Consumption upgrades force brand upgrades.

When the brand's growth is not as good as expected, and when it is hindered to become stronger and bigger, many restaurant companies will think of brand upgrading at the first time. The ultimate goal of brand upgrade is to improve the restaurant's ability to attract customers, but the best way to improve the ability of attracting customers may not be brand upgrading.

It is true that many brands have achieved good results through brand leadership, but sometimes, compared to brand upgrades, what more restaurant companies need to do is management upgrades.

ONE

Brand upgrade:

Accumulate thinly, vigorously

From the 1.0 version to the 2.0 era, what we usually call the brand upgrade is the overall promotion and innovation of the brand by the restaurant company, which can include store decoration, IP image, VI system, and even the repositioning of the restaurant company and so on. The brand upgrade requires a long period of planning and preparation, and then it can be achieved overnight and fully blossomed.

There are generally three major directions for catering brand upgrades.

1. Relocate (expand) purchase (exhibition) consumer groups

Established in 2015, Tomacado Flower Kitchen is known as a catering complex that is a must-have for the party. It is a compound catering model that integrates catering, floral art, retail and life aesthetics courses. At the beginning of its establishment, Flower Kitchen was positioned to combine catering with florists to create a new consumption model of "catering + florist", mainly to provide "pleasure-style" consumption for urban beauties.

In January 2021, Huachu's first lifestyle store was launched in Shenzhen Wanxiang Tiandi. This is another brand upgrade of Huachu. In the multi-functional space of more than 1,000 square meters, the store has assembled catering, theater, reading, flower shop, life good retail and other districts, leading a new round of check-in craze.

First to seize the eye, then to nourish the heart, the repositioning of categories and models makes Huachu seem like a new life. By expanding the scope of "catering +" and adding more revenue segments, Huachu once again broadened the consumer group. Nowadays, Huachu's label is not only "a place for literary and artistic urban women to punch cards", but also labels such as "sacred place for marriage proposal" and "dating paradise".

2. Visual innovation

Regardless of the size of the restaurant business, almost every brand will make innovations large and small based on development, but the "mute" innovation has little meaning for drainage. Only after the innovation is "visualized" can consumers be allowed to "suddenly" "The freshness of" and was attracted.

The three-year iteration of Shu Daxia has played an immersive atmosphere of martial arts. In terms of the IP image, "Xiabao" has changed from a knight wearing a hat to a traditional hero image familiar to the younger generation. It can be Nezha or Monkey King. By mapping the chivalrous IP to the classic animation image, the hero of Shu has not only gained Personalized brand IP, but also found a mature IP iteration mechanism. In the store, the Shu Daxia is almost an iteration of a new store. Each store is newly designed, incorporating a strong atmosphere of martial arts and unique ancient garden style. From IP to store, consumers can perceive Shu Daxia's innovation and personality through a strong vision.

Brand upgrading is to focus on making innovations that everyone can see.

3. Foreseeable potential

Experienced brands will use brand upgrades as content portals to increase brand awareness through a series of activities. The brand upgrade of Frog Xiaoxia in 2020 is to take the opportunity of the opening of the new store. During the same period, it has been widely spoken in the media and social media, not only to push the upgraded Frog Xiaoxia to the audience, but also to create momentum for the success of the new store opening.

The short-term purpose of brand upgrade is to improve the store's ability to attract traffic; the far-reaching purpose is to demonstrate the brand's ability in innovation, marketing and other aspects through the brand upgrade, so as to show the brand potential of "the future can be expected".

TWO

Management upgrade:

The long flow of water, perseverance

Brand upgrades often involve multi-dimensional innovations, focusing on accumulation and development. Therefore, brand upgrades not only require more costs, but also have higher requirements for the brand's abilities in many aspects. However, management upgrades are different. Management upgrades may occur in a certain operating sector at any time. It is a long-term flow that requires the brand to persevere.

The management upgrade of catering companies will generally start from the following major directions.

1. From the introduction of numbers to the use of numbers

The trend of digital upgrading has been blowing in the catering industry for several years, but the level of digitization in the catering industry is not high.

Traditional diners are generally "lazy". Many catering companies are "passively" accepting digital tools. They see that other people have introduced a cash register system. If they don't introduce them, they may affect their business. After the introduction, they often use whatever they use themselves. In fact, in today's continuous iteration of the SaaS field, there are still many things that SaaS tools can help restaurants do.

For example, the Meituan cashiers, Keruyun, and Zhitong, etc., which are currently used in restaurants are relatively high. If the restaurant holds these tools and only uses basic functions such as ordering and cashiers, it is a waste of resources. They can also help restaurants in material inventory management, chain store management, big data analysis, precision marketing, etc., and ultimately achieve the goal of reducing costs and improving efficiency.

2. From enclosure to precipitation

Encouragement can make a brand, or it can "kill" a brand. Whether the brand's management capability (group) ability (team) can match the expansion speed is a key factor in determining the brand's direction.

Fortunately for a small cage, it used to be a smash hit, with an IP and something to watch, but it eventually quickly dropped from 100 to 0. On July 22, 2017, a small cage was fortunate to cause food poisoning to 71 people due to food safety issues. This incident became the starting point for the decline of a small cage. But the root cause, whether it is a food safety incident or the inability to recover after the incident, has exposed a small fortunate management problem.

Scale is almost the only way for every brand to develop. However, management upgrades, including talents and management systems, must always be accompanied by scale to support the "controllable" development of the brand. Fortunately, a small cage has also sounded the alarm for catering people. While doing the full visual "brand upgrade", we cannot ignore the management upgrade that reflects the "internal strength".

3. From service to human efficiency

Although Haidilao succeeded in getting out of the circle with its services, more cases have proved that blindly paying attention to service is no longer applicable in the current catering industry. Labor costs are rising. How to find a balance between service and human efficiency is what most catering companies should do.

Chen Ning, the founder of Le Kaiser, mentioned in his New Year letter to "Le Kaiser people" in 2020: The lean working hours reform promoted by the hourly wage system has changed from salary based on daily schedule to hourly schedule. Timeliness increased by 30%.

With the hourly pay system, optimized schedules, and intelligent services, more and more restaurants have begun to take various measures to break through the bottleneck of human efficiency, and achieve the goal of reducing costs and improving efficiency based on people.

4. From experience to ping effect

In addition to service and human efficiency, restaurants also need to find a balance between experience and efficiency.

Located in the bustling snack street or shopping mall, Michelle Ice City, most of them are small stores. The layout of the store is compact, and the space utilization is mostly improved in the form of decks and bar counters. However, in a township under Shenqiu County, Henan, there is a large store occupying three floors. Regardless of whether it is a small compact store or a large open store, they have made good net profits.

In the hot pot industry, on one side, stores in shopping malls maximize their seating arrangements to increase revenue; on the other side, there is a form called "Manor Hot Pot", which escapes the urban area and creates a table and a table in a corner of the Xiao District. An extraordinary experience of scenery.

The balance between experience and floor efficiency also tests the restaurant's management ability. How to pursue a better experience with the right performance is a question that restaurant management always needs to think about.

Every brand upgrade will inevitably go through a long "static" preparatory period, waiting for the magnificent bloom. Not all brands will experience brand upgrades, but almost all brands are constantly undergoing management upgrades, and management upgrades are "dynamic" and "timely".

When a restaurant encounters a problem, more often it needs to find a method from the management first, and then find the problem from the brand. At the same time, in restaurant operations, a sound management upgrade rhythm helps restaurant companies carry out effective, timely and accurate brand upgrades.