With the establishment of Douyin live broadcast room, how does the "Chinese hamburger" Tustin attract young people?

Tustin Burger is a Chinese burger brand. After 11 years of development, it has grown to a small scale. It has also begun to enter first-tier cities. How did it grow to its current scale and what risks does Tustin need to face? This article will answer your questions.

Tustin began to expand into first-tier cities.

Recently, the news that Tustin opened a store in Beijing has been circulating on social platforms, and many netizens have posted photos of themselves checking in. Tustin's social influence is reflected on various platforms, with more than 50,000 related notes on Xiaohongshu, and multiple evaluation videos on Bilibili with millions of views. Tustin also won the top sales list of local life group buying on Douyin.

What is the key to Tustin's popularity among young people? What is its strategy for local life on TikTok?

1. Differentiate the brand through “Chinese characteristics”

In fact, Tustin is not a new restaurant brand established in the past two years, but has a history of 11 years.

As early as 2012, Wei Youchun founded Tustin in Nanchang, Jiangxi. At the beginning, Tustin did not take hamburgers as its flagship product, but focused on Chinese-style pizza, using Chinese dishes such as Peking duck, preserved vegetable braised pork, and pepper fried pork to replace Western cheese, diced meat, diced vegetables, pizza sauce, cheese and other ingredients, and launched the slogan of "on-site hand-made, freshly baked in an open oven, only selling fresh pizza every day".

At that time, pizza brands such as Pizza Hut and Domino's were dividing the Chinese mainland market, and the pizza industry had become a red ocean. Although Tustin had some product innovations, it did not attract much attention in the market.

In 2017, the number of Tustin stores was still less than 100, and business was lukewarm. Wei Youchun, who had run Wallace, led Tustin to gradually shift to hamburger products, forming a dual-category product model of "hamburgers + pizza".

Tustin also made Chinese-style innovations in its hamburger products. In addition to replacing hamburger sandwiches with Chinese dishes such as Peking duck and pork with preserved vegetables, Tustin also made innovations in burger dough, launching "freshly baked burger dough" and displaying the hand-rolled dough and on-site baking process in the store's open-air operation room, completely differentiating its products. This slightly novel operation and taste have gradually attracted the attention of the market.

In 2019, Tustin changed its brand positioning, made hamburgers its main business, put forward the slogan of "Super Burger", and successively registered trademarks such as "Tustin Super Burger Freshly Baked", "Tustin National Trend Burger", and "Tustin Chinese Burger". The tone of the national trend hamburger was thus formed.

As the store model was further improved, the number of Tustin stores began to grow rapidly. In 2019, the number of Tustin stores exceeded 100, and in 2020 it exceeded 500.

Tustin ushered in an important watershed in its development in 2020. This year, Tustin adjusted the positioning of the "super burger" to the "Chinese burger" and launched the "Eastern Taste Awakening Plan" in the same year, further emphasizing the concept of "Sinicization".

Image source network

In order to match the "Chinese burger", Tustin has identified the "national trend" in brand positioning and store style. For example, its brand logo is a red and white Chinese lion dance, the store decoration style and product packaging are mainly red, and even the slogan has become "Chinese stomach, love Chinese burger", implementing the "national trend" to the end.

Compared with Tustin's "super hamburger" brand positioning and "green and white"-based brand visual image before 2020, today's "red national trend" is more in line with the preferences of Chinese people in terms of visual aesthetics and brand cognition. This also allows Tustin to differentiate its brand and make it memorable, increasing the topic and spread of the Tustin brand. The related brand content has become popular on social platforms, which also gives the brand certain social attributes.

The rise in brand popularity has also attracted capital. In 2021, Tustin received investment from Buhuo Ventures and Source Code Capital, and the store expansion speed was further accelerated. The number of stores reached 1,000+ that year, and branches were established in nine cities in China. In 2022, the number of Tustin stores officially exceeded 2,000. At present, Tustin has 4,783 stores across the country, becoming the fourth largest hamburger fast food brand in terms of store number after Wallace, KFC, and McDonald's.

It is worth mentioning that Tustin takes the affordable route and avoids direct competition with other hamburger brands in terms of price. In terms of store location, Tustin adopts the strategy of "surrounding the city from the countryside", first building brand awareness in the sinking market and preparing for entering the first-tier cities.

