news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

Produced by Radar Finance Hongtu | Edited by Mo Enmeng | Deep Sea

The well-known Zhengxin Chicken Steak has once again been embroiled in a food safety scandal.

On July 31, the "Zhengxin Chicken Steak was exposed for not changing the oil for more than 20 days" incident, which sparked heated discussions online, quickly became the focus of public attention. According to Red Star News, a netizen exposed the aforementioned incident on social media. After seeing the aforementioned situation, the netizen, who originally planned to work during the summer vacation, decided to resign on the night of his employment.

It is reported that the staff of the store involved responded that the photo was taken before cleaning. The netizen posted the misleading photo and has now reported it to the police. Later, the Market Supervision Bureau of Zhanggong District, Ganzhou City intervened in the matter and sent staff to conduct a special inspection of the oil used in the store involved. This incident is not the first time that Zhengxin Chicken Steak has been involved in a food safety controversy.

As a well-known player in the domestic catering and snack brands, Zhengxin Chicken Steak has been around for more than 20 years. Chen Chuanwu, the founder of the Zhengxin Chicken Steak brand, started out by producing and acting as an agent for frozen foods, and officially established Zhengxin casual snack shops in 2000. In the years that followed, Chen Chuanwu gradually opened Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores across the country and even overseas markets.

However, while repeatedly involved in food safety scandals, Zhengxin Chicken Steak is also facing other challenges. As early as March 2021, the number of Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores had exceeded 25,000, but now the number of Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores is only 11,011 (data source: Zhaimen Canyan).

Some analysts pointed out that there are many reasons why Zhengxin Chicken Chops are "ignored" by young people, such as the unpopularity of fried foods due to the improvement of healthy eating concepts, the price has no obvious advantage compared with competitors, and the food quality and safety needs to be further improved.

The aforementioned person also pointed out that the franchise model helped a lot in the expansion of Zhengxin Chicken Steak, but due to the large number and dispersion of franchisees, it was more difficult for the headquarters to manage and supervise the stores, which also led to uneven store quality. Some franchisees may have sacrificed product quality and service level in order to reduce costs, thus damaging the brand image.

Zhengxin Chicken Fillet is caught in food safety controversy again after being exposed for not changing oil for more than 20 days

Recently, a report about food safety and hygiene issues in a Zheng Xin Chicken Steak store has attracted widespread attention on social media.

According to Red Star News, a netizen publicly posted on social media that when he was working at a Zhengxin Chicken Steak Shop in Zhanggong District, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, he found that the store had health and safety hazards such as flies contaminating food and frying oil being reused for more than 20 days without changing the oil.

According to the netizen, he started working at the store on July 27. According to the arrangement, he was assigned to be responsible for coating and frying chicken fillets. However, because he could not stand the poor sanitary environment in the back kitchen, the netizen, who originally planned to work as a summer intern, decided to resign on the night he started working.

According to the netizen, the person in charge of the store in question contacted her on July 29, hoping that she would delete the relevant post. However, the netizen's post has not been deleted and has attracted many netizens' attention.

In response to this incident, a staff member of the Zhengxin Chicken Steak store came out to explain that the content shown in the relevant video was the situation before the store was cleaned, and it was not the case after the cleaning. The store hygiene is the responsibility of all employees, and the netizen works in the store, so he also has the obligation to clean.

However, the staff member pointed out that the netizen not only failed to fulfill his duties, but also took and posted misleading photos of the kitchen before cleaning. In response to these one-sided accusations, the staff member said that the police had been notified.

In response to the statement that "the oil used to fry chicken steaks is reused", the staff member said, "In the photos online, we can see that the kitchen prepares new oil. If old oil is used, why do we need to prepare new oil?" As for how the waste oil is handled, the clerk responded, "The waste oil in the store will be handled by a professional company, but it is true that not every day someone comes to recycle the old oil."

Later, a staff member of the Catering Service Supervision and Management Section of the Zhanggong District Market Supervision and Management Bureau of Ganzhou City said that they did receive a notification of the incident on the morning of July 30, and arranged for staff to conduct a special inspection of the oil used in the store involved in the afternoon, and would test the oil. If the situation is true, it will be dealt with later.

