With the rise of the street stall economy, more and more young people are devoting themselves to market stalls, trying to get a piece of the craze. However, setting up a stall is not the imaginary “monthly income of more than 10,000”, but is full of challenges and uncertainties. Through field investigations and case studies, this article delves into the current situation of the stall economy, revealing product selection strategies, urban differences, intergenerational characteristics, and potential pitfalls.
During the May Day holiday that just passed, a variety of markets have reached the point of seeing stitches. Parks, shopping malls, art blocks, craft beer, carbs, and handmade intangible cultural heritage. From a distance, it looks bustling, and up close, the price is staggering. It is difficult to start two circles around the market, and it turns out that the pocket is shy.
There is a lot of people, the unit price is not low, presumably it is very profitable to set up a stall, right? Judging from the status of stall owners and the categories they sell, more and more young people are indeed joining the ranks of stalls. The big brother and sister who were skilled in flipping the spoon of fried pho were replaced by the little brothers and sisters who were desperately trying to transform the alkaline bread. The middle-class price and the street stall experience make the hard candy king ready to move – not willing to buy, but also want to sell.
But looking at the Internet, on the one hand, there is “a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan is not a dream” and “the ceiling of freelancing”, entrepreneurial mentors and Internet celebrity stall owners are sharing the way to make money by setting up stalls, and the investment promotion of major markets is also “packing publicity and traffic, just waiting for you to be the boss”; On the other hand, there is a history of blood and tears of the masses such as “renting out popular stalls at low prices”, “don’t try to set up stalls easily”, and “the end of the street stall is a scam”.
So after more than a month of field investigation, Hard Candy Jun finally confirmed that the most common reality of the stall economy is that brave people lose 20,000 yuan first. The truth of “three days of stall, income of 3,050” is that the first day sells 10 yuan, the second day sells 40 yuan, and the cart sells 3,000 yuan on the third day.
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The layman’s stall is like Jia Zhiguo in “I Love My Home”. Stimulated by a little and re-entering the wave, Yangzhou soup dumplings have been “improved” into a giant. Innovation is real, and there must be people who are taking photos and videos and posting them on the Internet today. But there is neither cooking skills nor business, and it is a waste of fun, leaving only endless leftovers and a reaffirmation of the boundaries of personal ability.
01 What to sell at the stall
Jia Zhiguo sells steamed buns unreliably, so what should he sell? Product selection is the first step in setting up a stall, and there are 350,000 notes under the label of “what do street stalls sell” on Xiaohongshu alone, which shows the confusion of novice stall owners.
According to Hard Candy’s observation, there are at least three characteristics of the current street stall selection: trend, generational and urban differences.
Trending means that street stalls always keep up with Internet food culture, and stall owners are just porters of Internet celebrity products. The same product was launched almost overnight in stalls and night markets across the country, and the name came all the way from beating the scumbag all the way to beating the ex, beating the A, beating the unscrupulous boss, and so on. This kind of chasing Internet celebrity traffic not only reflects the snack category, but also sells cub frogs and Fujian hairpins have been popular items in the street stall night market.
What shocked Hard Candy the most was the stall owners who sold Rongchang braised geese in Changsha. One of them also deliberately cut the interactive clip between Boss Wen Heyou and Brother Lu Goose into a ghost video, which was played in turn at the booth site, and the comedy effect was directly full. People passing by couldn’t help but take out their mobile phones, but there were very few people who paid for it, and the business was deserted.
The trendy concept of life is also a common gimmick in the market, as Hard Candy Jun said at the beginning, today’s limited theme markets are emerging one after another, such as carbs and water freedom festivals, road life festivals, intangible cultural heritage festivals, handicraft festivals and so on. Can you believe it, some markets have even eaten the gender dividend and specially made a “women’s entrepreneurship demonstration street”. As expected, it actually looks no different from other markets.
The gender of the stall owner has no impact on the market, but the products that stall owners of different ages like to sell are indeed different, which is what Hard Candy Jun calls “intergenerational selection”.
