Xinhuanet Beijing, March 12 (Ren Yuxi) According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the national catering revenue exceeded 5 trillion yuan for the first time in 2023. The catering industry has contributed to the economic recovery and growth of China. This data is inseparable from the resilience and vitality of catering enterprises themselves.
At the beginning of 2024, a snack chain enterprise, Kuafu Fried String, handed over a performance sheet and announced the formal completion of the B round of financing. So far, Kuafu Fried String has completed financing of nearly 500 million yuan, becoming the brand with the highest total financing amount of snack chain in recent years.
Favor comes from trust.
As a tiny pixel of China’s economy, this enterprise reflects its youthful vitality and deep responsibility. According to Yuan Zelu, the founder of Kuafu Fried String, China’s economy and China’s catering industry are full of potential, and he has confidence in both.
Yuan Zelu said in an exclusive interview with Xinhuanet: "Catering is an industry that runs through the tertiary industry, from agriculture, animal husbandry to food industry, to catering and service industries. Catering enterprises are the capillaries of society, and they are everywhere. For the sake of Chinese people’s three meals a day, there are about 10 million restaurants in the country providing exquisite food and services, including snack franchisees. "
From the data and scale he said, it is not difficult to feel the vigorous power of the catering industry. At the same time, how fierce the competition is must be beyond everyone’s imagination. As a matter of fact, the catering track has always been very competitive. Why is Kuafu Fried String favored by capital?
Yuan Zelu said that Kuafu Fried String completed three rounds of financing in 2021 and B round of financing this year. I think it is not easy to achieve such a result. Analyzing the source of capital, a very important part comes from the old shareholders of Kuafu Chuanchuan, and the other part comes from the whole industry. The leading capital of this round of financing is the unique fund of Juewei. "In fact, the old shareholders saw the scarcity of our team. Over the years, every expectation we threw out exceeded expectations, which verified that the company’s digital construction and advanced management concepts can achieve ideal performance." Generally speaking, it is based on trust.
From an industrial point of view, the track where Kuafu Fried String is located has been recognized by the industry. There is a saying in the company called "Questioning Fried String, Understanding Fried String, Becoming Fried String". "At the beginning, many people were controversial about joining the fried string, thinking that it could last for one or two years at most, but in fact, we not only didn’t have a’ gas’, but we had our own scale. This category was developed by us, and we gave the industry imagination on this track."
Digitalization is the starting point for practicing high-quality development.
Yuan Zelu has his own understanding of how to promote high-quality development to take root in the catering industry. He believes that we can start from two aspects. The first is to improve the cost performance. In many cases, as long as the new things on the market pass the fresh period, consumers will return to rationality and start thinking about whether it is worth it. This is actually the cost performance. For example, at the same price, people used to choose "roadside stalls" in collusion with others, but now they can choose chain stores with better quality and hygiene and more intimate service. Good and not expensive, this is the improvement of cost performance, and it is also the direction for catering enterprises to practice high-quality development.
The second is to strengthen digital construction. The most fundamental thing in digital transformation is to solve the efficiency problem. Kuafu Fried String began to think about how to build it digitally in 2020, and then began to put it into practice the next year. "We hope to solve the’ triangle problem’ in the catering industry. According to past experience, it is difficult to have good quality, large scale and fast speed. The reason for this problem lies in the low efficiency of data utilization, so we have spent three years making a lot of digital systems and tools to make business-related data online at any time. With the data basis, our decision will be faster and more accurate. "
Yuan Zelu believes that digital construction is particularly important for enterprises. Industrial Internet and digital industry can drive franchise chain’s format to become more efficient and accurate. "Regarding the digital construction of catering enterprises, it used to be thought that there must be 10,000 stores before it can be digitized, because it feels that the investment in digital construction is large, but I think that catering enterprises facing the future can only achieve 10,000 stores if they have digitalization first."
He introduced that in the past three years, Kuafu Fried String has invested tens of millions of dollars in digital construction, and other catering enterprises may have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars if they want to achieve a similar degree. "We have done a lot of selection work on functions, only doing the most accurate and needed functions, and there is almost no waste of investment."
