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This article comes from the WeChat public account: Canguanju, author: Meng Yi, the header image comes from: Visual China

Wenheyou is a unique restaurant in the history of Chinese catering. However, it seems to be facing problems.

Guangzhou Wenheyou, which just opened for four years, may be preparing to close.

According to an announcement from the Guangzhou Planning and Natural Resources Bureau, the 24-hour pedestrian overpass, urban public corridor and facade at No. 75 Tianhe East Road, Tianhe District (Huifang, Tianhe District) are planned to be renovated, but Wenheyou, which was originally located here, is not included in the schematic diagram.

Picture｜Source: Internet

A reporter visited the store and found that all the shops on the second and third floors of Guangzhou Wenheyou have been closed. Only 5 of the original 26 shops are still operating normally, and the remaining 21 shops have closed down, with a closure rate of 80.77%. Some shops are waiting for their contracts to expire, saying that they can only "hold on".

You should know that on the opening day of Wenheyou in Guangzhou in July 2020, there were 3,000 tables lined up and the average waiting time was 4 hours.

The three super Wenheyou companies were once valued at over 10 billion yuan, but now the financing news stops in 2021. Except for Wenheyou in Changsha, the base camp, which still maintains a high popularity, Wenheyou in Shenzhen and Guangzhou are doing a quiet business, and Wenheyou's cross-regional expansion is "not smooth".

The cultural and commercial complex that once claimed to be the "Disney of China's catering industry" is now facing rumors of store closures, slow business, and merchants struggling. What happened to Wenheyou, the former "top internet celebrity"?

1. Invested 200 million yuan, but now business is slow

In 2018, the "Super Wenheyou" spanning 7 floors and covering an area of ​​5,000 square meters opened in Hisense Plaza, surrounded by Hermes and LV in Changsha. It restored the old streets of Changsha in the 1980s and condensed the street scenes of 30 years ago, making people feel as if they were in an old movie.

Wenheyou turned a super roadside stall into a landmark building and a tourist destination. On weekdays, there are 7,000 people queuing up, and on holidays, the number can reach 30,000. The average daily turnover rate is 12, which is three times that of Haidilao. The following year, it was further expanded to 20,000 square meters.

The emergence of Super Wenheyou is unprecedented. It is understood that in 2020, the cumulative exposure of Changsha Super Wenheyou store on "two Weibo and one Douyin" has exceeded 6 billion times, attracting national traffic and also attracting the attention of capital.

After the opening of Guangzhou Super Wenheyou, Wenheyou quickly received 500 million yuan in financing; half a year after the opening of Shenzhen Wenheyou, Wenheyou quickly received tens of billions of yuan in financing. After this round of financing, Wenheyou's valuation reached 10 billion yuan.

At that time, Wenheyou planned to open 20 super Wenheyou stores within five years, covering all first-tier cities, and Wenheyou stores in Nanjing, Kunming and other places were already in the planning and design stage. However, there has been no news of new stores or new financing since then.

Picture｜Source: Internet

Following the path of Changsha Super Wenheyou, Guangzhou Super Wenheyou also created a retro old town style of Guangzhou in the 1980s, selling Cantonese snacks and introducing many local time-honored brands, with an investment cost of up to 200 million yuan.

However, the good times did not last long. Like many Internet celebrity restaurants, the customer flow of Super Wen declined significantly in just three months after it landed in Guangzhou. After that, at the end of 2020, many local time-honored brands withdrew; in January 2022, Guangzhou Wenheyou upgraded and renovated the first floor into a seafood-themed "Huawen Port", with four or five seafood stalls occupying the central position, but the results were not satisfactory.

In July this year, the news that there was no Wenheyou logo in the renovation diagram released by the Guangzhou Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau caused an uproar in public opinion.

Many netizens with IP addresses in Guangdong said: "I went there once and don't want to go again";

Some netizens even said: "There is a scar in the middle of CBD. If you want to see old and dilapidated houses, go to Yuexiu or go to Shipai Village nearby."

Some netizens wondered: "Shipai Village, 500 meters away from Wenheyou in Guangzhou, is a real village in the city. That is the real difficult situation of the lower-class people. Why go to Wenheyou?"