Middle-aged and elderly stall owners usually choose classic models such as grilled sausages, grilled cold noodles, and hydrogen balloons, which are conservative but safe. Young and middle-aged stall owners generally talk about innovation like Jia Zhiguo, and must add some ideas to the traditional selection: roast beef skewers are made into freshly worn roast beef skewers, and handmade ice powder is turned into handmade ice powder of your choice. Younger stall owners are more bold, eager to find categories that have never appeared in traditional street stalls or even in the history of human food, such as spicy hot pot and ice drink two-in-one super cups.
The urban differentiation of street stalls will only appear at certain times. In first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, it was once popular to drive luxury cars and supercars to set up stalls, extending the trunk stall economy, attracting customers by creating a sense of contrast, and also allowing coffee and cocktails to successfully flow to the stall market. However, over time, these stalls have gradually spread in lower-tier cities, and even localized transformations will be completed.
Through chatting with stall owners of all ages, Hard Candy Jun found that the old stall generally looked down on young people who were doing flower work, and the reason was basically that Guangtu Fresh could not do business for a long time. This is also highly consistent with the opinions of the masses, and under those hot posts that complain about the failure of setting up stalls, the suggestion of “selling grilled sausages and baking cold noodles” is always at the forefront.
02 The street stall is calling
In 2020, the stall economy will rise as a “bailout” model, and many people will rise to the idea of getting rich from food stalls. At that time, this was actually a relatively passive choice, and unemployed young people wanted to use this side hustle to transition. In the past five years, the stall economy has been continuously added with filters such as freedom, getting rich, and fame, and has become more and more a popular track for youth entrepreneurship.
The attitude of the management department has also changed. At first, it was just a relaxation of policies and encouragement of development, but now the “market” has become the focus of urban construction, and the “creative night market” and “compound commercial street” appear in various planning documents and people’s lives.
In a city like Changsha, where nightlife is already prosperous, there have long been representative night markets in Yangfan, Sifangping, Dongguashan and other places, and almost every one of them is a must-visit Internet celebrity check-in point for tourists. Now a variety of “demonstration entrepreneurial streets” have been formed in more remote areas, and the stalls are simply denser than the passenger flow. Even Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which used to have a relative lack of nightlife, have become more and more active in the market economy, and cities such as Nanjing and Hangzhou have introduced relevant support policies.
The government has set up a stage to sing, and many shopping malls are also developing street stalls and night markets. From large shopping malls to community businesses, Sanwu has to plan some themed pop-up markets from time to time to attract young and mobile stall owners to come and support. An obvious change is that many well-known chain catering brands are now also involved in the stall economy.
And most young people’s dream of getting rich by setting up a stall still starts from the Internet. Short videos have long been popular with batches of street stall Internet celebrities, such as the waist sister who beats the world with the sentence “Brother is coming”. The follow-up short video creators were inspired to simply turn the stall into a live broadcast simulation operation, filming their daily procurement and stalling, so that fans could witness and accompany them to upgrade and fight monsters.
Of course, only a very small number of bloggers can become an instant hit with their stall diaries, such as Fujian Internet celebrity “Cabbage”, who picks different ingredients to set up stalls on the street every day, and the plot of opening a blind box has allowed it to successfully accumulate nearly 6.7 million Douyin fans. She is already a well-deserved top of the stall track.
For more “stall owners”, setting up a stall is just a form of showing themselves, and the essence is still to be a funny, fashionable, and appearance blogger. The script traces of this kind of video are obvious, but I didn’t expect that there were still friends who had just surfed the Internet to take it seriously. For example, those street stall entrepreneurial bloggers who take the appearance route, are their customers facing snacks? People are so greedy for their appearance and figure! Those netizens who left a message saying “I see that people want to quit and set up a stall”, you better play abstraction.
But no matter what type of stall Internet celebrity it is, it is bringing traffic and heat to the stall economy. And when setting up a stall becomes a hot spot, or even a craze, online tutors from all walks of life also smell it.
