Original title: snacks are so expensive, Miao Ke LanduoAre you collecting IQ tax? source: 36Kr Holdings

When the post-90s generation enters the role of parents, the underlying logic of children's food consumption is also changing.

"parents in other families all buy expensive ones for their children. Don't you have the nerve to buy them?" As the mother of a 3-year-old child, post-90s Li Xi fell into the strange circle of competitive shopping after being obsessed with "shopping" in the group of baby mothers.

Li Qian calculated that she spent nearly 200 yuan on snacks alone, including 99 yuan for cheese sticks, 59.9 yuan for imported seaweed and 28.8 yuan for imported rice cakes.

In the childhood of post-90s and older consumers represented by Li Qian, most snack brands use "child-oriented" packaging design to attract children, but the products are not designed for children in nature. However, with the upgrading of consumption, China's food culture is undergoing a transformation from the pursuit of energy and taste to the pursuit of nutrition and energy efficiency.

According to Li Qian, there are three reasons why post-90s mothers are particularly positive in buying high-end snacks for their children: first, there is a "rigid demand" for children to eat snacks; second, advertisements such as "captive baby artifacts" and "crying for the child next door" are really seductive; coupled with the public opinion environment emphasizing "safety and nutrition", most people are willing to spend more money to buy peace of mind.

The pursuit of nutrition and ingredients by the new generation of parents, represented by Li Qian, has heated up the children's snack track, especially the snacks for children aged 3-6 years old have become a new tuyere.

According to Huaying Capital, the market for children's snacks is expected to reach 150 billion yuan in 2023.In terms of growth, the CAGR of children's snacks is expected to remain at 13.7% in the next five years, which is higher than the CAGR7.8% of leisure snacks in the next five years.

The huge market with a population of 250 million children naturally attracts snack giants and capital to bring in a lot of money, and bags of cartoon packaging have become a new battlefield for capital and enterprises to burn money. The ingredients, eating scenes, craftsmanship and packaging of children's snacks began to be redefined.

However, if the gimmick is greater than the reality, how far can the marketing of children's high-end snacks go? Food safety problems occur frequently, how can the new brand win the trust of parents?

A crowded track

"good quality and low price" is no longer the key factor driving the purchase of parents. In the current consumption context, the word "child" itself means a high premium.

According to the White Paper on the Market Survey of Children's snacks released by the China non-staple Food Circulation Association in 2020, among the factors considered by parents of post-80s and post-90s when buying children's snacks, 63.5% of parents are most concerned about whether they are natural, healthy and non-added products. 60.3% of parents pay attention to factors such as nutrition, ingredients, formula matching, shelf life and brand of the products.

36Kr Holdings searched on a shopping website and found that with "children's yogurt" as the key word, the discounted price of the first brand yogurt was 39.9 yuan, a total of 85g*4 bags, with "yogurt" as the key word, and the first brand yogurt voucher was 99 yuan, totaling 140g * 12 cups. If calculated on the basis of single gram price, the price of children's yogurt is twice that of ordinary yogurt.

With regard to the issue of high premium, one or two can also be seen from the financial data of the leading companies in the industry.The gross profit margin of Miokolando children's cheese sticks, a dairy company, is as high as 50%. As for the cheese category, the gross profit margin of its family table series and catering industry series is only 36.83% and 22.68%.

Driven by high profits, children's snack brands are moving closer to health and nutrition in order to put on a high-end label. Nutrients are mainly high-protein, low-sugar, whole grain, organic, 0 addition, etc., healthy processing methods emphasize simple baking, non-fried.

From Yili, Mengniu, Guangming and other dairy giants, to innovative brands such as Miaofei, Dr. Cheese and Kistine, as well as retail channels such as Yonghui and Box Horse, the children's cheese market has entered a fierce competition since this year. According to data, China imported 115000 tons of cheese in 2019, and by May 2021, the figure had reached 82700 tons, an increase of 66% over the same period last year. Cheese has become a new vent in the dairy industry since low-temperature yogurt.

Aiming at this track, there are not only dairy giants Yili, Mengniu, Guangming, etc., but also three squirrels., good product shopSuch as the first generation of online celebrity snack enterprises, as well as many new power brands. According to incomplete statistics, at least nine new brands will receive financing in 2021, including duo cat, baby greedy, Akita Manchu, little yellow elephant, Dr. Cheese and so on.

It is worth mentioning that due to problems such as the peak of dividends in e-commerce channels,The initial generation of online celebrity snack companies, such as the three squirrels, have long been exhausted, and the plus-size children's snack track has almost become a consensus for them to seek the second growth curve.Take three squirrels as an example, the company set a quarterly low in the second quarter, with revenue of only 1.59 billion yuan and negative non-net profit.

Last year, three squirrels and quality stores launched the baby snack brand blue blue and the children's snack brand snack fairy, respectively, and placed high hopes on them. In May this year, quality stores proposed a short-and medium-term target of 1 billion in revenue for snack fairies and 3 billion in the next 3-5 years. At the investor exchange meeting in May this year, three squirrels said that Little Deer Blue Blue is a separate brand promotion.

The dilemma of "increasing income without increasing profits" is difficult to break.

When it comes to children's high-end snacks, cheese brand Miaoke Lando is an unavoidable topic.

In a short period of five years, under the overwhelming advertisements, Miao Ke Lando cheese sticks not only occupied the "minds" of parents and children, but also covered the shelves of Shang Chao. According to Kaidu data, Mioco Lando's market share reached 30% in the first half of this year, surpassing France's Baijifu to become the number one cheese brand in China for the first time.

