Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1557
Meituan Maicai achieves breakeven, restarts expansion plan, and will open in Suzhou in the near future
“LatePost” learned that Meituan’s pre-warehousing e-commerce business, Meituan Maicai, has restarted the Suzhou Kaicheng plan shelved early last year in February this year. It has completed the site selection in the local area and will open the city in the near future. In addition, Meituan Maicai will go to more cities in East China this year on the premise of ensuring the balance of profit and loss, and start a new round of expansion plan.
In 2022, the epidemic will make front warehouses one of the few profitable industries. Dingdong Maicai, which also focuses on the front warehouse model, announced in the 2022 Four Seasons Report that it has achieved national profitability, and the business growth rate of Meituan Maicai has also exceeded 30%. , and opened about 100 new warehouses, realizing the coverage of the whole city of Beijing and Shanghai. At present, Meituan Maicai has more than 500 front positions, and the average daily order volume has stabilized at more than 1.1 million orders. It has achieved positive gross profit in several months last year.
A person from Meituan told LatePost that the grocery shopping business was evaluated earlier this year, and its market share is close to 60% of Dingdong’s grocery shopping, which is currently close to that of the second-ranked Pupu Supermarket. He believes that in the past, Meituan Maicai has always been cautious about the expansion of the region due to the influence of Dingdong Maicai in the East China market. Now it is determined to enter East China because the cost reduction and efficiency increase in the past year have achieved good results. Meituan is more confident to give it a try in the most competitive market.
At the beginning of 2022, Meituan began to promote the cost reduction and efficiency increase of its retail business. At that time, Meituan Maicai opened about 400 front warehouses. Some warehouse receipts were low and UE (unit economic model) was poor. The product of expansion pursuit of speed. After clarifying the profit target, the grocery shopping business suspended the expansion plan, closed down the warehouses with low square footage efficiency, and spent a year continuously reducing the loss of goods in the front warehouse, optimizing the product structure and controlling labor costs, and constantly moving closer to profitability. .
Starting from 2022, Meituan’s newly expanded warehouses will be large warehouses (with an area of more than 800 square meters). Compared with the previous small warehouses (300-400 square meters), large warehouses can accommodate about 6,000 SKUs. The average daily order volume of a single warehouse is generally around 3,000 orders a quarter after its launch, and some large warehouses in Beijing and Shanghai can achieve 5,000-6,000 orders per day, while the average daily order volume of small warehouses in Meituan Maicai during the same period The volume is stable at around 1,200 orders, and Xiaocang has reached the break-even point.
In mid-2022, after Daily Fresh is eliminated, there are still three representative companies on the front warehouse track, Dingdong Maicai, Pupu Supermarket, and Meituan Maicai. The three companies first started with high-frequency and just-needed fresh food categories, but today they have obvious differences:
The instant-delivery comprehensive supermarkets represented by Meituan Maicai and Pupu no longer simply sell fresh food, but have added more daily food products to increase the order volume. The product structure is similar to that of traditional supermarkets; still Dingdong Maicai, which insists on fresh food as the core, hopes to provide a richer variety of food to attract users to place orders.
At present, in the product structure of Meituan Maicai and Pupu Supermarket, fresh products account for about 30%, and standard products account for about 50%. During the same period, the proportion of fresh products in Dingdong Maicai remained stable at between 50% and 60%. between.
It is difficult to directly evaluate the final advantages and disadvantages of the above two options, but the model chosen by Meituan and Pupu Supermarket is obviously easier to implement. Reducing the proportion of fresh products means lower waste, and more abundant products can also allow consumers Buy more, further increase the unit price of customers, and increase the gross profit margin.
As the pioneer of the Dacang model, Pupu Supermarket has successfully verified the model in second-tier cities. At present, most of Pupu Supermarket’s large warehouses in Fuzhou, Xiamen and other places in Fujian can achieve an average of more than 6,000 orders per day, which is equivalent to the sales of local medium-sized supermarkets, and has long-term stable profits.
Most of the front warehouses of Pupu Supermarket in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places have also been able to achieve profitability. Pupu Supermarket plans to go public this year or next year, and will consider entering more new cities this year. As Meituan’s grocery shopping goes south, the three companies will face more direct competition, using products and services to prove who can make long-term profits and retain users. (Text丨Edited by Shen Fangwei丨Guan Yiwen)
Hema will expand its distribution nationwide, and MINI stores will restart and expand
“LatePost” exclusively learned that Freshippo is about to expand its delivery range across the country, launching a one-hour free delivery service within 3-5 kilometers, which is currently being piloted in second-tier cities such as Zhengzhou and Changsha.
Previously, Hema only supported half-hour delivery services within a 3-kilometer radius of the store. Expanding the delivery radius to 5 kilometers is equivalent to nearly tripling the delivery area.
When Hema opened its first store in Shanghai in 2016, it set the delivery radius at 5 kilometers. At that time, Hema was a sample of the new retail industry, and its expansion strategy was “mainly online, supplemented by offline”. However, the distribution system of Hema was not mature at that time. After receiving the goods, some customers found that the frozen products had been thawed and the hot food was no longer kept warm. Therefore, Hema quickly reduced the delivery radius to 3 kilometers and promised that the first order would be delivered free of charge. .
This is also the choice of the front warehouse fresh food e-commerce Dingdong and Meituan. The user experience is the best with a delivery distance of 3 kilometers. Consumers can receive the goods in half an hour and the ingredients are not easy to deteriorate, but the platform needs to be in the community. Dense front warehouses are set up nearby. It is difficult for Hema Xiansheng to cover a wide range of communities through this model. The cost of opening a 4,000-square-meter Hema Xiansheng store often exceeds 30 million yuan.
