With 4,500 stores opened in three years, Tustin has become a rising star in the burger industry

The number of Tustin stores has increased rapidly, and Chinese hamburgers have become popular. So how did the Tustin brand do it? This article describes the relevant content and hopes it will be helpful to you.

What can a business do in 18 months?

Tustin provided the answer by rapidly increasing the number of stores from 1,200 to 5,000.

At present, according to the data from Zhaimen Canyan, the Chinese hamburger restaurant chain brand Tustin has 5,176 stores across the country. In an internal letter from Tustin founder Yang Bing in March 2022, the number was only 1,200.

1. Competing on price, playing with innovation, and going down-market, Chinese hamburgers have taken advantage of the gaps in foreign fast food

If you look closely at the Tustin brand, you will find that it actually has a quite long history.

From opening its first "Chinese pizza" store in 2012 to selling "Chinese hamburgers" in 2020, it took Tustin 8 years to achieve a qualitative leap in business. In the two most difficult years of the epidemic, Tustin opened more than 3,000 new stores. This year, it became a hot topic and was ranked first on the list of "poor man's meal" by consumers. How did Tustin do it?

1. Category transformation and accurate positioning

When Tustin first entered the market, it positioned itself as "Chinese pizza". But among pizza brands at that time, the "foreign giants" were strong! John's, Pizza Hut and Domino's were the three major players; popular brands such as Big Pizza and Jambo Pizza were accelerating their rise; Le Caesar Pizza even created popular products such as durian pizza, crayfish pizza, and roast duck pizza.

In the market environment where the volume of pizza brands was growing and the number of pizza brands was exploding, Tustin, which had just been established, had weak single products and weak brand effect, did not have much brand advantage. As a regional pizza brand, Tustin had less than 100 stores in its 6-year history.

In 2017, the pizza market was booming, but Chinese hamburgers were still a blank in the domestic market. Unable to make headway, Tustin simply tried to launch a "hamburger + pizza" dual-category model and unexpectedly discovered that the growth rate of hamburgers was higher than that of pizza.

Having tasted the sweetness, Tustin quickly seized the opportunity for transformation, focusing its product category on hamburgers and taking the opportunity to launch the "Chinese hamburger" label, thereby clarifying its brand positioning of "wanting to be the Chinese people's own hamburger."

2. Innovate products and create differentiation

After the transformation of its product category, Tustin first thought of working on its products in order to further demonstrate its differentiated advantages and positioning.

Tustin's signature dish is the Chinese hamburger. Although it does not deviate from the hamburger pairing rule of "everything sandwiched between two buns", Tustin is more like "Western burger made in China", integrating Chinese noodles and Chinese food cooking methods into hamburgers to form a brand memory point.

Different from the semi-finished processing method of traditional hamburgers, Tustin uses "purely hand-rolled and baked burger buns" and uses famous Chinese dishes such as Chinese roast duck and fish-flavored shredded pork as hamburger fillings, which has earned Tustin's "Chinese Hamburger" signature a lot of attention.

At the same time, Tustin continues to enrich its product line and has launched items such as "Tartar Chicken Legs and Spiced Meat Patties" this year. So far, Tustin has a total of 10 burgers for consumers to choose from. The new flavors are innovative and the traditional flavors are up to date, which has become the biggest difference between Tustin and other burger brands.

3. Super high cost-performance, capturing the sinking market

In first- and second-tier cities, we can see McCann everywhere, but in third- and fourth-tier cities and county-level cities, apart from Wallace, there are few other Western fast food brands, which also means that the sinking market has huge development potential. Wallace has had frequent food problems in recent years, and the emergence of Tustin has filled the gap of Western fast food affordable brands and avoided a head-on confrontation with foreign giants.

The "China Western Fast Food Category Development Report 2023" pointed out that among the key words in the comments on Western fast food brands, "high cost performance" and "affordable price" are ranked relatively high. As a cutting-edge brand, Tustin can quickly gain a foothold in the sinking market, precisely because of its "high cost performance". Compared with McCann's noble prices of 27.86 yuan and 34.71 yuan per capita, Tustin's average customer price of 19.47 yuan or even less per capita can better meet the price-sensitive "sinking group". From time to time, the official launched "free bill", "half price" and "buy one get one free" wool-pulling activities, attracting batches of "poor ghosts" to join. This is why Tustin can still attract customers when consumers' enthusiasm for consumption has decreased during the epidemic.

2. Two-handed marketing: Guochao on the left and Douyin on the right

In 2019, Tustin had not yet been dubbed the "Chinese hamburger", and its average number of store openings per month was only in the single digits. According to data from Zhaimen Canyan, the number of new Tustin stores opened in 2019 was only 32.

