China News Service, February 4 (China News reporter Zuo Yukun) At afternoon tea, at weekend parties, or when they are bored and hungry, young people may need to eat some pork floss, fried clams, fried mochi and egg yolk cakes. .
It’s unclear whether young people think so, but capital did think so and did so, thus creating a steaming new Chinese baking track with a scale of hundreds of billions.
However, the fragrant business does not seem to be as fragrant as imagined. For example, two so-called top brands that were once prosperous have reached the edge of the cliff.
Image source: Weibo@虎头bur Standard Chartered Cake Company Official Weibo
A "tiger-headed game" that starts but ends first and ends at the end
Probably starting in 2021, new Chinese-style baking began to receive capital attention, and entered the "Internet celebrity snack list" of young people with great fanfare. This year, the number of registered companies related to the domestic baking industry reached 6,395, and the investment amount in the baked food industry once reached 6.14 billion yuan, making it the most dazzling year on the track.
But the fall seems to come faster than the popularity. Hutou Bureau·Standard Chartered Cake Shop ("Hutou Bureau" for short) and Momo Dim Sum Bureau, once known as the "Twin Stars of New Chinese Baking", have recently received bad news.
Tianyancha APP shows that recently, a new bankruptcy review case was added to Shanghai Wanwu Youyang Catering Management Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of Hutou Bureau. The announcement shows that the applicant Sheng Moumou applied to the court for bankruptcy liquidation on the grounds that the company could not pay off its due debts and obviously lacked solvency, and the case has been filed.
It was a tiger-headed game, and indeed it stopped its glory in the Year of the Tiger. As early as March 2023, Hutou Bureau had been exposed to rumors that it was in arrears with employee wages and supply payments and was about to close down. Afterwards, although some relevant people responded to the media saying that "the news that Hutou Bureau is going to close down is definitely not true, and we are currently working hard to repair it," it has indeed embarked on a downward path since then with a large number of offline stores and online channels closed.
Mr. Du once worked as a baker at a Hutou restaurant in Shanghai, and he resigned in April 2023 amid this crisis. "The store's signature product is a tiger skin mochi roll, which is ordered by the most people. Now when I think back to those days, what impressed me the most is that I kept rolling the tiger skin rolls," Mr. Du said.
He told reporters from China News Service that most of the snacks in the store are pre-made semi-finished products, so the work is not difficult. You only need to carry out some processes of proofing, preparation and baking after thawing. This also makes Hutou Bureau particularly dependent on the supply chain. After the capital chain was cut off, a large amount of raw materials were cut off due to arrears with payment to suppliers. Many stores were once out of stock before the stores closed.
"Actually, I still don't really understand how the former owner failed." Mr. Du said bluntly, he only heard from people around him that the company was "burning money" too much, frantically expanding stores and investing heavily in projects. Now that Mr. Du has joined another popular baking brand, he deeply feels that “desserts are delicious, but most people don’t eat them every day.”
"I think food is a thing with culture and connotation. It does not mean that investment can only rely on capital. Nowadays, Internet celebrity bakeries are similar and there are too many substitutes. If blind hunger marketing is added, the brand will be even more It won’t last long,” Mr. Du said.
Zhu Danpeng, a senior researcher at the China Food Industry Research Institute, also said: "Hutou Bureau has not done a good job in the supply chain, products, and service systems in a down-to-earth manner. Instead, it is taking advantage of the industry and consumption. Dividends, so without the support of capital, the brand will be in crisis."
Image source: Weibo@MoMoDim Sum Bureau
The silently shrinking "Momo Dim Sum Bureau"
Dark clouds also enveloped another new Chinese bakery brand, Momo Dim Sum Bureau.
Tianyancha App shows that recently, the business status of Wuhan Yibiyicheng Catering Management Service Co., Ltd. has changed from survival to cancellation. The company was established in September 2021 and is wholly owned by Changsha Yibi Yicheng Catering Management Co., Ltd., the main company of Momo Dessert Bureau. At the same time, all 15 branches of the company in Wuhan have been cancelled.
What makes consumers feel more obvious is its successive defeats in major cities. The Momo Dim Sum Bureau mini program shows that its stores in Beijing, Hangzhou, Wuhan and other places have been closed, and the remaining stores are all located in Hunan. At that time, some media reported that Momo Dim Sum Bureau responded that "the brand's strategy this year (2023) is to focus on the Hunan base camp, so it actively withdraws from the external market."
Beijing citizen Xiao He still remembers the opening scene of the first Momo Dessert Shop in Beijing: "We queued for 5 hours just to buy coffee mochi. At that time, we were not allowed to queue directly. We had to get a number first. After getting the number, I came back and queued up again in another 2 hours, it was the first time I had seen this happen.”
Such "craziness" happened at the end of 2021, but soon at the end of 2023, there was no longer any Momo dim sum restaurant in Beijing.
Xiao Ren, who once worked at a Momo snack shop in Beijing, has a good impression of this brand. "It can be said to have the most stringent hygiene requirements among the food stores I have worked in. You have to wash your hands almost every hour. The company also conducts special food safety inspections every week. The control of raw materials and production is very strict, and the products are only sold on the same day. , the raw materials also have a Kaifeng scrapping mechanism.”
"We still joke among our employees. I don't know what the boss thinks. The delivery efficiency of signature products is very low." Xiao Ren explained that the best-selling products in the store are basically made fresh, and may be baked in a pot. There are only ten egg tarts, or only three or four kilograms of mochi per batch, which is not enough.
When business was at its best, Xiao Ren's store also considered purchasing an oven, but an oven would cost tens of thousands of yuan more. "The rent and labor costs in Beijing are both expensive. One or two million yuan may have been invested when opening the business. Even if the sales are 10,000 yuan a day, it is difficult to cover the rent of more than one million yuan a year. In the end, the business will be poor. At that time, the daily turnover was only about 800 to 1,000 yuan."
In 2021, when Beijing’s first Hutou Bureau opened, consumers purchased products. Photo provided by interviewee
Who else can seize the market?
"There is a strange theory in the baking industry. The cards are shuffled once every five years, and those that remain unchanged will be washed out." Bao Caisheng, the founder of the old new Chinese baking brand Master Bao, said this in an interview with the media, which is hailed as the industry leader. truth.
Mr. Du also bluntly told reporters: "As long as you are willing to spend money to buy good raw materials, hire experienced and reliable bakers, and preferably tell stories again, it is not difficult to reproduce popular models." On social platforms, many netizens expressed their disapproval of these brands. Disappearance expressed his opinion, which can be summed up in one sentence - they are not so delicious that they must be opened. If you add problems such as high prices, hungry marketing, and unstable quality control, you will not even consider repurchasing.
Of course, although it seems that capital has cooled down and consumers have become disenchanted, there is no need to be too pessimistic from a consumption perspective. The baking industry still has a good development trend and considerable room for growth. The "Research Report on the Current Situation and Trends of China's Baked Food Industry in 2023" shows that the market size of China's baked food industry will reach 285.3 billion yuan in 2022, and the market size is expected to reach 351.8 billion yuan in 2025.
“In the baking industry, it’s too easy to imitate. But the brands that we recognize as long-lasting actually have their own products with core competitiveness, such as Holiland’s semi-cooked cheese and Master Bao’s pork floss and scallops, which need to be seen when you tear them apart. After removing the packaging of the story, what is the product itself?" Mr. Du said.
Looking back over the past few years, the baking industry has been constantly breaking out into new top trends, and has been constantly "splashed with cold water". Experiencing the temptation of hot products and hot spots, and obtaining the password to transcend the cycle, may only be available to brands that can truly concentrate on making products. ability. (over)