Wedome opened its smart bakery outlet as part of an older traditional outlet in Chaoyang District of Beijing on 28 May this year, after more than a year's soul searching and preparation, at a time the 380-outlet bakery chain witnessed a rare decline in sales revenue on a monthly basis, said Huang in Shanghai in a major bakery exhibition today.
A customer picks his bread, cakes and snacks from shelves and cabinets, then puts them under a scanning machine, and then pays digitally. The outlet has so far attracted nearly 100 journalists who have produced 243 media reports that reached out to 55.805 million people, he noted.
He believed that the manless outlet, with Alibaba's support, has boosted his brand's awareness among the public, and thus enhanced its sales, adding "(company) sales rose 10 per cent and eight per cent respectively in August and September year-on-year."
His goal is to add the smart outlet into all his outlets, thus bringing down the 10-20 people needed to man an average outlet, to five, which should be two at the service area and three at the kitchen.
"My ultimate goal is to have each store to be manless," he said, speaking at a seminar today, the first day of a three-day bakery exhibition in Shanghai, "Bakery China Autumn 2018 & China Home Baking Show 2018".
During the first nine months of this year, Wedome's labour cost went up by 32 per cent on an annual basis, and its sales cost and rent up by 16 and seven per cent respectively, he said.
The average worker's monthly salary was RMB 4,500 last year, but this year it is RMB 5,600. The 22-year-old company has around 5,000 workers in Beijing, Shanghai, Baotou of Inner Mongolia and Sanhe of Hebei Province. "That means if we made RMB 60 million yuan in profit, the cost increase would wipe it out entirely this year," he added.
He explained that last year the company suffered an usually high labour turnover rate of 25.9 per cent so this year he decides to hire more workers than necessary to keep a reserve of some workers against that bad fortune.
In terms of sales cost increases of 16 percent, he said that this was mainly generated by the cost of food for sampling by customers. "This year we expended 200 per cent more on sampling food, as sampling has become ever more important in driving sales," he said.
Hai Di Lao, the hotpot chain listed in Hong Kong, opened a manless restaurant on 28 October. Huang thinks this is further testimony to the wisdom of his manless store strategy.
Sources say that Wedome's competitors, Bread Talk (面包新语), Qian Ji (仟吉) and Qin Yuan (沁园) have all plans to open manless outlets. ###
作者是高纲企业管理咨询（上海）事务所合伙人，汕头东峰消费品首席研究员、上海弘章资本食品与农业高级顾问、国际并购整合联盟（PMI）行业分析师，与多家FA机构和直投机构有着广泛深入的合作（包含股权架构设计、商业计划书写作指导和ICO中英文白皮书的写作等具体业务）。如希望参与行业研究讨论，或接触到FA机构推荐的精品项目，欢迎联系。