At that time, Tustin had profitable categories and innovative products. The next thing to think about was how to make the brand famous. Starting in 2020, it took only two moves to achieve widespread scale, surpassing the old American brands Dicos and Burger King, which were founded in the 1950s.

1. Offline: Embracing the “national trend” trend and reaping the benefits of traffic

In recent years, many catering brands that focus on the concept of "Chinese style" and "national trend" have suddenly become popular, such as Hutouju, Kuafu Fried skewers, Momo Dim Sum Ju, etc. Even McDonald's and Xiaolongkan have joined the market and moved closer to the national trend. New brands have sprung up with hundreds of millions of financing, and old brands have been reborn with the power of national trend.

According to the 2020 China Catering Marketing Power White Paper, "As a typical cross-border marketing idea, the catering national trend is a ride that all catering brands can take advantage of." Baidu search big data also shows that the popularity of searches related to "national trend" has increased by 528% in the past decade. With the label of "Chinese hamburger", Tustin has naturally taken advantage of the "national trend" and caught up with the consumption craze of the national trend 1.0 era.

In order to build itself into a national trend brand, Tustin changed its brand logo into a more distinctive Chinese lion dance. The font of the store name was modified based on the traditional official script. The sign "Chinese Hamburger" and the slogan "Chinese stomach, Chinese burger" were directly printed on the door. From the store decoration to the product packaging, the marketing and products are unified to show a unique national trend style.

This also allowed Tustin to successfully gain the favor of capital and obtain 150 million in financing.

2. Online: Rely on live streaming platforms and take advantage of traffic

In addition to catching up with the "national trend", Tustin's second wave of "tap water traffic" came from Douyin and Kuaishou. As a hamburger brand specializing in the sinking market, Tustin's core customer base is young people and students in second-tier and lower-tier cities, which almost overlaps with the core users of Douyin and Kuaishou. Tustin naturally sees that Douyin and Kuaishou are the best entry points for it to further enter the sinking market.

In fact, just as Tustin expected, Tik Tok and Kuaishou have become the traffic express trains for its brand promotion.

In terms of publicity, Tustin operates multiple matrix accounts with differentiated positioning, and each account has a different content style. The account @托斯汀(中国哈姆)美食局 has created a joke that is on par with 疯四文学, which quickly went viral, boosting the rapid spread of the Tustin brand and was even named one of the "抖音生活服务2022年案" by 抖音.

In terms of traffic diversion, Tustin implements a low-price strategy, "a cup of Coke is 2.9 yuan, a single meal of a hamburger and a cup of Coke is only 9.9 yuan", "buy one get one free", "10% off hamburger coupons" and other wool-grabbing activities are common. In order to reach a wider range of consumers, the official account also broadcasts live at different time periods to maximize the online traffic;

In terms of conversion, the two platforms with vast traffic pools helped Tustin break through the barriers between online and offline operations and promoted the closed loop of online and offline transactions. In February this year, Tustin's double meal worth 34.9 yuan sold 2.776 million copies on Douyin, winning the top spot on Douyin's local life group buying sales list. On Douyin's local life group buying sales list, Tustin has been ranked in the top 5 for five consecutive months, with the highest monthly sales exceeding 7 million.

In addition to these, Tustin also focuses on being "thick-skinned" in marketing, taking advantage of whatever is popular. For example, when the TV series "The Longest Day in Chang'an" was popular two years ago, Tustin opened a "The Longest Day in Chang'an" theme store, attracting a large number of young people.

Whether it is the price-performance ratio or the marketing strategy, the reason why Tustin became so popular also tells all brands: no matter what means are used, "knowing what consumers want" is the core.

3. Conclusion

Tustin, which is favored by capital and popular in the market, is actually facing market changes at any time. In the eyes of consumers, many people still regard Tustin as a substitute for "McKen". As McCann accelerates its layout in the lower-tier cities and constantly adjusts its prices, will Tustin, which seems to have firmly occupied the lower-tier cities, still have a chance of winning?

Especially in the past two years, the concept of "Chinese hamburger" has become popular. From Jia Guolong under Xibei to new brands such as Dadafangfang and Hamburger Champion, the competition is becoming more and more fierce and the industry is becoming more and more competitive. Although Tustin is the fastest one now, how to continue to seize the market in the fiercely competitive industry is still a long-term issue for Tustin. After all, after the novelty of "Chinese hamburger" fades, what can be recognized by consumers is always "cost-effective" and "durable products".

Author: Empowering Global Brands WeChat Official Account: IBrandi