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Wen/Wang Lin
Source: Tech Planet (ID: tech618)
Tech Planet exclusively learned that Tongue Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., which was founded by Lu Zhengyao just four months ago, moved into Donghuang Building located at Wangjing South Subway Exit, Chaoyang District, Beijing in May 2021.Lu Zhengyao rents a whole floor, about 2000 square meters, as an office, adjacent to Wework, Bilibili, Sony and other enterprises.
In the past, Lu Zhengyao bought a two-story flat near Lenovo Bridge in Beijing as the office of Ruixing Coffee and Shenzhou.After losing the control of Ruixing Coffee, his new company can only rent an office. The rent here is 8.5 yuan per square meter/day, which is not cheap.
The office looks very grand, and the tip of the tongue technology at the front desk is particularly dazzling against the light.This whole floor holds about 200 stations. Most of the stations were empty on the day Tech visited the planet.
Lu Zhengyao's first noodle shop is about to open.He greatly changed his previous style of crazy expansion and no loss. Internally, he required that every store must be profitable before continuing to open.Instead of large-scale capitalization, he began to save costs and asked the branch office to rent enough office space to save thousands of yuan per month.
Lu Zhengyao, 52, regards this venture as his last battle in the mall.He expects to justify himself through this war.But catering is more difficult than coffee. To win, Lu Zhengyao needs to pay more.
The new store will be opened soon, and 14 cities will go hand in hand to select the site
On May 12, the day Tech Planet exclusively reported "Lu Zhengyao's Re entrepreneurship", Tongue Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. sent the brand manual to the staff manual.
This is Lu Zhengyao's new company. The company was founded in January 2021. Its Beijing office is located on the 16th floor of Donghuang Building. Its major shareholder, Zhang Ying, is an old subordinate of Lu Zhengyao and was once a shareholder of Shenzhou Youche.However, Zhang Ying did not join Ruixing Coffee, but returned to Lu Zhengyao after leaving the Shenzhou Department for a period of time.
Tech Planet's exclusive brand introduction of Lu Zhengyao's new company shows that the noodle shop is called "Funny Noodles". In the early stage, it will give priority to 14 first tier or new first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Jinan, Tianjin, Wuhan, Xi'an, etc.
Search Meituan for "Quxiaomian". The address is Building 1, Yard 16, Guangshun South Street, namely Donghuang Building at the entrance of Wangjing South Metro. In addition, Meituan did not give a more specific address.At the same time, the address of "Xiaomian Diary" happens to be the basement of Donghuang Building.
Tech Planet has previously reported that the nearest dining place of Donghuang Mansion is on the basement of the New World Shopping Center, which is close to the Beijing headquarters of Tongjian Technology.
On June 1, Tech Planet visited here and found that the first store of "Quxiaomian" in Beijing has now entered the finishing stage of decoration.The on-site construction staff said that the decoration could be completed in about 10 days.At the same time, there is a recruitment notice on the fence of the decoration site that "Chongqing Small Noodle New Shop of Food City is open, and kitchen assistants need to be recruited".
According to the brand manual, Tongue Technology will take Beijing as its headquarters and establish four food research and development centers in Beijing, Xiamen, Guangzhou and Chengdu.The decoration style of "Quxiaomian" is mainly Japanese simple style, which is quite similar to the style of Ruixing Coffee.From the perspective of SKU, "Fun Small Noodles" will cover eight series, including small noodle family, instant fried noodles, instant marinated noodles, instant marinated products, special snacks, pot chicken, dessert drinks, and special cold dishes. Each series has different SKUs.
According to the brand manual, "Fun Noodles" should tell good stories (fireworks on the street, barking of shop assistants), have good taste (innovative small menu, order and make now, bittern goods do not stay overnight), and create a good experience.It is not difficult to see that Lu Zhengyao hopes to reshape the small-scale industry.
A tip of the tongue employee said that at present, other cities are also promoting site selection.For example, the store address in Shenyang is located in Wanda Plaza, Heping District.The above employees also said that stores in Xi'an, Hangzhou and other new tier cities will open in August.
Tech Planet has learned that in terms of the core expansion business, Tongue Technology divides the country into two regions, with Li Jun, a soldier, and Zhou Bin, who has followed Lu Zhengyao for many years, as the leaders.Qian Zhiya paid more attention to the premium cars in China.
Lu Zhengyao's Last Battle
Capital leverage is one of the best weapons that Lu Zhengyao used in the past.But now, Lu Zhengyao does not intend to continue this business style.
Tech Planet exclusively learned that within Tongue Technology, Lu Zhengyao conveyed the attitude that Tongue Technology is his last battle before retirement. He hopes to regard it as a long-term career and is not prepared to capitalize it.
In the traditional sense, Lu Zhengyao is not short of money.According to the 2020 Forbes Global Billionaires List released by Forbes on April 6, 2020, Lu Zhengyao, as the chairman of Ruixing Coffee and Shenzhou Car Rental, was worth 2.3 billion US dollars (13.1 billion yuan) at that time.
Although, with the disintegration of the Shenzhou system, Lu Zhengyao's personal wealth has shrunk significantly.However, Lu Zhengyao found the "white knight" - Asia PE MBK Partners for car rental in China.Amber Kay is one of the largest private equity funds in Asia, managing more than $23 billion in capital.This acquisition has earned Lu Zhengyao more cash.
