When giants such as Meituan, Taobao, and JD.com launched a fierce subsidy war on the takeaway track, consumers enjoyed an unprecedented feast of low prices, but the catering merchants behind them were in a dilemma. On the one hand, participating in platform activities can bring about a sharp increase in order volume, but the profit is meager or even a loss after deducting various costs; On the other hand, if you don’t participate in the activity, you may face the dilemma of no one paying attention to you. Through the real cases of a number of merchants, this article reveals the dilemma of merchants behind the takeaway war: from being “fooled” by the platform to participate in activities, to having to be involved in a price war in order to survive, to worrying about the impact of low-price consumption habits on long-term operations, merchants are experiencing a difficult survival challenge in this seemingly lively takeaway war.
The unprecedented takeaway war was “completely crazy” on the weekend.
Open Meituan, and the “0 yuan takeaway” red envelope will automatically arrive in the account; Taobao flash sale “5 meals in 1 day”, “18 minus 18” big giveaway; JD.com distributes 100,000 crayfish of 16.18 yuan every night…… It provoked consumers who were “hungry a day in advance” to place orders passionately and stuff the refrigerator.
As of Saturday night, Meituan’s instant retail daily orders hit a new high of 150 million, and Taobao’s flash sale daily orders, as a “new player”, also exceeded the 80 million mark.
Users laughed, riders raised their salaries, but merchants couldn’t bear it.
Xu Ting, the proprietress of the rice noodle shop, lives a “war-like life” every day, and after joining the promotional activities, the number of takeaway orders from a single platform in the store once soared 10 times.
Li Bin, a milk tea merchant in the center of the artillery fire, was even worse, as soon as it opened on the morning of the weekend, the printer spat out a steady stream of orders, and the store hired 6 employees, and it had to be transferred to more than 2 a.m. before it was over.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
View details >
After a day of hard work, the result was that after deducting merchant subsidies, platform service fees, distribution fees, etc., the turnover was cut in half. After subtracting the costs of materials and other costs, the profit is only 400 yuan. “After sending out red envelopes to employees, there is no point left.” He wanted to cry but had no tears.
But it is not easy to give up this “loss-making transaction”, like countless catering businesses trapped in this game, Li Bin can only pray that the gears of fate will run over and be lighter, lighter.
01 From “looking forward to coming” to “being forced to roll”
Baozi opened a chicken pot restaurant near the university, and her participation in the takeaway war was “fooled” by the platform’s regional manager.
“This event platform bears most of the subsidies, and your unit price is high, so many people will rush to buy it.” After the war started, the regional manager called Baozi the next day, and she was always perfunctory when she was used to selling words.
But when the other party revealed that the spicy hot shop at the end of the street “opened an event yesterday and doubled the order volume today”, the buns listened.
She looked around, it was already time for the meal, there was no customer in the store, although it was the off-season of summer vacation, but the peak season was not lively – when it first opened, the buns did not need to be advertised, students lined up to eat in the store, and now the freshmen saw the beautifully decorated restaurants all walking around, and when they entered the store, they turned around and withdrew.
“Everyone is unwilling to spend money, and the catering business is not easy to do.” Baozi sighed that the store’s signature set meal for two at 78 yuan was sold for 3 people to eat, and the last 4 people also ordered a meal for two.
Business is becoming more and more deserted, and store turnover has been cut in half year after year – there were 400,000 yuan the year before last, fell to 200,000 last year, and it was even worse in the first half of this year. Baozi had to consider making some takeaway: “Earn less, it’s good to have an order to do.” ”
Elsa thought the same way, but unexpectedly, she benefited a lot and once made a wish that “it would be nice if we had a takeaway war every day”.
Opening a Japanese food store in a shopping mall overwhelms Elsa with monthly operating costs. But one day when she settled her income, the takeaway turnover was actually doubled compared to dine-in, and the money she got doubled, and her daily anxiety changed from “no order” and “not making money” to “too busy” and “salmon out of stock”.
“The new takeaway platform will release some dividends.” Elsa explained, for example, JD.com has offered a “0 commission” killer feature, and the cost that merchants need to bear in the early stage is very low, and the customer pays 20 yuan, and she can receive 18 yuan.
Even if the three-way melee is later, in order to seize the opportunity, the platforms will offer a lot of preferential conditions to merchants at the beginning, and the unit price of the takeaway itself is higher, Elsa has lived a nourishing life of “rising volume and price”.
