Zhou Fangyuan has ambitions for takeaways, but in fact, few people know that the takeaway industry also has its own pain points.

Ostensibly, the restaurant has increased sales of its food with the help of Meituan's digital platform and delivery services, and Meituan's recruitment of millions of new riders has partially alleviated the pressure on social employment, while consumers can enjoy delicious food without leaving home.

In fact, whether it is takeaways, merchants or consumers, they all have their own pains.

In terms of takeaway, Meituan takeaway is getting more and more expensive.

Whether Meituan takeaway has become more expensive or not, consumers have the absolute right to speak.

In the previous life, Yiou once found through online research that 68% of consumers felt that "Meituan takeaway has become more expensive", among which, 65% of consumers have an average single consumption amount of 20 to 30 yuan, indicating that this part of consumers with low-price consumption is more sensitive to price. According to the financial report released by Meituan, on the whole, the cost of a single takeaway is fluctuating and rising, which verifies the perceptual cognition of consumers to a certain extent.

It is basically true that Meituan Takeaway has become more expensive, but is it the individual behavior of Meituan Takeaway, or is it a commonality in the takeaway industry?

The answer is simple.

There are a few data companies that have done sample surveys.

The results showed that Ele.me was cheaper than Meituan Takeaway on the whole, with dishes on average 2 to 6 yuan cheaper, with some dishes up to 11 yuan cheaper, while Meituan Takeaway was more dominant in the survey of the other four merchants, with dishes on average 0.5 to 2 yuan cheaper and some dishes up to 6.6 yuan cheaper.

According to the sampling, Ele.me has a greater discount than Meituan in terms of price.

Ele.me also followed suit and announced the launch of "10 billion subsidies", and it will be normalized. Takeaway is the top priority of Ali's local life, and although Ele.me is still at a disadvantage, Ali is unwilling to lose the takeaway market. Normalized subsidies, that is, 10 billion will be spent and another 10 billion will come until they are satisfied.

Most of the subsidy amounts of Ele.me are concentrated in 2 to 8 yuan, and together with the reduction and exemption of delivery fees, full reductions in stores, red envelopes and vouchers, etc., it has had a certain impact on Meituan Takeaway.

The price advantage is facing erosion by competitors, Meituan's takeaway becomes more expensive, and consumers eventually pay for it, and as a provider of takeaways, the merchants' life is not easy.

Meituan's takeaway became expensive, and the merchants behind it did not reap much benefit, and were even on the verge of struggling for a while.

Compared with dine-in, takeaway not only needs to pay the three major costs of ingredients, labor and rent, but also needs to bear additional expenses such as commissions, packaging fees, and activity fees of the takeaway platform. After deducting these expenses, the net profit of the merchant is not much left, and sometimes there will be a situation of "the more you sell, the more you lose".

It can be seen that it is really helpless for merchants to increase prices, because it is necessary to do various activities online, and it is a problem for small merchants to survive without raising prices, let alone making money.

The "activities" in the mouth of the merchants, including the reduction and exemption of delivery fees, full reductions, member red envelopes, new user reductions, cashback red envelopes, discount dishes, allowance alliances, coupons, promotions, etc., are also borne by the merchants themselves, which can make the comprehensive recommendation of merchants higher and get more traffic. Many activities are enjoyed in combination, and the final settlement price of some merchants' dishes is 60% or less of their list price, but there are still many consumers who report that the takeaway price is not much cheaper than dine-in, or even more expensive.

The reason is that among the additional expenses borne by takeaway merchants, packaging fees and activities are relatively independent and controllable. The selection of materials required for packaging, the determination of activities and the strength of the activities can be adjusted according to the merchant's own situation. However, some merchants said that the Meituan takeaway platform sometimes launches its own activities, and in many cases, it is borne by the merchants.

However, the platform tariff is compulsory, and general merchants can only passively accept or refuse, and non-large restaurant chain groups have almost no room for negotiation.

If a merchant goes online with Meituan, there are two forms of cooperation: one is that the merchant uses the Meituan takeaway platform and completes the delivery by itself, so that the average rate is about 6%, and the other is that the merchant chooses to go online and uses Meituan's delivery service, so the average rate is about 18%.

