2023 The first wave of "lobster fever", crayfish market strong recovery of billions!

With the arrival of spring, crayfish are quietly in the market after a winter's sleep.

At present, the national crayfish production is mainly from Hubei, Anhui and other places, it is understood that in early March, Hubei Qianjiang crayfish price has come to the highest level in history, between 50 and 130 yuan per jin, data show that the crayfish trading center daily trading volume is basically about 100 tons, with the temperature rising, in the spring Equinox season will welcome a small peak listing, The mass release of crayfish is expected in mid to late April.

Crayfish as the dominant summer food, in recent years, the market time is increasingly earlier, and this year as the first "lobster season" after the opening of the epidemic, the crayfish market has a faint boom trend.

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"Unaffordable" crayfish

From 2014 to 2015, China saw a boom in crayfish consumption. In 2016, the market size of China's crayfish was about 146.6 billion yuan, rising to 446.68 billion yuan in 2022.

From 2020, under the impact of the epidemic for three years, the crayfish market, like many offline catering industries, has been greatly hit. In May 2022, China's domestic crayfish consumption decreased by 30% compared with the same period last year, which was a big drop. In 2021, the number of restaurants serving crayfish across China decreased by 10.4 percent year-on-year.

As the epidemic becomes normal, the catering market gradually recovers. According to the consumption data of the Spring Festival, the average daily consumption scale of the 2023 Spring Festival increases by 66% compared with that of the 2019 Spring Festival (Portal: the daily queue of 4000+ catering, how long can the "revenge consumption" of the 2023 Spring Festival last). The crayfish market also ushered in the spring.

The price of crayfish can be seen from the market price of aquatic products. Li Lindu, founder of Fallen Shrimp, which has layout of supply chain and terminal retail, told the new chain of catering that the price of Yinshi crayfish has come to a high level in March. At that time, the price of ordinary medium shrimp is about 40 yuan, and the price of two shrimp is as high as 100 yuan per jin. Even shrimp shoots have risen to 30-40 yuan; Gan Hao, founder of Lao Gan Family, also revealed that the cost of the 789 crayfish sold in his stores is more than 80 yuan, and even 90 yuan at the most expensive time.

When the cost goes up, the price of the sales terminal will naturally not be low. A search on Meituan Takeout shows that the price of ordinary spicy crayfish ranges from 60 to 70 yuan per catty, and there are many different kinds of crayfish with prices pushing into three figures.

Soaring prices can't stop diners from embracing their first meal of crayfish in 2023. Jiang Yi, founder of Haoshrimp Chuanchuan, revealed to the new restaurant chain that at present, the unit price of Haoshrimp Chuanchuan Taikoo Li store can reach the level of 10-20,000 yuan. "Lao Gan Jia" also said that due to the hot market, the current supply chain has been unable to meet the needs of the store sales, some crayfish also need to be charged high prices in the market to meet customer demand.

Li Lindu, founder of the "Fallen Shrimp", told the restaurant chain that according to the data available so far, sales of fallen shrimp increased by 28 percent in January 2023 compared with January last year, which is the same as in 2019 before the pandemic.

Although the warm spring breeze has awakened the taste buds of crayfish, not many people rush to satisfy their hunger before the first wave of crayfish comes out. On the one hand, lobster prices are not cost-effective at this time, and on the other hand, March is not the prime time to eat late at night, so it is not "crayfish social time".

According to Jiang, seven to eight of them will turn over in May or June, when crayfish are at their peak.

Three seasons a year? How do you make more money selling crayfish

As a highly seasonal single product, crayfish, on the one hand, is trapped in the production mainly concentrated in summer, and on the other hand, it is confined to the night snack scene, and the gap between off-peak and peak seasons is also obvious.

1. Complementary seasons, deep cultivation flavor type, meal + scene + drink play upgrade

In fact, most crayfish merchants in the market do not only sell crayfish. Large-sized restaurant merchants in the night snack scene usually choose seasonal complementary dishes or night snack items with similar consumption scenes for collocation.

