Give subsidies when you join! Lu Zhengyao’s pre-cooked dish entrepreneurial project once again started a money-burning war.

On January 10th.Prefabricated vegetable brand "After the opening of the first store of Tongjian Workshop in Beijing, Li Yingbo, the rotating CEO of Tongjian Technology, the parent company of the brand, disclosed in media interviews including interface news that since Tongjian Workshop began to recruit franchisees in January, it has accepted the signing of 2,500 interested franchisees, and it is expected to open 1-2 model stores in 15 cities before the Spring Festival.

Signing 2,500 intention franchisees means that Tongjian Workshop has inhaled 10,000 yuan of intention money, 20,000 yuan of brand management fee and 30,000 yuan of brand deposit from each franchisee (the deposit will be refunded at the end of the cooperation period).

Interface news was seen in the circle of friends of a recruiter in a tip workshop, and Liu Yiwei’s head was printed on Yi Labao propaganda paper. Liu Yiwei once hosted a cooking TV program and was also the chief product officer of Tip Tip Technology.

Tongjian Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., the main company of Tongjian Workshop, was established in August 2020. In August 2021, it launched the store’s business brand "Fun Faces" (later renamed "Fun Bayu"). In the same month, the company also completed the 550 million yuan Series A financing led by PCG Capital. The newly released tongue tip workshop is positioned by this company as a "new generation meal integrated solution provider".　

Li Yingbo told the interface news that with only a small amount of capital investment, franchisees can get 50% gross profit. In order to attract franchisees, the headquarters will provide large subsidies. Li Yingbo joined Tongue Technology in September, 2021. He once worked for Ogilvy & Mather, participated in the marketing subsidy wars in CAR Inc. and Luckin Coffee, and has rich practical experience in operating subsidies to win customers and social marketing.

"The most important thing in the single-store model is the number of new customers. We will support franchisees to find new customers quickly in their own way at the beginning of opening a store, such as borrowing communities and pushing places. When a franchisee develops a new customer offline and purchases more than 15 yuan, the headquarters will provide it with different subsidies between 7 and 15 yuan. Different cities have different levels and subsidies. For example, the subsidy for first-tier cities is 15 yuan. If franchisees find 2,000 new customers within two months, they can get a subsidy of 30,000 yuan. " Li Yingbo said.

According to the cost and investment calculated by Tongjian Technology for franchisees, take a class A stall store (with an area of 8-10 square meters) as an example, as long as there are 10 orders (the unit price of customers is about 50 yuan) every day, the balance of payments can be achieved. If Class A stores can attract 2,000 new customers, assuming that each new customer places an order once a month (the customer unit price is about 50 yuan), it means that the store has 67 orders every day on average, and the daily turnover is about 3,300 yuan, and the gross profit is 1,650 yuan.

Previously, a recruiter of Tongjian Workshop told the interface news that Tongjian Workshop has eight major city warehouses in China, which are located in Beijing, Nanjing, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Shenyang, Wuhan and Xi ‘an, and each region will be equipped with four "top chefs" to develop dishes and constantly update the menu. Every 50 franchisees have an operation manager, who is responsible for guidance, training and other affairs. Even novices can join to make money. If agents are introduced, there are other discounts.

It is worth noting that the subsidy war in Luckin Coffee’s early days will be copied to the practice of Tongjian Workshop, but the difference is that all the stores in Luckin Coffee in the early days were mainly direct stores, which required the brand to make real money investment, while Tongjian Workshop, which mainly developed and joined, needed more franchisees to bear the basic expenses such as stores and personnel. If you can’t get a stable passenger flow and keep attracting new customers to the store, franchisees will bear the losses.

Tip tip technology emphasizes that it is hoped that through the innovation of business model and the application of technology, the cost structure will be optimized, the customer experience will be subverted, and the pain point of consumers’ "cooking difficulty" will be fundamentally solved. Since March this year, Tongue Tip Workshop is also preparing to build momentum for brands and prefabricated dishes on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Tik Tok.

But in fact, in the online and offline retail channels such as Ding Dong Shopping, Box Horse, Yonghui, there are already rich pre-processed ingredients, semi-finished dishes and instant pre-cooked dishes that can be purchased, and the next hour’s home service is quite mature. Such enterprises rely on algorithms and mature supply chains, which can predict the quantity of orders in advance, and the purchasing experience of consumers may not be worse than that of the tip workshop.

On January 14th, Interface News visited the store of Tongjian Workshop in Changying District of Beijing, which covers an area of about 50-60 square meters. The store is equipped with freezer, console and other equipment. The equipment on the console is convenient for the clerk to provide customers with tasting and demonstrating the cooking methods of the products. Because the new store has a 30% discount on the purchase of goods, it has attracted many customers to place orders.

Although the prefabricated dish is the current outlet, a prefabricated dish practitioner who did not want to be named told the interface news that the prefabricated dish is more satisfied with the needs of consumers. Compared with the same hot new tea track, the gross profit of tea products is more impressive. The actual business situation of the tongue tip workshop after landing remains to be seen.

As a reference, the financial report of Suzhou Weizhixiang, known as the "first stock of pre-cooked dishes", shows that as of December 31, 2020, there were 1,117 franchise stores with a sales amount of 320 million yuan. It is equivalent to the annual sales of a single store of 286,500 yuan, and the average monthly output of a single store is 23,900 yuan. According to the gross profit of 40%, the average monthly gross profit is only 9,560 yuan.