Exchange low-priced items for traffic, and win reputation with traffic | Small group purchases "assist" the transformation of the catering industry
2024-08-28
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In the afternoon, at the intersection of Central Street and Red Brick Street, a long line formed outside a restaurant's window stall. "I've been waiting in line for five or six minutes, waiting to scan the code to pick up the food." Resident Zhu Li bought the store's best-selling item, crispy pineapple buns, online. "The regular price is 5 yuan each, but this time the online group purchase is 3 yuan each, and sometimes 1 yuan each. It's only for in-store consumption, not for online takeout."
With the deep integration of online and offline consumption and the increasingly fierce competition in the catering industry, the marketing model of Harbin catering companies is accelerating its transformation. Among them, small-amount group purchases of popular products in stores as a new way of "drawing traffic" have become a "weapon" for catering institutions to increase popularity and brand exposure. As a result, the boundaries between traditional catering companies' in-store consumption and commodity retail business are becoming increasingly blurred.
Small-value popular packages are offered at a big discount in exchange for traffic
Opening the phone, a restaurant that specializes in grilled fish has launched a variety of grilled fish packages on Meituan, ranging from 138 yuan to 354 yuan. Among these large group purchase packages that cost hundreds of yuan, there are two particularly conspicuous low-priced group purchase items, namely, a cone for only 10 cents and a jelly for 30 cents. The original prices are 3 yuan and 20 yuan respectively, and the group purchase price discount is 0.2 to 0.4. "At first glance, such prices seem to take us back to the 1980s and 1990s when a popsicle cost 10 cents and a bowl of cold noodles cost 20 cents." This is the first-hand experience of many diners when they first experienced it.
Coincidentally, a small noodle restaurant on Shengyong Street in Xiangfang District also launched a small group purchase package on the online platform. The original price of 2 yuan per piece of braised eggs is only 1 yuan per piece.
Nowadays, when people open the Harbin channel of the apps of online platforms such as Meituan and Dianping, they find that whether it is a large chain restaurant or a small street shop, they often launch low-priced group purchase items that only support in-store consumption based on their own regular set meals.
"Selling popular items in the store through low-price group purchases has become a common way for catering establishments to attract customers. Through a certain item, customers can get to know a store and have an initial experience of the products and services, which will lead to second or even third purchases." Rong Rusi, manager of the Central Street branch of Mrs. Petty Bourgeois Restaurant, said that many times, small group purchases of low-priced popular items do not make much profit, and are mainly for the purpose of increasing store popularity and traffic.
“The queue in front of the door is itself an advertisement!”
The reporter checked online platforms such as Meituan and Dianping and found that the small group purchase items launched by restaurants are generally their own popular dishes or snacks and drinks, and the price is generally less than 10 yuan, and they can often be bought for two or three yuan. Although the total unit price is not high, the discount of this type of group purchase is often greater than that of ordinary set meals. For example, it is common to offer a 50% or 60% discount on the original price, and a 30% or 40% discount is also rare. Some stores will offer super discounts of a few tenths... which is equivalent to letting consumers experience it for free.
In terms of sales, this kind of low-priced popular set meal generally has a sales volume several orders of magnitude higher than set meals that cost hundreds of yuan. A group purchase page of a restaurant that specializes in Northeastern iron pot stew shows that the sales volume of steamed dumplings, which originally cost 3 yuan and are only 1 yuan after discount, exceeded 19,000 in half a year, far surpassing other set meals that cost hundreds of yuan on the same page.
"Now is an era where traffic is king, and the catering industry, which relies on popularity, understands this principle even better," Yu Kai, who has run a catering business in Harbin for many years, told reporters that the Internet has profoundly changed people's catering consumption habits. At present, there are more and more tourists from other places in Harbin, and many foreign consumers actually don't know whether local restaurants are good or bad. When it's time to eat, they often choose restaurants by opening Meituan or Dianping to search for nearby restaurants based on consumption or praise rate, and go to the one with high sales and high praise rate. In order to increase sales and praise rate, many catering stores launch group buying activities online for popular products at extremely low or even unprofitable rates, just to accumulate online popularity.
"In fact, the sight of people queuing up outside the store to get food is itself a kind of word of mouth, and a free commercial advertisement." Many people in the catering industry said that instead of spending money on commercial advertising, it would be better to invest the money in low-priced, small-volume group purchases of popular items. After all, a long queue for food at the door is a more intuitive and effective word of mouth for catering brands.
The boundaries between catering and retail are being broken
At the Xiaozitaitai Central Street store, an open window stall is set up next to the main entrance of the store, which is reserved for consumers who have purchased the store's popular product, pineapple buns, in groups to pick up their meals.
Rong Rusi told reporters, "The online group purchase price is only about half of the original price, so there are a lot of pineapple buns group purchases in the store every day. This stall mainly serves customers who make small group purchases." The reporter found on Central Avenue and its side streets that many catering stores here now have set up such single-item pick-up stalls, and many dishes and delicacies such as sweet and sour pork and black bread are sold through such stalls.
The function of such restaurant stalls is equivalent to the retail counters of traditional stores, and the retail function of traditional restaurants is thus strengthened. The business model of online ordering and offline stall pickup is transforming the traditional restaurant business into a "catering + retail" model.
In fact, as competition in the catering industry intensifies, it is becoming a trend for restaurants to expand into the retail market. Especially in some commercial districts with large traffic or key cultural and tourism areas, more and more restaurants are setting up stalls and counters.
"Waiter, check out. Then order another lamb chop to be sent to this address!" At the Shepherd Restaurant on Xingfu Road in Xiangfang District, a diner from another place came to the freezer in the store after paying the bill and chose a bag of the store's specialty frozen lamb chops to send to his relatives and friends back home.
Relying on the reputation and brand advantages established by catering stores, some restaurants in Harbin have made their own special dishes into retail packaging that can be mailed and sold in stores or on the Internet, forming a closed-loop model of "catering to the store + retail business". The retail model triggered by the catering experience may be quietly changing the revenue ecological chain of Harbin catering institutions.
Source: Harbin News Network
Reporter: Huo Liang
Editor: Liu Yixuan