In particular, in April this year, Mengniu settled an increase in Mioko Lando 3 billion, becoming the largest shareholder with a stake of nearly 30 per cent. Debang Securities pointed out that after becoming the Mengniu cheese business operation platform, Miaoke Lando will get Mengniu key resources input. In addition to brand endorsement and marketing resource sharingMiao Ke Lando is expected to accelerate the sinking of 60-800000 retail terminals in Mengniu to the third and fourth tier market.

Miao Ke Landuo's "success" makes newcomers Miao Fei and others emulate this heavy marketing road one after another. It is reported that brands such as Justin and Miaofei have chosen focus Media and other brands of children's cheese sticks.Cooperation, each invested hundreds of millions of yuan.

Miao Ke Lando's revenue has indeed exploded as a result, with the launch of children's cheese sticks in 2018, with revenue approaching 500 million yuan the following year and a gross profit margin of more than 50%.

In the secondary market, with the collective rise of consumer stocks and the rise of the food sector, as the only A-share listed company with cheese as its core business, Miao Ke Lando has also become an upstart in the investment tracking of the capital sector.

Compared with its share price of 14 yuan in early 2020, the company's share price rose to an all-time high of 84.50 yuan in May this year, then fell back, and as of press time, Miocolando's share price remained around 50 yuan.

However, overvaluation has also become a kind of pressure, because of heavy reliance on marketing and other reasons, Miocolando has been faced with the problem of increasing income without increasing profits for many years.

What is extremely out of proportion to revenue is the dismal profits of the company. Compared with revenue of 2.85 billion yuan, the company made a profit of less than 60 million yuan in 2020.

This is mainly due to high sales expenses. Last year, the company's marketing fee was as high as 710 million yuan, accounting for 1/4 of the revenue. Among them, advertising promotion expenses accounted for 561 million yuan, accounting for 78.94% of the sales expenses.

As a matter of fact, "increasing income without increasing profits" has always been a malady of the industry.From the point of view of lengthening the entire industrial chain, snack brands, as the middle reaches of the industry chain, need to pay costs for upstream production and downstream retail links, and their profit margins are also compressed. Therefore, in some market comments, we can often hear the ridicule that food companies earn "hard money".

In addition, a well-known brokerage food and beverage analyst also explained to 36Kr Holdings that increasing income or not increasing profits or losses is a necessary process for the cultivation of new brands. Marketing and finding production lines are all necessary inputs in the early stage, and it is difficult to dilute the cost of sales in a short period of time. Especially at the beginning of sales, the loss will be relatively obvious.

According to the current stage of industry developmentIn the context of new brands, new channels and other new shocks, the children's snack track is far from harvesting, the focus is still on the "horse racing enclosure".

There are hidden dangers in the mode of contract manufacturing.

High-end snacks may be a good business for companies, but consumers like Li Qian are more concerned about whether higher prices equate to more nutrition and safety.

36Kr Holdings found that the so-called high-end concept is more like the forced implantation of conceptual nutrients. According to public media reports, Miaofei claims "0 sugar" in an original cheese stick, while some cheese sticks emphasize the addition of DHA and lutein ester. On the other hand, the average cost of a bag of so-called "0 flavor" formula is only 0.5 yuan, and that of adding lutein ester is only 0.5 yuan more than that of the general formula.

If the issue of nutrition is just the icing on the cake, the issue of safety is related to the foundation of food enterprises.

Without exception, the first generation of online celebrity snack giants copied the light asset model of OEM + brand to the children's snack track. In addition to Miao Ke Landuo in the hot children's cheese stick track, other brands are also cut in by OEM. According to media reports, a children's cheese stick factory in Shandong Province has cooperated with more than 40 brands during the peak period.

Compared with the self-built factory, the light asset model can quickly confirm the market demand and user taste, and it is easy to test the popular style products at a lower cost in a short time. This is also the core competitive advantage behind the high ROE of high-quality stores.

It should be pointed out that compared with adult food, children's snacks have more stringent food safety and hygiene requirements than general products. How to avoid the occurrence of food safety incidents is one of the biggest problems faced by the contract manufacturing mode.

Previously, Wuhan Xuzhongxu Food Co., Ltd., which provided "baby fresh shrimp slices" for three squirrels' deer blue blue, was fined 10,000 yuan by Wuhan Dongxihu District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau on January 25, 2021, and ordered it to immediately stop producing and operating substandard products and recall the food already on the market.

"all OEM's food safety risks are relatively large, which is also the riskiest one in China's business model at present, because its entire industrial chain and supply chain are uncontrollable."Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of China's food industry, told 36Kr Holdings.

In addition, the OEM mode lowers the entry threshold of children's snacks, at the same time, it also produces a serious problem of homogenization. Children's snacks are not high-tech, after a single item is popular, the competition is that competitors can quickly launch similar products through contract factories. This will inevitably drag enterprises into the price war.

Zhu Danpeng told 36Kr Holdings that the integrity of the current snack food supply chain is not enough, and the competition of the entire supply chain in the future will become the core of the post-marketing era. "the upgrading of consumption in China is not only the increase in the acceptance of high prices, but also the improvement of professional awareness of ingredients, technology and other specialties, and the upgrading of overall consumption thinking."

In the long run, the moat of high-end children's snacks is not high, and the so-called high-protein, non-added concepts detonated by new brands are easy to imitate or even surpass.In the field of food, and with the precipitation of quality control, scale and brand influence, some traditional brands tend to have more advantages.

See Weilong to value spicy gluten at 60 billion. As an important childhood memory, children's snacks may accompany users' growth, resulting in lifelong repurchase. Marketing for the market is important, but in the final analysis, consumer loyalty "is based on the product, and product strength is the key to the survival of the brand."