"The pancake stall has a monthly income of 30,000", "The uncle has been selling biscuits for 8 years, and has 7 suites in Zhejiang", "Shandong Pancake Village, every family buys luxury cars and builds villas."

For catering, there has always been a variety of "myths" in the market, as if it were a model of no capital management and profitable business.

But is it really so easy to make money in catering?

This article takes the pancake stall as an example. From business hours, customer orders, customer flow, competing products, costs, profit models and other aspects of field research and empirical analysis, catering entrepreneurship does not make as much money as imagined!

In addition, this field analysis method is also applicable to all catering formats, and provides a set of methods for catering practitioners to introspect restaurant positioning, product selection, location selection, operation and strategic planning, and hope to inspire you.

As a representative of the small format in catering retail, the pancake stall is small, but it has all the five internal organs. After analyzing this small format through empirical research, we found that: the effective operating hours of the pancake stall are short, the production is not standardized, the customer unit price is low, and the price is increased. Space is limited. Running a small pancake stall is actually not as easy to make money as we imagined. A mature pancake stall (more than 1 year in operation) is properly managed and the profit is basically between 5,000 and 8,000 yuan.

If you add "regular store rental and decoration costs" and "labor costs that need to be hired", then the entire financial model cannot support chain expansion, so it is difficult to create a chain brand.

ONE

Is the pancake stand really easy to earn 30,000 a month?

Before the new year was over, Lao Liu had returned to Shanghai from his hometown in Linyi, and continued to set up his pancake stall in the old place next to Lu's mouth.

This year is Lao Liu’s 14th year in Shanghai. Like other people in the village, he set up a pancake stall in Shanghai with the skill of spreading pancakes left behind by his ancestors. It takes 14 years to sell one pancake. It takes 2 minutes for others to spread one pancake. Liu can do it in just 40 seconds.

Even so, Lao Liu's income in one month is only one hundred and fifty-six. Monthly income of 30,000? Never thought about it.

"A pie costs five or six yuan on average and sells 100 a day. Even if the weekends are included, it will sell for less than 20,000 yuan in a month."

Located 50 meters away from Lao Liu’s pancake stall, Lao Liu’s wife started setting up a stall on the same street six months ago. They sell almost exactly the same things as Lao Liu. Even the batter and sauces used are all made by Lao Liu. Separated from the barrel.

Nowadays, Liu's wife's pancake stall has been in business for half a year, but the cakes sold every day are less than half of Lao Liu's. According to Lao Liu's words, it can basically only save money.

TWO

Short business hours

The breakfast attribute is strong, and the effective business hours are concentrated at 7:30-9:30 in the morning

Lao Liu has been making cakes for 14 years. He was in Puxi for the first four years, and he went to Pudong in the next 10 years. It stands to reason that it should be a leader in the "pancake stall" industry, but even in the catering industry that is known for making good money, Lao Liu's pancake stall still belongs to the category that is both lucky and less profitable.

Why?

The essence of the retail industry can be summarized by a core formula: traffic × conversion rate × customer unit price;

The flow rate can be decomposed into: business hours × flow rate per unit time.

Pancake stalls are operated by individuals and have great flexibility. The location is generally close to a place with a lot of people. Lao Liu’s pancake stall is less than 50 meters away from Pudian Road Metro Station, backed by the old residential area of Weifang 9 Village, next to Baosteel Building, Lujiazui Financial Plaza and other office areas. There is a lot of traffic in the morning and evening on weekdays.

But the catering industry is a time-selling industry. We can eat fruit, rice and snacks in the morning, lunch and dinner, but we don’t eat pancakes in the morning, lunch and evening.

Although pancake originated in Shandong, it is a common staple food in Shandong, northern Jiangsu and other regions, but in the process of moving from the birthplace to the whole country, not only the eating method has changed, but the main eating scene has also changed from a staple food to breakfast.

On the one hand, this is because of the large differences in eating habits across the country, especially in the north and south. On the other hand, it is also related to the economic strength and business awareness of practitioners in the Shandong pancake industry. They often choose pancake stalls with low thresholds and low start-up capital to start businesses. It’s impossible to make pancakes like Huang Taiji from Pancake Village.

The picture below is our field survey of 5 pancake stalls in Pudong New Area. The results also confirm that most of the pancake stalls we see are open between 6 am and 10 am, and the peak hours are basically 7 Between 9 o'clock.

The pancake stall at Pudong Avenue subway station is the only one that operates all day long among the five pancake stalls we surveyed. However, as can be seen from the figure below, the peak sales volume of the day is still concentrated between 7:30 and 9:30. In the meantime, there were 105 sales throughout the day and more than 60 during the peak period, accounting for almost 60% of the sales throughout the day.

THREE

Low degree of standardization

Ready-to-eat, the meal efficiency is low, the actual number of cakes per hour does not exceed 80.

The process of making pancakes is simple. Put the blended batter on the hot pancakes (an ancient tool for making pasta) and fry them into round pancakes, and then add the fillings.

