Change in traditional coffee stores

Not long ago, Qbake, a century-old German brand, quietly withdrew after entering Shanghai for two years. Once upon a time, it was full of ambitions for the Chinese market. Not only the original Fang, but also many baking brands such as Shentley and Xilai Commune have closed down one after another recently, including slow product renewal, rapid expansion, low profitability and so on. Many of the surviving companies are also in a state of loss.

In this case, the average profit of Shanghai baking companies was negative last year, and the industry showed negative growth for the first time. Among them, there is a prominent contradiction between the economic downturn, the decline in consumer purchasing power and the rise in store rent and labor costs. With the influx of more and more foreign chain brands into China, the competition in the baking industry is becoming increasingly fierce, and the profit margin of the industry continues to decline.

"it can be said that I have encountered challenges that I have never had before," Cai Binrong, founder of the bakery chain Yizhiduo, told reporters not long ago. "the cost of renting is rising too fast, while the growth rate of store flow is slowing." In this case, what Cai Bingrong can do is to increase the bargaining chips as much as possible through the brand effect of Yizhiduo and sign a longer lease as much as possible. However, for some shops in prime locations, this approach is not very effective.

Since last year, Cai Binghong, who vaguely felt the bottleneck of the traditional model, began to observe the e-commerce of pastry, trying to cater to the "online" spending habits of young people and ease the rent worries of opening new stores. The rise of cake e-commerce further stimulated his determination to open e-commerce channels.

In the first half of this year, Cai Bingrong plans to open Yizhiduo's flagship store on Tmall's platform, sell biscuit food, and test the waters of the group-buying platform to develop mobile APP. He found that in order to maintain rapid growth, the company must solve the last kilometer of distribution through new channels. Although e-commerce is a defensive strategy for Yizhido, "this must be the direction of the future. If we don't do it, we will eventually be eliminated."

Cai Bingrong understands that this transformation is not achieved overnight, because e-commerce and traditional retail need a completely different mode of operation, and it is by no means as simple as building a website. Just like SUNING needs an online promotion team that is completely different from the offline store, Yizhiduo also needs to build an e-commerce team, and this team must have long-term patience.

More importantly, opening online channels means more and more expensive logistics costs. After all, the nearest distribution of the store will eventually be completed by people, and the store needs not only more manpower, but also all kinds of vehicles and equipment to keep up. In addition to distribution between stores and end consumers, more cars will need to be shipped back and forth between central kitchens and stores-because individual kitchens may not be able to process too many cakes once orders rise. In contrast, in this fiercely competitive market, Cai Bingrong is already very sensitive to the rise in every penny of cost.

In addition, the quality of cakes after distribution is also one of his concerns. After nearly 10 years of hard work, Yizhiduo has gradually formed a high-end position in the white-collar circle. It is understandable that once the last kilometer of e-commerce affects the shape of Yizhiduo cake, it is likely to affect the brand that the company has finally established.

Despite the difficulties, change in this traditional industry is on the horizon. One question that Ji Xiaoyang and Wang Tao are often asked is whether it will have an impact on these start-ups if 85 °C or Starbucks opens its own e-commerce channel. Wang Tao said frankly that the impact is inevitable, even the coffee response strategy is still "service." Ji Xiaoyang made a defensive strategy at the beginning of his business: "the concept of 100 afternoon tea downstairs is to avoid possible shocks in the future. after all, the frequency of cake consumption is not high, and people may not think of buying online for three or four months. Afternoon tea can be eaten every day and every week, and the unit price is not high. This is our unique position. "