Click to read the original article for details In recent years, impacted by e-commerce, physical retail enterprises have struggled, and news of supermarket closures is common. Recently in Hunan, physical stores in the 'fruit + snacks' format have been springing up like mushrooms. The author visited several fruit + snack stores. Upon entering, one feels the simple and stylish decoration, hears the latest dynamic music, and sees delicious all-category fruits, internet-famous foods, and specialty products. The prices are even lower than those in other supermarkets, fruit stores, and snack shops. Employees wear smiles and work busily and orderly, while customers bustle about in a continuous stream, creating a lively atmosphere. This left the author with a pleasant and wonderful shopping experience. The 'fruit + snacks' format initially began with 'Xiaopeng Fruit Manager' as a pioneer, followed by 'Guotianxia Fruit Manager', 'Xianguo Bang City Fruit Storage Center', 'Guopianyi Storage Membership Store', and other fruit and snack enterprises rapidly expanding across Hunan. In their commercial areas, the fruit and leisure snack businesses of hypermarkets are sluggish, with few consumers; nearby stores like 'Lvye Fruit' and 'Baiguoyuan' are deserted; even the usually strong regional snack specialty stores like 'Snacks Busy' and 'Dai Yonghong' pale in comparison. The fruit + snacks format can be described as a fresh stream in Hunan's retail industry. In today's bleak physical retail environment, why can fruit + snack stores stand out and dominate? This article analyzes the secrets and genes of their success one by one. 1 Strategic Location Selection They generally choose locations near large communities in prefecture-level cities or counties, with parking lots, not traditional commercial positions, and rent is cheaper than in commercial centers. Proximity to large communities ensures customer flow, parking lots help expand the trade area, attract high-end customers, and facilitate convenience. Low rent creates conditions for implementing 'low cost and thus low price'. Such locations can attract food enthusiasts within a 3-kilometer radius after opening. 2 High Sales and High Sales per Square Meter The fruit + snacks format achieves monthly sales of 1.5-2 million yuan per store, with daily sales of 50,000-80,000 yuan. Under the same expense and loss amounts, high sales lead to low expense rates and low loss rates, ensuring reasonable profit margins. The overall store profit margin is around 5%. A store's annual sales are about 20-25 million yuan, with net profit per store around 1 million yuan. Store areas are generally 500-800 square meters, with monthly sales per square meter around 3,000 yuan, compared to traditional supermarkets' 600-800 yuan, making it 3-4 times higher. 3 SKU Count and High Product Efficiency Total SKUs range from 1,200 to 1,800, with monthly product efficiency of 1,000-1,500 yuan. Fruit SKUs account for 20% of the store, snacks 50%, roasted nuts 5%, internet-famous and specialty products 4%, ambient milk, chilled milk, and beverages 10%, toys 3%, cooked food and on-site processing 3%, and daily chemicals, paper products, condiments, and grain and oil 5%. The fruit category has a wide product structure, covering all subcategories, and a deep product structure, including all fruits available on the market, creating an image of 'the most complete fruit category'. 4 High Quality and Low Prices They adopt a strict selection model to find the best-tasting fruits in the market. Their buyers must personally taste each batch of every single product before it can be put on the shelves, ensuring the best taste and building a reputation of 'I have the best-tasting fruits'. Each fruit subcategory has ultra-low-price promotional items, such as bananas, fragrant pears, and apples at 0.99 yuan per jin, and durian at a sensational 9.9 yuan per jin, making prices highly competitive, challenging, and sensational. Their promotional items have a gross margin of -30%, promotional products 5-10%, regular items 25%, and high-end items 30%, with an overall store gross margin of around 20%. They do not just offer low prices but pursue high cost-performance. High quality and low price is one of the secrets of this format's success. 5 Powerful Promotions These stores generally do not run frequent promotions or recharge activities, but when they do, the effect is unprecedented. For example, in summer, they ran a promotion: 'Spend 88 yuan and get a desert watermelon free'. A desert watermelon costs 10-15 yuan, making the expense rate over ten points per order. Considering participation rate, average order value, and promotion period, the actual overall promotion expense rate is within 5%, but the effect is an unbeatable 'street sensation', creating a buzz, bringing continuous hot traffic, and defending the strategy of high sales. 