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author | southern window reporter zhu qiuyu

it took monkey brother, a young man from guizhou born in the 1980s, seven months to make his products popular not only in provincial capitals in the south, but also to sell them in malaysia and africa.

he claimed that this was the best business he had ever seen after starting many businesses. “it’s a slow business, but you can do it for a lifetime. the longer you do it, the more money you can make.”

on the short video platform, "monkey brothers" are the most contrasting group of people. on the surface, they are doing the work of collecting junk, recycling kitchen utensils, tables and chairs from closed restaurants. then, they clean and refurbish these kitchen utensils and resell them as second-hand goods. people call them "the dark lights of the catering industry" and "the corpse collectors that scare restaurant owners."

in the second-hand kitchenware market, staff are cleaning, refurbishing and recycling kitchenware/photo source: photo by guo jialiang‍‍‍‍

what is less known is that this is a relatively lucrative industry. after encountering failure, many catering people will choose to move on to the next stop - recycling kitchenware for the catering industry as a new start.

brother hou said that the industry also has a time pattern. the beginning and middle of the month are the peak period for restaurant openings and the peak period for restaurant owners to purchase. the end of the month is the peak period for reclaiming stores - because the rent is due, struggling businesses are crushed by the last straw and close their stores one after another.

coming and going, the "corpse collectors" of the catering industry have witnessed the ups and downs of catering businesses. in the process of quietly looking for business opportunities, they have also seen through the human nature and secrets of the catering industry.

search for "mask"

“when did it open?”

"august 12, 2023. exactly one year."

“how much did it cost?”

"more than 2 million. our decoration, air conditioning, tables and chairs, and equipment are all very good."

on a hot day in august, monkey drove a red tesla model y to a closed shunde steam hotpot restaurant. the restaurant is located in the suburbs of guangzhou. the shop is several hundred square meters, and the conspicuous green sign makes it look like a vegetarian restaurant. the interior decoration is very new, with green small patterned bricks and red rattan chairs, giving it the temperament of a southeast asian restaurant. the roof is painted black, and now, with the lights turned off in the restaurant, the atmosphere is even darker.

the receptionist also looked unhappy. he was from the northeast and had worked in guangzhou for more than 20 years. he could speak standard northern dialect and fluent cantonese. he first showed me the fish pond, which was a movable "good thing" with wheels; then the kitchen, which had a slicer for slicing fish - it was used to make shunde sashimi, as well as an ice machine, a freezer, a seafood steamer, and a spider that bumped into my foot.

then he went to the backyard of the kitchen to check the air conditioner outdoor units. "two 1.5-horsepower units and eight 3-horsepower units," monkey brother recorded on his phone.

the step of counting the "corpses" of the catering industry is not over yet. the person in charge took us to the front hall and introduced that the restaurant was converted from an old car repair shop. last year, their boss bought it and spent a huge amount of money to renovate it. "the hot pot steam boiler we bought is the best. the water boils in more than ten seconds."

monkey brother is investigating in a restaurant/photo source: photo by zhu qiuyu, a reporter from salt finance

it’s a pity that all efforts failed due to the poor site selection.

the elaborate decoration was not enough to offset the lack of target consumer groups nearby. pointing to the self-built houses in the urban village surrounding it, the person in charge sighed: "no one comes here to eat hot pot."

more than 2 million yuan was wasted, and the restaurant owner could only seize the last chance to recover his losses - selling his property.

the entire evaluation took less than half an hour. brother monkey promised to go back and issue a detailed quotation, which would take 1-2 days.

in fact, monkey quickly told me that he had probably figured out that all the stuff was only worth 30,000 to 40,000 yuan. the only slightly valuable items were the air conditioner and the tables and chairs.

