Yang Jinxiang, the founder of Yang Jixing: the "innovator" of stinky mandarin fish

"I didn't repair it in my last life. I was born in Huizhou. I was thirteen or fourteen years old and lost it." It is a long-standing Huizhou folk song, telling the story of past lives of Huizhou merchants.

This issue of "Restaurant Face" is a Huizhou merchant in the new era. /kloc-at the age of 0/7, he was young and frivolous and began to "break into the world". 200 1 year officially entered the catering circle, and after more than ten years of hard work, found a way to operate; In 20 13, Yang Jixing's Stinky Mandarin Fish was a hit; Now sit firmly at the top of China Huizhou cuisine.

He is Yang Jinxiang, the founder of Yang Jixing's stinky mandarin fish.

"Wanshan is not allowed to flow, and the sound of the stream is noisy day and night; At the foot of the mountain, the stream will flow out of the former village. " This poem by Yang Wanli, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, praised the beautiful scenery of Shangzhuang in Huizhou. This is a poem often quoted by Mr. Hu Shi.

Such a humble villa makes Mr. Hu Shi, who lived in Taiwan Province Province in his later years, haunted; Such a magical land gave birth to a unique and humane Huizhou merchant.

Huizhou merchants, the most outstanding business gang in China during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, began in the Southern Song Dynasty and flourished in the middle and early Qing Dynasty. At the end of Qianlong period of Qing Dynasty, merchants from Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang began to rise, while those from Huizhou gradually declined. Nowadays, with the deepening of reform and opening up, Huizhou merchants who have been dormant for a long time have gradually begun to revive.

When we talk about Huizhou merchants again today, we should put the word "new" in front of them. On the one hand, "new Huizhou merchants" refers to the development of Anhui province in geographical scope; On the one hand, the field involved has expanded to all aspects.

Shi Yuzhu, the founder of Giant Group, is the most controversial and legendary figure in China business circles.

At present, Zhang Liaoyuan, the founder of Three Squirrels, the largest food e-commerce enterprise in China, is called "Zhang Sanfeng" by the electric business community from Jixi, Anhui. ?

Today's dining face, Yang Jinxiang, has the same name-New Huizhou Merchants, who inherit the excellent quality of China's 5,000-year-old traditional culture with their own hands.

Back in the early 1990s, the spring in Chuzhou came quietly. A row of tea trees in the alley have vomited scattered buds. Just behind this row of tea trees, a 65,438+06-year-old boy waved a little bully game machine borrowed from his relatives in his left hand, and held three game tapes of Nintendo's Contra, Super Mario and Tank Battle in his right hand, and began to shout to his neighbors: "Eat mushrooms and you will grow up! Eating flowers can fire bullets! The latest version of "Top Mushroom" (Super Mario) that is not available in the game hall! Two dollars a hand, five dollars three hands! " The neighborhood children who lived nearby came to watch the excitement and surrounded him in an instant.

The boy skillfully connected the red and white game machine to his 14 inch black and white TV set, brought up the game screen, and kept chanting "line up! Play games and jump prices in a limited time! There is no such shop in this village! " Not long after, the coat pocket was "full of pots."

At that time, there were obviously no advanced words such as "resource integration", "focus on segmentation" and "hunger marketing", but boys were almost born with a talent for doing business, and they showed extraordinary business acumen when they were students.

"When I was a child, my family conditions were not good, and my desire to make money was particularly strong." In order to reduce the family burden, a boy from an ordinary family entered the society at the age of 16 or 17. He never wanted to work for others. He has always believed that "he can do things by himself".

In the three years after 1990, he did 360 small businesses, including opening clothing stores, selling vegetables, providing information services for getting rich and starting small food processing factories. He tried almost every time, but he didn't make any money. Not only did I not make any money, but I also lost one or two thousand yuan borrowed by my parents.

The money was not a small sum for ordinary families at that time, and neighbors talked about it. "Yang's son really lived up to expectations. He didn't learn well at a young age, and sooner or later he will lose his family. " The boy's spine ached with thorns.