But the time has entered June, and her good days have come to an end – the takeaway war is gradually heating up, not only the activities are becoming more and more intensive, but the platform subsidies have also shrunk, and the merchants who give customers large discounts have to pay more than half.
More and more merchants are also involved in the whirlpool.
Tangtang, who only opened the store in June, was stunned by an order that paid 3 yuan as soon as he opened the backstage that day. The original price of 13 yuan of double skin milk was hung up on the “full 12 minus 10” activity at some point, including the delivery fee and material cost, and it was purely a loss of money in vain.
She immediately contacted the regional manager and asked the other party why he helped her sign up for the event privately, but the other end did not reply for a long time, obviously the day before he changed his tricks to urge Tangtang to open the event, and even persuaded him kindly, “If you don’t participate in the activity, the store will not push the flow”.
Tangtang is angry, catering is a physical job, merchants are busy and have no time to stare at the backstage, and the regional manager has the pressure of orders, and the “backstab” that may occur at any time is unguardable.
Xu Ting saw that the complex rules in the background were also full of bags, she didn’t plan to participate in the takeaway war, but the brand she joined reached a cooperation with the platform, and promised to arrange the preferential packages and full discount activities in a unified manner, so she silently accepted it.
“There is a headquarters to cover it, at least there is a layer of guarantee.” This was Xu Ting’s original idea, but after a few days of activity, she realized that she was too naïve.
02 If you lose money, you don’t even have a chance to lose money
Before the meal arrived, Xu Ting’s store became busy. The new order prompts came one after another, and the clerks rushed to prepare meals, and the takeaway bags at the door quickly piled up into a mountain.
However, seeing such a hot scene, Xu Ting sighed: It’s all false prosperity!
Take the original price of 19.8 yuan of rice noodles as an example, customers can eat them by paying 9.9 yuan. Xu Ting broke her fingers to settle accounts, and the money paid the platform commission, packaging fee, delivery fee, total fraction, etc., and was less than 1 yuan in her hand.
She went to complain, but there was no splash, and a major source of income for the brand was to sell ingredients, takeaway bags and other materials to franchisees, and the more orders the better. Even batches of materials were ordered, Xu Ting vaguely felt that the headquarters was taking advantage of the takeaway war to “destock”.
“And the headquarters thinks it’s good that you can earn one or two yuan.” Xu Ting explained that now takeaway is already a rigid need, and it can rush up the order volume and store ranking, and the franchisee will complain again, which seems to be “both necessary and wanted”.
Leilei, who has opened a dessert shop in the county seat for ten years, was not worried about takeaway to grab business, small places are different from big cities, customers trust the shops near their homes from snacks to large stores, and the old store does not participate in takeaway activities and has repeat customers.
But she has turned off the takeaway activity and recently took the initiative to open the entrance.
Just because within 10 days, four milk tea shops opened in her street one after another, all of which were involved in the “takeaway war”: milk tea and fruit tea with the original price of more than ten or twenty yuan rolled up to four or five yuan or even “0 yuan purchase”.
Watching the riders go in and out of the milk tea shop, carrying handmade milk tea similar to her own store, Leilei felt very uncomfortable: “Customers are trying to get a few dollars of wool, and if they order more, the old customers in the store will inevitably be snatched away.” ”
Putting aside the long term, the number of orders in the store has recently fallen to unacceptable single digits, and the takeaway war does not know how long it will last, Leilei doesn’t want to sit still anymore, gritted her teeth and “join if you can’t beat it”.
“Everyone makes up for it, but whoever stops first dies first.” Li Bin, who joined the milk tea shop, sighed that he could live in the “hellish difficulty” track, and only by embracing more traffic platforms and leveraging more orders could he survive.
Taking a step back, the milk tea industry has been rolled up to the extreme, many brands have regional warehouse networks, which can achieve “one match a day” or even “two matches a day”, and the supply chain responds very quickly when the war starts, and is not afraid of losses, and can theoretically achieve “small profits and quick turnover”.
Li Bin saw a survey that the takeaway war drove the entire milk tea industry to usher in a sales growth of about 20%. Overall, with the fierce competition on food delivery platforms, the average daily order volume of China’s food delivery market has doubled from 100 million orders in May to 200 million.
“The takeaway war has indeed shaken many people who don’t eat takeaway.” Blogger Jincheng formed several “wool groups” of 500 people, and he found that many people in the group who usually eat at home like him were dragged into the takeaway pit by this war.
But he also observed that as more and more users joined, the national wool harvesting operation began to go crazy.