"it's cruel, but this is reality. those custom cabinets are worthless and are sold at scrap prices."

this is the first year that houge has been in this business. he said that the threshold of this business is mainly to evaluate the value of the circulation of second-hand kitchenware. in other words, the difficulty lies not in receiving the goods, but in the ability to sell the second-hand kitchenware. therefore, he particularly emphasizes the "circulation rate".

considering the turnover rate of goods, he is now more cautious about whether to repurchase the western restaurant.

in his eyes, expensive steam ovens, pizza ovens, and teppanyaki grills are all unacceptable. "nowadays, consumers are paying more and more attention to cost performance, and fewer people eat western food. a few days ago, a michelin western restaurant in shanghai closed down. i just bought it and it was a waste of time. i can't do it anymore."

he gradually stopped buying back coffee shops because many of the equipment in the closed ones were semi-automatic coffee machines. as chinese coffee brands become more chain-like and concentrated, the equipment they use has also changed. "nowadays, chain stores rarely use semi-automatic coffee machines, they are all fully automatic. it is estimated that no one will want semi-automatic coffee machines in 2-3 years."

he gradually stopped buying back coffee shops because many of the equipment that went bankrupt were semi-automatic coffee machines/photo source: guo jialiang

every failure brings wisdom, which is the cultivation of the "corpse collectors" of the catering industry. they also gain insight into the market secrets of the catering industry from the "corpses" of catering kitchen utensils.

many of the short videos that monkey brother shot are about this: what track in the catering industry can make money and how to make money. he found that among the 40 to 50 stores that are bought back every month, 70% are hot pot restaurants. the next largest groups are milk tea shops and coffee shops.

but there are always some categories where people repeatedly fall and people repeatedly stand up.

for example, pickled fish, spicy hot pot, and hot pot restaurants. "there are always people opening stores in these popular areas, which meet the daily needs of ordinary people. this is not the equipment needed for places with consumption upgrades. as long as the price is cheap enough, these equipment can be sold at any time." monkey said. therefore, he is happy to stock up on the most popular kitchen utensils to meet the needs of the greatest common denominator.

second-hand kitchenware market/photo source: guo jialiang

zhao boli, a post-90s from qingdao, shandong, started a second-hand recycling business five years ago. he also came to a similar conclusion: the restaurants he recycled the most this year were hot pot restaurants and breakfast restaurants. in addition, restaurants in shopping malls also had the most "graduations".

this is because the rent of shopping malls is higher, while the flow of people is decreasing. "merchants have to spend money to buy traffic", but the more they buy, the more they lose.

the number of businesses that "graduated" in 2024 has also increased. "china catering big data 2021" shows that the average lifespan of newly opened restaurants in china is only 508 days. and now the lifespan seems to be even shorter.

zhao boli discovered that "basically six months can determine the life or death of a store." this means that in a highly competitive market environment, the labor and store expenses of a restaurant are very fixed. if the business does not improve during this period, it will only get worse.

he no longer collects the products from every store he sees. instead, he makes the opposite choice - he only recycles the products from high-quality stores.

“what is quality?”

"the items are in about 80% new condition and the store hasn't been open for long." zhao boli said, "it's just like women's cosmetics. everyone can use facial masks, but not lipstick."

“so what is the mask for the restaurant industry?”

“air conditioners and refrigerators are hard currency.”

about traffic business

before dealing in second-hand catering equipment, brother hou had just gone bankrupt.

his mobile hinterland is always in the area of ​​the cafe where we met, in the south of guangzhou. the ring road passes through the middle, with a brand new community with clean exterior walls on one side and a crowded rooftop composed of a large number of factories on the other. only when you get closer can you find that this area, defined by the gullies brought by the self-built houses in the urban village, attracts foreigners like monkey brother who come to the first-tier cities to seek gold.

according to him, he settled here 8 years ago due to a job transfer. at that time, he was in the booming internet industry, enjoying a million-dollar annual salary brought by the thriving projects. at the end of 2019, the substantial growth of e-commerce was about to peak, and he was no longer interested in working and decided to go it alone.

he set his sights on the most popular jewelry promotion on the short video platform. "almost all the jewelry factories are located in this area. international brands such as van cleef & arpels all have their brands made here," he said, pointing to an unidentified area behind him. from the subway station, all the nearby stations have the word "village" in their names. in fact, this is a paradise for entrepreneurs.

