【中文标题】肯德基在中国的制胜法宝：本地化菜单和管理者
【原文标题】Local menu, managers are KFC’s secret in China
【登载媒体】华盛顿邮报
【原文作者】William Mellor
【原文链接】http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/local-menu-managers-are-kfcs-secret-in-china/2011/02/08/ABkqlxF_story.html
在天安门广场一角，与毛泽东陵墓之间隔一条街的餐厅里，何盈盈在大嚼一块鸡肉。她凝视着那个面容和蔼的人像，那副画像也把她笼罩在自身的光环下。
“我们喜欢他。”她面带顽皮微笑地说。
这位21岁、来自北京首都经贸大学的学生说的不是俯视天安门广场的毛的标志性肖像，而是在她大快朵颐的餐厅中，早已作古、留着雪白的胡子的肯塔基上校标志。
在肯德基的老家美国，它被麦当劳这个世界上最大的餐饮公司排挤得苦苦挣扎，同时还在与它的一些特许经销商陷入如何阻止赢利下滑的纠纷。
然而在中国很多城市，哈兰德山德士上校的形象出现的频率远高于毛的肖像。在一个外国公司通常都会步履蹒跚的国家中，取得这样的成就的确令人瞩目。
作为肯德基的母公司，位于路易斯威尔的百胜餐饮集团的制胜秘诀就在于本土化的配方——既包括管理团队的配方，也包括菜单中食物的配方。在中国运作的24年中，百胜聘请了中国管理者在扩张过程中与本地企业建立伙伴关系，充分利用他们的特长来开发一系列本地化的食物，以迎合当地的口味。
本地化的口味和价格
今天，中国的肯德基顾客在享受著名的炸鸡的同时，还可以买到一碗粥——其中有大米、猪肉、腌菜、蘑菇和皮蛋。2010年，百胜期望能在中国3700家餐厅的20亿美元营业额中占据36％的市场份额。这个数字首次超过它在美国经营的19000家Taco Bell、Pizza Hut、KFC、Long John Silver和A&W餐厅的收入总和。
百胜在中国第三季度的利润飙升了23％，其美国本土的利润下降了2％。它在第四季度报告中公布的收入为35.6亿美元，主要收入来自海外市场。
在这个国家中，像Dunkin和易趣这样的西方公司努力经营却毫无起色的时候，百胜却在以每18个小时开一家分店的速度扩张。根据一家市场研究机构欧睿国际提供的数据，它现在拥有快餐领域40％的市场份额，而麦当劳只有16％。
百胜在1987年以一家餐厅起步，现在在中国各地有3200家肯德基和500家必胜客，从南部热带岛屿海南到北朝鲜边境和古代丝绸之路的沙漠绿洲。肯德基的目标是开设2万家餐厅。
《十亿顾客：来自中国商业前线的经验》一书的作者James McGregor说：“百胜是中国市场上最成功的外国公司。”
他说：“他们进入得早，他们投放合理的产品，他们积极扩张，他们给予中国管理者真正的决策权。”
中国的大赌注
百胜在中国成功的道路上也经历过风险。像对冲基金经理Hugh Hendry和Jim Chanos这样的悲观投资者曾经说，中国是世界第二大经济体，已经以每年10％的速度增长了三十年。如果资产泡沫破裂，或者上升的劳动力成本和食品价格开始侵蚀商业行为，那么其增长必将放缓，甚至停滞。
Warren Liu是百胜前任副总裁，现任一家欧洲私募股公司Investindustrial Advisors的中国区主席。他说，百胜在未来4年中，会依靠中国来实现其全球一半的收入和利润指标。
Liu是《肯德基在中国：成功的秘方》一书的作者，他说：“我很担心如此高度地依赖单一的市场，无论这个市场目前的业绩多么有吸引力。”
McGregor这样描述：“如果百胜在中国的业绩下滑，对股价的打击将是致命的。”
