In 2 years, more than 2,000 Chinese-style burgers have been opened, can they grab the sites of McDonald’s and KFC?
Let’s take a guess first, what are the top five Western-style fast food brands in China?
If the ranking is based on the number of stores at the end of 2022 , the Top 5 are Wallace, KFC, McDonald's, Tustin, and Pizza Hut.
Did you mix in a name that feels strange to you?
Tustin, whose full name is "Tustin China Burger", is positioned as a Chinese burger brand. It has opened more than 2,000 stores in two years, and the total number of stores is close to 3,000.
You may not have heard of it, but its banner "Chinese burger" is curious. Even the No. 1 Wallace started by imitating KFC and McDonald's. Why do new fast food brands stand upright and make "Chinese burgers"?
Chinese-style burgers, satisfying Chinese stomachs and working workers' wallets?
In the brand story, Tustin calls himself "the pioneer of Chinese burgers".
On the one hand, the hamburger embryos are freshly rolled and baked. The dough is hand-rolled and baked on-site, reflecting the feeling that making dumplings starts with kneading the dough. According to the brand's own words, it is "inheriting the craftsmanship of Chinese pastry and making Chinese hamburgers with outstanding flavors".
I ordered their grilled pineapple burger. The hamburger skin tastes like a sesame seed cake, with a certain toughness and oily aroma.
Colleague Xiao Li has eaten Spicy Chicken Drumstick Burger, Bacon Fried Egg Burger, and Rattan Pepper Chicken Drumstick Burger, and they all think it is not bad, especially the crust——
"It is more chewy, but the texture and taste are not exactly like Roujiamo or other cakes. It feels quite special."
On the other hand, burgers use Chinese fillings. Crayfish, Peking duck, and spicy chicken are all familiar Chinese dishes.
Tustin also recently launched Yuxiang Pork Shredded Burger, which was inspired by Sichuan cuisine Yuxiang Shredded Pork, but made a "decision against the ancestors" and actually contained fish steaks.
Of course, it also has classic styles such as spicy chicken drumstick burger and bacon fried egg burger, but my colleague Xiao Liu thinks the fried chicken inside is not as good as KFC.
Besides hamburgers, snacks and drinks are relatively regular. Snacks include coarse potatoes, spicy chicken wings, Colonel’s chicken nuggets, salted crispy chicken popcorn, Orleans grilled wings, etc. Drinks include cola, coffee, milk, black rice milk, etc.
The thick potatoes I have tried have different tastes in the same box, some are crispy and some are soft, heavy in starch and less fried.
Colleague Xiao Li has eaten chicken wings, chicken popcorn and chicken nuggets, let’s take a look at his mind-blowing evaluation:
The chicken wings are mediocre, probably because I was writing a manuscript and let it cool down;
The chicken popcorn is okay, the portion is quite large, and I didn't finish it in the end;
The chicken nuggets are not really delicious, they are very common and low-cost chicken nuggets;
I always order takeaway, and these snacks are basically not warm when they are delivered, so it should be a little bit affected.
The price of Tustin is also quite satisfactory, more than less than more than the lower – lower than McDonald's and KFC, higher than Wallace, and there is a gap between takeaway and in-store orders.
First of all, Tustin’s takeaway prices are relatively affordable. Colleague Xiao Liu found that Tustin's three-piece suit was less than 20 yuan, and the four-piece suit was less than 25 yuan.
But on the same takeaway platform, my colleague Xiao Li’s experience is that there is a discount for newcomers for the first time. The spicy chicken leg burger with chicken wings and Coke is less than 15 yuan, and the subsequent orders basically start at 27 or 28 yuan.
Secondly, the advantage of Tustin to place an order in the store is not so obvious. I once went to the store to scan the QR code to place an order for Tustin, a three-piece set of grilled pineapple burger, coarse potato, and iced lemon cola for 27 yuan.
Therefore, Tustin’s customer unit price is more than 20 yuan, which is not much different from McDonald’s and KFC offline, but online is still attractive because of the delivery fees of McDonald’s and KFC.
In terms of price and positioning, it is too exaggerated to compare Tustin to Michelle Ice City in the burger world, and it is more like Luckin in the burger world.
Tustin has been serious about making burgers, in fact, in recent years.
Tustin was founded in Jiangxi in 2012. In 2017, it launched the "burger + pizza" dual-category product model. In 2018, "freshly baked burger" came out. In 2020, it launched a new category of "Chinese burger". At the same time, it launched the "Oriental Taste Awakening Program" ".
Although it mainly made pizza before, it seems that the effort of making dough and baking crust was not in vain, because the slogan at that time was "Tustin adheres to the on-site hand-patting, freshly baked in the open oven, and only sells daily fresh pizza", and now The Chinese burgers are in the same line.
Guochao style, isn’t it a bit bumpy?
Another outstanding feature of Tustin is the national trend.
The trend of national fashion spreads endlessly in new consumer brands. There were clothing brands such as Li Ning and Anta in the past, and catering brands such as Wenheyou, Chayanyuese, and Hutouju Standard Chartered Cake Shop. In fact, it has already made people feel numb.
But Tustin still keeps up with this wave of trends. The logo is based on the Chinese lion dance, the store is bright red and dark green, neon tubes, wooden tables and chairs, and calligraphy is printed on the posters.
In September 2021, Tustin opened the first cultural themed space store "Twelve Hours", the first "Chicken Crowing Breakfast Series", with a time museum, food clock array, abyss mirror, pavilions and other national-style landscaping .
