GuShiio.com Wen| Blue Shark Consumption, Author| Wei Qiang, Editor| Lu Xucheng
According to the forecast of the 2025 comprehensive transportation Spring Festival travel special class, during the 8-day Spring Festival holiday (January 28, 2025 to February 4, 2025), the cross-regional flow of people in the whole society will exceedRMB23 millionNumber of people, estimated23119388 millionPassenger flow, including highway personnel flow218818 millionPassenger travel volume of non-commercial passenger cars on expressways and ordinary national and provincial highways199529 millionPeople,This means that about 2 billion people visit relatives and friends by car。
This year’s Spring Festival holiday is the same as last year. The author chose to take the high-speed train from Beijing to Guangzhou, rent a new energy vehicle, and drive from Guangzhou to his hometown in Guigang, Guangxi for the New Year, becoming one of the 2 billion people.
For the flow of these 2 billion people, if calculated based on the cost of 50 yuan per person, this business of wealth of wealth is hundreds of billions of yuan. According to my observation, all parties are not doing a good job in this business.
Does the New Year’s Day ignore the large market of 2 billion people?
According to data from the Ministry of Public Security of China,As of the end of 2024, 506 million people in China have driver’s licenses, and the number of cars in the country is 353 million. This is the prerequisite for approximately 2 billion self-driving people during the Spring Festival this year.
The author drove from Guangzhou to Guigang, Guangxi. The whole journey took more than 6 hours without traffic jams. According to the author’s understanding, many people drive home from Beijing by themselves, and some travel for more than 20 hours. When people drive home for the New Year, on the one hand, they must bring gifts for the elderly and relatives at home, such as tea, wine, health products, etc.; on the other hand, they need to prepare equipment on the road. If they encounter a major traffic jam during the Spring Festival (caused by car accidents, rainy and snowy weather, etc.), how to solve problems such as going to the toilet, eating and drinking?
In terms of gifts, online e-commerce platforms and offline large supermarkets have special areas to recommend health products, tea, wine and other New Year goods. The supply is sufficient and mature, so I will not elaborate on them. In terms of products prepared for people driving home for the Chinese New Year on a long-distance basis, I don’t see much targeted design and innovation. For example, long-distance self-driving during the Spring Festival is a headache for internal emergencies. Although there is a service area every dozens of kilometers on highways, provincial roads, and national roads, and there is a complete public toilet system in the service area, it is often encountered that you accidentally miss it or if car owners try not to enter the service area in order to rush home. Large supermarkets can fully provide portable (even specially developed) adult diapers to solve this pain point. When I was preparing to go home at Wumart, Beijing’s largest supermarket, I didn’t see any similar product promotion in a prominent position.
In addition, long-distance self-driving people usually prepare in advance things such as food and drink for a carload (family) on the road. Each individual and family has different preferences. Some will boil their own eggs, and some will buy cooked food such as smoked chicken, but in fact they have something in common, such as the functional drinks Red Bull, Dongpeng Special Drink, etc. used by drivers to refresh themselves, fruits, snacks, etc. that are convenient for hanging and using on the car (rather than turning shopping bags into garbage bags), pillows, sleeping bags and other products that are convenient for resting on the car are scattered in various corners of online shopping malls and offline large supermarkets, and can be completely combined into a set (it can also include disposable toothpaste toothbrushes, hand wipes and face wipes for self-driving).Special promotion in an eye-catching positionI believe this will be welcomed.
Drink competition Shura arena?