Specifically, the platform fee includes a commission and a delivery service fee, and the commission includes two fees: platform use and technical services, that is, the fees paid by merchants for using the Meituan Takeaway platform to complete transactions and enjoy the technical services provided by Meituan Takeaway to ensure the normal conduct of transactions. The delivery service fee can account for 80% of the platform fee. In addition to the platform's commission, being required to "operate exclusively", that is, to "choose one of the two" between Meituan Takeaway and Ele.me, also made merchants miserable, and they wanted to use the platform to increase sales and profits, but unexpectedly backfired and became the "wage earner" of Meituan Takeaway.

In fact, if you are a little more careful, it is not difficult to find that the overlap between Meituan and Ele.me is very low, and less than 10% of the merchants who launched Meituan Takeaway and Ele.me at the same time.

However, the Meituan takeaway platform, which is "pointed out" by merchants, is actually not easy.

Meituan Takeaway itself has said that more than 80% of the merchants on their platform have commissions of 10%-20%, the average profit of each takeaway is less than 2 cents, and 80% of the commission income is used to pay the wages of riders.

You must know that in 2018 alone, there were millions of food delivery riders who earned income through the Meituan platform, and in just half a year, the total number of newly registered and earning riders on the Meituan platform exceeded one million. A large team of riders inevitably brings an increase in the cost of riders. According to the reality of Meituan's financial report, their sales cost in the quarter was 16.15 billion yuan, and the cost of food delivery riders alone accounted for 7.27 billion yuan.

In fact, this situation is normal, as domestic labor costs continue to rise, service fees are naturally generally increased. In the field of local life, takeaway is more special because of the delivery link, especially during the peak period of ordering, or catching up with bad weather, and in many cases, the order commission is not enough to cover the delivery fee.

In fact, the high commissions criticized by merchants and the expensive takeaway complained by consumers have their reasonableness: for merchants, takeaway saves dine-in service staff and seats, and for consumers, takeaway saves time costs and transportation costs.

Takeaway platforms need to increase investment in logistics infrastructure, develop intelligent scheduling systems, and carry out intelligent scheduling in different scenarios to provide efficient delivery services for merchants, as well as maintain and upgrade the system, which requires a lot of money to maintain operation. Merchants only need to hand over the acquisition and delivery of traffic to the takeaway platform, and focus on improving the quality of catering. From the perspective of Meituan's takeaway platform, the average commission of about 12% does not seem to be harsh. However, some merchants revealed on the Internet that the commission of Meituan Takeaway is as high as about 25%, which does make it difficult for many small and medium-sized businesses to continue.

So, did all the money from the takeaway go to the riders?

No, riders can earn 5-10 yuan per order, of which customers pay about 5 yuan, the platform subsidizes 1-3 yuan, and if the delivery fee is reduced, it will be paid by the merchant. According to some data, 70% of riders earn less than 5,000 yuan a month - the high income is paid for long hours of work, and there is no security.

Judging from merchants, platforms, and riders, it is indeed not easy for everyone, and they don't make much money, but why is takeaway getting more and more expensive?

This is mainly because of two points.

The first is that the psychological gap between users is obvious.

In the emerging stage of the takeaway industry, capital and takeaway platforms are throwing money into it, trying to capture the market in a short period of time, and exchange traffic at low prices.

Over time, it has given consumers a false impression: it is cheap to go outside and offline.

But the real situation is: takeaway with packaging fees and delivery fees is originally more expensive than offline consumption - especially now that the platform subsidy has become less and the merchant has reduced the full reduction, the takeaway has returned to the previous price, and the psychological gap of consumers is obvious.

Second, the intermediate cost of the food delivery industry is high

Different from offline dining: takeout needs to be packaged by the merchant, and then picked up and delivered to the user by the rider. The intermediate cost of additional expenses on this long distribution process is high. Not only the rider's salary, but also the rider's brother is only the bottom, the rider has a station manager above the rider, a franchisee above the station manager, and a platform party above the franchisee - these labor costs are much higher than the rider.

And all the manpower and cost ultimately need to be paid by consumers.

With the development of society, in the next few years, the scale of the domestic catering takeaway industry will gradually expand, and when Zhou Fangyuan is reborn, online catering will account for more than 20% of the entire catering industry.

Don't be overly surprised – after all, it's a modern person, who can not eat a takeout?