Take Haoshrimp Chuanchuan as an example. At present, Haoshrimp Chuanchuan cultivates crayfish products deeply, but it is affected by the seasons. Jiang Yi often chooses to close his store in winter. But this year, Jiang said, the store plans to sell new beef bones around September as a complementary product for autumn and winter.

"We sell crayfish all year round," Gan Hao, founder of the restaurant, said in an interview. "But in winter, the cost is high and the gross profit margin is lower. We mainly rely on tea, barbecue and Jianghu dishes to make high profit."

Gan Hao believes that the crayfish category single is relatively single. Therefore, in addition to serving Jianghu dishes and barbecue, Lao Gan's family also innovates some high appearance level desserts and tea drinks to attract young people to eat, clock in and spread.

Bawang shrimp founder Yuan Ye also said that this year will be in the regular cold dishes, marinated dishes, barbecue on the basis of several Jianghu dishes to try. At the same time, Bawang shrimp has made new attempts and optimization on the basis of the original classic in terms of flavor type this year.

"Especially when the crayfish industry has entered a period of stable development, the annual crayfish opening time is also a time to test everyone's judgment on the market and restart innovation." Mr Yuan said.

Even this year, many restaurants in Chengdu's night food scene have integrated with the camping style, and crayfish has also become a popular dish during this period.

In this regard, Yuan Ye thinks: crayfish do fusion is a very routine thing. Because crayfish itself has the property of Internet celebrity product, when it is tried with the camping style, barbecue and all kinds of night snacks favored by young people, the propagation property of Internet celebrity is doubled.

2. Deep cultivation of community stores, complementary take-out food

In the past three years, due to the rapid development of the food delivery industry due to epidemic prevention and control and other reasons, many consumers have formed the habit of taking delivery. Although consumers have retaliatory consumption in stores after the outbreak of the epidemic, retaliatory consumption will eventually return to the right track after a short-term concentrated outbreak, and the wide range of delivery radiated by community stores can still take up at least half of the revenue of stores.

The consumption scene of degenerate shrimp tends to be night market scene. From this point of view, winter is the off-season compared with summer. "Corrupted Shrimp values the stability of its stores very much," Li told the new restaurant chain. "Our revenue difference in the off-peak season will not exceed 60 percent. Besides in-store meals, delivery revenue accounts for a large proportion of revenue."

In fact, delivery has already become an important source of revenue for crayfish brands, including the GO store of Songgo Braised prawns and the elder Gump's online crayfish delivery brand, Gump Brother Crayfish.

In winter, when the social scene shifts away from the night market, sit-down food and takeout can complement each other. On the other hand, low-service neighborhood stores require relatively less pressure on rent and labor costs, and pose less operational risk in the off-season.

Li Lindu said, "Most of our stores have been open for more than three years, six or seven years, which means most of our stores were opened before the epidemic and have experienced the test of the epidemic.

(some traditional crayfish shop) peak season may be particularly high single volume, water is particularly large, a month can do 500,000-1 million, but in the off-season a month may only do 50,000, that in this case, it corresponds to the rent and labor, and not so much flexibility, the peak season required store area of 500 square meters, off-season is impossible to shrink it to 50 square meters. As a result, traditional crawfish stores are extremely likely to experience an upside down cost during the off-season."

3. Supply chain ensures supply and demand, so that the price can be stable

Although community stores are small in scale and have less rent and labor costs than large stores, they have higher requirements on the number of stores and supply chain.

For example, there are nearly 600 stores in the country, which radiates to a wider range of delivery. The supply chain that supports the huge scale of the fallen shrimp brand not only meets the needs of the brand itself, but also provides service to B-end customers.

According to Li Lindu, although the cost of lobster has fluctuated in recent years, thanks to a complete supply chain system, the price of corrupted shrimp products can always fluctuate within 10 percent.

A long-term chain brand, stable price basis, is the support of the supply chain. KFC, McDonald's will not fluctuate because of the price of chicken, hamburger prices fluctuate with it. And crayfish are in it for the long haul.

Source: Catering new chain, this article is intended to exchange and share, if there is infringement please contact delete