jewelry anchor is live streaming and selling goods

every day, dozens of jewelry anchors live broadcast sales. the team found that if they wanted to sell quickly, they had to spend money to buy traffic and gain exposure. huge fortunes came from short videos, and it was effortless to make tens of millions of dollars a month.

but the rise was fast and the fall was also fierce, "like a roller coaster", and there was an endless stream of people who bought and returned the goods. half a year later, seeing that the inventory was piling up and about to be crushed, monkey brother and his partners discussed and withdrew from this long-standing business of fighting for traffic.

but he did not give up on relying on traffic to make a business. in 2023, a fellow villager from guizhou first became a "catering corpse collector" and made considerable income. he then saw a similar internet celebrity on short videos. he was tempted and went to beijing to become a disciple of an internet celebrity "corpse collector". during this period, he gradually realized that learning to use "internet tools" would be a reshaping of the second-hand recycling industry.

at the end of last year, he opened a short video account, "to test it out and see if it can work." the positioning is very clear, to create a vertical account that understands the catering industry and sells second-hand catering equipment. in monkey's words, this is called "personal ip."

“only when others truly identify with you as a person can you sell your products and increase your repurchase rate.”

unexpectedly, after only half a month of using the account, more than 100 people came to him to buy equipment.

next, it was time for traffic business to work. he first rented a 300-square-meter store, and a month later found a 1,000-square-meter warehouse to store large freezers, steamers, tables and chairs, and air conditioners. the goal was that customers could get all the equipment to open a store through his warehouse.

monkey brother also knows that his development speed is faster than his peers. he believes in the internet miracle he has witnessed in the past, "if the traffic is increased, the (risk) is not too bad, and it is within a safe range."

he told me: "many people start their business by renting a place, hiring people, buying equipment and doing renovations, and then investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to increase traffic. this does not conform to current logic. it is very risky to invest too much (capital) and then see if you can make the business a success."

therefore, the thinking of internet people is to focus on assets and traffic.

he chose foshan, a city close to the south of guangzhou, to rent the factory for more than 10,000 yuan a month and hired only three people, who were responsible for managing the warehouse, receiving goods, selling goods and serving as customer service.

he was only responsible for traffic and building his own ip. when we arranged to meet for an interview, he brought a phone stand and phone to record our interview. before the conversation began, he also put a microphone on my chest to "conveniently pick up the sound."

screenshot of the video posted by monkey brother on the social platform

the intensity of his daily work is similar to that of an internet worker. he has no fixed eating and sleeping time. if he encounters a store in a recycling mall, he often has to wait until 22:00 before he is allowed to start work. once he gets busy, he can only go home after 3:00 in the morning. when i sat in monkey's tesla, he said that if he sat in the passenger seat, he would usually fall asleep in 10 seconds.

but the positive benefits of this traffic-related job made him happy. according to his calculations, the labor costs and warehouse rental costs add up to about 30,000 yuan per month, while his monthly turnover sometimes reaches hundreds of thousands.

zhao boli, who wears round-frame glasses and has a flat head, is also a person who warmly embraces internet traffic. the introduction he wrote for himself on his short video account is: the initiator of the graduation alliance. when talking to him, his language also has the characteristics of the internet, describing "the new crown period" as "masks" and "bankruptcy" as "graduation."

coexisting with traffic has also been zhao boli's job for the past 10 years. he used to write advertising copy and work in internet operations. later, he opened a spicy hot pot restaurant, which still relied on traffic to increase exposure.

on the eve of 2020, the malatang restaurant closed down. when he was dealing with the equipment himself, he met the "corpse collector" in the catering industry and learned about this under-the-surface industry.

later, he judged that this was an industry that met the basic needs of restaurant owners, so he used short videos to do this business and found that it was "a little easier than the catering industry."