Shandong pancakes have been loved by many people for their crispy taste, but it also puts forward requirements for the timeliness of their production and eating. Only on-site production and timely consumption can ensure their crispy taste. This feature makes Shandong pancakes taste obvious on the one hand. It is better than the standardized breakfast produced by the factory, but relatively, it also makes the meal efficiency far lower than the batch-made or factory-made categories such as steamed buns and steamed buns.

Lao Liu has been making pancakes for 14 years, from scooping noodles to spreading the pancakes to placing the ingredients in one go. However, it takes 40 seconds to make a pancake at the fastest. Excluding the time spent in collecting money, the actual maximum number of pancakes can be produced in one hour. There will be no more than 80, and it takes more than 1 minute for the old daughter-in-law Liu, who has just been making a pancake for half a year, to make a pancake.

Analysis: The effective operation time is short, coupled with the individual production on site, even if the pancake stalls of Lao Liu are constantly in business between 7:30 and 9:30 in the morning peak period, it is difficult to exceed 200 in a day.

As for the "baby steamed buns" next door to Lao Liu, all the ingredients are processed in the factory, and they can be heated uniformly on the spot. Three to four hundred steamed buns can be easily sold in the morning.

FOUR

Lots of competition

Consumers have a large choice and low traffic conversion rate.

We just talked about the problem of traffic, but if there is traffic, it’s not enough. It depends on the traffic conversion rate.

According to calculations, between 7:30 and 10:00 on weekdays, the flow of people passing by Lao Liu's pancake stall is about 7,000, while the number of pancakes sold by Lao Liu is 120, and the traffic conversion rate is about 1.7%, which is It is said that for every 100 people passing by, only 1.7 people buy.

The quantity and quality of competing products directly affect the conversion rate of traffic.

In the street where Lao Liu's pancake stall is located, there are 12 stalls selling breakfast like him every morning, including pancakes, mullet cakes, sauce-flavored biscuits, bobby buns, and egg-filled biscuits. In addition, there are two convenience stores that also sell breakfast.

"Which family is young can buy it at any store." "Buy whatever you want to eat."

For Lao Liu, his pancake stall is not only facing competition from other pancake stalls, but also faced with steamed buns, steamed buns, fried dough sticks, soy milk, congee, noodles, bread...

FIVE

Customer unit price is low and price increase is difficult

Strong geographic attributes but weak brand attributes

The conversion rate of traffic is also related to the brand, which helps people make consumer decisions.

As long as you pay attention, you will find that although they are scattered in different parts of the country, the pancake stalls everywhere are almost the same, a pancake cart and a poster with "Shandong miscellaneous grain pancake" or "Authentic Shandong miscellaneous grain pancake" printed on it. ", even the store of the pancake stand.

No brand, no introduction, no publicity, no prior consultation, but tacitly consistent.

Shandong pancakes all over the country are emphasizing regional attributes, but they rarely have brand awareness. There are several reasons for this: the pancake itself is relatively single in category, and the product differentiation is small. The main consumption scene is breakfast, which can meet the convenient and fast demand. It is difficult to make a brand; most of the employees come from Linyi and other villages and towns, and their economic strength and brand awareness are relatively weak; the pancake stalls are mostly roadside stalls, with no fixed stores and poor stability, making it difficult to establish a stable and long-term brand image.

Even after selling pancakes in one place for 10 years, Lao Liu did not establish his own brand. There are many competing products and consumers do not have the reason to consume (no brand). In addition, compared with other competing products, the price of the pancake itself is not low (1 standard pancake usually sells for 5 yuan, 1 serving of mullet The average price is 2~3 yuan, and a meat bun is 2~3 yuan). The unit price of Lao Liu’s pancake stall has been stable at six or seven yuan for a long time, and he dare not raise the price easily.

SIX

Cost analysis: Is the pancake stall really operating without capital?

Some people say that roadside stalls such as pancake stalls and night snack stalls are operating without capital, freeing themselves from the three mountains of rent, labor, and fixed investment in the traditional catering industry.

What are the facts?

As urban governance becomes more and more stringent, there are basically no roadside stalls in downtown Shanghai. Pancake stalls like Lao Liu rely on street food and beverage outlets, and rent out the front doors of these shops during breakfast. The stall, closing the stall before the dinner time, shall not affect the normal business of the restaurant.

What Lao Liu rented was the front door of a chicken pot restaurant. He paid the owner 100 yuan a day for rent, which would cost 3,000 yuan a month, plus two to three hundred yuan for the electricity bill. There is no clear standard in the industry.

In addition to the fixed cost, there is also the cost of the pancake itself.

Lao Liu's pancake stall has a limited variety of products. The average customer unit price is about 6 yuan, the cost of a single pancake is about 2.3 yuan, and the gross profit margin is more than 60%.

Analysis: It can be seen that the pancake stall is not without its own business. The rent, water and electricity, and raw materials are all costs. If the monthly fixed cost is 3,000 yuan, and the cost of a single pancake is 2.3 yuan, Lao Liu will get at least a monthly fee. Only sell 810 pancakes (27 pcs/day) to maintain breakeven.

