The shelf life of Tianshui Malatang is only one month? , in the Yangtze River Delta
Many people may have noticed that many Tianshui Malatang specialty stores have opened around them.
At the end of March, the reporter searched and found that there was not yet a Tianshui Malatang specialty store in Shanghai. If the scope is expanded to the Yangtze River Delta, the number of Tianshui Malatang stores is still very few. There are one store in Nanjing, Changzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places that have been opened and are operating stably.
Looking back now, the situation is very different. "Five stores have opened within a 100-meter radius, and a new one just opened a few days ago." Jing Yizhu, owner of Nanjing Gansu Malatang, observed, but two of them have closed down.
Tianshui Malatang, which was steaming hot 2 months ago, has now cooled down a lot. Where will the businessmen who opened their stores take advantage of the trend?
A Tianshui Malatang restaurant posted a notice saying, "It's not spicy enough, I'll add more for you."
By the end of April, the popularity of Tianshui Malatang had almost subsided. Calculating this way, the bonus period for opening a new store is about one month.
On March 28, Yang Ning, a native of Tianshui, Gansu, opened the first physical store of Tianshui Malatang in the Lujiazui area of Shanghai. In Tianshui, Yang Ning’s parents started running a spicy hotpot restaurant. During that time, business was booming, and the store in my hometown "couldn't finish ironing at all." From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., there was a line of 100 meters long at the door.
At that time in Shanghai, Tianshui Malatang was still a blank market. From having the idea to opening the store, it only took Yang Ning 3 days. "When you say you want to take advantage of the popularity, you must be suspicious of it, but there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of the popularity of your hometown."
Catering investor Chen Xu has also witnessed this popularity firsthand. On March 14, he heard the term "Tianshui Malatang" for the first time. "I heard it is very popular, and it is indeed very popular. You can browse it on the short video platform." Last year, Chen Xu had already enjoyed the traffic bonus. . A barbecue restaurant he joined has a similar model to the Zibo barbecue restaurant. The pancakes are rolled with barbecued meat and green onions. The business data has always been good.
Two days later, the first Tianshui Malatang opened in Suzhou. Chen Xu drove there from Shanghai to try it out. From noon to evening, the queues of people waiting to eat didn’t stop until all the ingredients prepared in the store were sold out. “It’s really unique. The chili is fragrant but not spicy, and there is no similar flavor on the market." He went to Tianshui to investigate and tried all the top Malatangs. The queue time at each store started at 5 or 6 in the morning. almost there.
Chen Xu rushed back to Shanghai to open a store without stopping, "trying to be among the first wave of people." His idea was to at least make a quick buck. After all, if he stepped into the flow of traffic, "pigs can fly in the sky."
Tianshui Malatang was once pushed to the peak of traffic.
Jing Yizhu's Gansu Malatang store in Nanjing opened at the end of last year. In mid-March this year, traffic suddenly exploded. Customers queued up to pick up plates and choose dishes. The queue stretched outside the store. "When it was the hottest, everyone was willing to wait for two hours."
At the end of March, Ma Suosuo added Tianshui spicy hotpot to its Lanzhou beef noodle shop in Shanghai. In the first month of supply, the store sold about 4,000 yuan every day. At that time, Ma Suosuo's mother was tired and sick. Frying the chili peppers, boiling the chili peppers, and just seasoning the chili peppers will take four to five hours. People are watching and cannot leave for a moment. Usually we start making the food at 11pm, and it’s already early in the morning when it’s done. I can’t sleep for two hours and have to prepare to open at 9am the next day. When we were busy, we hired 5 additional employees. There was no time to wash the dishes, so they all used disposable tableware.
Yang Ning's store has not yet been renovated, and some people have already driven 20 kilometers to come here; at the peak of business, more than 300 orders were made every day; to have a bowl of spicy hotpot, you have to wait in line for at least 1.5 hours; there are self-selected dishes prepared in the freezer They were all sold out, and the kitchen was busy skewering the dishes, but the speed was still not fast enough for customers to get the dishes. "There are no more dishes, add more!" In just half a month, Yang Ning basically earned back the cost of opening the store, and received more than 20 orders every day. The phone calls are all for me to join.
In Yang Ning's observation, store business began to decline in mid-April. "There are fewer and fewer people every day, and it continues to decline." By the time Chen Xu's Tianshui Malatang shop opened, it was already April 14. "It was half a month late, and I didn't seize the opportunity." In his shop, white-collar workers at lunch time People flock to visit, but the popularity is far from expected.