Radar Finance found that Zhengxin Chicken Steak had been involved in food safety controversy many times before. As early as August 2022, netizens exposed the behavior of an employee in a Zhengxin Chicken Steak store cutting his toenails by stepping on the operating table.

Later, the owner of the store involved responded that he had learned about the situation internally and that the clerk was indeed seen cutting toenails in the surveillance video. Since he was a private franchise, the employee he hired might not pay enough attention to food safety, and he has now been fired. If anyone consumed in the store that day and felt there was a problem, they could get a refund based on the consumption record of that day, and this will be strictly managed in the future.

In the same month, the market supervision department of Zhuzhou, Hunan Province, conducted a special food safety inspection on Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores in its jurisdiction, which revealed multiple hidden dangers in one of the stores. Problems found in this inspection included employees wearing jewelry, mixing personal belongings with food ingredients, inadequate inspection of incoming goods, and poor sanitation in the store. These problems directly pointed to the loose brand management and the lack of store implementation standards.

In October of the same year, the Beijing Fangshan District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued a notice, which once again sounded the alarm for Zhengxin Chicken Steak. It is understood that the failure of the parties involved in processing and making food with tools and utensils dedicated to the purpose violated Article 18, Item (2) of the "Beijing Regulations on the Management of Small-Scale Food Production and Operation". In accordance with relevant regulations, the Beijing Fangshan District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued a notice of rectification to the company, requiring it to make corrections immediately.

Last November, Zhengxin Chicken Steak was once again at the center of controversy due to food safety issues. At that time, the Zhangjiajie Yongding District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau reported that it had taken prompt action after receiving a report from netizens and confirmed that rats had indeed appeared in the operation room of a Zhengxin Chicken Steak franchise store in the Guanliping Street area of ​​Yongding District. Subsequently, the bureau's law enforcement officers immediately sealed up the store in accordance with the law and filed a case to investigate its illegal and irregular behavior.

If you search for the keyword "Zhengxin Chicken Steak Food" on the Tianyancha platform, you can also see cases where many Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores have been administratively punished for reasons such as "violating food safety regulations", "food sellers failing to establish and implement a purchase inspection and acceptance system, and failing to establish a product purchase ledger", etc.

As of press time, there have been as many as 500 complaints about Zhengxin Food on the Black Cat complaint platform. Among these complaints filed by consumers, foreign objects such as rubber bands and iron wires were found in the products, as well as food safety issues such as food spoilage, food odor, and stomach upset. In addition, many consumers reported that the service attitude of Zhengxin Chicken Steak was not good.

The founder started the frozen food business, and Zhengxin Chicken Steak had more than 25,000 stores at its peak.

As a well-known domestic snack brand, the story of Zhengxin Chicken Steak can be traced back to more than 20 years ago. Back in 1995, riding on the spring breeze of reform and opening up, Chen Chuanwu, the founder of Zhengxin Chicken Steak, resolutely plunged into the tide of entrepreneurship. However, at that time, Chen Chuanwu's company had not yet set foot in the chicken steak business, but mainly relied on the production and agency of frozen food business for a living, and the business was spread all over Wenzhou area.

With his extraordinary business acumen and unremitting efforts, Chen Chuanwu reached a cooperation with the Fortune 500 company Unilever in 1997, and won the domestic agency rights of Wall's ice cream under the former, and obtained 1,000 freezers and refrigerated trucks invested by Unilever. Under the leadership of Chen Chuanwu, his company once became the leading player in Wenzhou's frozen food agency industry.

Time passed quickly and it was the millennium. With his keen market insight, Chen Chuanwu foresaw the huge potential of the snack market. So in 2000, Chen Chuanwu opened the first Zhengxin snack shop in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, which officially kicked off the development of the Zhengxin brand.

At first, the snack bar mainly sold oden, sausages, fried chicken and other products. Due to its rich product structure and appropriate business location, the small shop quickly attracted many diners in the local snack industry. As the snack bar business became popular, Chen Chuanwu began to consider replicating this model to more places. After that, more and more Zhengxin snack bars began to open their doors to welcome customers across the country.

