Capital market for a long time ushered in a chain catering enterprises. On December 20, Xiaoyuan was officially listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, opening at HK $9.00 / share, up 5.88%. As of the close, the share price was HK $9.66 / share, up 14%, with a total market value of HK $11.4 billion.
Compared with the high chain rate of Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Guangdong cuisine and other cuisines, the small garden is the main Anhui cuisine, the price is 50 yuan ~ 100 yuan of affordable catering, the current store scale of more than 640, are direct mode.
Compared with the “Haidilao” who mainly attack the first and second-tier cities, the small garden that breaks out from the sinking market, 40% of the stores are currently distributed in the third-tier and below cities, and nearly 30% of the stores are distributed in the new first-tier cities.
With 2020 as the node, from A shares to Hong Kong shares, catering companies rush to IPO, there are fellow chicken, rural base and old aunt uncle known to the outside world, the “Chinese fast food three giants”, there are also Yang Guofu malatang, and Fu Lo Mein ten thousand store scale chain catering brands.
Compared with the IPO of Haidilao, Xiabu Xiabu and other chain catering brands a few years ago, the IPO of this batch of catering companies is not smooth, and few of them successfully landed, such as the initial generation of “net red” green tea restaurant, is still trapped in the fourth impact of the listing of twists and turns.
Three years into the account of more than 10 billion small vegetable garden, can out of the development of chain catering enterprises dilemma?
The small vegetable garden with a market value of 10 billion represents a listed catering enterprise spawned by capital. Since 2023, Jiahua Capital has invested 500 million yuan in Xiaoyuan for two consecutive rounds, becoming the only external institutional shareholder of Xiaoyuan before its listing. From the time point of view, when the small garden is favored by capital, catering enterprises are cold in the primary and secondary markets.
In terms of financing amount, Red Food data show that the total financing disclosed in the first half of 2023 was only 5.49 billion yuan, a decrease of 63.0% compared with the same period in 2022.
Since 2020, the catering enterprises that have piled up ipos have also mostly ended in “prospectus failure” or “termination of listing”, and it is generally believed that the listing of catering enterprises has almost entered the “hell mode”, and the difficulty index has increased sharply.
A catering practitioner told the author that the last wave of listing time of catering enterprises was concentrated from 2014 to 2018, and Xiabu Xiabu, Haidilao and other catering enterprises successively landed in Hong Kong stocks. After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, catering enterprises have opened a new wave of listing, and the reason behind it is that catering enterprises urgently need to go to the capital market to supplement cash flow, and many investment institutions involved in investing in catering enterprises are also facing the withdrawal pressure of fund expiration.
This round of catering cluster sprint to hit a peak number of listings. According to Sino-Singapore Economics & Weft, before the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the number of Chinese catering companies listed was only 17, and from the first listed Xi ‘an Diet in 1997, the average listing was less than one a year. In contrast, only in the first half of 2022, there have been ten catering enterprises hit the market.
A catering practitioner told the author that Huizhou cuisine is currently not as well-known and chain rate as Sichuan cuisine, Hunan cuisine, Guangdong cuisine and other cuisines in the country, and there is no competitive product of the same level in the market, and it is a good time to seize the market.
The above practitioners said that in the store expansion mode, the small garden and Haidilao “mentoring system” is very similar, generally by the chef as the store manager, training apprentices, and then let mature apprentices take over the old store, the master to open up new stores and take away part of the old store dividends as “culture fees”, its advantage is to solve the problem of Huizhou chefs and store managers difficult to find. But at the same time, if you do not open a shop or open a shop slowly, it will also cause the loss of trained talents.
At present, the number of stores in Jiangsu and Anhui provinces accounts for more than 60%, and is concentrated in the sinking market, and the future is bound to expand to a second-tier city to build brand awareness, and will face the pressure of rising rent and labor costs.
Compared with an aggressive store opening program, Little Garden is struggling with declining same-store sales. According to the prospectus, from January to August this year, compared with the same period in 2023, the same-store sales of small garden stores decreased by 11.4%, and the operating profit margin at the store level fell from 21.3% to 17.8%. The turnover rate has also declined, with the overall turnover rate from January to August this year at 3.1 times/day, compared with 3.4 times/day in the same period last year.
The same as other catering enterprises, the small garden is almost involved in the expansion of sub-brands, going to sea and other catering enterprises to seek new growth paths, but more than 98% of its current income is still highly dependent on the small garden master brand.
The brands such as “Guandi”, “Fuxing Lou” and “Dish hand” created by the small garden respectively correspond to higher-end banquet scenes and more sunken community canthouses, but the current effect is little.
In the “winter” of catering listing, the small garden that first knocked on the door of the Hong Kong Stock exchange is also facing new challenges.
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