Even the net red store is difficult to survive in Beijing, not to mention the overall spit "and expensive and difficult to eat" old. In March of this year, the store in Beijing Dajiejie Street, which is the last directly-managed store in Beijing, closed, which means that the century-old brand officially withdrew from the Beijing market.

High-quality catering in Beijing to survive, the need for higher management wisdom, lower operating costs and stronger anti-risk ability, which means that the expansion strategy of the elaborate design, low-cost cold chain logistics support, as well as the heavy involvement of capital, and snacks fast food in these aspects is far better than the middle and high-end quality catering. As a result, Beijing has become the world of Sha Xian snacks, Lanzhou ramen and Zhang Liang spicy hot pot, rather than the battlefield of the brotherhood of officials.

However, there is no need to pity the Beijing people's stomachs: there are no more Netflix restaurants, and there is still the Beijing Office.

The chicken at the Jinshite restaurant in the Xinjiang Bazhou Beijing Office is considered one of the most authentic chicken dishes in Beijing. Photo / VW Dianping

References:

1. "10,000-word article: Five years of data insight into China's food and beverage megatrends", restaurant bosses inside

2. "Catering investment in the fire: the best and last decade", reads the number of a banner