Fortunately, parents are tolerant and say "inherit the family style". They don't think the child is a "black sheep". On the contrary, from his point of view, they think it is good to keep the child away from the engine. Since this is the initial intention, they should support it.

1994, Yang Jinxiang ushered in a small watershed in his life. He plans to go out of his hometown to see the outside world. So I followed my friends to Shanghai to start a building materials business. "When I first arrived in Shanghai, I worked in a building materials factory for a year as a transitional period," the boy questioned himself on countless sleepless nights this year. "Do I have to work like this all my life?"

The answer isno. Stubborn, he doesn't believe in birth.

Through constant exploration and consultation, he finally found a business opportunity. A year later, he took his girlfriend to raise 5000 yuan again and started a small business of "selling building materials". 800 yuan bought a tricycle, and 50 yuan bought all the furniture. From the samples in the building materials wholesale market, he began to sell all the needed materials, such as cement, yellow sand, ceramic tiles, wood thread, glue and so on. Put the booth in front of the newly-built residential area, there are many customers in need, pick up the goods from the suppliers, provide home delivery service, and change hands to make a difference.

In the first half of the resumption, it seems that Yang Jinxiang was born with excellent marketing ability of focusing and positioning. He quickly locked in the marble business with "the highest profit and simple operation" from many building materials categories. Business is booming gradually. Not long after, the booth at the entrance of the original community moved to the rental facade room and finally became a stone processing factory.

The first bucket of gold in life followed.

1998, CCTV's opening drama "Water Margin" made thousands of people empty, and Liu Huan's theme song "Good Han Song" became the memory of a generation.

In the same year, Yang Jinxiang resold the stone processing factory and decided to return to his hometown of Chuzhou. Although he did not return to his hometown, he not only accomplished two major events in his life-getting married and having children; At the age of 25, when he was doing a small business in Chuzhou, he paid off the loans of his relatives and friends, and he was finally relieved.

Speaking of Yang Jinxiang's innovation about stinky mandarin fish, in fact, before he officially went north, the layman in this restaurant circle tried it at home. He opened a restaurant, fried crayfish and sold fish heads. In just one year, he lost 70,000 to 80,000 yuan.

This year's test of water, there is no result, but the stubbornness of "things don't work out" is deeply branded in his heart.

After the Spring Festival in 2002, the couple took the green leather train for more than 20 hours, took a suitcase and borrowed 65,438+10,000 yuan from relatives, and came to the vast Beijing to seek a new development path. If you need a chance to do something, then entering the catering industry is definitely a slap in the face. At that time, when he returned to his hometown, he accidentally watched a talk show by a catering boss. "At that moment, I felt that I was ignited." So I had the experience of testing water in my hometown of Chuzhou for one year.

As we all know, coming to Beijing is the real beginning of the nightmare.

Some people say that the word "I don't know" is extremely subtle. It carries the mission of ending the topic quickly, emphasizes the sense of distance between people and clearly reveals the despair and helplessness of the speaker.

Yang Jinxiang experienced four moments of "not knowing" in his life, which often made him collapse several times and wanted to give up.

In 2002, the "white mouse" continued to test water. Based on the concept of "what can I do", I opened a small fishing village in the south of the Yangtze River, and the specialty is small fish paste cake. "The store is near Longgang Road in Qinghe, with 4 people and 6 tables, covering an area of more than 20 square meters, plus one * * * three people in my store." When he mentioned the scene of opening a shop in Kan Kan, Yang Jinxiang talked about it in Kan Kan, as if everything happened yesterday. The good times didn't last long. In less than half a year, the small fishing village in Jiangnan was transferred to others because of poor management.

How to cook food and drink? My cooking is delicious. Why can't I make money? I don't know

At the end of 2002, after many twists and turns, we found a new facade and prepared for a big fight. In the spring of 2003, the unprecedented SARS epidemic suddenly broke out. In desperation, they were forced to close down, and after months of waiting, the husband and wife could hardly open the pot.