百胜在路易斯维尔的公司主席和首席执行官David Novak说，不会发生这样的事情。他引用摩根士丹利和欧睿的预测，中国在未来十年里，经济总量将变为现在的三倍，这会让2亿中国人进入快餐消费市场。
58岁的Novak说：“中国是21世纪最好的餐饮市场。”
Novak在中国的步伐不断加快。2004年，他开张了一个新的餐饮连锁店——东方既白，专门供应中国快餐。2009年，他收购了香港上市公司小肥羊集团27％的股份，这家公司在全国有480家门店，专营蒙古火锅。
投资者们认可了Novak的方向。2010年，百胜的股票在纽约股市中上涨了40％，麦当劳上涨了23％，标准普尔500强指数上涨了13％。自从百胜餐饮集团在1997年脱离百事集团之后，公司的股票价格翻了6倍多，而截止到1月25日，标准普尔500强股票价格只上涨了37％。
位于上海的中国市场研究集团总监Shaun Rein说：“如果你想找个简单的方法沾一些中国消费者的光，买进百胜的股票是个不错的主意。”
然而亚特兰帝斯投资行中国分部的首席理财师刘洋说，她不会购进百胜的股票，因为地区最低工资标准越来越高，主要城市的人工成本上升了21％，截止到12月份，食品价格通胀率达9.6％，这同时催高了原材料的成本。
手中掌握40亿美元资金的刘说：“百胜曾经在中国取得了不错的成绩，但是他们将面临利润率的降低。”
12月份，百胜的高管在纽约的一次股东会议中说，中国业务对公司的赢利越来越重要，这让我们的经营底限变得难以捉摸。
Novak对股东说：“我们希望尽量不要单纯依赖中国市场。我不知道是否还有另外一个中国，但我想，印度、俄罗斯——你把类似几个国家组合起来，早晚你会发现另外一个中国市场。”
百胜在中国的成功，主要归因于其开创本地口味的本领，既包含了其传统的、令人吮指回味的西方快餐风格，又结合了令人吮“筷”回味的中国口味。
龙旋风
麦当劳在中国餐厅中出售的基本上是与美国一样的汉堡包，可是肯德基菜单上的食物美国消费者肯定没见过。与上校鸡块摆在一起的是“龙旋风”——用类似北京烤鸭的酱料包裹起来的鸡肉（译者注：怀疑是老北京鸡肉卷），还有四川口味的麻婆鸡肉饭，那里是中国最辛辣食物的发源地。
中国的必胜客与西方门店更是没有一点相似的地方。肯德基毕竟看起来还像是一家西方快餐厅，而必胜客在中国装扮成了一个高端餐厅的模样，瞄准的客户群是越来越多的有钱人和在乎自己身份的中国人。顾客们坐在沙发上，在包含106样菜品的菜单中任意选择。其中有红酒和中国菜，还有海藻沫的扇贝炸丸子，甚至法式蜗牛。
百胜在文化方面的灵活性不仅体现在菜单上。西方快餐店通常会主办孩子们的生日聚会，而在穆斯林维吾尔人聚居的新疆乌鲁木齐的肯德基餐厅，甚至打广告可以为完成包皮割礼仪式的男孩家庭举办聚会。
28岁的苏易在北京积水潭地铁站对面一家拥挤的肯德基餐厅中，一边大口吃蘑菇熏肉饭一边说：“肯德基在本土化方面明显比麦当劳做得好。我每周在肯德基吃两次午餐，因为附近总能找到它的餐厅。当我出去约会的时候，如果想给女孩子一个好印象，我就带她去必胜客。”
快餐文化
中国对百胜品牌的钟爱——反之亦然——在北京的中心地带表现得尤其明显。在天安门广场上，山德士上校与毛主席遥遥相望。这里的肯德基餐厅占据了三层楼，第一层有一个精美的大型壁画，内容是长城欢迎用餐者。
第二层装修成胡同的模样，这是传统的北京居民建筑，在高层写字楼和公寓建筑中，这些老房屋正在消失。第三层是一个当代摄影师和画家作品的画廊，入口处的一个牌匾上写着，这是肯德基快餐文化和中国传统文化交织的场所。
肯德基在1952年由企业家哈兰德山德士创建，他曾经是一位农民和电车售票员。他当年手写的炸鸡秘方至今还妥善保管在路易斯维尔。上校这个头衔是肯塔基州授予他的荣誉称号。他在1964年以200万美元将公司出售给私人投资者，后者在4年后将公司上市，而山德士依然保留他公司代言人的身份。
1986年，当时的肯塔基炸鸡被百事公司收购，餐厅在1991年改名为KFC，原因是美国人越来越关注健康问题，开始尽量不食用油炸食品。