Because the author returned home at the peak of the Spring Festival travel season and encountered a car accident, the original planned six-hour drive was delayed to about 8 hours, requiring one service area to replenish electricity for the electric vehicle on the one hand, and replenish drinks and food on the other hand. The author drove into Fengkai (via Guangxi to Guangzhou) and Gaoliang Service Area (via Guangzhou to Guangxi) in Zhaoqing City, Guangdong Province to rest. Taking these two service areas as models below,Observe the consumption ecology of high-speed service areas。
Many people drive electric cars home during the Spring Festival and worry about too many cars waiting to be charged and waiting in line for too long; they are worried that there will be a traffic jam and the car will die on the way without power. What should I do? In the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, there is no need to worry about local winter temperatures around 20, and the cruising range of electric vehicles will hardly be reduced due to weather conditions; there are sufficient charging piles in the high-speed service areas in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, and the charging queue in the service areas ahead can also be predicted through the Gaode map. Situation, staggered the service areas with many people, the two service areas that the author entered had spare charging piles, and the journey continued after charging for 1 hour.
In the Gaoliang service area, there is aesay joy。Easy Joy Convenience Store is a convenience store chain brand owned by Sinopec. According to data from China Chain Store Association, the number of Easy Joy Convenience Store stores nationwide in 2023 will reach 28633, second only to Meiyijia’s 33848 stores.ranking second in the country。According to the 21st Century Business Review, the annual turnover of Easy Jet convenience stores in 2021 will exceed 70 billion yuan. In the closed service area, there is a Leyi convenience store。Leyi Convenience Store isChina Expressway Service Area Convenience Store BrandAs of February 2025, the number of Leyi convenience stores is 535, mainly distributed in Guangdong Province.
At the Yijie convenience store, Blue Shark consumers saw the crushing of Red Bull by Dongpeng Special Drink, a China head functional beverage brand.
Red Bull from Thailand was once the absolute leader in energy drinks in China and a must-have artifact for long-distance driving drivers to eliminate fatigue. In 2014, its revenue in the China market exceeded 20 billion yuan.
Dongpeng Beverage Company, which was still producing Dongpeng Pai Kao Chenpi beverage in 1994, was an imitator and follower of Red Bull. In 1998, it launched the functional beverage Dongpeng Special Drink. After 25 years of development, Dongpeng Special Drink’s revenue in 2023 will exceed 10 billion yuan; in the first three quarters of 2024, it is expected to achieve operating income of 12.4 billion yuan to 12.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.50% to 47.21%.
At the entrance of the Gaoliang service area, there is a huge billboard for Dongpeng Beverage. People are tired and sleepy. Drinking Dongpeng Special Drink is intended to overwhelm the enemy in terms of momentum; secondly, in the stacking and display of convenience stores, the opponents are comprehensively crushed in Yijie Convenience Store’s health food sales area, on the upper and lower levels, is all occupied by Dongpeng Special Drink, covering 250ml bottles, 500ml bottles, 250ml cans and other specifications. In the pile head and counter display areas, Dongpeng Special Drink is surrounding Red Bull: Red Bull only sells classic canned Red Bull at 6 yuan/can; Dongpeng Special Drink uses 4 yuan/bottle with slightly larger capacity for cost-effective competition. In fact, the price of Dongpeng Special Drink classic cans is only 0.5 yuan lower than that of canned Red Bull. Red Bull also has bottles, but the price is still slightly more expensive than Dongpeng Special Drink of the same size. In Red Bull’s freezer, in addition to the 1st and 2nd floors that are Red Bull’s products, the 3rd to 6th floors are occupied by drinks from brands such as Wahaha, Master Kong, and Tongyi.
All in all, Dongpeng Special Drink relies on more specifications, more cost-effective products (lower bottle cost), richer display and stacking, and greater advertising investment to seize Red Bull’s territory. At Easy Jet convenience stores, Blue Shark consumers cannot see any brands of functional drinks other than Red Bull and Dongpeng. As the saying goes, the eldest brother and the second brother fight, and the third brother dies. Judging from the financial report, Dongpeng Special Drink is effective in attacking Red Bull, and its performance has grown rapidly.