Food safety lies in nip in the bud.
Food is the most important thing for the people, and safety is the first thing to eat. This sentence has been engraved in the bones of Kuafu Fried String, and the problem of eating for ordinary people is the biggest livelihood problem, and Kuafu Fried String knows this well.
Yuan Zelu introduced that the company usually holds food safety-related activities online and offline, emphasizing that the whole company should pay close attention to food safety and quality. At the management level, Yuan Zelu is the first person in charge of the Center for Food Safety. "In fact, there are not many departments that I am directly responsible for, but I will be personally responsible for this department."
The food safety center consists of three departments, one is responsible for the control of raw materials. All links and key control points of raw material production are supervised by a set of mechanisms, which is the link with the most manpower input. In Yuan Zelu’s words, "Concentrate superior forces on the whole industrial chain to control from top to bottom, because the source is the easiest to hide problems, and we should control the quality from the source at all costs. At the same time, Kuafu Fried String has carried out grading and hierarchical management of raw material factories, and has internal cycle evaluation every quarter, repeated assessment and repeated management. "
Second, warehouse distribution logistics link, Kuafu fried string adopts cold chain warehousing logistics. "I chose to cooperate with Parkson when I started my business. At that time, in order to ensure the freshness of food, my only choice was to choose a mature full cold chain logistics and leverage development. Now Kuafu Chuanchuan has three warehouses in the country, and all materials will enter this warehouse first, where they will be subject to collective verification, which is also a big part of our investment. "
The third is store management, which belongs to the more traditional food and beverage management and control link, mainly from the aspects of shop patrol supervision, monitoring and supervision, talent training and so on. These three links can be done repeatedly and continuously, which can reduce the security risk to a certain range. Even if there is a problem, it can be found in the first time through the traceability mechanism. At present, it is more about nip in the bud.
The future is the trend of snack bars.
Kuafu Fried String plans to open 3,000 new franchise stores this year. This goal looks very challenging, but it is actually carefully measured. It is estimated that half of the target will be achieved by old franchisees, and they are invited to open more new stores. In the second half of 2023, new stores opened by old franchisees have accounted for 40% of the company’s new franchisees, and this trend will continue this year. The single-store model of Kuafu Fried String has been verified by everyone, and it is very important for franchisees to make money and relax.
"The other half of the target will be completed by new franchisees, but I also hope that at least half of the new franchisees will come from mature catering franchisees, such as joining from the milk tea track." In addition, the company will pay attention to the improvement of product strength and increase product development this year. It is estimated that 7-8 products will be launched every month, and there will be about 80 products throughout the year. At the same time, we will focus on brand marketing and the creation of brand potential energy, and continue to define the sub-track of fried string.
Yuan Zelu said: "I have experienced three ventures. The first time I started a business, I developed a takeaway website in the university and crossed the river by feeling the stones. At that time, it was very green. The second time was in Master Xi, and this time I really entered the catering industry. The experience and cognition accumulated in those five years may not be available to many people in 20 years, which is very valuable. "
"The third venture was fried in Kuafu. At that time, the whole catering industry was popular with’ direct orthodoxy’, and only direct stores would be valued. I wanted to be a franchise store at that time. Someone once questioned whether I wanted to make quick money. But I decided at that time that the future must be the trend of small shops. The head milk tea brand has proved in a few years that excellent brands can develop healthily as franchise chains, and so can Kuafu fried skewers. "
"From this perspective, Kuafu’s mission is to’ provide better business models for entrepreneurs’, which is of great significance to me. I am starting a business for the third time now, and I hope that Kuafu’s string bombing is also my last venture. "
It’s hard to be a business. Kuafu will escort franchisees all the way, and will also provide a relocation subsidy for franchisees who close their stores due to poor site selection. More than half of these franchisees who have closed their stores have chosen to relocate and start again, which is a trust in the brand. "But franchisees should have a sense of responsibility. We welcome inexperienced’ Xiaobai’ to join, but we don’t welcome the shopkeeper." The person in charge of Kuafu Fried String said.