According to the data from Zhaimen Canyan, nearly half of Tustin’s current stores are located in third-tier and lower cities, 44% are located in second-tier and new first-tier cities, less than 7% are in first-tier cities, and there are less than 50 stores in shopping malls. Now, Tustin has opened a store in Beijing, further expanding its offline presence, and Tustin’s mature online operation model has also brought certain growth to the brand.

2. Focus on Douyin to seize the local life traffic dividend

Tustin has set up brand accounts on multiple platforms including TikTok, Bilibili, and Xiaohongshu to publish brand activities and updates, further expanding its online influence.

Based on thousands of offline stores, Tustin focuses its online operations on local life. Tustin entered the market early when Douyin's local life business exploded, and invested a lot of marketing resources in Douyin, focusing on live streaming and Douyin group buying. It is understood that in August last year, Tustin already had a team of more than 20 people specializing in Douyin operations.

At present, Tustin’s Douyin brand accounts include @Tustin China Hamburger, @Tustin (China Hamburger) Food Bureau, @Tustin (China Hamburger) Welfare Club, @Tustin (China Hamburger) National Trend Club, etc. In addition, there are also dozens of local brand accounts.

Image source: TikTok screenshot

Tustin's several brand accounts have different styles. For example, @托斯汀(中国哈姆)美食局 has 1.92 million followers, the highest number of followers among all accounts. The short video content of this account focuses on plots and jokes, including "Enjoy the Chinese stomach", "Tustin's work day", and "New Minnan-style burgers", with the aim of strengthening consumers' awareness of the brand; @托斯汀(中国哈姆)福利社's short video content focuses on product introductions and food direct shots, using food to attract interested users; @托斯汀(中国哈姆)国潮社 places more emphasis on live content, and the video is mainly live slices.

It is worth mentioning that these accounts will do live broadcasts for a long time, often in the form of relay broadcasts, basically covering the entire day. As long as a user is interested in Tustin, he can enter the live broadcast room, and almost no traffic is wasted. After users buy a package on Douyin, they can go to an offline store to redeem it.

Judging from the live broadcast data, Tustin's online operations are quite effective. For example, @Tustin (Chinese Hamburger) Food Bureau's live broadcast had nearly 2,000 online viewers, and multiple product links in the live broadcast room were sold out, among which the signature spicy chicken leg burger sold more than 100,000 units. Tustin's group purchase results are also quite impressive. Among the 98 group purchase products on this account, the "Double Burger Thick Potato Spicy Wings 6-piece Set" and "Super Value Popular 5-piece Set" sold millions of units.

Image source: Tik Tok screenshot

A large number of offline stores, lower product pricing, and the traffic dividend of Douyin's early local life have all contributed to Tustin's impressive performance. Today, Tustin's Douyin live streaming has become professional and normalized, becoming a new revenue channel for Tustin.

3. Problems behind the popularity

Currently, Tustin has nearly 4,800 stores, and the reason why Tustin can expand rapidly is the franchising system.

However, the threshold for joining Tustin is not low. According to the official website, including the franchise fee, deposit, brand usage fee, etc., the investment for a standard store of 65 square meters is more than 450,000 yuan. Adding the store rental transfer fee, etc., the estimated investment for the whole store is about 700,000 yuan, which is already at a medium-to-high level in the catering industry.

Some netizens calculated that if the monthly revenue is 180,000 yuan and the gross profit margin is 50%, the monthly gross profit is 90,000 yuan. After deducting labor costs, store rent and other expenses, the monthly net profit can reach 20,000 yuan, and the investment of 700,000 yuan can only be recovered in about 3 years.

Image source: Xiaohongshu screenshot

Not only that, Tustin has relaxed its control over competition with franchisees and no longer restricts franchisees' location selection, which has increased competition in popular locations. Many people speculate that Tustin is suspected of focusing on marketing to make money.

In addition, during the acceleration process, Tustin also had many problems. According to the Black Cat complaint platform, the cumulative number of complaints about Tustin burgers has reached 1,679, involving food safety, activity mechanism, service attitude and other aspects.

Image source: Black Cat Complaint Platform

In general, Tustin has secured a place in the catering market through its differentiated products and brand characteristics. A certain market presence and operational experience have also laid the foundation for Tustin to expand into first-tier cities. How to gain a foothold in first-tier cities is the key point that Tustin needs to think about.

Author: Aries

WeChat public account: TopKlout