At first, they only sold online courses such as “setting up a stall with a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan” and “realizing your entrepreneurial dream in 30 days” at low prices. After attracting enough users, they began to provide entrepreneurial escort services with prices of thousands or tens of thousands, teaching people how to find booths, choose products, shoot short videos, and live stream goods……
Such a stall economy has fully adapted to the Internet era, but it seems to be getting farther and farther away from the streets and alleys and fireworks. Several young stall owners contacted by Hard Candy Jun talked about “private domain traffic”, “personal brand” and “community operation”. However, the taste price is really not complimentary, so it has not been able to implement the theory and establish a “stall business empire that opens up the real economy and the virtual economy”.
03 Reverse operation, stall “upgrade”
Before the previous stall owner officially set up a stall, he had to invest in online shopping formulas, supply chain services, franchise brands, etc. Now, there are countless videos and courses on online teaching stalls, and the new batch of stall owners believe that they can reduce poor entrepreneurial information and pay less IQ tax.
However, they were careless. The stall owners, who are exuded by the Internet thinking, are surprisingly cautious and picky in the decoration of their stalls, and they also spend a lot of money on this. In the past few years, there have been a large number of stores in the catering industry, and kitchen equipment has flowed into the professional second-hand trading market, and experienced stall owners are more inclined to choose these cost-effective products. The first step for them to set up a stall is to buy a high-end equipment and match it with some foreign and conspicuous decorations.
At the same time, the stall economy shows the opposite operation with physical catering: physical consumption is downgraded and stall consumption is upgraded. In order to cope with consumers’ tightening wallets, more and more physical stores have begun to engage in minimalist decoration, and adopted new store names such as street stall hot pot and street stall steak to create a sense of cheapness and affordability. The stall economy is becoming more and more fancy and petty-bourgeois, and it is no wonder that more and more netizens complain that they “dare not ask the price”.
Without systematic learning and research, it is difficult for new stall owners to access professional-level supply chain services, which leads to soaring costs. Setting up a stall to sell Sam’s desserts, doesn’t that sound simple? However, procurement takes time, travel expenses, and labor, which eventually become the pricing of products that buyers feel wronged and sellers do not make much money. If you can’t sell it on the same day, the loss will be even greater.
The booth fee is also more expensive than expected. Beginners who are not familiar with stalls want to choose prime locations with high foot traffic, and it costs two or three thousand to rent a place every month. According to Hard Candy, the vast majority of street stalls in Changsha have to charge sanitation fees, management fees and booth fees, and the daily rent of ordinary stalls is also fifty or sixty yuan, which is easily more than 100 yuan.
And if you want to occupy a seat in the Internet celebrity night market, it is as difficult as opening a canteen at school. You have to go through layers of screening and interviews, and even rely on relationships to get it. Once you fail to do it for a long time, the entry quota that you desperately rolled up will become an unbearable loss.
Everywhere is not left behind, the master opens a canteen, and the stall is of course a business student since ancient times. Of the Changsha stall owners that Hard Candy Jun has come into contact with, 30% of them can earn six or seven thousand per month, which is not bad in the local area. Their general commonality lies in the fact that they do not have the psychology of playing tickets, let alone use Internet thinking to package this business, and firmly believe in a truth – there is no premium for things related to Internet celebrities.
What is slightly frustrating is that although the street stall economy is in full swing, we ordinary consumers seem to be losing the joy of visiting the night market. On social media, a large number of netizens complained that they could no longer afford to eat street stall snacks, and drinking a cup of ordinary milk tea cost more than ten yuan, so it was better to buy Bawang Chaji and Chayan Yuese.
Hard Candy Jun personally tested, a person eats barbecue skewers at a stall in Changsha, and he can’t taste it at all without spending dozens of dollars. Not to mention the various carb festivals in Beijing, the price of the street stall and the physical store is even higher, and the physical store also has various group buying discounts, and the street stall can only experience middle-class consumption on the northern wind and sand squatting on the road, you can say chill is not chill.
We used to think that it was not that the store could not afford to eat, but that the street stalls were more cost-effective. It wasn’t until the stall assassin arrived that he knew that every Internet celebrity product was secretly priced. There are so many side hustle options, all the stall owners who “have ideas” should let go of us poor gluttons.
