How an ordinary bread became a "net celebrity" with high prices
Is "expanded" bread delicious?
Seven or eight yuan for an egg tart, ten yuan for a croissant... Going to the bakery to buy two breads and a cup of coffee is almost the same as having a regular meal.
Nowadays, bread, which uses food crops as raw materials, fermented and re-baked, is a bit "expanded"?
The reporter recently found through street visits that the price of bread at the popular commercial area's Internet celebrity bakery is about twice or more than that of the ordinary bakery.
According to industry insiders, the most core factor determining the price of bread is rent, and the bakery is no longer just a place for selling bread, it has gradually become a social place for young people to chase a fashionable atmosphere.
croissant?
19 yuan!
At Taikoo Li Sanlitun, at noon on weekends, the sun is scorching, and at a time when it is not for afternoon tea, there is a crowd of people in front of an Internet celebrity bakery.
If you don’t confirm the positioning on the navigation software again and again, just watch from the outside, it is really impossible to connect this store surrounded by trendy brands with the traditional bakery-the name of the store is in English, and the overall color is mainly black, white and gray. Decoration of any bread image.
It is more like an internet celebrity restaurant or cafe than a bakery.
Walked into this bakery and found that it really sells coffee.
It sells not only coffee, but also fruit juice, yogurt, and light salads.
Of course, the main thing is bread.
A 100g regular croissant sells for 19 yuan, a 100g raspberry almond croissant for 28 yuan, and a 200g breakfast toast sells for 37 yuan.
A croissant and a 400g cup of coffee latte (33 yuan) cost about 60 yuan.
Even so, this Internet celebrity bakery is still full of consumers.
"Which one should I buy?" "Let's look at the online reviews...this! This!" Everyone obviously came here prepared according to the picture.
In Sanlitun, there is more than one such bakery. In fact, Beijing’s Internet celebrity bakery is clustered together in the bustling business district.
A hundred meters away, there is another one.
This is slightly better, with a Chinese name, it can be seen as a bakery at a glance.
A regular croissant that is about the size of a croissant is priced at 18 yuan.
But once you add almonds, it becomes 28 yuan each.
There is another one near an underground supermarket in Sanlitun. The price of bread is also in line with the surrounding trend. Half of Hokkaido toast sells for 28 yuan.
There are also many Internet celebrity bakeries in Nan Sanlitun.
Relatively speaking, the passenger flow here is slightly less than that of Taikoo Li, and the price of bread is relatively lower.
A bakery's signature original toast, half a serving (280 grams) sells for 20 yuan.
Original toast (570 grams) from another Internet celebrity bakery sells for 39 yuan.
There is also a bakery that specializes in croissants. An original croissant sells for 13 yuan.
To extend the distance to an area farther away from the commercial area, there is a chain bakery outside the South Fifth Ring Road.
Here a whole-wheat toast (200g) is only 11.9 yuan; an 80g croissant is only 3 yuan; an egg tart is 6.5 yuan.
In the further Yizhuang Development Zone, there is a large bread manufacturer. The factory shop here sells freshly baked bread every day.
The supermarket sells toast bread (400 grams) for about 9 yuan, but here it only sells for about 7 yuan.
What is the most important?
Lot! Lot! Lot!
Outside the South Fifth Ring Road, in a shopping mall, the bakery run by Lao Wang is six years old.
Lao Wang's bakery is on the third floor of the mall, which is the most visited floor of the mall because of the concentration of children's play areas, dining areas and movie theaters.
"There are not many people in this mall. The cinema closed last year, and the big supermarket closed before May 1st this year. There are even fewer people." Lao Wang said that since its opening, the mall's popularity has not been very high. Focus on the third floor.
Lao Wang's bakery is a typical small shop, mainly operated by himself, and he also hired a man.
Taking into account the passenger flow and surrounding consumption levels, the pricing is set very low.
The egg tarts are 4 yuan each, and you can get another discount if you buy 4 of them.
This price is not only cheaper than the general bakery, but also cheaper than the fast food restaurant downstairs.
"Everyone knows the egg tarts. I guess friends who know how to make them all know the cost. The crusts and tarts are very simple." Lao Wang said he couldn't increase the price. The mall has low traffic. Small shops mainly make repeat customers and have to take care of them. The mood of regular customers.
He knows that the prices of many bakeries are higher than him, but he also understands "what is the location of others, there is no way to compare".
As the lines of a certain TV show say-what is the most important?
Location (lot)!
Location!
Location!
Lao Wang seldom bake bread now, because bread mainly relies on mobile customers, which is very unstable.