After accumulating initial successful experience, Zhengxin Snack Shop did not stop at the status quo. Chen Chuanwu knew that in order to stand out in the fiercely competitive market, he must continue to innovate and break through. Therefore, he led the team to explore the path of store expansion, and by continuously optimizing the business model and product portfolio, he laid a solid foundation for the long-term development of the brand.

In 2012, an important turning point in the development of Zhengxin appeared. At that time, Chen Chuanwu made a bold and wise decision: to adjust the brand strategy, cut 90% of non-core categories, focus on the popular product chicken steak, supplemented by hot-selling barbecue products such as barbecue and grilled squid, and officially changed the brand name to "Zhengxin Chicken Steak". This move seemed risky at the time, but it actually accurately grasped the market demand, making Zhengxin Chicken Steak stand out among many snack brands and achieving a qualitative leap in sales.

With the continuous improvement of brand influence, Zhengxin Chicken Steak has ushered in a golden period of brand development. In 2013, the company officially opened the franchise model, which greatly accelerated the brand's layout across the country. In 2015, Zhengxin Chicken Steak signed the well-known actor Huang Bo as its brand spokesperson. In 2016, Zhengxin "spent money" to appear in the popular variety show "Go Fighting" in which Huang Bo participated in the recording.

With the help of the franchise model and a series of marketing promotions, the popularity of Zhengxin Chicken Steak has been greatly improved, and the number of its stores has also increased rapidly. By July 2017, Zhengxin Chicken Steak successfully crossed the threshold of 10,000 stores, achieving another milestone in the history of brand development.

However, for Cheng Shin, the achievement of 10,000 stores is not the end of the brand development. Chen Chuanwu, who is becoming more and more "ambitious", has begun to charge towards the more ambitious goal of 100,000 stores. In 2019, Cheng Shin launched the "Forest Plan", which is a brand-new plan specifically designed for Cheng Shin's goal of 100,000 stores.

Soon, the number of Cheng Shin stores hit a new high. On November 22, 2019, to celebrate the number of its chain stores exceeding 20,000, Cheng Shin Group held a grand store celebration event in the Jinggangshan Scenic Area.

According to data disclosed by Zhengxin, as of March 2021, the number of Zhengxin Chicken Chops stores has exceeded 25,000, which is three times that of KFC and six times that of McDonald's, and one-third of them are directly operated. At this time, it has been less than ten years since Zhengxin Chicken Chops opened up for franchising.

At the 2021 China Catering Industry Summit, Chen Chuanwu said: "The reason why Zhengxin has become the king of store expansion is that all links such as factories, logistics, and decoration have been opened up. The expansion of the front end drives the development of the back end, and the development of the back end supports the front end."

The number of stores is lower than the level in 2018. Is Zheng Xin Chicken Steak being abandoned by young people?

Just as the outside world was looking forward to when Zhengxin Chicken Steak could achieve its goal of 100,000 stores, Zhengxin, which seemed to have a very rapid momentum in store expansion, gradually slowed down its pace and even its store scale began to decline.

According to the data from Zhaimen Canyan, the overall opening speed of Zhengxin Chicken Steak showed a downward trend year by year from 2020 to 2022. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, the number of Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores opened was 3,785, 1,735 and 962 respectively.

As of December 5 last year, the number of Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores nationwide had dropped to 11,619. Compared with the previous 25,000 stores, the number of Zhengxin stores has decreased by more than 10,000 in less than three years, which means that the proportion of its closed stores exceeds half of the total number of stores. For a time, the topic of "Zhengxin Chicken Steak is being abandoned by young people" became a hot search and sparked heated discussions.

Later, Zhengxin Chicken Steak also posted on its social media account, solemnly declaring that some accounts on Toutiao and Weibo used the name of Shanghai Zhengxin Food Group Co., Ltd., forged the company seal, and published false content including "the company is not doing well, the capital chain is broken, and other reasons make it unable to continue to provide services..." Tianyancha shows that Zhengxin Food is a brand of Shanghai Zhengxin Food Group Co., Ltd.

