rebirth from small pockets

The current number of ideal fried chicken stores is running towards one hundred stores at a very rapid rate.

The year 1999 is only half over. If we continue to develop at this rate, Chen Li's previous plan of having 200 branches within this year can be easily completed.

In fact, what hinders the development of an ideal fried chicken restaurant is no longer a financial issue, but factors such as store location and employee training.

When Chen Li did not have enough funds, the talent reserve he had vigorously developed had been exhausted by the expansion speed of Ideal Fried Chicken.

But Chen Li is still unwilling to give in on this issue~!

According to Chen Li's regulations, Ideal Fried Chicken employees need at least nearly a month of training before they can take up the job, and after taking up the job, they must be familiarized with the work by a "master" from the store.

However, as the expansion of Ideal Fried Chicken is getting faster and faster, Ideal Fried Chicken seems to be a bit weak in terms of talent training.

But even so, Chen Li would rather slow down the expansion than just recruit a few people and open a store directly.

Chen Li knew very well that if he let go of this hole, the expansion speed of Ideal Fried Chicken would definitely speed up again, but that would actually be harmful to Ideal Fried Chicken.

Some things will have a big impact in a subtle way.

Sometimes even a small operational problem may cause huge harm to the corporate brand.

This is also the reason why Chenli does not open up franchise channels like other chain brands.

Chen Li would rather make money and then open a branch than let people join him directly.

In Chen Li's memory, almost no chain food companies that open up franchises have a good ending.

The purpose of opening up franchises is to allow companies to gain benefits quickly while expanding their brand influence and occupying as much market share as possible.

But franchising is a double-edged sword. Instead of leaving the establishment of brand value in the hands of a bunch of "outsiders", Chen Li would rather believe in himself.

Although this does not guarantee that problems will not occur, even if problems occur, the company can rectify them in time.

Unlike those franchise stores, once a certain point is reached, these people will not listen to your company at all.

As long as you can earn more profits, it doesn't matter even if it hurts the value of the corporate brand.

After all, for them, making money is the last word, and corporate brands and other things are closely related to them.

Just like some chain food companies in the previous life, the company will definitely not allow its employees and franchisees to do things that harm the brand value.

But in fact, those franchisees don’t care about you at all.

They don’t care about gutter oil, expired ingredients, food hygiene, etc. Anyway, as long as they can make more money, they don’t dare to do it.

Of course~ This does not mean that such problems will not occur in directly operated stores, but it is relatively less likely to occur.

Anyway, Ideal Fried Chicken was not short of money, so Chen Li simply gave up on joining the franchise.

In this way, although the development speed of Ideal Fried Chicken is slower than that of chain companies that open thousands of branches in one or two years, it is also more stable.

Moreover, Ideal Fried Chicken can also use some of the extra money to purchase shops.

In this way, even if the fried chicken shop itself does not make any money, it will still make a huge profit based on the increase in the value of the store.

It's just that doing this~ does have certain limitations on the speed of development.

In other words, Chen Lizhi spent two million US dollars here, otherwise the future development of Ideal Fried Chicken will definitely be greatly restricted.

I have to say that businessmen are a very smart group!

Ideal Fried Chicken officially opened its first store in October last year, less than a year ago.

But there are already smart businessmen who have found business opportunities from the ideal fried chicken model.

In fact, some smart people in China sensed business opportunities as early as KFC and McDonald's entered the domestic market.

After all, this kind of foreign fast food is so expensive, but there are still so many people queuing up to eat it. If no one pays attention to this business, it will definitely be impossible.

So actually, before the rise of Ideal Fried Chicken, similar fried chicken shops appeared one after another in the country.

Of course~ There are actually people in China who want to compete with KFC and McDonald’s, such as Dicos!

Speaking of Dicos, many people don’t know that the boss behind this company is Chinese.

In fact, Dicos was considered a foreign fast food at the beginning, and it entered the Chinese market in 1994.