SEVEN

Profit analysis: poor business OR rich business?

The real profitability of the pancake stand

So how much money can a pancake stand make?

Let’s take Lao Liu’s pancake stall as an example. On weekdays, Lao Liu can sell 100 pancakes a day. Weekends are half of the weekdays, that is, 50 pancakes per day. If you calculate it, you can basically sell 2700 pancakes per customer per customer. 6 yuan, Lao Liu's monthly income is 16,000 yuan. Excluding various costs, his monthly profit is 6,500 yuan.

The model of Lao Liu's pancake stall is as follows:

According to the situation of several pancake stalls we researched in Pudong, Lao Liu's pancake stall basically represents the general situation of a mature pancake stall (more than 1 year in operation). Properly managed, the profit of a pancake stall can basically reach 5000~8000. In time, although it is higher than the average service staff salary level (according to the salary level of Pudong urban area, the average salary of a waiter in a restaurant is about 4000 per month), but there is still a big gap from the "monthly income of 30,000".

EIGHT

Why is it difficult for pancakes to create a chain brand?

When talking about pancakes, you can't avoid Huang Taiji. When talking about Huang Taiji, people often attribute its failure to "can only do marketing, not products", or "too good at marketing and too little understanding of products".

But after this investigation, we may be wrong to blame Huang Taiji?

The people of Zixi in Jiangxi (the hometown of Chinese bread) brought Chinese pastries such as pork floss, crackers and waterless cakes to all parts of the country, and gave birth to the brand like Master Bao; the people of Shandong Yimeng also brought pancakes to the north and south of the country, with a range of influences. It's not as good as it is, but it has not been able to become a national chain brand.

Why?

I think there are three reasons:

1 Effective business hours are short

The pancake category itself has a strong breakfast attribute, which greatly limits the time period for its sale.

Before we listed the main categories of breakfast, we can see that there are two types of breakfast that really do chain brands:

The first category is the categories that can be used for dinner, such as KFC, McDonald's, Yonghe King, etc., including Lao Shengchang soup dumplings (soup dumplings are often used as staple food in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai), they can sell all day, breaking the limit of breakfast time ；

The other is a special breakfast brand, such as Bobby Buns, and there are ingredients in the stomach (why it is established and will be expanded at the next point).

Someone may want to ask, isn't Taoyuan Military Village also selling sesame seed cakes? Why can be a chain brand.

If Taoyuan Military Village only sells biscuits, fried dough sticks and soy milk, would you eat it at lunch and night? Compared with breakfast, the Taoyuan Military Village’s naming shows that its positioning is snacks rather than breakfast.

"Dependents’ villages" usually refer to the houses built by the Taiwanese government from 1949 to the 1960s in order to arrange for military personnel and their dependents who were relocated to Taiwan from various provinces in mainland China. The most concentrated place of military’s villages is Taoyuan County. Because military and civilians from all over the country are housed in the military villages, they also gather the most diverse cuisines. This is also the foundation of the most famous Taiwanese night market.

If you have seen the Taoyuan Military Dependent Village in Sanlitun at 12 o'clock in the morning, you will understand that this is by no means a simple breakfast shop.

2 Low degree of standardization

Why is it that the same category is single, and Bobby Mantou, which specializes in selling steamed buns and steamed buns, can reach more than 2,000 stores and earn more than 2 billion in revenue?

Because of the high degree of standardization!

All products of Bobby Mantou are uniformly produced by the central factory. The store only needs to be heated in batches. It is also 1 minute. Lao Liu can only make 1 pancake, but the Bobby Mantou next to him can sell several buns.

If the business hours are short, then you need to make full use of it to break through the time limit. Bobby Mantou currently has 2,100 stores with a turnover of 2 billion. On average, each store can sell 80,000 yuan a month, which is five times that of Lao Liu's pancake stall.

3 lower unit price

Breakfast is fast and convenient, and it is a high-frequency consumption. It is price-sensitive and it is difficult to increase the unit price per customer.

Huang Taiji sells 1 pancake to 20 pieces, which is basically 6 times that of ordinary pancakes. Huang Taiji's truth is that it is expensive to eat a pancake for 30 yuan, but it is not expensive to eat a meal (a meal) for 30 yuan.

But who often eats pancakes for dinner? Still spend 30 yuan!

Breakfast is breakfast, and pancakes are pancakes. Have a good dinner and a full meal, but what about breakfast? Consumers pay more attention to convenience, speed, cleanliness, nutrition, and low prices. Compared with other breakfast categories, the price of pancakes is no longer low, and the room for price increases is even more limited.

summary

The effective business hours are short, the production is not standardized, the customer unit price is low, and the price increase space is limited. Operating a small pancake stall is actually not as easy to make money as we thought.

If you add "regular store rental and decoration costs" and "labor costs that need to be hired", then the entire financial model cannot support chain expansion, so it is difficult to create a chain brand.

Some people say that life choices are more important than hard work, and the same is true for catering. Choosing the right direction and category will make the subsequent efforts meaningful.