In a statement, Zhengxin Chicken Steak emphasized that the company's current operations are normal and the situation mentioned in the above content does not exist; the aforementioned false content has seriously infringed the company's legitimate rights and interests and seriously disrupted the company's normal business order. The company will pursue the legal responsibilities of relevant personnel in accordance with the law and has reported such matters to the public security organs.

It is worth noting that compared with the previous period, the number of stores opened by Zhengxin Chicken Steak last year actually rebounded, with the number of stores opened throughout the year reaching 1,719, basically returning to the level of 2021, but still lower than the speed of opening nearly 3,800 stores in 2022.

Entering 2024, Zhengxin Chicken has opened 1,443 stores this year. In March and April, Zhengxin Chicken opened 262 and 613 stores in a single month. Based on this, it is very likely that the number of Zhengxin Chicken stores opened this year will exceed that of last year.

As of now, Zhengxin Chicken Steak has a total of 11,011 stores in operation across the country, covering 31 provinces and 355 cities. Among them, stores in new first-tier, second-tier, third-tier and fourth-tier cities account for 17.9%, 18.57%, 25.24% and 21.5% respectively, while first-tier and fifth-tier cities account for less than 10%.

As of September 2018, Zheng Xin Chicken Steak had 15,165 stores, which means that Zheng Xin Chicken Steak, which once had more than 25,000 stores, is now even smaller than it was six years ago, and is only slightly better than the number when it just broke the 10,000-store mark in 2017.

Although the number of Zheng Xin Chicken Steak stores has returned to a growth trend, the current number of 11,011 stores has not increased compared to 11,619 stores in December last year, which means that the overall number of store closures by Zheng Xin during this period is still greater than the number of store openings, which further leads to a negative net growth in the number of its stores.

It is worth mentioning that the store information included in Zhaimen Canyan is not absolutely accurate. Since the store data related to Zhaimen Canyan is collected from public information channels, if some township stores are not entered in the public channels, there may be certain deviations.

As for the brand's opening and closing of stores, Zhengxin Chicken Steak's relevant staff responded in an interview with the media that it is normal for stores to open and close, and there are many factors for store closures. "Generally speaking, after a store has been open for a few years, if business is not good or it doesn't make much money, they will consider closing the store. Some reasons are also due to the need for local government demolition or partial renovation. In addition, the catering industry has not been doing well due to the epidemic in the past two years."

In fact, compared with joining some hot pot and new tea brands, the threshold for joining a Zhengxin Chicken Steak is relatively lower and the cost is relatively lower. According to the official website of Zhengxin Chicken Steak, one of the requirements for franchisees is a capital of more than 200,000 yuan.

The initial investment to join a Zhengxin Chicken Steak store is about 63,200 yuan, including a franchise fee of 35,000 yuan, a deposit of 10,000 yuan, a management fee of 13,200 yuan, and a design fee of 5,000 yuan; the later investment includes equipment costs of about 20,000 to 30,000 yuan, the first batch of food purchases of about 20,000 yuan, and decoration costs of 30,000 to 50,000 yuan. However, the above-mentioned costs do not include rental deposits and other expenses.

According to Zhengxin Chicken Steak, its main products include chicken steak, fried chicken, fried skewers, beverages, hamburgers and snacks, and its gross profit is generally above 52%, which is mainly related to the product structure of the store. The price of Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores must be consistent with the company's price. If the price of products in some stations and airports is increased or decreased, it needs to apply to the headquarters.

Judging from the distribution of its stores, Zhengxin Chicken prefers to choose rural areas. According to the data from Zhaimen Canyan, the proportion of Zhengxin Chicken stores in rural areas reached 27.63%, followed by stores in shopping malls, accounting for 7.96%; in addition, stores in schools and transportation hubs accounted for 3.93% and 0.33% respectively.

Some catering practitioners believe that the closure of a large number of Zhengxin Chicken Steak stores reflects the challenges and difficulties the brand is currently facing. As consumers pay more attention to healthy eating, the fried foods promoted by Zhengxin Chicken Steak are no longer as popular among young people as before. Secondly, in the face of fierce market competition, Zhengxin Chicken Steak has not been able to show a significant advantage in terms of price. And being involved in food safety scandals many times has also affected the reputation of Zhengxin Chicken Steak to a certain extent.