1997年，百事把KFC和其它几个快餐业务分离出来，成立了一家新公司，叫做Tricon国际餐饮集团。2002年改名为百胜。
肯德基刚开始进入亚洲市场时并非一帆风顺。1973年，公司在英国殖民地香港开设了11家餐厅，但在两年内纷纷关闭，因为它无法迎合当地消费者的需求。10年后，公司又回到香港，同时进入台湾市场，与日本伙伴建立的合资公司依然难有起色。
刘说：“肯德基早年在香港和台湾的失败，为后来打入中国市场提供了宝贵而又不昂贵的经验。”1987年当肯德基出现在天安门广场时，中国的老百姓都满怀期待地见识西方事物。
本地化的管理团队
刘在一本关于肯德基的书中写道：“第一家肯德基餐厅开业的时候，受到了无比热烈的欢迎。”公司选对了合作伙伴——北京动物制品生产、处理、交易公司和北京旅游局，这些国有单位可以给公司提供一些“关系”，这是在中国做生意非常重要的因素。
刘说，另一个重要的决定是把中国的业务委托给来自台湾的中国人打理。
他说，其它外国公司进入中国的时候都会聘请美国人，或者东南亚出生的亚洲人做经理。而百胜聘请的是来自台湾的中国人，他们和大陆人说一样的普通话，更深入地理解他们的文化。
人员是百胜在中国打开供应链的关键因素，也是他们比那些由外国管理团队运作的竞争对手更深入中国的核心所在。刘在书中把台湾管理者称为“台湾帮”，领导人是58岁的Sam Su，中国业务主席。他在2008年被提升为路易威尔董事会主席，09年年薪670万美元，仅次于CEO Novak 1310万美元的年薪。
前商会主席McGregor说：“Sam是中国商界的传奇。”我们无法联系到Su做采访。
老家生意惨淡
百胜在美国的窘迫状态无法与在中国取得的成绩相提并论，它2008年和2009年的收入都在下滑。
甚至奥普拉温弗瑞的促销活动也起到了相反的效果。2009年5月，温弗瑞在电视节目中推出了网络免费餐券。促销引起的反响如此之大，以至于原定两周的促销时间只持续了两天，肯德基就停止兑现餐券。有些消费者起诉了百胜，肯德基总裁Roger Eaton被迫承认错误，公开道歉。
免费餐券事件之后，不满的特许经销商宣称烤鸡肉的销量一直在下降。2010年，一些百胜的特许经销商把公司告上法庭，说它禁止经销商在推荐更受欢迎的油炸食品之前促销对人体更健康的烤鸡肉，理由是损害公司的品牌形象。消费者和特许经销商的诉讼案还在审理过程中。
肯德基在中国也并非事事如意，从食品到汽车行业的西方公司纷纷受到低端新贵们的挑战。在快餐领域，百胜遇到越来越多来自亚洲食品连锁行业的竞争，比如顶新国际集团的德克士、东京吉野家控股公司的吉野家、马尼拉的快乐蜂食品公司的永和大王和宏状元，后者在菲律宾的销售额已经超过了麦当劳和百胜。
麦当劳也姗姗来迟地积蓄自己的力量。中国CEO Kenneth Chan说，公司的目标是到2013年，把目前1100家中国餐厅的数量翻倍。
尽管如此，中国和百胜之间的关系目前还是牢不可破的。在遥望毛的陵墓的肯德基餐厅中，学生何盈盈吃完最后一块鸡肉，口称“好吃”，她又看了一眼上校的肖像。
“他当年真的只以200万美元的价格卖出了肯德基？”她似乎不大相信地说，“他后来一定很后悔。”
山德士死于1980年，他决想不到自己的美国南方手艺会有一天吸引到数百万中国消费者。这要感谢肯德基并非那么神秘的海外生意经、西方的魅力和辛辣的地区性口味。
原文：
On the edge of Tiananmen Square, across the street from Mao Zedong’s tomb, He Yingying munches on a piece of chicken and gazes at the benign-looking figure beaming down at her.
