Rumors are flying everywhere, is the originator of internet celebrity desserts really going to be out of fashion?

Do you still remember the desserts like Mango Sago, Snow White Black Glutinous Rice, and Durian Pancake? How did it become a "memories" of the 80s and 90s generation? Let's take a look at the answer given by the author.

The rumor that "Honeymoon Dessert is in danger" continued to circulate for several days.

According to Southern Metropolis Daily, many consumers have recently reported that the well-known dessert chain brand "Honeymoon Dessert" has started to close stores in their cities, and consumers' previous top-up amounts cannot be refunded. Southern Metropolis Daily reporters called Honeymoon Dessert's customer service hotline and sent an email to the official email address to inquire.

"We have not received any complaints about non-refunds after store closures. As for refunds, as long as they have been registered, we will refund them in about 30 working days. As long as they apply, we will refund them." On March 13, the customer service of Honeymoon Dessert responded to a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, saying, "Our Honeymoon Dessert account will not be cancelled after the store closures. Even if the consumer applies for cancellation, it will not be cancelled. In the case of account balance being cleared, it will be cleared a few working days after the consumer applies for a refund."

On March 18, Honeymoon Desserts issued a statement saying that the content about consumers' "prepayments cannot be refunded and accounts are cancelled" is completely inconsistent with the facts, and the company strictly follows national laws in handling the prepayment refund process. At the same time, Honeymoon said that the company's operations are normal and it will open 38 new stores in 2023. In 2024, the company will continue to expand the scale of store openings, with no less than 50 new stores in the mainland, and continue to open global franchises.

However, netizens on Xiaohongshu do not believe what Honeymoon Desserts said. Since 2022, Honeymoon Desserts in Ningbo, Xuzhou, Shijiazhuang and other places have "said goodbye", leaving members with complaints. Many consumers have deep concerns about Honeymoon Desserts, the originator of the Internet celebrity dessert that carries childhood memories.

From prosperity to decline, what is the reason for the decline of Honeymoon Desserts? Is it Honeymoon Desserts’ own failure or a common problem in the entire dessert industry? Is the dessert industry really a “sweet burden”?

1. Track: neither wide nor high

Is dessert a good market? According to New Retail Business Review, no.

The core problems of the dessert track: one is that the width is not enough, and the other is that the height is not enough.

Let’s talk about width first.

Compared to coffee and milk tea, desserts do not have such a wide audience. There are many people who drink coffee and milk tea every day, but there are only a handful of people who must eat desserts every day.

In recent years, Honeymoon's brand potential has gradually declined. What's more terrible is that coffee and milk tea shops have extended their tentacles into the field of desserts. On the menus of brands such as Heytea, Starbucks, and Lelecha, desserts have begun to become an important part of the new product SKUs, and "drinkable desserts" such as Seven Sweets have also sprung up on the market. On Xiaohongshu, people's discussion of Heytea ice cream and Starbucks cakes is much more heated than that of "professionally trained" dessert shops like Honeymoon.

"Although I love desserts, I don't have to go to a dessert shop." Karren, born in 1994, is a typical dessert-obsessed girl. She not only buys desserts, but also makes them herself. But even so, she still doesn't side with dessert shops over coffee shops.

"Unless you are particularly fond of a certain dessert brand or product, most people would rather go to a cafe for afternoon tea. In addition, coffee shops are more suitable for chatting with people, negotiating work, working alone, etc. There are many more consumption scenarios than dessert shops. It is not strange for a person to work overtime in a coffee shop with a laptop, but it is still a bit strange to work overtime in a dessert shop."

Next is the height.

Desserts are not a very technically difficult culinary category. Of course, a small part of the cooking process is relatively complicated, but overall, the key to whether a dessert is delicious is whether the raw materials are good enough.

“Based on my own experience in making desserts, as long as the raw materials are of high quality and not too bad, the taste will be good.” Although this is just Karren’s experience, in fact, the difference in taste between different dessert brands is mostly due to differences in raw materials rather than the chef’s skills.

Therefore, as long as you are in this track, no matter whether you are the leader or not, you cannot say that you have much of a moat, and your brand value is obviously lower than that of other sub-tracks.

In addition, in the current situation of consumption downgrade, it is very difficult for dessert shops to raise prices. On the one hand, if they want to use high-quality ingredients, the cost is bound to be high; on the other hand, the selling price cannot be raised, so there is no need to say more about the height of the dessert shop track.

Choosing the dessert track may mean turning on the hard mode from the beginning.

2. Self-help: Although there are many medicines, it is difficult to find a good prescription

Before Honeymoon, the exact same problem also occurred in Hui Lau Shan, another Hong Kong-style dessert shop. Last year, after Hui Lau Shan officially closed down, not only did consumers have difficulty getting refunds, but even more outrageously, the company also enabled the operation of directly clearing deposits. To this day, there are still many complaints about Hui Lau Shan's "unfinished" projects on the Black Cat complaint website.

From gyms to beauty salons, from barbershops to chain restaurants, the problems related to prepaid cards have never stopped. From the perspective of merchants, prepaid cards are indeed not a must. But setting up prepaid cards is obviously a choice that has more advantages than disadvantages for merchants.

Firstly, the prepaid money from customers can be used in advance as the company's cash flow; secondly, the recharge model invisibly binds merchants and consumers, forming a certain degree of stickiness, which is also more conducive to increasing the consumption frequency of rechargers.