For Hema, expanding the distribution area is cheaper than opening a new store, but it can attract more online orders. For this reason, Hema stores have set up two operation chains for order sorting and packaging of 3-5 kilometers. By adding more ice packs to frozen food orders and adding more insulation materials to hot food orders, etc., to ensure contract fulfillment quality.
A person from Hema predicted that this change will bring more new orders to Hema in second- and third-tier cities with fewer stores, because the stores in Beijing and Shanghai are already dense enough.
Hema will pay more for this, but it is not prepared to charge customers more for delivery. Beginning in February 2021, Hema will increase the threshold for free delivery fees for the first order from 0 yuan to 49 yuan (Beijing, Shanghai) and 39 yuan (second-tier cities). If the threshold is not reached, a delivery fee of 6 yuan will be required.
An industry insider estimated that within a delivery radius of 3 kilometers, the fulfillment cost of a single Hema order is about 8 – 10 yuan. According to the average customer price of about 90 yuan and the gross profit rate of 25%, Hema’s fulfillment cost per order is almost half of gross profit. If the delivery radius is expanded to 5 kilometers, the fulfillment cost will be higher.
In addition, “LatePost” also learned that Hema will also restart the expansion of the Hema MINI store in the community supermarket this year to fill the area that the Hema Fresh Store has not yet covered.
This format first appeared in 2019. In the second year, Hema CEO Hou Yi set a goal of opening 100 Hema MINI stores within a year, but so far there are only more than 20 in the country, and almost no new stores have been opened in the past two years.
Since 2021, Hou Yi has placed more growth hopes on the community self-pickup store Hema Neighborhood and the discount supermarket Hema Outlets, but these two formats are still immature-for cost considerations, Hema Neighborhood Shrunk multiple times, Hema Outlets are still in polishing mode.
Hou Yi once reflected on the Hema MINI model after the fact, “Because it is not open to franchising, the implementation is difficult, the investment is large, and the expansion is really slow.” But on the other hand, the Hema MINI store area is only 500-800 square meters. The investment is only about 2 million yuan, and the internal judgment model is relatively mature.
Re-examining and optimizing the unsuccessful model and format attempts in the past are also in line with Hema’s current status – the market it wants to enter is larger, and there is less room for trial and error. Therefore, Hema is pursuing growth and overall profitability On the road, we must be more cautious. (Text丨Edited by Chen Jing丨Guan Yiwen)
Fu Qiang, the former senior vice president of Didi, joined Manbang and was responsible for the platform and regional business divisions
“LatePost” learned that Fu Qiang, the former senior vice president of Didi, has recently joined Manbang Group. In the first week of his tenure, Fu Qiang took over the Manbang platform business department and the regional business department, and the two business department heads Zhang Qi and Xue Bi turned to Fu Qiang to report.
The platform business department is one of the most important businesses of Manbang, and the regional business department is the innovative business of Manbang. The platform business includes two parts: Yellow Pages of consignors and online transaction commissions. Manbang matches consignors and drivers to match transactions, sells delivery members to consignors, and collects online transaction commissions from drivers. The business of the regional business department is mainly the entrusted freight business. Starting in 2021, Manbang has launched a service for small and medium-sized enterprises that have delivery needs but lack logistics experience.
Manbang’s business can be divided into several categories according to revenue, including freight brokerage business (Manyunbao), membership fee collection from cargo owners (Freight Yellow Pages), transaction commissions from drivers (online transactions), and services for drivers and cargo owners. Income from providing value-added services such as credit and insurance.
Many people close to Manbang believe that the overall growth rate of Manbang’s main cross-city freight business is slowing down, and revenue is affected by policies, and it is facing transformation. Fu Qiang’s past experience in Didi can help Manbang improve its operations. efficiency and improve service quality.
More than 50% of Manbang Group’s revenue in 2022 depends on the service fee contributed by the freight brokerage business (Manyunbao). Manyunbao is a guaranteed transaction model that provides two-way guarantees for cargo damage and delays in the online transaction process of drivers and cargo owners on the platform. This model was formerly known as “car-free carrier”. The problem of tax irregularities allows car-free companies to engage in cargo transportation services and is eligible to issue value-added tax invoices.
Manbang is one of the beneficiaries of this policy. The company helps cargo owners issue value-added tax invoices in guaranteed transactions so that they can deduct freight and obtain government tax refunds.
However, there are uncertainties in this model, and changes in tax policies may lead to a reduction in the income of Manbang in the future. In the past two years, Manbang is gradually increasing the proportion of transaction commissions and value-added services through platforms, regional business units and more innovative businesses, in order to hedge against the impact of possible future reductions in tax rebates on revenue.
The commission business has been piloted since August 2020, and currently charges drivers an average of 1% commission, which will contribute 21% of Manbang’s revenue in 2022, a 32-fold increase from when it started in 2020.
At present, for Manbang, the focus of the next work is how to attract more shippers to use Manbang and pay, how to obtain more income and ensure capacity retention, how to reduce operating costs and improve service levels, these are also the freight industry A long-standing problem.
The two business divisions that Fu Qiang took over are an important entry point for Manbang to improve these problems and transform the industry. The market and room for experimentation are large, and the challenges faced are not small.
This is destined not to be an easy battle. Even if Fu Qiang has rich experience and good reputation, it is still unknown how much change he can promote. (Text丨Edited by Shen Fangwei丨Guan Yiwen)
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