He is mainly a repeat customer-nearby residents and businesses order cakes.
"This is relatively stable." He also wants to go to shopping malls with high passenger flow, but is afraid that the cost will increase, "I am afraid that the rent can not be afforded."
What is the pricing?
rent! rent! rent!
"The pricing of your bakery mainly depends on the overall cost of your store. In fact, to put it bluntly, it is to look at the rent and the location of the store." The salesman of an Internet celebrity bread franchisee clearly stated that the location determines the price of bread. The first element.
Xiao Li's franchisee is endorsed by movie stars, and chain stores cover the whole country.
Judging from the franchise materials he provided, its decoration style is very similar to that of most Internet celebrity bakeries. It also sells European-style bread, prepared bread, Internet celebrity cakes, coffee drinks, etc.
Xiao Li said that the company provides a one-stop service, from the initial site selection, to decoration, recruitment, training, raw materials, etc., to the Internet celebrity shop, short video marketing, "we are all in charge."
Discussing the price of bread, Xiao Li revealed that although the prices of raw materials fluctuate, the company purchases and distributes them uniformly, and there has been little fluctuation in the last two years.
The decoration cost of the store is mainly affected by the area. As for whether it is renovated into an online celebrity store or a traditional bakery, "the cost of decoration is almost the same, but the style is different."
What really affects the price of bread is the rent, that is, the location and location of the bakery.
"Rents in popular commercial districts must be expensive. When you factor in the cost, the price must be higher."
At the 2021 China Bakery and Sugar Products Industry Association Industry Summit Forum that ended at the end of March, Zhang Jiukui, chairman of the association, said with emotion that the epidemic has had a huge impact on the bakery industry.
However, other data shows that the baking industry also has a thriving side.
According to the "China Bakery Store Market Report 2020" released by Meituan Dianping, the chain of the bakery industry is accelerating. The larger the brand chain, the faster the development speed, and the bakery stores are also moving towards a mixed business format.
In the gender distribution of bakery shop consumers, female consumers account for 76.9%, which is the mainstream of bakery shop consumers.
In terms of age distribution, more than 60% of bakery shop consumers are between 25 and 35 years old, and young people who have just entered the workplace are typical consumers of bakery shops.
The proportion of high-end bakery stores with per capita consumption of western desserts is also increasing. From 2016 to 2019, the proportion of stores with per capita consumption of more than 60 yuan has been increasing.
According to the "Annual White Paper on China's Baking Industry", citing data from Meituan, from February to April 2020, orders for bread and cake products that consume more than 60 yuan accounted for 56%, and orders for Western-style desserts that consumed more than 60 yuan accounted for 28.3%. , Chinese-style pastry products only accounted for 5.9% of orders with a consumption of 60 yuan or more.
The bread has changed?
We changed
"It is nothing more than shop rent, raw materials, and labor that determine the price of bread. There is indeed some growth in raw materials and labor, but it is within a controllable range, and there are actually many substitutes for raw materials."
Baking expert Tang Baoma often bake by herself. Her bread and cakes are well-known in the circle of friends.
She is now limited to making it at home and sharing it with friends and family.
"I also thought about opening a store. I inspected it and was frightened by the rent." She felt that the cost of renting a store would be unbearable for a full-time mother.
For those Internet celebrity bakeries that stand in popular business districts, their shop rental costs are definitely not something ordinary people can handle.
Tangbao’s mom thinks that the barriers to baking technology itself are not high. “It’s very simple to say, it’s raw materials, fermentation, and baking. You can learn it by yourself, and there are tutorials on the Internet. And you don’t need to add messy flavors, so you don’t need to add sugar. ,health."
The real difficulty, turning a small bakery into an online celebrity shop, is marketing.
"Almost every bakery now has a few tables, a few chairs, and some drinks and desserts. I went to an online celebrity shop in Wangfujing a while ago. The decoration is beautiful, the bread is exquisite, and the drinks are abundant. But if it's not for meeting My friend, I will definitely not go alone.” In the eyes of Tangbao’s mother, ordinary bread is a staple food, but now more and more new products that have been designed and packaged appear, bread has long been a staple food. Up.
"It can't be said that the bread has expanded, but our own consumption outlook has changed." She feels that coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores and other consumer places are no longer as "simple" as before, "like a kind of scene consumption," What you want is an atmosphere. In a popular location, surrounded by fashion brands, there is a comfortable environment, listening to music, eating, drinking, chatting, what you want is the feeling."
Our reporter Sun Yi