Original Title: Tamping the Foundation of Traffic Convenience Stores Add Fresh Food

Like China's economy, convenience stores are entering a critical stage of transformation and upgrading. They need to build stronger commodity management capabilities, cultivate new development drivers, and achieve high-quality development. In the process of building commodity power, fresh food has gradually become the key to improve the profitability of convenience stores. Most of the leading convenience store brands are adding fresh food, and hot food and cold food are showing a steady growth trend.

To some extent, fresh food that can meet the consumer's consumption scenario of "breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and supper" has become the source of flow of convenience stores due to its high gross profit, high repurchase rate and high sales proportion.

In recent years, most convenience store brands have focused on the production and sale of goods on site. This change is also reflected in the data on the continuous growth of fast food introduced by convenience stores. The report on the selection of "gold medal store managers" issued by the China Association of Chain Stores (hereinafter referred to as the "China Association of Chain Stores") shows the data of gold medal stores - fresh food revenue accounts for 16.6% and gross profit rate 26%. Pei Liang, honorary president of China Association of Companies, said that on the whole, the production and sales capacity of fresh food of convenience stores is still in the cultivation period, and the proportion of fresh food processing and sales will continue to increase. In the future, as the aging consumer population continues to grow, convenience stores may play the role of community supermarkets like Japanese convenience stores, and fresh products will gradually increase.

At the 2024 China Convenience Store Conference held recently, many business leaders mentioned that R&D and fresh food management are the top priority of enterprise development when discussing how to accelerate the development of new quality productivity of convenience stores.

Established in 2001, Chukui Convenience Store has accelerated the development of instant boiled and instant steamed food since 2010, increased the proportion of nutritious breakfast, and made efforts to develop towards fresh food. Although it has been involved before, its scale is not large. With the further enrichment of the commodity structure, it has fully realized the comprehensive operation of fresh food commodities, customized commodities, freshly ground coffee and other commodities to meet customer needs. "Our goal is to provide five meals a day, with different meals and complete coffee and wine," said Ou Zaifu, general manager of Chufa Group.

According to Ou Zaifu, a coffee brand, Jiupa Coffee, has been meticulously created. It uses high-quality coffee beans, milk and coffee machines, which cost a lot. Recently, Yuchi is promoting its gardenia latte, which has won consumers' favor because of its unique taste. "Despite the fierce competition in the coffee market, we are still working hard and believe that a cup of high-quality coffee will eventually win the recognition of consumers," Ou Zaifu said.

In the convenience store fresh food industry, Family Store has always been the industry leader. According to Tong Guowei, the assistant president of Shanghai Fumanjia, the whole family launched the fifth generation store in July 2023 to enhance the three values of products, emotions and services. "For example, increase self-service facilities to facilitate consumers, cook now, and increase urban fireworks. Last year, the whole family proposed the concept of five meals a day. In addition to three meals in the morning, noon and evening, there are more flexible afternoon tea and night snacks."

Song Yingchun, the founder of Today Convenience Store, also said that the enterprise has made great efforts in the localization and timeliness of commodities, including the extension of the shelf life of fresh food commodities and the application of hot pressing technology for fresh food. Today also plans to launch a new slogan, "Hot Chinese Taste", which highlights local characteristics and temperament from products to culture to convenience store scenes.

In Pei Liang's view, the continuous growth of fresh food in convenience stores is first due to the strong demand of consumers for such goods. To a certain extent, the fresh food production and supply capacity of convenience stores at this stage lags behind the growth of demand side, which is reflected in two aspects: first, the socialized and specialized supply of fresh food is insufficient; The second is that enterprises have insufficient investment in fresh food development.

"Local enterprises represented by Tang Jiu and Jianfu are investing heavily in the capacity building of fresh food, and have achieved good returns on investment. At the convenience store conference last year, Le Doujia proposed that the development of fresh food should conform to the characteristics of local consumption, and shared the successful case of enterprises introducing Nanchang mixed flour." Pei Liang said that such personalized, diversified In addition to the construction of enterprise production system, the constantly changing fresh food supply capacity cannot be separated from the empowerment and blessing of socialized professional institutions. According to the survey of China Association for Food and Beverage Association, the mainstream fresh food sold in convenience stores is not only Guandong cooking, rice and steamed buns, but also noodles, baked goods, fried goods, and ready made drinks. More and more food production enterprises are laying out fresh food in convenience stores and leading the rising track. (Reporter Yan Mi)