“We love him,” she says, bursting into an impish smile.
The 21-year-old student from Beijing’s Capital University of Economics and Business isn’t referring to Mao, whose iconic official portrait dominates the square. She’s talking about the long-dead, white-bearded Kentucky colonel on the logo of the KFC restaurant where she’s feasting on her favorite fast food.
In its home market, the United States, KFC is struggling as an also-ran to McDonald’s — the world’s biggest restaurant company — and feuding with some of its own franchisees over how to halt declining profits.
In China, Colonel Harland Sanders’s image is a far more common sight in many cities than that of Mao. That accomplishment is striking in a country where foreign companies often stumble.
The secret to the success of KFC’s parent company, Louisville-based Yum Brands, can be traced to its use of local ingredients — both in its management team and on its menus. In the 24 years it has operated in China, Yum has hired Chinese managers to build partnerships with local companies in its expansion drive and used their expertise to offer an array of regional dishes that appeal to domestic tastes.
Local flavors and fare
Today, KFC customers in China can buy a bowl of congee — a rice porridge that can feature pork, pickles, mushrooms and preserved egg — as well as a bucket of its famous fried chicken. In 2010, Yum expected to make 36 percent of an estimated $2 billion operating profit from 3,700 restaurants in China — eclipsing for the first time its total earnings from the 19,000 Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, Long John Silver’s and A&W restaurants it owns in the United States. Yum announced Jan. 18 that it will sell its Long John Silver’s and A&W chains in part to focus on China.
In the third quarter, Yum’s profit in China soared 23 percent, while its U.S. profit dropped 2 percent. Yum posted $3.56 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, boosted by robust growth overseas.
In a country that Western companies such as Dunkin’ Brands and eBay have struggled to penetrate, Yum has opened a new restaurant every 18 hours. It now has a 40 percent market share among fast-food chains, compared with 16 percent for McDonald’s, according to Euromonitor International, a market research firm.
Yum, which started with one restaurant in 1987, now operates 3,200 KFCs and 500 Pizza Huts in 650 Chinese cities — stretching from the tropical southern island of Hainan to the North Korean border and the desert oases of the ancient Silk Road. KFC’s target: to push that number to 20,000.
“Yum has become the most successful foreign company in China,” says James McGregor, author of “One Billion Customers: Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China.”
“They got in early,” he says. “They adapted the product. They expanded aggressively, and they gave their Chinese managers real decision-making power.”
A huge stake in China
Yum’s Chinese success story also has risks. Bearish investors, such as hedge-fund managers Hugh Hendry and Jim Chanos, say that the world’s second-biggest economy, which has surged an average of 10 percent a year for more than three decades, could slow to a halt if asset bubbles burst and rising labor and food costs bite businesses.
Within four years, Yum will depend on China for more than half its global revenue and profit margin, according to Warren Liu, a former Yum vice president who is now China chairman of Investindustrial Advisors, a European private-equity firm.
“I worry about too much reliance on a single market, no matter how financially attractive that market is,” says Liu, who wrote the unauthorized “KFC in China: Secret Recipe for Success.”
McGregor put it this way: “If Yum’s China business went south, it would kill the stock.”
David Novak, Yum’s Louisville-based chairman and chief executive, says that’s not going to happen. He cites estimates from Morgan Stanley and Euromonitor that China’s economy will triple over the next decade, lifting 200 million more Chinese into the fast-food-consuming class.
“China is the best restaurant opportunity in the 21st century,” Novak, 58, says.
