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Haidi Lao, which is about to come into the market, makes Xiabu Xiabu feel unprecedented pressure.
I have gathered enough energy to catch up with my rivals and expand quickly, but I don't want to be led into a food safety accident by a mouse in hot pot.
On September 6, a consumer in Weifang, Shandong, said that when he took his family to a local Xiabu Xiabu hotpot restaurant for dinner that day, his pregnant wife fished out a mouse from the bottom soup of the hotpot.
Behind the food safety accident, it may be the "sequela" left by the rapid expansion of Xiabu Xiabu in recent years. Public data shows that since 2014, Xiabu Xiabu has maintained the speed of opening about 100 new stores every year.
"Strict requirements for food hygiene are the bottom line and red line of catering enterprises, which will have a huge negative impact once touched. The emergence of this problem shows that Xiabu Xiabu is in rapid development, and the terminal safety management lags behind the upstream management, which should have an inseparable relationship with the talent allocation everywhere, indicating that Xiabu Xiabu's management team cannot keep up with the rapid development of the market. ”Lu Shengzhen, a marketing expert, told the Times.
Misery of food safety
This is not the first time that Xiabu Xiabu has faced the storm of food safety accidents.
In 2013, some media reported that after a secret visit to a store in Beijing, Xiabu Xiabu found that "more than 500 tableware were washed out from a pool of water in the cleaning pool in the operation room, with oil stains after washing", the disinfection pool and washing pool had been idle, and tableware had not been used in the process of disinfection.
In 2012, two consumers found a white strip like living thing suspected of maggots in the vinegar bottle of a store in Xiabu Xiabu Beijing. Although the store later apologized and was willing to compensate for the corresponding losses, it also tarnished the reputation of Xiabu Xiabu.
Like Haidilao, another giant in the hot pot industry, the operation mode of Xiabu Xiabu stores is direct operation and they are not open to the outside world, which greatly reduces the potential food safety hazards to a certain extent. However, neither Haidilao nor Xiabu could bypass the food safety issue. Last year, the hidden danger of food safety in the back kitchen of a store of Haidilao in Beijing was exposed. For example, the rats in the back kitchen were scurrying around, cleaning sanitary ware dustpans, brooms and tableware in the same pool, and using tableware used by customers (such as hot pot skips) to clean the sewer.
Xu Xiongjun, a famous strategic positioning expert and founder of Jiude positioning consulting company, believes that food safety accidents are almost "probability events" in the catering industry. "Whether it is the world's top catering chains such as McDonald's, KFC or Starbucks, they will also have similar food safety accidents, which are almost inevitable," said Xu Xiongjun.
However, Lu Shengzhen believes that Xiabu Xiabu has a strict process in raw material procurement and distribution, especially in meat procurement, regular inspection of suppliers and strict standards in slaughtering. There is also a fixed base for unified procurement and distribution of vegetables. The mouse incident is caused by management loopholes in the terminal kitchen link, This event shows that in the rapid development process of Xiabu Xiabu, the terminal security management lags behind the upstream management.
Hidden worries of high-speed expansion
Behind the "mouse gate" is the rapid expansion of Xiabu Xiabu in recent years.
Time Weekly reporter inquired about the company's prospectus and annual report and found that from 2011 to 2017, the number of Xiabu Xiabu stores was 243, 330, 394, 452, 552, 639 and 759, with an average of 100 stores opening each year. By the end of June 2018, there were 780 Xiabu restaurants in Xiabu Xiabu, covering 86 cities in 14 provinces and 3 municipalities directly under the Central Government of China.
Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of the Chinese food industry, believes that the motivation for the quick opening of Xiabu Xiabu stores lies in: on the one hand, the audience of Xiabu Xiabu was relatively single before, which made its profits have a significant ceiling effect and needs to expand its business scope; On the other hand, Xiabu Xiabu also needs to expand the size of the company to ensure profits.