Do you want to stick to it? What can I do without food? I don't know

But there is nothing wrong with insisting. After several years of slow blood transfusion, Yang Jinxiang's restaurant business finally came back to life and improved a little. He was carried away by the phased achievements. He and his friend * * * invested 2 million yuan to set up a large store near Xisanqi, with an area of nearly 1000 square meters, and named it "Xianghui Cuisine", which mainly promoted Anhui local dishes and dreamed of doing a big job to build a well-known catering brand. However, no matter the location of the restaurant, the process system and standard positioning, or the management ability of the team, there is no rules and regulations, which leads to the lack of interest in "Xianghui Folk Song".

What followed was Lao Yang's self-question: "What do I want to do?" I don't know

Because of the fierce competition in popular restaurants, the operation of "Xianghui Cuisine" has become very difficult-I have everything I want to eat and my taste is average, but my business is getting colder and colder. Operating for more than a year, the debt is two or three million. He thought of giving up, so he made a transfer list, but he couldn't contact the buyer.

What kind of restaurant can be remembered by everyone? Still don't know

Dozens of employees are waiting for their wages, and their brothers and their hard-earned money are penniless. The family's expectation ... Yang Jinxiang's life fell to the bottom, and he lost his heart and direction.

When he nearly collapsed, his friend said, "When you come to Shenyang, you must go to XX store to eat grilled shrimp!" " This sentence made him suddenly enlightened: "The reason why every store can't last long is because it doesn't have its own characteristics at all. "

After returning to Beijing, Yang Jinxiang carried out drastic reforms and created Yang Jixing's stinky mandarin fish, which occupies half of today's Huizhou cuisine in China.

This reform is a famous "menu revolution" in the industry, which has simplified more than 200 Anhui dishes into 38 dishes, with the focus on "smelly mandarin fish".

Because the menu is scientifically classified and organized, even the first-time guests can know what the specialty of the store is in one minute, and even the blind spots can combine delicious banquets, which not only saves time, but also reduces the decision-making cost of customers. After this optimization, the sales of snakehead only sold seven or eight copies a day, and then soared to more than 100, accounting for 50% of the total sales in the store.

Yang Jixing's stinky mandarin fish seems to have been injected with fresh blood. Not only is it very popular in Beijing, but also mandarin fish is the main dish in Anhui restaurants all over the country, and even restaurants of other cuisines have added this food to their menus. This has led to the vigorous development of the national mandarin fish breeding and the raw material industry chain of stinky mandarin fish.

20 14 years after Yang Jixing's stinky fish became popular, Lao Yang knew that the lack of catering professional knowledge seriously restricted the development of enterprises, and began to move towards the road of learning, turning his energy to the inside of enterprises, cultivating internal strength and becoming an enterprise. He was an out-and-out detail controller.

He took the company's core management, constantly participated in various training and learning, and visited industry predecessors. From focusing on positioning to store location, from team building to enterprise management, from business philosophy to corporate culture, a reform from the inside out has begun. In the first half of 20 15, yang jixing mandarin fish catering management co., ltd was formally established, which means that the company will pay more attention to a series of management systems such as system standardization, service process and performance appraisal.

Careful people will find that Yang Jixing's slogan * * * has gone through six iterations after focusing on the smelly mandarin fish.

Lao Yang is not only a good cook, but also a good brand marketer.

In the past more than a year, Yang Jixing has iterated again, refining the "signature dishes of Anhui cuisine" from the previous focus on products to the brand strategy level.

"After several years of development, the stinkfish has gained certain recognition and popularity in the market. Emphasizing "signature dishes of Anhui cuisine" not only emphasizes the importance of stinky mandarin fish, but also highlights its position in Anhui cuisine, spreading from both dishes and cuisines. "

Seeing that Yang Jixing is becoming more and more steady, corporate values seem to follow naturally-honesty, tolerance, innovation and persistence. At first glance, it is nothing new, but it coincides with the stubbornness and tenacity of Huizhou merchants.

Lao Yang summed up his values of being a man and doing things as persistence.

"Every time a store changes hands to restart a new brand, friends and relatives are willing to support me in the most difficult time. This is a trust in me and a reward for my honest life." Tolerance and innovation are two essential qualities on the road of enterprise development, and persistence is the premise and foundation of all results.

