Recently, Henan Ramen got caught off guard!

Frequently reported by various media, Henan Ramen became popular in Shanghai! "Ramen in Henan is everywhere in Shanghai", "momentum overwhelms Lanzhou ramen", and "nearly 2,000 stores in scale" have become the key information reported.

ONE

Henan people don’t know Henan Ramen

Regarding the popularity of Henan ramen, many Henan people are "stunned", saying that as Henanese, they only know Henan braised noodles, and they don't know that Henan also has ramen. There are some interesting "regional" battles below some short videos: Shouldn't the people in Henan say it should be Lanzhou Ramen? Lanzhou people say that Lanzhou only has beef noodles. This can be regarded as a kind of charm of Chinese regional cuisine, each with its own merits, and its own growth.

In fact, Henan Ramen here is really not a kind of "popular" regional specialties. It does not have the popularity of Henan Braised Noodles, nor does it have the strong taste label of Henan Hu spicy soup. Compared with braised noodles and spicy soup, Henan ramen is hard to find in local regular stores. It appears as a "partner" for barbecues and snacks in night markets and street stalls, and its local popularity is not high.

Different from Lanzhou beef noodles in clear soup, Henan ramen noodles are based on thick soup, using beef and large intestines as the ingredients. The beef is mostly chunky and thick, which looks quite appetizing. On Dianping.com, netizens also spoke highly of Henan ramen: cost-effective, delicious, punched in several times, and the soup base is delicious. These are common words in the comments.

As a food category that is not popular in the local area, Henan ramen is popular. It is not the regional characteristics, but the food itself.

The popularity of Henan ramen is not in line with the development trend of catering?

On the surface, what kind of existence is Henan Ramen?

·The "regional" snacks with low local awareness

·So far, it is still mainly based on the mode of mom-and-pop shops, there is no fashionable dining scene, and the service is quite satisfactory

·There is no brand image output, let alone professional management

·There is no common marketing routine behind the popularity...

Judging from the above dimensions, the popularity of Henan Ramen is really surprising. In the eyes of some catering people, the popularity of Henan Ramen runs counter to the current trend of re-experience and re-branding of catering, and does not even conform to the current business logic of building successful restaurants. Is that true? Obviously not. Behind every successful catering model, there are business logics worth learning and learning.

TWO

Large-scale output without standardized processes

Almost all Henan ramen restaurants in Shanghai come from Xiangcheng County, Henan Province, with the largest number of restaurants in Fuzhuang Village, Shilipu Town. Half of the people in Fuzhuang Village operate ramen restaurants in Shanghai. After Henan ramen became popular, a Douyin blogger went to Fuzhuang Village for an interview and met an old lady who said that she had two suites in Shanghai. When the blogger was surprised and asked "Buy a house in Shanghai?", the straight old lady said: "Where can I not buy a house?" By opening a noodle restaurant, many villagers in Fuzhuang Village bought houses in Shanghai.

The Henan Ramen restaurant in Shanghai is actually more like a "family" industry. Just like when Yang Guofu Mala Tang made his first pot of gold, he brought his relatives to do it by joining. This "old with new" approach is very common in the catering industry. The "Shaxian snacks" all over the country are also. Compared with Chongqing small noodles, Shanghai fried noodles, and even Henan braised noodles, Shaxian snacks are not branded, and their doors are very simple and lack branding labels. It's a simple "Shaxian snack". But the difference with the branding operation is that the Shaxian snacks all over the country have similar menus with very similar tastes, and even the color of the seasoned chili is very small. Although this category has not achieved brand operation, it has already had "standardized" output that many brands have not yet achieved.

Tracing back to the source, these stores can be said to be "the same door as the teacher." They have no brand awareness, but most of them will not be innovative; they are good at summing up the market operation experience and wisdom of the entire category, and then fight separately, but tacitly do not break the current comfort.

Zhu Jincheng from Fuzhuang Village has opened five Henan noodle restaurants in Shanghai, and he is also the chairman of Henan Xiangcheng Chamber of Commerce. The establishment of the Chamber of Commerce is actually a way for Henan ramen restaurants to pursue standardized management.

Therefore, in the eyes of outsiders, Henan Ramen and Shaxian snacks with categories and no brands are like a pan of sand; in fact, there is a "conventional" operation logic behind them. These logics are like inconspicuous water, condensing scattered sand together.

Of course, if one day someone wants to break this "category, no brand" pattern, and a "back wave" strikes, the sand masses using water as a coagulant may also be vulnerable.

THREE

Many stores are already "20 years old"

When many people envy the owner of the ramen restaurant in Fuzhuang Village for owning multiple suites in Shanghai, they ignore a very important prerequisite factor-they are not getting rich overnight, on the contrary, some of them have worked hard in Shanghai for more than 20 years.

In Dianping, it is not uncommon for netizens to express their "feelings" to "Henan Ramen". Meals that can make netizens "from snack to big" still miss the meal, there must be a unique memory point in the taste, with the perseverance of the ingenuity of the diners. In the comments of netizens, many people mentioned the unstoppable soup of Henan Ramen. The thick soup of Henan ramen is mostly made from beef bones or chicken bones. The flavor is delicious and rich, which is in line with the taste of Shanghainese. People in Fuzhuang village persisted for more than 20 years.

Henan Ramen stores are also a representative of "one trick, eat all over the sky". Even if they don't have distinctive regional characteristics, they have built up barriers to competition with their excellent taste and high cost-effectiveness. They are in Shanghai, a city where gourmets gather. Take root.

At the same time, people themselves have a high tolerance for food. The famous small noodle shop in Chongqing, Dong Xiaomian who has been on CCTV, the fat girl noodle shop known for queuing up, the flower market pea noodles that wrote "the top 5 in front of Chongqing small front" on the door... all are Some flies are in the pavilion. People maintain a high degree of attention to the novel and tall dining styles, and they also have a unique feeling for the small restaurants on the street with thick smoke. Moreover, it is undeniable that in terms of experience, environment, and even hygiene, people tend to be more tolerant of mom-and-pop stores and more picky about brand stores.

Therefore, almost every catering category has an unbeatable fly restaurant.

FOUR

Unchanging logic

Product comes first, then output

Digging deep into the development history of Henan Ramen in Shanghai, it is not difficult to find that Henan Ramen has not deviated from the development trend of the catering industry, but has always adhered to the essence of the development of catering-products, first products, and then export.

In recent years, Internet celebrities in the catering industry have frequently appeared. They have fashionable brand images, professional management teams, and branded operation models. These catering brands seem to cater to the general trend of catering development. For example, Diaoye sirloin, celebrities personally test, and Internet celebrity visits; 5 million mysterious meals, light luxury rituals...The Diaoye sirloin was really popular; another example is called a duck, Internet people As a representative brand of catering, it has been full of "Internet taste" from the beginning of its name, and the well-intentioned "Meals delivered by beautiful men and luxury cars" incident has been talked about today. But whether it was Diaoye's sirloin or a duck, they all quickly fell into silence after the limelight. Fundamentally, they ignore the essence of catering-products.

The explosion of Henan Ramen has nothing to do with the region, but with the product.

Products will always be the touchstone for opening the market and the rock for stabilizing the market. A large number of cases have proved that blindly strengthening external frameworks such as store image, operation model and marketing strategy, but weakening the proportion of products in catering operations, is the behavior of throwing watermelons and picking sesame seeds.

The reason why today's catering industry is calling for scene upgrades and experience optimization is because it is becoming more and more difficult to upgrade at the product level, not because the importance of the product has been weakened. In any era, any category, product is the core of catering operations.