However, in recent years, the profit growth of Xiabu Xiabu failed to keep pace with its expansion. Its annual report shows that the growth of net profit of Xiabu Xiabu has slowed down significantly in recent years, of which the net profit in 2017 was 431 million yuan, up 15.9% year on year, significantly lower than 39.7% in 2016, and the growth rate of net profit decreased by 23.8%. In the first half of this year, the net profit of Xiabu Xiabu only increased by 11.5% to 209 million yuan.
Not long ago, after the announcement of the medium-term results, the stock price of Xiabu Xiabu fell due to the lower growth rate of net profit than the market expected. However, JPMorgan Chase reported that the profits of Xiabu Xiabu in the first half of the year increased by 11.5% year on year, which was lower than the expected growth of 15% – 20%, while the sales increased by 35% year on year, which was higher than the expected growth of 20%. JPMorgan Chase has lowered the target price of Xiabu Xiabu shares from HK $18 to HK $16, and its profit forecast from this year to 2020 has also been lowered by 10% to 11%.
Lu Shengzhen believes that the slowdown of Xiabu Xiabu's profit growth is related to the profit encroachment by the fast expanding store investment of direct stores. From Xu Xiongjun's point of view, Xiabu Xiabu is originally focused on the middle and low end market, and the profit itself is not too high. In addition, the increasingly fierce competition in the hot pot market in recent years has also squeezed the profit space of Xiabu Xiabu.
According to the report of Sullivan, a consulting firm, hotpot has the largest market share in the Chinese catering market among all Chinese dishes, accounting for 13.7% of the revenue in 2017. At the same time, another group of data shows that Haidilao occupies about 1.5% of the hotpot market, while the total market share of five listed hotpot enterprises, including Xiabu Xiabu and Xiaotailang, is less than 1%, which means the industry concentration is low.
Enter the high-end market
Xiabu Xiabu has been seeking change, and entering the high-end is regarded as one of the ways out.
In June 2016, Xiabu Xiabu launched the brand "Caobao", which is positioned as a medium and high-end brand. Since the customer price is relatively similar to Haidilao, it is also considered as a measure of Xiabu Xiabu benchmarking Haidilao.
After the downturn of the previous two years, Caojiao finally turned loss into profit in the first half of this year. The report shows that in the first half of this year, the revenue reached 190 million yuan, an increase of 497.3% compared with 32.8 million yuan in the same period last year. The net profit was 22.8 million yuan, compared with a loss of 10.3 million yuan in the same period last year. By the end of June 2018, there were 28 restaurants.
In addition, Xiabu Xiabu also upgraded the original restaurant. The original "1.0" version with orange as the main color has been changed to black as the main color, and more "2.0" versions of square tables have been added.
In addition, Xiabu Xiabu, which is mainly located in the northern market, is also preparing to "swing south" to expand the market scale.
He Guangqi, the chairman of the company, said publicly in June last year that Xiabu Xiabu would make a push in the southern market, and 2019 would be the "first year of the Great Leap Forward" of Xiabu Xiabu Group, with the goal of reaching 1000 "Xiabu+" upgrade stores. According to the plan, Xiabu Xiabu will develop more than 1000 stores in Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta, with Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen as the three strongholds in the future. This means that the whole Xiabu Xiabu Group will develop nearly 4000 stores in the future.
However, compared with Haidilao, which is about to land in the capital market, there is still a gap between Xiabu and Xiabu.
According to Xiabu Xiabu's financial report, its revenue in 2017 was 3.66 billion yuan, about 1/3 of that of Haidilao; The net profit is 420 million yuan, which is also 1/3 of that of Haidilao. In 2017, the turnover rate of Xiabu Xiabu was 3.3, also lower than that of Haidilao.
Xu Xiongjun believes that in order to catch up with Haidilao, we must first strengthen and stabilize our main business, and on this basis, improve the customer price, product quality and service; In addition, the brand mental share of the high terminal brand "Qiaocao" still needs to be improved. The opinion of this article only represents the author himself. If the source of the article is a network reprint, this website is an information publishing platform. If there is infringement, please contact this website to delete it in time.
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