Yang Jixing currently has 20 stores in China. When it comes to future development planning, Lao Yang intends to dig deep into Beijing first, and strive to win the goal of chain 100 stores in four first-tier cities in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen within five years, and reach the volume of 300 stores within ten years. When the opportunity is ripe, he will go abroad and try his best to let consumers all over the world taste stinky fish.

Back to life, Lao Yang is a very casual and romantic person.

I like driving with my wife. I like the feeling on the road. Away from the reinforced concrete in big cities, the husband and wife walked through the Duku Highway in Xinjiang to see the changes of the four seasons, walked through the Alashan Desert in Inner Mongolia to see the sunrise and sunset, walked through the 3 18 Sichuan-Tibet line to see the towering Mount Everest, and walked through the Wan Li-China-Vietnam border to see the beautiful scenery along the way.

After more than 20 years of marriage, we have had differences and quarrels, but we have never left.

During the most bitter SARS period, the store was closed for several months, and finally there was only 1 10,000 yuan in cash flow. The only reason why the young couple persisted was to cheer up with each other every day. It is mutual help that ended today's suffering.

Speaking of family, what makes Lao Yang happy is that he has a sensible and obedient daughter.

"Her name is john young, which means to set sail. "When he mentioned his daughter, his face was full of subtle relief and smile. "Follow me, I am quiet and introverted." Then I pointed to my clothes. "It's from my daughter." He is more tolerant of his daughter's education and implements the "stocking policy".

My daughter's understanding and independence are much like her own when she was young, but she is more free and easy. At the age of fourteen or fifteen, she went out alone. /kloc-When she was 0/8 years old, she went to Australia to study alone. She is a quiet girl who is independent.

"Daughters should have their own lives."

Compared with "female inheriting father's business", Yang Jinxiang hopes that she can see the world more, get to know more wise people and friends, and experience the scenery and miracles that others can't meet.

Some people say that "juvenile" is a state, even if the years accumulate and even if the suffering is deep, even so, some people become muddled along, while others hope to compromise; But some people are always excited and still have a pure heart.

When it comes to more admired entrepreneurs, Ma Yun's words are similar to Lao Yang's current situation. Ma Yun once said: "Do what you like at the age of 30, do what you are good at at at the age of 40, and do something for young people at the age of 50."

"I am a young man now. I should be middle-aged at the age of 60. I can still contribute when I am 80 years old. " Lao Yang thought he could work until he was 80, and his retirement had to be postponed.

In order to keep himself and his team in a sunny state of mind and healthy body, Lao Yang started from me and insisted on exercising. It's easy to exercise at first, but it's hard to stick to it. As a result, the # Yang Jixing Cool Running Team # was born, and a "Yang Jixing Sports Culture" was launched throughout the company. According to the agreement, everyone should punch in and display all kinds of sports data every day. If a training program fails to meet the standard, they will pay cash-filled red envelopes voluntarily. Driven by various sports methods, Yang Jixing has more and more sports-loving friends.

Haruki Murakami said in the book "What do I talk about when I talk about running": "If there is any opponent that must be defeated in long-distance running, it is me in the past." After running for four months, Lao Yang felt that the idea of running and doing business with him was like quitting. There are many reasons for not running: it's foggy today, there's a dinner today, I'm late for home today, and there's a work meeting today ... There's almost only one reason for running-"If you persist for one more second, it will be different."

Compared with "setting up a game stall" when he was sixteen or seventeen, he is now in his forties. From officially crossing the Beijing restaurant circle in 2002, to the successful transformation of Yang Jixing's stinky mandarin fish in 20 13, from starting from scratch to becoming a well-known brand of Huizhou cuisine in China, he has thought about giving up many times because of various blows, stepped on countless pits, and taught countless tuition fees. Only those who have experienced it can feel the hardships along the way.

He is a Huizhou merchant in the new era. The industrious and unyielding spirit of Huizhou merchants from generation to generation is the guiding light to support them to explore their own methods step by step.

Imagine giving up at any time. Is today's China Hui cuisine catering market another situation?

"Going further, the world of ten parties is one." Probably Yang Jinxiang's current state of mind.

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