Text | Yao Lan
36氪 was informed that the Chengdu Luwei brand “Huohao” has completed tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing. The investor is Aoniu Capital, and Qingtong Capital is the long-term exclusive financial advisor. This round of financing will be mainly used for product research and development, brand building, supply chain upgrade and channel construction.
Born in Chengdu in 2013, “Huohao” hopes to make authentic and delicious lo-mei products. At present, it has covered mainstream e-commerce platforms, and has successively achieved the top four in the Taobao Luwei brand list, the top 100 Taobao snacks, the top seven annual sales of Douyin leisure snacks, and the first annual sales of boneless chicken feet. Since the epidemic in 2020, annual sales have maintained a doubling growth trend. Since 2022, the GMV in a single month has been close to 20 million yuan, and the monthly repurchase rate has exceeded 30%.
Chengdu lo-mei brand “Huohao”
Among the many lo-mei products, why choose boneless chicken feet to enter the market? The founder Huang Shan told 36氪 that chicken feet are national ingredients, and boneless chicken feet are an iterative product of chicken feet snacks, and the market acceptance is naturally high. In addition, due to the high requirements of product technology and harsh storage conditions, a mature brand of deboned chicken feet has not yet emerged in China, which is the opportunity for a brand with the ability to innovate the supply chain.
In order to ensure product quality and strengthen cost advantages, “Huohao” has built its own supply chain system and established a complete SOP process. It is worth mentioning that a production line was designed for the deboned chicken feet products alone , and 26 requirements were put forward (including the size, color, cutting method, nail extraction method, etc.) of the deboned chicken feet. “We have figured out the method of peeling chicken feet. Before, the manufacturers in Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Sichuan used raw chicken feet. The shape was not good, and the product safety and taste stability could not be guaranteed.” Huangshan further said, The technical team has also overcome the industry problems that the flavor of chicken feet with soup is easy to lose and the product is easy to deteriorate , reducing the product’s dependence on packaging and logistics conditions, becoming the first brand to snack on boneless chicken feet with soup. The brand of deboned chicken feet that covers the widest range of consumers.
From the very beginning of its business, “Huohao” has insisted on cultivating its own R&D team. According to Huangshan, team members visit hundreds of brick-and-mortar stores every year to gain experience, and there are thousands of sample records about new product development or adjustment every year. Taking the main product – Sichuan-style hot and sour cold braised chicken feet as an example, the sauce is composed of more than 30 kinds of natural spices, seasoned with the brand’s unique “old seasoning”, manually fried for three hours, and then left to ferment 72 hours. After the soup is boiled, when brewing chicken feet, the unique “three soaking and three soaking” process can be used to present the crisp, tender, fresh and refreshing taste of chicken feet.
Red Oil Chicken Feet
In addition to chicken feet, “Huohao” also launched beef, chicken, rabbit meat and other categories, a total of hundreds of SKUs. Each single product is independently developed and has obvious characteristics, such as the fire turkey that inherits the characteristics of Zigong cold food, the glazed rabbit that draws on the flavor of the three cups, and the phoenix bullfrog originating from the flavor of Laotan, etc., breaking the general sense of Sichuan flavor. Snacks are based on the prejudice of spicy and fried everything.
As a senior planner, Huangshan has his own persistence in detail page design, packaging presentation, photo shooting methods and copywriting expression, and the brand style of “Huohao” is highlighted.
On the channel side, “Huohao” has made many attempts on the Douyin platform. In 2021, under the circumstance that the talents brought goods and sold tens of millions a month, “Huohao” still started self-broadcasting, in order to better convey information about craftsmanship and origin, and cultivate consumers’ sense of trust.
In the future, “Huohao” will have more plans offline: on the one hand, it will actively develop derivative products such as home wear and long-term storage products at room temperature, and expand channels such as convenience stores, KA stores, fresh supermarkets, community distribution, WeChat distribution, etc.; On the one hand, it plans to build a compound store that integrates chicken feet and other Chengdu lo-mei products. Huangshan said that problems such as standard bad taste, delicious food difficult to replicate, obvious off-peak seasons, and single eating scenes will all be solved in brick-and-mortar stores with new models.
Investor’s View
Gao Xiang, managing partner of Aoniu Capital, said: The market size of braised products exceeds 100 billion yuan, and it has been the fastest growing category in snack food in the past few years. Opportunity. Since boneless chicken feet entered the category of casual snacks, it has entered the top three of lo-mei snacks in just a few years, but the category brand has not yet been formed, and there are blank opportunities. The Huohao team has deep accumulation on both the product side and the channel side, and quickly climbed to the top of the category in a short period of time, and demonstrated stable financial performance and anti-risk capabilities during the epidemic. It is expected to build a boneless chicken feet. Category-centered lo-mei brand.
Wang Zimei, senior investment manager of Aoniu Capital, said: As one of the few braised products with both dishes and casual snack attributes, boneless chicken feet have ample room for expansion in both scenarios and channels, and at the same time benefit from the natural characteristics of braised products. Addictive repurchase attributes, with the rapid growth of the demand side in recent years, has already taken the shape of a large single product. The team’s excellence in products and content is impressive, showing extremely high operational efficiency. We are optimistic that under the leadership of Mr. Huang, the team will continue to cultivate in the braised product market and continue to accumulate the “old taste, good taste” belonging to Huohao. !
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