Universal’s co-branded marketing has not been left behind either. It launched a co-branded Guochao figure with Pepsi, and cooperated with the cultural and creative brand Dongfang Haoli during the Spring Festival of the Year of the Tiger.
On January 1 this year, Tustin also officially announced the rapper Wan Nida as the first Haowei recommendation officer, and wrote a few big characters:
"It's Chinese stomach, so I love China Fort."
Guochao is just a tonality of the brand. To return to the brand itself, it still depends on its category and business model.
Before 2017, Tustin was a regional brand, mainly selling pizza in Jiangxi, with fewer than 100 stores.
2020 is the year when Tustin launched a new category of "Chinese Burger", and it was also the year when it really took off. The number of stores nationwide exceeded 500; as of October 31, 2022, Tustin opened in 211 cities nationwide There are 2,890 stores.
In other words, Tustin has opened more than 2,000 stores in two years. The speed of opening a store is related to its positioning transformation, capital investment, and open franchise, but it is its strategy of targeting sinking markets that is most responsible.
According to the catering data query platform "Narrow Door Restaurant", nearly 80% of Tustin's stores are opened in second-tier cities and below. Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang are Tustin's most extensive provinces. At the same time, Tustin's location selection is also very particular, 62% of the stores are opened near the residences, and the rest are mostly township stores and the first floor of shopping malls.
In terms of franchising, Tustin only opens a single-store franchising cooperation method. For a standard store of 60 square meters, the total franchising fee is 369,800 yuan. Jiemian News pointed out that this is somewhat similar to Wallace, which has more than 16,000 stores, which is inseparable from its cooperative chain model of "store crowdfunding, employee partnership, and direct management".
Tustin is currently the top spot in Chinese burgers, but there are many Chinese burger brands similar to it.
In December 2022, the Chinese-style hamburger fast food brand "Chuzheng" received 3 million yuan in angel round financing, with a valuation of 30 million yuan. Interestingly, the founder and CEO of "Chu Zheng" once worked in KFC and Wallace.
Look at the store style of "Chuzheng", is it inexplicably familiar?
The Chinese hamburger brand "Dafangfang" launched the concept of "Western-style hamburger, oriental expression", and also worked hard on the hamburger embryo and filling.
"The dough is freshly delivered to the store, rolled by hand, temperature controlled, and then baked in the oven" "Incorporating classic Chinese ingredients such as Beijing roast duck and Chinese roast chicken"…
Listening to the "big and generous" product innovation, does it seem familiar?
Chinese-style hamburgers are quite fresh when taken individually, but when put together, the positioning and style seem to be similar. In addition to these companies, there are also Chinese burger players such as Hawkerji and Hamburg Champion.
It seems that there are many national trends, and there are too many Chinese burgers.
"Foreign fast food" is also localized, Hamburg should have been downgraded long ago
Chinese people eat hamburgers, but it only has a history of 20 to 30 years. KFC entered China in 1987, and McDonald's opened its first store in Shenzhen in 1990. At that time, it was still called "foreign fast food".
At that time, hamburgers, fried chicken, and French fries were not only a meal, but also represented an emerging lifestyle and imported culture, bringing a refreshing public space.
Up to now, Western-style fast food such as KFC and McDonald's has long been integrated into daily life, and it is one of the most convenient "worker packages" in the industrialized era. Of course, high-end brands such as Shake Shack and Five Guys, which cost more than 40 yuan for a burger, are still excluded.
To be daily, to sink, to have fun with young people, not to mention Chinese burgers, the menus of KFC and McDonald's are also constantly localized .
In May 2022, McDonald's launched the late-night snack platform "Mai Mai Night Market". Among them, "Wow Lotus Root Burger" and "Cai Cai Zhen Xiang Burger" add enough Chinese-style braised lotus root or dried prunes to the Western-style pan-seared chicken drumsticks.
Going back in time, the first Chinese meal McDonald's launched should be fried dough sticks in 2013.
In terms of Chinese fast food, KFC has a more sensitive sense of smell than McDonald’s. From the first old Beijing chicken roll, to recent years’ snail noodles, hot dry noodles, three delicacies buns, Sichuan spicy spicy skewers, everything is available for breakfast and supper.
When did "foreign fast food" really integrate into daily life? Entering the sinking market to open a store, updating the local menu in a variety of ways, or do middle school students get together at McDonald's and KFC to make up homework? In my opinion, it has to be the fancy wool of the whole network.
KFC's "Crazy Thursday" event was unveiled in 2018, and it gradually became popular across the Internet from the end of 2021, and reached its peak in August 2022. The "Crazy Four Literature" spontaneously created by netizens made people find a place to read O'Henry's novels pleasure.
KFC has Crazy Four, and McDonald's has a 12.9 yuan "1+1 set meal with your heart". However, at the beginning of 2023, there was bad news from McDonald's – the "poor ghost meal" was raised from 12.9 yuan to 13.9 yuan, and the colleagues who provided me with materials for writing Tustin were all beating their chests.
In addition, Domino's, Pizza Hut, Burger King and other brands also have limited-time promotions every week.
Chinese hamburger brands are naturally aware of this. They have launched discount packages on Douyin group buying and Douyin live broadcasts. The three-piece set can be won for less than 18 yuan. One trick is to eat it all over the world. Frequent promotions are always the way to win .
In fact, regardless of whether it is Chinese style or Western style, the hamburger that has been in China for more than 30 years has returned to the act of eating itself. After a moment of novelty, what we enjoy is still the cost-effective, high-fat, high-salt, high-calorie food. hapiness.
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