Consumers who have tried it said: "The same snack costs 15 yuan on Beijing Road and 25 yuan here. Any one of the restaurants on Beijing Road tastes better than this one."

Picture｜Source: Internet

According to the reporter's visit, the shops on the second and third floors of Guangzhou Wenheyou have been closed, and the overall closure rate exceeds 80%. At 1 pm, only four shops on the first floor were open, and only one restaurant had two or three tables of customers dining; around 2 pm, no one was dining at Guangzhou Wenheyou.

The retro scenes that Wenheyou is proud of are regarded by the old Guangzhou people as old and dilapidated houses, urban villages, and Kowloon Walled City themed escape rooms. The snacks that Guangzhou Wenheyou has increased in price are considered expensive and unpalatable by the old Guangzhou people. It sounds like Guangzhou Wenheyou has no place in the hearts of consumers.

Even the most famous stall of Guangzhou Wenheyou, Fengtonghui, quietly moved away due to lack of business. The main reason for leaving was the decrease in customer flow, a significant drop in turnover, and a serious disproportion between effort and income.

The clerk's statement also confirmed the reality of the bleak business: "The situation was relatively good two years ago. Last year, some businesses moved away one after another. Now there are not many businesses left. Business is getting worse year by year."

Shenzhen Wenheyou also faced problems of declining popularity and store closures.

It was just as popular. In April 2021, Shenzhen Wenheyou opened and was equally popular. In less than fifteen minutes, the number of people queuing to get a number exceeded 10,000. The queues turned several corners and even attracted the attention of the traffic police department because of the traffic congestion.

Less than half a year after opening, Shenzhen Wenheyou changed its retro scene to a mix of fashionable technology cyberpunk style and retro scenes, and upgraded to Shenzhen Wenheyou Old Street Oyster Market. In January 2022, seafood markets, vegetable markets and other formats were introduced. In September 2023, Shenzhen Wenheyou announced the suspension of business, which did not cause widespread discussion until November.

In Shenzhen Wenheyou, the withdrawal of Cha Yan Yue Se brought about a cliff-like drop in traffic, and the revenue of many Internet celebrity stores plummeted. Many merchants also withdrew from their stores. After the withdrawal, Wenheyou became empty and the lights were not on. Netizens once suggested turning it into a haunted house.

Whether in Guangzhou or Shenzhen, Wenheyou’s popularity declined after a brief burst of popularity. They have all adjusted to seafood restaurants that suit the tastes of local people, but the results are still not satisfactory.

In February 2022, the news of Wenheyou's large-scale layoffs further fermented, which also affected the landing of Wenheyou in Nanjing, and it has not yet opened for business.

2. The “Disneyland of the catering industry” doesn’t work well in other places

Unlike other super Wenheyou restaurants in other places, which are doing very well, Wenheyou in Changsha is still doing very well. It is understood that during the May Day holiday this year, there were more than 2,000 tables and more than 1,000 tables in front of customers. When Changsha locals entertain friends from other places, Wenheyou is also their first choice. They usually take a number first, go out to visit some scenic spots, and then come back to eat.

Changsha Wenheyou has also added a track train. Some people go up and down the stairs, while others sit on the train and go up and down along the aerial track, giving the experience a full sense of enjoyment.

So, why is Wenheyou in Changsha still doing business, while Wenheyou in Guangzhou and Shenzhen is failing to adapt to the local environment and is even rumored to be bankrupt?

First, the popularity of Wenheyou in Changsha is due to its status as a "tourism business card", which will not work in other places.

Wenheyou is a landmark building in Changsha and is equivalent to one of Changsha’s tourist business cards.

Changsha's business district is extremely concentrated, all around the Wuyi Square Pedestrian Street. You may run into acquaintances 2-3 times a night while shopping. Changsha Hisense Plaza, where Wenheyou is located, is located at the end of the pedestrian street, taking on a large amount of traffic from the pedestrian street, which attracts tourists from all over the country to Changsha. This is a typical high-traffic, low-repurchase model.

In addition, Wenheyou was established in 2011. Before Super Wenheyou, Wenheyou had accumulated many years of experience in Changsha specialty dishes, such as crayfish, stinky tofu, fried skewers, etc.