Novak has doubled down on China. In 2004, he launched a new chain, East Dawning, which serves only Chinese fast food. In 2009, he acquired a 27 percent stake in Little Sheep Group, a Hong Kong-listed company that operates 480 restaurants specializing in Mongolian hot pot dishes.
Investors are betting that Novak is right. In 2010, Yum shares jumped 40 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, compared with a 23 percent rise in McDonald’s shares and a 13 percent increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Since Yum Brands was spun off from PepsiCo in 1997, the stock has risen more than sixfold, compared with the 37 percent rise in the S&P 500 to Jan. 25.
“If you want an easy way to get a piece of the China consumer story, Yum is a good stock to buy into,” says Shaun Rein, Shanghai-based managing director of China Market Research Group.
Yet Liu Yang, chairman and chief investment officer of the Chinese unit of Atlantis Investment Management, says she wouldn’t buy the stock because higher regional minimum wages have pushed up labor costs by as much as 21 percent in major cities and food inflation that hit 9.6 percent in December will increase the price of raw materials.
“Yum used to be a good China consumer play, but they will face a squeeze on their margins,” says Liu, who helps manage $4 billion.
Yum executives said at an investor conference in New York in December that the growing importance of the China business could lead to more volatility in the bottom line.
“We want to become less China-dependent,” Novak told investors. “I don’t know if there’s another China, but I think India, Russia — you combine a few of these opportunities, and you’ll create another China over time.”
Yum’s success in China has resulted in large part from its ability to create a menu that combines its traditional finger- lickin’ Western fast food with chopstick-lickin’ dishes that appeal to Chinese tastes.
Dragon Twister
While McDonald’s restaurants in China mostly sell the same U.S.-style burgers, KFC’s menu features dishes that would be unrecognizable to its U.S. patrons. Alongside the Colonel’s secret-recipe fried chicken, Chinese KFCs offer options such as the Dragon Twister, a chicken wrap in a Peking duck-type sauce, and spicy tofu chicken rice based on the cuisine of Sichuan province, home of China’s hottest dishes.
Pizza Huts in China bear even less resemblance to their Western counterparts. While a KFC in the People’s Republic still looks like a Western-style fast-food restaurant, Chinese Pizza Huts are marketed as sophisticated venues for the legion of increasingly affluent and status-conscious Chinese. Seated in cushioned booths, customers can choose from a 106-item menu that includes wine and Chinese-influenced dishes, such as scallop croquettes with crushed seaweed and even French-inspired escargot.
Yum’s cultural flexibility doesn’t end with the localized menu. While fast-food restaurants in the West often host children’s birthday parties, KFCs in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang region that’s home to the Muslim Uyghur people, advertise parties for the families of boys who have just undergone the religious ritual of circumcision.
“KFC is certainly doing better than McDonald’s at becoming more Chinese,” says Su Yi, 28, a lawyer, as he pauses between spoonfuls of mushroom, bacon and rice at lunch in a packed KFC opposite Beijing’s Jishuitan subway station. “I have lunch at KFC twice a week because there’s always one close by. And when I’m out on a date and want to impress a girl, I take her to Pizza Hut.”
Fast-food culture
China’s embrace of Yum brands — and vice versa — is most apparent in the center of Beijing, where Colonel Sanders meets Chairman Mao in Tiananmen Square. On the ground level of the three-story KFC, an elaborate mural of the Great Wall greets diners.
On the second floor, the decor is meant to resemble a hutong — the traditional Beijing neighborhoods that are disappearing to make way for high-rise office and apartment blocks. The third floor doubles as a gallery for local photographers and painters. A plaque at the entrance describes it as an exchange channel between KFC’s fast-food culture and Chinese folk culture.
KFC was founded by entrepreneur Harland Sanders, a former farmhand and streetcar conductor, in 1952. His handwritten recipe for the chain’s fried-chicken batter remains under lock and key in Louisville. The colonel, an honorary title bestowed by the state of Kentucky, sold out for $2 million in 1964 to private investors who took the company public four years later, though Sanders continued to be the main spokesman for the chain.