In addition to functional drinks, there is a sufficient supply of other beverages, from packaged water to tea drinks, to juice drinks, coffee drinks, carbonated drinks, etc., with several characteristics:
2. Coffee, juice drinks, etc. can be sold at high prices. For example, oriental leaves sell for 6.5 yuan/bottle, lemon tea with ripe fruit sells for 7 yuan/bottle, Starbucks bottled coffee for 25 yuan/2 bottles, Dongpeng Special Drink, Yibao and others have launched their own juice and coffee drinks to steal money.
3. You can’t see the brands of freshly made tea and coffee. Compared with the prices of the above-mentioned fruit juice and coffee bottled products, Mixue Ice City 4 yuan/cup of freshly made lemonade, and Kudi and Ruixing 9.9 yuan/cup of freshly made coffee should be competitive. The difficulty lies in the monopoly of Sinopec and other high-speed service areas. How can these freshly made tea and coffee brands share the profits with them, how can they share labor and other costs to make money? It remains to be seen whether the store-in-store model proposed by Kudi and Nova Coffee will stand the test.
Why is food and catering consumption so useless?
Compared with sufficient beverage supply and fierce competition, the food and catering supply in the high-speed service area is poor.
Take Babao porridge as an example. In Yijie Convenience Store, only Yinlu and Taqi Food, a well-known brand in the Greater Bay District, are not even seen. The only instant noodles are Master Kong.
In the two service areas of Fengkai and Gaoliang,The catering provided is also difficult to describe——Most of them are roast duck legs, chicken legs, fried noodles, etc., for 15 yuan each. Duck legs and chicken legs are one of the cheapest meat products in supermarkets. Not even a few shredded pork can be seen, and the cost is negligible. You can imagine how high the profits are. The author remembers that when I passed by a certain service area when I returned home in 2023, I could still see chain restaurants such as Zhengxin Chicken Chop, but I couldn’t see it at all this time. The operator of the service area should actually understand that although people pass through the high-speed service area and spend most of them on one-time consumption, if there is no good supply and no cost performance, over time, people will not arrange to eat in the service area. They will hold a bunch of supermarket instant noodles and soak them in boiling water to cope with a meal. After the high-speed rail opened the takeout service, many consumers were willing to pay slightly higher prices and pay delivery fees to order takeout. Well-known catering brands such as KFC near the high-speed rail station ahead provided services and were delivered by high-speed rail attendants, which slowly changed people’s perception of high-speed rail food. The impression that food is not delicious and expensive.
Blue Shark Consumption believes that during the Spring Festival, there is a huge flow of people in the high-speed service area, many of whom are foreigners, and local cultural and tourism departmentsYou should cooperate with the service area operators in your jurisdiction, promote local specialties, culture and scenic spots, such as snail noodles in Liuzhou, Guangxi, beef intestines sour and ice spring soy milk in Wuzhou, Xijiang brewed tofu, sausage flour burger, steamed rice dumplings, etc. in Zhaoqing, Guangdong. The catering stores in the service area are best It is a branch of time-honored brands, with veteran chefs taking charge of cooking and bringing out the most authentic local cuisine to attract car owners with purchasing power and strong tourist intentions. In addition, during the Spring Festival, traffic and people flow in the high-speed service area 24 hours a day, so you can consider using smarter methods to provide services, such as smart coffee machines, tea machines, cooking robots, etc.
I can often see huge signs of well-known local tourist attractions on my own driving road. In fact, most people will not leave an impression. If large posters are erected in advertising service areas, parking lots, charging stations, etc. in the high-speed service area, restaurants and retail stores in the service area are filled with KT board information on scenic spots, and more LED TVs can even be hung to scroll through videos of scenic spots, cultural and food. There are also leaflets that allow consumers to take them away, which may make people eye-catching. If we follow the arrangements of major local cultural and tourism festivals, such as Yunnan’s Water-Splashing Festival and Guangxi’s March Three Songs Festival, etc., corresponding flash mob activities are held in the service area, which will increase popularity. The combination of offline marketing with online platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu will have a better effect.