However, in 1996, Dicos was acquired by a company in Taiwan Province.

And this company has another product that is famous in China.

Master Kong!

Many people may not have thought that Dicos and Master Kong are actually from the same family, right?

In fact, in the early days, Dicos wanted to compete with KFC and McDonald's in its development.

At that time, Dicos was ready to do something big, so it opened dozens of directly-operated stores in more than ten economically developed cities in China.

At that time, Dicos was so confident that it even opened its store next to KFC and McDonald's.

It's a pity that Dix failed later, and it was a pretty miserable defeat.

It is said that Dicos lost tens of millions in Yanjing alone!

Industry insiders at the time described it as “blooming everywhere and bruises all over the place”!

After experiencing a tragic failure, Dicos re-planned its strategic approach.

They clearly understood that it was obviously not a wise move to go head-to-head with industry giants such as KFC and McDonald's, so they decided to avoid their competition and turn their attention to small and medium-sized cities in the second and third tiers and below.

This is actually the "development of the sinking market" that became very popular later, also known as "rural areas surrounding cities".

Also making this choice was Splatoon, who later became famous.

Whether it is Dicos or Splatoon, they naturally have their reasons for choosing such a development plan.

Compared with those big cities, small cities have great market potential, low rent and labor costs, and lack of direct competitors.

It was in these small cities where there was no competition from industry giants that the continued development of Dicos and Splatoon took place.

However, both Dicos and later Splatoon are relatively large-scale chain companies in the industry.

Well, the domestic and foreign fast food industry is also filled with various fried chicken restaurants.

In fact, not long after foreign fast food entered the domestic market, its booming business attracted the first batch of "crab-eating" businessmen.

These merchants launched similar crispy fried chicken and drinks immediately, which can be regarded as the first dividend of "foreign fast food".

However, although these small shops have made a lot of money because of "foreign fast food", due to various reasons, the scale of development is extremely limited.

It was precisely because of this that Chen Li decided to start his first business after leaving his hometown as a fried chicken restaurant.

The reason why I chose fried chicken was naturally because of its extremely high profits.

Thus ~ the ideal chain fried chicken is now available!

But also, because of the ideal fried chicken, it naturally attracted the attention of those "smart people".

So, a competitor to Ideal Fried Chicken appeared.

Please note that it is not a competitor of KFC, McDonald’s, or even Dicos, but a competitor of Ideal Fried Chicken.

In fact, if Ideal Fried Chicken follows the development path of KFC, McDonald's or even Dicos, it will have no competitors.

After all, the investment philosophy of these companies is there, and they can't make it work without some capital.

Even if you have capital, you might end up like Dicos and end up at your grandma's house with a loss.

But Ideal Fried Chicken is different. A small Ideal Fried Chicken restaurant only requires an investment of less than 100,000 yuan.

Even if it is only 1999, there are still many people who can afford this kind of investment.

Ever since last year, some people have begun to imitate Ideal Fried Chicken.

In the beginning, these people were still having petty quarrels, and Chen Li didn't take them to heart at all.

Especially when Chen Li went to inspect it, no matter whether it was the hygiene of the store, the craftsmanship of the employees, or the quality of the ingredients, these people could not compare with Ideal Fried Chicken.

There are even some bad merchants whose chicken legs are smelly. Facing such competitors, Chen Li said he has no pressure.

But what can I say? No matter which industry there are some "idiots", there are also really smart people.

No, there are two fried chicken restaurants. They are not eager for quick success like some idiots, nor are they willing to accept the status quo like most people.

They learned the operating model of Ideal Fried Chicken, and while controlling the quality of their products, they steadily began to expand.

These people are very smart~ They did not directly compete with Ideal Fried Chicken, but chose a place where Ideal Fried Chicken’s business territory has not yet expanded.

For example, Ideal Fried Chicken is currently not involved in primary and secondary schools and large communities.