When copied to other cities, such as Guangzhou, Wenheyou's appeal is greatly weakened. The so-called local snacks and seafood dishes cannot be compared with the local old shops. Moreover, the urbanization process subsidies in different cities, the rare retro scenes that are treasured in Changsha are real in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It can neither attract locals nor outsiders, and cannot find customers.

Many customers will queue up out of curiosity, but it is difficult for them to go a second time after queuing once.

Perhaps Wenheyou also knew that its dishes were hard to compare with those of the local time-honored brands, so it innovated in the entertainment field that it thought it was good at. For example, it later introduced new formats such as trendy toys and beauty products, built its own stinky tofu museum, and launched documentaries such as Street Chef and One Day in Guangzhou and the original immersive drama Dream. But none of them made much of a splash.

Second, no matter what the Disney of the catering industry says, Wenheyou is essentially doing the business of a sub-landlord.

Guangzhou Wenheyou is said to have invested 200 million yuan. In other words, if the investment is to be recovered in three years, the monthly turnover needs to reach 1 million to 2 million yuan to recover the investment. However, the customer flow dropped sharply in March after opening, and the subsequent major adjustments failed to change the downward trend. Now in the fourth year of operation, it is rumored to be closed again. I am afraid that Guangzhou Wenheyou will find it difficult to recover the investment.

Although Wenheyou's revenue sources include direct sales profits, merchant commissions, franchise fees of various sub-brands, supply chain profits, profits from cultural and creative peripherals, and profits from online shopping malls, the majority is still from catering. Wenheyou's catering business mainly includes two aspects: one is the dishes of the direct sales part, and the other is to find more authentic merchants to settle in.

Wenheyou once issued a recruitment notice saying that it wanted to recruit a BD for the catering industry, with an annual salary of up to one million yuan.

It is understood that Wenheyou has invited many local old merchants to move in, and the commission rate is between 10% and 30%, which means that Wenheyou is actually doing the business of a sub-landlord.

After the commission was deducted, the prices of local old merchants also increased, and their original advantage of high quality and low price was gone, and consumers would return to the alleys. Therefore, some merchants also withdrew.

Third, the unstable positioning.

Wenheyou CEO Feng Bin once said: "Wenheyou's biggest loss in Guangzhou is that while it wanted to focus on Guangzhou's local culture, it was reluctant to give up Hunan cuisine." In order to cater to local customers in Guangzhou, it failed to localize well and lost its own characteristics.

The landscape design is volatile. Wenheyou spends hundreds of millions of yuan on site selection and scene creation, and then starts over again after a lot of construction. For example, Shenzhen Wenheyou has changed from a retro style to a punk style.

The style fluctuates. It is understood that one of the projects where Wenheyou laid off 60% of its employees was the Nanjing Wenheyou project. Wenheyou initially planned to do Ming Dynasty culture, and research, operations, space design and other work were all carried out from there. Half a year later, the planning team was suddenly told not to do Ming Dynasty culture but Six Dynasties culture instead, and half a year's work was wasted.

The vacillation in various aspects not only caused huge waste of personnel and landscaping costs, but also left customers with a negative impression that "Guangzhou Wenheyou is just a guise of being a Cantonese restaurant to trick out-of-town tourists to take photos and check in." The root of these vacillations lies in whether Changsha should maintain its cultural confidence.

Why is Changsha Wenheyou so popular, but Wenheyou in other cities is not? Wen Bin, the founder of Wenheyou, may have found the answer. The founder of Wenheyou once said that the reason lies in the consumption culture. Many consumers go to Changsha to check in for the culture, and Wenheyou, which follows the local customs, cannot meet their needs. He also said that in the future development, he will express Wenheyou more confidently.

In the following actions, we rarely see Wenheyou expanding to other places. Instead, it is based in Hunan and tries more scenarios. For example, in September last year, Wenheyou moved from indoors to outdoors, trying the "landscape" camping style, and opened two non-Super Wenheyou hotels.

3. The shortcuts taken by the influencer model will be returned sooner or later

Internet celebrities are sometimes a "shortcut" that can achieve more explosive results in a shorter time than others.