"it's not a huge profit. the profit margin is about 15%," zhao pineapple said, "it's just a little more than working at a regular job."

some are happy, some are worried

it is difficult to generalize what the second-hand catering recycling industry is like.

hongcan.com, a vertical catering media, once concluded that the second-hand kitchenware recycling industry is one of the most profitable businesses in the catering industry, and its "return relies on the vicious competition and abnormal development of the catering industry." according to its prediction, the equipment of second-hand recyclers has a profit margin of about 700%. the industry rule is to give an estimate of 5% to 10% of the price of new equipment. on this basis, negotiations are conducted based on the age and type of the equipment. then, many second-hand dealers will sell it at a price 70% to 80% off the original price.

however, four second-hand recyclers told me that as more and more people enter the market, the recycling prices are becoming more diverse. most of the 90% new equipment will be purchased at 30% off the original price.

as newcomers, hou ge and zhao boli have their own "playing cards" - winning by offering low prices. hou ge's rule is to sell at 50% off the original price and rely on word of mouth to attract repeat customers.

details of the store activity displayed on brother monkey’s douyin page/source: screenshot of brother monkey’s douyin‍‍‍

“traditionally, those who deal in second-hand goods usually make huge profits of 60 to 70 percent. but if (i) don’t make changes in the industry and continue to do business with huge profits, it will be meaningless.” he wants to ensure that the recycled kitchen utensils are “quick in and quick out” so that small profits can be rolled out into big profits.

according to monkey brother’s idea, internet people can subvert this traditional industry. “i have analyzed that there are lianjia and beike (platforms) for second-hand houses, guazi and youxin for second-hand cars, hongbulin for second-hand luxury goods, and zhuanzhuan for mobile phones. but there is no corresponding platform for second-hand kitchenware.”

he believes that big capital is not interested in this scrap business. "i can try to stand out from the crowd and become the leader in the industry. that's why i do this business."

there are good news and bad news. 2024 is indeed a big year for second-hand recyclers. but at the same time, they found that fewer people are opening restaurants.

entrepreneurs began to be cautious. according to qichacha data, in the first half of the year, a total of 1.31 million catering-related companies were added nationwide. compared with the 1.68 million new additions in the same period of 2023, the growth rate has narrowed.

zhao boli found that last year, qingdao's street food industry was undergoing rapid renewal. today, there are more vacant shops on the street. he clearly feels that business is not as good as in the past three years. the buyers who come to him are all old customers. this means that "fewer people have demand. now even the second-hand recycling colleagues have begun to graduate."

two traditional second-hand catering equipment dealers also told me that the second-hand kitchenware business is becoming increasingly difficult and "no one is buying". mu yan, a henan native living in beijing, said that he has been in this track for four years and has lost the most this year. the wechat transaction he showed showed that in the first eight months of 2024, his income was 913,000 yuan, but his total expenditure reached 1.453 million yuan.

brother hou also feels that the sales cycle has become longer. "this year, most of the (merchants) who come to buy again are because their equipment is broken. although there are people who come to buy because of expansion or replacement (upgrade) of equipment, they are very few."

fewer buyers and more equipment pose challenges to second-hand recyclers' ability to control costs and sell goods.

second-hand kitchenware business is becoming increasingly difficult/photo credit: guo jialiang

monkey brother said that although the market has shrunk, he still believes in the power of private domain traffic.

"i have to make friends with the fans i attract on the platform in private. becoming friends is much more valuable and efficient than getting customers by taking advantage of discounts. this is the role of ip."

because of the trust he has built with restaurant owners, he now posts recycled equipment on wechat moments, and soon someone will contact him to buy it. he even has fans from malaysia who have contacted him and teamed up with him to sell second-hand kitchenware to overseas restaurants.

zhao boli also relies on trust to sell second-hand goods. "when facing restaurant owners who have graduated, i will first provide them with emotional value, affirm their past efforts, and maintain a good relationship." he firmly believes that it is these heartfelt words that allow him to at least maintain his business and survive the market adjustment period.

it takes time to build word of mouth and repeat customers. fortunately, compared with the fiercely competitive catering industry, this industry has very low investment costs and it is not yet the cold winter.

what gives them hope is that winter is coming.

when winter comes, many new signs will go up in the streets and alleys, and hot pot restaurants will open again.

zhao boli and hou ge both said that by the end of august, many bosses had proactively asked them, "is there anyone selling hot pot equipment?"

the pictures in this article are from the internet