In the group of Jincheng, everyone took out the momentum of grabbing air tickets and hotels to grab takeaway coupons, with a clear goal – first grab raw wontons, fruits and other relatively shelf-stable products, then order daily lunch and dinner on demand, and finally stock up on milk tea, coffee and other drinks.
Last week, he only spent 65 yuan to get his week’s worth of food. In the past two days of “Super Weekend”, there are more organized and disciplined people to gather wool, and the “takeaway war” has become a new traffic password.
Jincheng said frankly, “I will get tired of eating too much takeaway, but I think that a meal only costs a few yuan, what kind of motorcycle do you want?” “What’s more, the discount will not last forever, and there is wool that is not white.
This kind of user psychology is obviously not good news for merchants.
03 After the explosive order, merchants are still struggling
More than 200 takeaway orders a day, almost all of them are “new customers”, looking at the background data, Xu Ting can’t laugh.
This is not a day’s data, but almost every day, she knows in her heart, “The takeaway customers are all here to pick 9 yuan and 9 wool, and they can’t become repeat customers.” ”
In the Chinese catering arena of “per capita gourmet”, only those old stores with truly unique tastes and taste bud memories can attract customers without relying on low prices. The rice noodle shop opened by Xu Ting did not form a “dimensionality reduction blow” on its peers, but was just a member of thousands of homogeneous chain stores.
“For new customers, a low-priced event will not form loyalty, and it is good to be able to order it again, let alone convert into offline diners.” This cognition made Xu Ting’s heart half cold.
What’s worse is that after the takeaway war, the ratio of dine-in and takeaway has changed from the original 3:1 to 1:7.
This makes Xu Ting’s carefully decorated and high-priced store like a joke, and it also makes her more and more tired the more she works: dine-in dishwashing is troublesome, but it is still much easier than takeaway from a series of work such as taking orders, packing, and feedback.
However, the new customer business that is not “cost-effective” is not the most worrying for Xu Ting – she is worried that the low-price consumption habits of old customers will be “used to”.
“There are low-priced audiences at low prices, and there are high-priced people at high prices.” Elsa said that there are many old customers in her store who have ordered takeaway nearly 20 times, and there are not a few who order hundreds of yuan at a time.
However, after the takeaway war, high-consumption takeaway orders decreased at a speed visible to the naked eye, and some familiar faces who often came to dine-in even began to place orders online and pick up offline.
The takeaway point is cheaper, Aisha can understand the behavior of the guests, after all, no one’s money is blown by the wind, the floor price is hit online, and the original price order is pure injustice. However, “if you eat too much at a low price, people will think that your meal is worth the price.” She said helplessly.
Once, a customer ordered a set meal of 19 yuan and 9, but gave three negative reviews in a row of “less meat”, which directly lowered Aisha’s store rating by 0.1. In her opinion, the increase in customers like “bad reviews if you don’t increase the volume” and “no matter if it’s enough is black-hearted” is behind the “credit” of takeaway involution.
Sadly, merchants have to continue to cooperate, otherwise the “half-life” will be pinched.
At noon on weekdays, the list in the store was half less than usual, and Elsa opened the backstage and saw that there was no money for promotion. After the takeaway war, the original promotion fee of 100 yuan was only half used a day, but now at six or seven o’clock in the evening, there is not a penny left.
Elsa quickly recharged, and it was 3 copies charged together – yes, the takeaway war has been fought until now, and the “rent” of the three platforms has risen. “With promotion, a maximum of 1,000 turnover can be done a day, and without promotion, there are only one or two orders a day.”
Spending a lot of money, but a little bit of takeaway habits back and forth are still that wave of people, Elsa said helplessly: “Those people whose units are close to home and love to cook may now join in the fun and order takeaway, and once the subsidy recedes, they will still return to their original lives.” ”
This cooling phenomenon has really happened in Li Bin’s store this weekend: many people picked up 0 yuan milk tea, but they didn’t pick it up, and cups of real money drinks were finally thrown into the trash can.
Also lost was Li Bin’s confidence, his store has not yet recovered its capital, but the money-burning game is getting more and more fierce every time, and the loss has increased. As mentioned at the beginning, 400 yuan a day is actually included in all costs such as equipment depreciation, which is completely upside down.
Li Bin decided to sell the store at the end of the month: “Although I don’t know what else I can do without catering, I don’t want to sink together.” ”
(The characters in the article are pseudonyms.) ）