In addition, the number of orders and merchants is constantly growing.

In other words, as the "stay-at-home economy" continues to develop, more and more people will order takeout. However, more and more people will enter the food delivery industry, so will food delivery become more and more expensive?

Yes, takeaway will get more and more expensive.

From the perspective of the takeaway platform, I burned so much money in the early stage to open the market, and now is the time to gradually make profits, so I am naturally unwilling to continue to burn money to increase subsidies and reduce prices; And the number of riders is constantly increasing, which will be a significant labor cost, and the price reduction of the platform is even more impossible.

In the previous life, the monopoly of the food delivery industry was very high, and Meituan's food delivery transaction volume accounted for 65.8%, far exceeding that of Ele.me. Although Meituan was constantly opening new businesses at that time, Meituan's revenue was still mainly based on the food delivery business. However, China's takeaway market is gradually saturated, and under the pressure of growth, commissions can only be increased in the short term. For small and medium-sized merchants, platform commission inflation is almost fatal.

Commissions are mandatory, and most of the people who can negotiate are large restaurant chain groups, such as McDonald's, Xiabu Xiabu, Haidilao, Heytea, etc. - they have a large volume, and they have their own small programs and apps, and they have chips to negotiate prices, while ordinary small and medium-sized businesses can only passively accept or refuse.

In addition to the commission, in order to make the comprehensive recommendation position higher, the merchant also has to pay a certain amount of marketing and publicity expenses on the platform;

While the delivery business continues to grow, it will also attract more people to join the rider industry, and this money will continue to be collected from consumers.

In fact, the reason why takeaway is getting more and more expensive is that it is a problem of the whole system in the final analysis.

Although takeaway saves dine-in service staff and seats, and saves consumers' time and transportation costs, if you want to go long, the price increase is not a long-term solution - after all, for price-sensitive consumers, the price increase of takeaway will make them give up such a lifestyle.

But that was obviously a long time later, Zhou Fangyuan had not been in such a situation before he was reborn, and now he didn't have to worry about it.

The platform is not happy, the merchants are not happy, the riders are not happy, and the consumers are not happy.

But at the end of the day, the market is big and has a lot of potential, and the benefits of the platform occupation are undoubtedly the greatest. Zhou Fangyuan handed over this platform to his classmates, but he didn't completely leave it alone, after all, he still had shares in it, but it was not yet time for him to intervene. At the same time, as a merchant, he provides services for the platform, and Jinbolo, as well as several newly registered catering brands of Yuanfang Food Company, are bound to develop and grow with the help of the platform. The traditional store model has been greatly impacted, and many takeaway businesses actually have no stores at all.

Just get a house, get some kitchen equipment in it, name it Meituan, and you can start business.

There is no need to get any façade room at all, and the rent cost is greatly reduced. There is no need for tables, chairs and benches, no need for waiters, and personnel costs are greatly reduced. Although the cost of packaging has gone up, it is obviously more cost-effective for takeaway in comparison. Other merchants suffer from platform commissions and have a difficult life. But now that the platform is in Zhou Fangyuan's hands, it's nothing more than a left-handed hand-to-right-handed. Even if there are many other expenses, such as dividends from other shareholders, such as the platform's tax money, in the final analysis, he has advantages that other merchants or separate platforms do not have.

What's more, his Yuanfang Group is one of the top Internet groups in China, and there is no company stronger than him in Internet channels.

The channel is strong, the number of users is strong, and now he has mastered the platform and merchants with a handle, and at the same time indirectly mastered the riders.

In short, in the domestic takeaway war, Zhou Fangyuan just kept a wait-and-see attitude, and he would not end up in person unless necessary. As long as he doesn't end up, Erma, and other people hiding under the surface of the water, will not easily surface. After all, everyone wants to save face, and whoever shows up first is actually tantamount to admitting defeat in advance. Zhou Fangyuan is not in a hurry, and he doesn't care if others will be in a hurry.

After learning about the situation of the domestic and foreign sales war, Zhou Fangyuan no longer paid attention to it, this war will not subside within three or two years, and he will not be able to pay attention to it for a long time.

He came back this time, he won't go abroad in a short time, and he has been flying around recently, and he is really tired, so he just took this opportunity to rest well.