He could have retired, but now Lu Zhengyao urgently needs to correct his name.A number of employees of the Shenzhou Department said to Tech Planet that although Ruixing had succeeded, the negative side was very big. If tip of the tongue technology could rise again, it would be a legend.
Note: The decoration effect picture of the front door of "Funny Small Faces" under Tongue Tip Technology of Lu Zhengyao New Company.
"The core leadership of tongue tip technology, such as Li Jun and Zhou Bin, are both about 50 years old. This is an awkward age, and it is difficult to enter the Internet giants, nor is it willing to settle down as a startup company. For them, it is also the last battle".A tip of the tongue technology employee sighed.
Lu Zhengyao also showed his sincerity and changed his style.Before listing, Ruixing made an option promise to employees, but it was only a verbal promise and did not sign any contract.Li Jun and Zhou Bin, who are at the level of Vice President of Ruixing, have not received any additional income except their salaries.
According to Tech Planet, Tongue Technology directly signed the option promise into the contract for employees at manager level and above."If it is successful, it will be millions at least," said an employee.
Under the call of "the last battle" and "practical option award", not only employees of Lucky Coffee, but also some people who had left China for car rental and premium cars for a long time and had not joined Lucky Coffee also joined Tip of Tongue Technology.
In order to prevent poaching and brain drain, Ruixing Coffee has given many employees substantial salary increases, many of which have exceeded 50%, and some key positions have doubled or even higher salaries.
Lu Zhengyao hopes to recruit more talents to boost his "final battle".But the commercial war is much harder than expected.
A war harder than coffee
The success of Ruixing Coffee benefits from its strong capital, mature and standardized supply chain and addiction dependence of users.But catering is a more challenging track: numerous players, high mortality, difficult standardization, and low gross profit.The loss of personal reputation and the characteristics of the industry mean that catering is more difficult than coffee, even though Lu Zhengyao has no strong opponent like Starbucks on this track.
In the brand introduction of Tongue Tip Technology, it was written that Tongue Tip Technology is a multi category and multi brand catering group company driven by advanced technology and committed to the informatization, standardization and innovation of the whole catering industry."Small noodles are just the beginning. In the future, there will be many sub categories such as braised pork rice", said a tip of tongue technology employee.
Previously, Tech Planet reported that noodle shops are just starting, and in the future, they will absorb other snack brands to become a food city, and finally an online app.
A tip of the tongue technology employee told Tech Planet that in the early days, small noodles still need to be made by chefs, and in the future, most of them will be cooking bags.The food package has accelerated the standardization process of catering, but the taste will inevitably be discounted.
Ruixing mostly purchases products from existing mature suppliers, but Tongtou Technology intends to change this practice.
More than one tongue tip technology employee told Tech Planet that tongue tip technology should build its own supply chain factory.Lu Zhengyao hopes to control the whole process of the tip of the tongue through front-end apps, mid tier stores and back-end factories.
In fact, most catering enterprises have the idea of building supply chain factories, which can make more profits.The supply chain factory started with an investment of billion yuan. At the same time, the overall requirements and decoration costs of Tongjian Technology for the store area exceed Ruixing Coffee, which means higher requirements for cash flow.
As for the cost of opening a store, Financial Stories once made a simple calculation: taking Ruixing Coffee franchise store as an example, when the store area is more than 30 square meters, the decoration cost is 110000-130000 yuan, and the production equipment is 190000 yuan. If we make a simple analogy, for a 100 square meter (small) store, the decoration cost doubles to 260000 yuan, the production equipment is maintained at 190000 yuan, and the shop rent is 500000 yuan,Then the cost of opening a noodle store is 950000 yuan, and the cost of 500 stores is 475 million yuan. This is just hardware costs, not including the cost of various materials purchase, middle and back office research and development, and labor costs.
With high capital requirements and no desire for rapid capitalization, Lu Zhengyao will no longer expand by leaps and bounds, but will choose refined promotion.
Tech Planet has learned that some business expansion personnel who have changed jobs from Ruixing Coffee to Tongjian Technology have not received an increase in the base salary (the expanded salary is composed of base salary+performance), but the rewards for opening stores have increased.
Tongue Tip Technology needs to rent office space across the country, and the company's requirements are sufficient. For example, if there are 10 people in the branch, rent a space just suitable for 10 people.According to Ruixing's style in the past, they can rent a larger venue.Some internal employees complain that the company should save thousands of yuan now?
When Ruixing was founded, it opened more than 500 stores nationwide in just seven months. Until it was listed, it has not yet achieved large-scale single store profits.However, tip of the tongue technology does not pay too much attention to the speed of opening stores. "The internal requirement is that every store should be profitable before opening new stores.".The disadvantage of slow store opening is that brand effect is not easy to establish in the short term, but the advantage is also obvious, that is, cash flow is not so tight.
Perhaps, Lu Zhengyao, who has been in shopping malls for decades, has long understood that it is not easy for Tongjian Technology to obtain more capital support, so he has a new strategy of refined operation.
However, the company will eventually return to the positive cycle of reducing costs and improving efficiency, and more importantly, follow the basic rules of the business world.For Lu Zhengyao, tip of the tongue technology is his last chance to prove himself.
However, will the capital market be willing to trust him again?