Chen Xu is no stranger to such a scene. Last year, there was a rush to open "Zibo BBQ". Now there are not many barbecue restaurants with "Zibo" in their names. "Shanghai, and even the entire Yangtze River Delta region, is the battlefield with the most intense competition among catering brands. They are constantly being eliminated and updated."
"A number of companies will definitely close down in the market, and 90% will be eliminated." Chen Xu said, "It may not be the last 10%. If you really can't hold on anymore, you should withdraw when you need to, and you have to be decisive."
"By mid-April, many stores have opened in the surrounding areas. There must be two to three hundred new Tianshui Malatang stores in Shanghai." Yang Ning observed. Not only that, many Malatang restaurants have added Tianshui Malatang as a single item to their menus, and it has become popular very quickly. “If you count this, there are thousands of them.”
Not far from the Jingyizhu store, there is a Tianshui Malatang brand franchise store. Such stores often have small investment amounts, low technical thresholds, and can be copied very quickly.
There are many competitors. How big can the market of Tianshui Malatang be in the Yangtze River Delta, Jiangnan Water Town and Tianshui Malatang?
In early April, most of the people who ate at Tianshui Malatang stores were early adopters. However, many southerners are not used to it and think Malatang is too strong and oily. "After a while, 70% of the people who came to the store to buy it were from the northwest," Yang Ning said.
In Tianshui, Malatang was originally called "Spicy Noodles". The main character is hand-rolled noodles made from potatoes, with hot vegetables as an auxiliary. It is mainly vegetables and soy products, with at most one chicken sausage added.
Chen Xu once had great confidence in Tianshui Malatang. "There are many categories of spicy flavors that have survived in Shanghai." For example, hot pot, Maocai, Sichuan cuisine, etc.
However, things did not develop as smoothly as he expected. There are many negative comments about the taste of Tianshui Malatang, "I've tried it, and it's just like that. It's not as delicious as the Malatang from Northeast and Sichuan." The shop owners analyzed the reasons and found that the unsuitable taste may still be an objective fact, but there is another more important reason. Yes, too many stores were opened. In the process of rapid expansion, Tianshui Malatang's reputation was ruined.
This business will eventually return to normal. From the beginning, most businessmen are mentally prepared.
At the end of March, Ma Suosuo slightly renovated its Lanzhou beef noodle shop and added Tianshui spicy hotpot items. This is very easy and the cost is not high. Chili has been around for a long time. Just add a pot for boiling soup and a freezer for selected vegetables, and you can make spicy hotpot.
There is no new store. Ma Suosuo built a shed on the side of the original front room, set up two tables and chairs, and wrote a small blackboard to hang at the side door. The menu hanging in the store has never added the option of Tianshui Mala Tang. Ma Suosuo explained, "This is not a normal thing." Later, the facade of the shop on Laijie was renovated and scaffolding was erected. The dining environment was not very tidy. The optional Malatang was canceled and replaced with a fixed set meal at 25 yuan per serving, which only included vegetables and soy products.
Later, the business gradually slowed down, and now it has dropped to less than 1,000 yuan. Ma Suosuo thinks this is normal, "After all, you can't eat Malatang every day."
Ma Suosuo's Gansu Malatang sign hangs on the side door.
After getting out of the rhythm of making quick money, Tianshui Malatang began to accumulate regular customers, striving to become a more stable niche choice.
Once Tianshui Malatang began to compete in "technology", handcrafting was one of the key points. In Jing Yizhu's shop, two old hens and a tube bone are boiled together to make soup every day. The apricot skin water, hand-kneaded flour and potato balls are all freshly made by her mother.
She went to the newly opened store next door and learned that the spicy hotpot recipes were different. One store had no flavor in the soup, another didn't add green onion and coriander, and most of the ingredients were purchased ready-made from the factory.
Compared with scattered vegetable ingredients, Yang Ning sells skewers, which need to be threaded one by one, so that the quality and freshness of the dishes can be better controlled. Yang Ning hopes that he can persist longer until Tianshui Malatang can truly become a regional brand with local characteristics. “It would be a pity if the popularity of Tianshui Malatang disappears and Tianshui Malatang returns to its previous state and only exists in the northwest. "
The Gansu Chamber of Commerce has contacted Yang Ning and proposed "clench your fingers into fists and hold together to keep warm." The Chamber of Commerce has established a Malatang Committee in Shanghai. To build Tianshui Malatang into a real regional brand, rectifying the market and establishing regulations are the only way to go.