In fact, these places all belong to the future business territory of Ideal Fried Chicken. However, it is obviously impossible for the market to be empty and wait for Ideal Fried Chicken to slowly develop.

So Ideal Fried Chicken now faces a choice!

Otherwise, continue to accelerate the pace of expansion and quickly occupy the corresponding market share.

Either way, choose to play it slow and ignore those competitors.

The first choice is actually Chen Li’s earliest development plan for Ideal Fried Chicken.

The reason why he asked Su Mei and Zhou Xiaoli to become shareholders in the first place was actually to speed up the development of Ideal Fried Chicken.

But what Chen Li didn't expect was that he quickly solved the funding problem through the Y2K bug.

Although most of the money he earned was "swindled" away by the system, the remaining "little money" was actually enough to develop Ideal Fried Chicken.

Later, the development speed of Ideal Fried Chicken did increase very quickly, and the original goal of opening 200 branches within this year was completely without any problems.

However, something unexpected happened. A competitor of Ideal Fried Chicken found investment from nowhere, and this fried chicken chain had already opened thirty-six stores before the end of June.

Home branch.

It would be fine if it were just this one company. After all, its development scale is far less than that of Ideal Fried Chicken, and the investment it can attract is actually limited.

Even though it has opened 36 branches at one time, its impact on Ideal Fried Chicken is actually very limited. Ideal Fried Chicken is fully confident in defeating this competitor. At most, it will be a little troublesome.

But there is an old saying that goes “Misfortune never comes singly”!

Another competitor of Ideal Fried Chicken was inexplicably acquired by a food company that had only been founded for less than half a month.

And according to the information Zhou Xiaoli gathered, this competitor turned out to be several of Zhou Bowen's "old friends"!

Speaking of which, this person who entered the fried chicken circle has something to do with Zhou Xiaoli.

Although Zhou Xiaoli's investment in Ideal Fried Chicken relied more on "luck", this did not prevent Zhou Bowen from treating it as a source of conversation.

Hmm~ To put it simply, Zhou Bowen has a somewhat "daughter-slave" mentality.

The eldest lady has made some achievements this week, and Zhou Bowen naturally wants to show off in front of some old friends.

And who are Zhou Bowen’s old friends? They are all veterans in the shopping mall!

Although everyone was complimentary and polite on the surface, some people still sensed business opportunities from Zhou Bowen's showing off.

And after some investigation, someone discovered that this humble fried chicken industry actually had something going on.

As mentioned before, the investment in companies such as KFC and McDonald's is too huge. It is said that the franchise deposit alone starts in the millions.

In addition to the store space, decoration, labor, etc., if you want to open such a fast food restaurant, the investment is not small.

But the model of Ideal Fried Chicken is different. It invests less in a single store and recovers costs quickly. Although the profit is not as good as that of KFC and McDonald's, it wins because of its large quantity.

One store can earn 10,000 to 20,000 yuan a month, but what about 10 to 100 stores?

The most critical thing is that the investment in a single store is small, which means that there is not so much pressure on the demand for funds.

So, after careful consideration, several old friends of Zhou Bowen formed a partnership to start a food company.

They first acquired a small fried chicken chain store that already had several branches, and then relied on their technology and the reputation they had accumulated before to prepare to make a big splash in the fried chicken industry.

In fact, compared to the previous competitor, this company's current development scale is not large, but Chen Li is very clear that the threat of this competitor is much greater than the former.

Even though the other party's current development is not very good, in fact the other party needs money, resources, and connections.

If you ask them to compete with KFC and McDonald's, they will definitely not go, but Ideal Fried Chicken ~ that's another matter.

In their eyes, Chen Li is just a young man with some abilities.

Compared with industry giants like KFC and McDonald's, Chen Li, a young man with some skills, is not worth mentioning.

So now, in the fried chicken shops in Yanjing City, a situation of three chickens competing for hegemony is gradually forming.

How to break out of this situation is what Chen Li needs to consider next.