But internet celebrities are sometimes a kind of "poison". They may be the product of a unique city, a unique business district, or a unique culture. They may not work well in other places. Moreover, because they have the halo of internet celebrities too early, it is easy to cover up real problems. By the time they discover the problem, their reputation has already collapsed and it is too late.

Compared with Yuelu Mountain, Xiangjiang River and other scenic spots in Changsha, Hunan, Hunan Satellite TV may be more famous nationwide.

It is precisely because of the existence of Hunan Satellite TV that Changsha can be called the entertainment capital and the star city. When the star-making culture of Changsha's entertainment industry is transferred to the catering industry, it has also brought many rapidly rising "national catering star brands" to the catering industry.

The first wave of traffic for many catering brands came from recommendations on Hunan TV’s program “Day Day Up”, including Wenheyou and Chuiyan Stir-fried Yellow Beef.

The show made the restaurant, which specializes in snacks and nostalgic black-and-white televisions, famous, and it even opened a store in Beijing Chaoyang Joy City.

He Yiting, the first professional manager of Cha Yan Yue Se, also worked in the "Super Girls" program crew of Hunan Satellite TV.

Wang Yuxiao, the founder of Momo Dim Sum Bureau, worked as a director and production coordinator for large-scale talent shows at Hunan Satellite TV for 6 years.

In other words, many of Hunan's internet-famous restaurant brands either have the resources of Hunan Satellite TV or have been reported by Hunan Satellite TV, thus reaping the benefits of its nationwide publicity and entering the fast lane.

However, among these brands, some are still quite powerful today, some have disappeared, and some stores have shrunk back to their base in Hunan, such as Wenheyou, Momo Dim Sum Bureau, and Black Classic.

Momo Dim Sum Bureau also started in Changsha. At its peak, Momo Dim Sum Bureau had over 60 stores across the country. Today, there are 39 stores still open, all in Hunan Province, 34 of which are in Changsha. Black Classic also brought direct stores to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Wuhan, but finally returned to its base in Changsha. Now, the Black Classic seen in other places are all franchise stores.

These internet-famous restaurant brands in Hunan, due to their geographical advantages, naturally hold the key to popularity and can easily become popular across the country and obtain financing. However, because they became popular too quickly, they scaled up too quickly, left Hunan too early, and came into contact with capital too early, before their models were fully proven. As a result, once problems arose, they collapsed like dominoes.

Moreover, in today's era where cost-effectiveness is king, the model that relies on high traffic and curiosity is no longer feasible, so the survival space of catering brands that adhere to this model will be further compressed.

The origin of the Internet celebrity economy is the fast pace of mobile Internet, which can quickly make a brand or a category popular and attract everyone's attention in a short period of time. But it is also a scumbag, constantly changing the "female lead". How many of those popular Internet celebrity catering brands do you still remember?

Therefore, even if there are "popular catering brands" now, many people in the catering industry will not care too much about them, because everyone knows that most of the Internet celebrity catering brands can only be popular for a while.

The catering business is about long-term repurchase, not relying on publicity.

The essence of catering is the product, the good quality of ingredients, the taste for the customers, and the authenticity of the goods. On this basis, better landscaping, better atmosphere, and better service will also become plus points.

The reason why the top internet celebrity Super Wenheyou can still maintain the basic base of Changsha Wenheyou is that before that, it has been making core dishes such as crayfish, stinky tofu, and fried food for many years. Moreover, because the founder himself is rooted in Changsha, his simple and sincere emotions run through the reproduction of Changsha’s old neighborhoods in the 1980s and 1990s that he created, which touched many people.

Becoming popular instantly, being a flash in the pan or even having to queue up, or becoming an instant internet celebrity should not be the pursuit of catering brands. A century-old restaurant that has been providing high-quality dishes for decades is the foundation for the survival of a catering business.

I was chatting with a boss some time ago, and he said: "My wealth today is hidden in the hardships I have gone through." To apply this sentence, the shortcuts taken by the internet celebrity model are hiding today's mines, which will explode sooner or later.

This article comes from the WeChat public account: Canguanju, author: Meng Yi

This content is the author's independent opinion and does not represent the position of Huxiu. Reprinting is prohibited without permission. For authorization matters, please contact [email protected]