6 Golden Category Combination The main categories are fruits, snacks, roasted nuts, milk, beverages, toys, and on-site prepared cooked food. Except for milk and beverages, which are low-margin categories, the others are high-margin. Except for roasted nuts and toys, which are low-turnover categories, the others are high-turnover. It can be seen that it uses fruits to attract traffic and snacks to make money, forming a golden category structure of high margin and high turnover. 7 Direct Sourcing from Bases, High Turnover, and Low-Cost Operation Purchases from Hongxing Fruit Market and Gaoqiao Market account for 80% of the store, while direct sourcing from fruit bases and manufacturers accounts for 20%. Direct delivery and daily distribution account for 80%, and central warehouse distribution 20%. Most products for a single store are delivered directly from wholesale markets and suppliers, saving intermediate logistics costs. Large quantities of regular items and seasonal products are directly sourced from production areas to the central warehouse, then distributed to stores. For example, apples from Shandong, desert melons from Ningxia, fragrant pears from Xinjiang, Gannan oranges from Jiangxi, and pomegranates from Yunnan have direct sourcing bases, implementing an efficient turnover model from orchard to store, reducing many intermediate links and lowering operating costs. 8 24-Hour No-Reason Returns and Active Free Tasting Many retail stores still impose conditions on returns, but fruit + snack stores offer 24-hour no-reason returns. In fact, customers come to buy, not to return. If your products and services are flawless, why would customers return? Returns are to better sell products, solving customers' worries, making them more confident to buy, and sales will naturally improve. General retail bosses are wary of customers eating products in the store, even posting 'No tasting' signs. But the author saw at fruit + snack stores that almost all fruits are offered for tasting, and employees proactively remind and recommend customers to try. This shows strong confidence in their quality and provides customers with a high-quality shopping experience. If customers taste delicious fruits, how can they refuse to buy? 9 Good Compensation and Quality Service Fruit + snack stores offer compensation and benefits far higher than peers, implementing a 'high performance, high reward' strategy. Their store managers earn 20,000 yuan per month, and employees 4,000 yuan per month. With a good compensation system, they can gather capable, executive, and young employees, who will have a sense of well-being and belonging. Treat employees well, and they will treat customers well. The author observed that employees are generally aged 25-35, with active thinking, strong innovation, passion, and vitality. They genuinely put themselves in customers' shoes, hawking in the store, proactively recommending tastings, and proactively cutting fruits, packing, and boxing, as if they were the owners. With a sense of ownership, enthusiastic reception, and thoughtful service, which consumer would not want to go? 10 Advanced Concepts, People-Friendly Selling Methods, and Innovative Promotion The owners of fruit + snack stores are young people born in the 1980s and 1990s, with excellent traits: being good at learning and strong execution. They learn from Kazuo Inamori's management philosophy and Pang Donglai's management ideas. Concepts like 'respect people', 'pursue love', 'do good deeds, think of others', and 'consumer benefit is the only meaning of our existence' can be seen throughout the store, making their management modern, avant-garde, and humane, strategically superior to other traditional retail enterprises. In terms of selling methods, besides special sales, they prefer '5 yuan for 3', '10 yuan for 5 jin', '10 yuan for 1 box, 15 yuan for 2 boxes, 20 yuan for 3 boxes', making customers feel the affordability. For promotion, they generally use Douyin, which is popular among the masses, especially young people. When there are special sales, new products, nutritional information, or taste descriptions, employees act as anchors, sharing their personal experiences in videos posted on customer WeChat groups and Douyin. The main young consumer group of the post-90s and post-00s likes to browse Douyin. When they see fresh fruits and anchors describing them deliciously, who can resist the temptation of food? In summary, although the current physical retail industry is declining, as long as we find market opportunities, delve into the industry, deeply study consumers and products, and return to the essence of retail, providing customers with high-quality and low-priced products, professional operation, and humane management, traditional retail can also have its own unique sky. Source: Lianshang Supermarket Home (ID: chaoshirenzhijia) -END-