There is no doubt that whether Honeymoon Dessert can survive this difficult time, prepaid cards will continue to play the main theme in the catering industry. The only difference is that Honeymoon Dessert may find it difficult to build its own capital pool with this model.

Seeing that the company was already in crisis, Man Kee couldn't say that it wasn't working hard.

The operations are as fierce as a tiger, and there have been many combination punches in recent years. Unfortunately, it seems that these operations are only temporary solutions and do not address the root cause.

First comes marketing.

In order to make up for the lack of customer flow during off-peak hours, Honeymoon Dessert launched the "48 yuan all-you-can-eat" event from 11:00 to 13:00 last year. When the event was first launched, Honeymoon Dessert's morning customer flow surged by more than 10 times. However, such data is obviously untrue. Can the short-term surge in morning customer flow be converted into long-term, stable customer flow? The possibility was not high from the beginning.

Image source: Honeymoon Dessert official Weibo

11:00~13:00 is the time period for most consumers to choose lunch, which does not leave much room for dessert. Even for the pig girls who have one stomach for dinner and one for dessert, most of them choose dessert during afternoon tea and evening hours.

On the other hand, although desserts are suitable for all ages, eating too much in a short period of time will inevitably make you sick of them. As a result, the cost-effectiveness of all-you-can-eat is not that high. Most people who are curious about it only eat it occasionally, and it is difficult for it to become a daily catering category with a high repurchase rate.

Next is the channel.

In order to expand its retail channels, Honeymoon Dessert chose to embrace leading fresh food e-commerce companies such as HEMA, Sam's Club, and Dingdong Maicai. This move may seem good at first glance, but if you think about it carefully, you will find that it is not a good move.

At present, the main battlefield for fresh food supermarkets such as Sam's Club and Hema is the fresh food field, and the fortress in the main battlefield such as baked desserts. How much motivation do these supermarkets have to promote Honeymoon's products?

As for displaying in convenience stores such as FamilyMart and Lawson, it can only be considered a routine operation at best, and other brands can still copy and paste.

Marketing and channels, after all, are not the correct answers.

No matter how things change, the essence remains the same. If you want to cure the root cause, the product problems must be solved.

3. Products: Imitation is not enough to surpass new tea drinks

After taking office in 2021, Jin Guochao, CEO of Honeymoon Desserts, expressed his views: "Honeymoon's overall performance and brand potential are indeed in a declining state, which is related to the entire industry. If it is limited to desserts themselves, it is indeed not a big track, and it is also impacted by milk tea and coffee. Therefore, the track must be generalized. Everyone in the same track is solving consumers' needs in leisure scenarios."

Judging from the trajectory of action, in 2022, Honeymoon Desserts and the new tea brand Xiaoman Tea Garden completed the merger, trying to create a "New Honeymoon", taking over both dessert and new tea tracks in one fell swoop. But now, Xiaoman Tea Garden's last store in Shanghai Changtai Plaza has suspended operations, and the brand's official account has been updated until November 2022.

There is nothing wrong with “pan-trackization”, but blind imitation will not allow Honeymoon Tea to surpass new tea drinks. The dessert beverageization requires products that are truly outstanding and even surpass new tea drinks.

Putting aside the saying that new tea drinks and Chinese desserts are "new" and "old", there is a simple difference between the two: one is more of a beverage, while the other is more of a food. For food, it not only squeezes out the presence of the three meals, but also pays more attention to the experience of dining in; while for beverages, it is not so particular.

The liquid state of beverages is more conducive to integrating into the gaps of people's lives. Someone once made such a metaphor: a bottle full of stones can only hold water. This metaphor is like the relationship between beverages and the human stomach.

Honeymoon wants to penetrate desserts into a wider range of consumption scenarios, so it needs to make desserts into beverages, which is almost perfectly equivalent to the logic of the explosion of new tea drinks. It’s a pity that Honeymoon failed to catch this trend. When Heytea and Lelecha made mango sago into beverage cups, Honeymoon’s mango sago was still quietly lying in the bowl.

Being a step behind others means you are already at a disadvantage.

The second disadvantage of Honeymoon Kee is the word “sweet” hidden in its name, which is even more fatal.

Honeymoon Kee is about to enter its 30th year. Thirty years ago, people loved sweet food, but thirty years later, that may not be the case. The sugar-free trend has been going on for several years, which has indirectly stabbed Honeymoon Kee in the back.

Honeymoon needs to launch more natural, healthy, low-sugar or even sugar-free products to have a better chance of attracting a new generation of consumers. However, how to solve the problem of low-sugar and sugar-free desserts being "not tasty" is more difficult for participants in the dessert market.

It is OK for Xinchayin to make a cup of sugar-free tea, but what will happen if Honeymoon makes a cup of dessert without sugar? Who will eat dessert if they don’t eat sweets? Moreover, can every kind of dessert really be made into a drink without affecting the taste? I am afraid Honeymoon itself does not have a good answer to this series of questions.

Yangzhi Ganlu, Baixue Hei Niu Tian, ​​Durian Pancake... For many people born in the 80s and 90s, these are indeed "full of memories". However, the taste of childhood is gradually fading in the taste buds of this generation.

For Honeymoon, choice is more important than hard work.

The reason why new tea drinks are so popular is that they are based on the universal raw material of "tea" and have opened up a wider track. In the relatively narrow track of desserts, can Honeymoon beat "Heytea" and move towards a broader world?

Hanging!

Author: Koala is a Deer Editor: Ge Weiwei

Source: WeChat official account: New Retail Business Review (ID: xinlingshou1001)