In 1986, Kentucky Fried Chicken, as it was then known, was acquired by PepsiCo, which changed the restaurant unit’s name to KFC in 1991 as health-conscious Americans began shunning fried food.
In 1997, PepsiCo spun off KFC and its other fast-food businesses into a new company called Tricon Global Restaurants. The company changed its name to Yum Brands in 2002.
KFC’s push into Asia faltered at first. In 1973, the company opened 11 restaurants in the British colony of Hong Kong but closed them within two years because it couldn’t win over local consumers. A decade later, it returned to Hong Kong and entered Taiwan, where an early joint venture with Japanese partners also ran into trouble.
“KFC’s early failure in Hong Kong and Taiwan served as valuable and inexpensive lessons in preparation for its entry into China,” Liu says. When KFC arrived in 1987 beside Tiananmen Square, China’s population was looking to the West with anticipation, he says.
Local management
“The first KFC restaurant opened to the warmest embrace imaginable,” Liu writes in his book on KFC. The company had also chosen the right joint-venture partners — Beijing Corp. of Animal Production, Processing, Industry & Commerce and Beijing Travel & Tourism — that were state-owned, providing the guanxi, or connections, that were essential when setting up a business in China.
An even more important decision was to entrust management of the China business to ethnic Chinese from Taiwan, Liu says.
While other foreign companies entering China recruited American or Southeast Asian-born Chinese managers, Yum hired Chinese from Taiwan, who speak the same Mandarin as mainlanders and understand their culture better, he says.
Those employees were key in helping open supply lines to allow Yum to reach Chinese locations out of the reach of rival food companies run by overseas managers. The leader of what Taiwan-born Liu describes in his book as the “Taiwan Gang” is Sam Su, 58, chairman of the China business, who in 2008 was promoted to vice chairman of the main board in Louisville and who earned $6.7 million in 2009 — second only to the $13.1 million earned by CEO Novak.
“Sam is a legend in China business,” says McGregor, the former chamber of commerce chairman. Su could not be reached for comment.
Not as hot back home
Yum’s performance in China contrasts with its struggles in the United States, where revenue declined in 2008 and 2009.
Even a promotion involving Oprah Winfrey backfired. In May 2009, Winfrey’s television show offered free meals with online coupons. The result sparked such a rush that KFC stopped redeeming the coupons two days into the scheduled two-week promotion, prompting consumers to sue Yum. KFC President Roger Eaton was forced to apologize for the fiasco.
After the free-meal giveaway, grilled-chicken sales continued to slide, the dissident franchisees claim. In 2010, some of Yum’s franchisees sued the company in an attempt to prevent it from promoting the healthier grilled chicken ahead of the more popular fried product, saying it was damaging the brand. Both the customer and franchisee lawsuits are continuing in the U.S.
It isn’t all roses in China, either. Western companies making everything from fast food to autos are being challenged by lower-cost local upstarts. In fast food, Yum is also facing increased competition from Asian chains such as Dicos, a unit of closely held Ting Hsin International Group; Yoshinoya, owned by Tokyo-based Yoshinoya Holdings Co.; and Yonghe King and Hongzhuangyuan, both owned by Manila-based Jollibee Foods, a company that already outsells McDonalds and Yum in the Philippines.
McDonald’s is also mounting a belated challenge. It aims to almost double its 1,100 China stores by 2013, its China CEO Kenneth Chan said.
For now, though, China’s love affair with Yum brands continues. In the KFC overlooking Mao’s tomb, student He Yingying swallows her last morsel of chicken, pronounces it “hao chi,” or delicious, and takes another glance at the colonel’s portrait.
“Did he really only sell the business for $2 million?” she says incredulously. “He must have regretted it later.”
Sanders died in 1980, never imagining that his Southern specialties would one day lure millions of Chinese customers, thanks to KFC’s not-so-secret recipe of local business knowledge, Western glamour and spicy regional fare. |
狗仔卡
楼主
提升卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
发表于 2011-6-1 14:36
