Digging out new groups from old categories, a super opportunity for the Super Bowl

When people think of light meals, the first thing that comes to mind is that people who are losing weight are eating them. So, how does Super Bowl, as a representative brand of light meals, attract customers? You can find out through this article.

Eating light meals is like eating grass, I guess this is what most people feel. I have eaten them occasionally before, and I feel that they are neither delicious nor expensive.

In the past two years, the light meal industry has not been so good. New Element went bankrupt at the end of 2021, and Wagas was sold to Anhong Capital in 2022. From a business perspective, traditional light meals have a small audience, poor user experience, and poor repurchase. It is not a good business no matter how you look at it.

But there is a company that not only did not go bankrupt, but it has been thriving and growing against the trend in the light food market, opening nearly 100 stores by 2023. This company is called Super Bowl. It has transformed its products, tapped into new groups of people, and turned light meals from unpalatable to delicious and healthy meals, bringing a business back to life.

Therefore, finding super opportunities is often not a matter of product category, but a matter of finding a niche. Insightful entrepreneurs can always find a way to break into a seemingly hopeless category and carve out their own territory.

The Super Bowl has blazed a new trail in the light food market. I think they did two things right:

1. The core of new consumer brands: capturing new groups

Wagas is a representative of traditional light meals. Its customers are mostly high-income women, white-collar workers, and fitness people. Its stores are located in core business districts and office buildings. It is positioned as high-end, but its customers are quite narrow and its prices are high, generally around 70-80 yuan.

But this is not the biggest problem. The most uncomfortable thing is: the food doesn’t taste good, it doesn’t fill you up, it’s cold and you feel empty after eating.
This type of light food restaurant is essentially a Western restaurant, with a contradiction that can never be resolved: the contradiction between consumers' pursuit of delicious and healthy food and the cold, unpalatable and expensive food supplied by the market.

For most people, eating a traditional light meal is like eating grass. It’s okay to eat it occasionally, but it’s unbearable to eat it for a long time. This exposes the three weaknesses of traditional light meals: poor experience, low repurchase, and low addictiveness. If Super Bowl continues to do business along this line of thought, it will definitely have no chance.
There are often two pools for the birth of new consumer brands: using innovation to improve old categories and looking for super opportunities in new categories.

How did Super Bowl do it? The entry point is to choose to improve the old categories, and improve the taste by expanding the categories of ingredients + steaming, boiling, frying, braising and mixing. By making the taste more palatable, improving satiety, and making the food warm. ‍‍‍‍‍Solve the contradiction of imbalance between supply and demand, and immediately capture a large number of people with health needs. Anyone who has requirements for their own health, body shape, and ingredients has become a potential customer of Super Bowl. The real needs of this type of users: delicious, inexpensive, and healthy.

After the improvement, the consumption frequency of light meals has increased from once a month or once a week to several times a week, and repeat purchases have been increased.
In addition, the Super Bowl brought the price range down to 30-50 yuan, which is nearly half the price of Wagas, and the potential customer base has increased exponentially.

In order to achieve greater growth, the Super Bowl also did one more thing: extending the user life cycle.

McDonald's, KFC, Coca-Cola, and Wahaha all have one thing in common: they have either been drinking or eating their drinks since they were young. The longer the user life cycle and the more repeat purchases they make, the more solid the user base is, and the more likely the brand will survive the cycle. This is also a way for online celebrity brands to become long-lasting.
Therefore, the Super Bowl’s product matrix also meets the needs of children, the elderly, and students.

2. Structural growth in subdivided tracks comes from the explosion of demand for product categories.

Whether it is after the epidemic or on March 15 a few days ago, the public's pursuit of health will only increase and not decrease. The potential users targeted by the Super Bowl are this group of healthy people, with a large enough base, a large enough increment, and a high enough ceiling. This is also the starting point for new brands that I repeatedly mentioned in the Super Bowl is a big class on strategic growth. Therefore, the people targeted by the Super Bowl and traditional light food are actually two completely different groups.

The demand of this type of general health population is on the rise, and the number of people pursuing health is constantly expanding, and the frequency of consumption is also increasing. When other traditional catering categories have completed their natural growth rate after 3-5 years of opening a store, Super Bowl can still continue to grow. It relies on seizing a category that is booming and continuous structural growth.

There is an interesting phenomenon. The way people think and act about eating is also changing dramatically: in the past, when we wanted to eat, we either chose Hunan, Sichuan, or Guangdong cuisine based on taste, or chose staple food, such as noodles, rice, dumplings, or steamed buns. But now, many people choose healthy or high-fat and high-salt food.

A new consumer product always rises around a new group of people. When the needs and behavior choices of the group of people change dramatically, new groups of people and new needs emerge. Whoever can fill this demand with new supply and solve the contradiction between supply and demand can seize the super opportunity of new consumption. The essence of the Super Bowl is fast food, but it is healthier fast food.

Fast food means that 80% of the public must like it. Fried pork with peppers, mapo tofu, and kung pao chicken can be sold all over the country without educating the market. The essence of catering is repeat purchases. The better the repeat purchases, the better the life. Repeat purchases are improved by continuous product innovation + service, and cost-effectiveness.

The reasons for repeat purchases during the Super Bowl are: delicious, inexpensive, healthy, and fast.
A few days ago, Panda Buzou had a problem. One of the important reasons was that there were too few repeat purchases, which led to high delivery costs and increased overall costs. On the other hand, the low repeat purchases led to the inability to get more new users in the public domain pool, and the inability to retain more old users in the private domain. Of course, there is also room for improvement in the Super Bowl:

In my opinion, the Super Bowl still needs a super single product like Luckin Coffee and Bawang Chaji. Once a hit product is created, it can be replicated infinitely, allowing 80% of the public to remember you, occupying the first mind of healthy, delicious and light fast food, and ultimately gaining a long-term competitive advantage.

3. Summarize the core points:

Making consumer products means serving different groups of people. Different groups of people have different needs, different scales, different products, and different services.
Taking new groups as the breakthrough point is the starting point for new consumer brands to seize super opportunities.

The Super Bowl broke the bottleneck of the development of light meals with Chinese light meals, and tapped into a larger population by improving taste, price, flavor, and satiety.

Author: Han Xu

WeChat public account: HanXun (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)