Your new life has been delivered – Takeaway Lifestyle Science 2.0. /Chen Yiquan
There is a kind of freedom called takeaway freedom. This is not a superficial freedom to order food freely, but a freedom of time and freedom of life. There is a kind of survival called "takeaway survival". "For me, 'takeaway' is a process that skips the process and gets us straight to an end point." (Xu Zhiyuan) As a time agent in the country of urgency, 7 million takeaway brothers not only saved the stomach of at least 300 million Chinese, but also saved countless "difficult households going downstairs" and "difficult households to go out". Everything can be taken out. Today's "takeaway" is no longer the "takeaway" you think, "takeaway" has long gone beyond the catering scene, penetrated into fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers and green plants, beauty daily use, medicine and health and other fields, and become the main supplier of the local life circle in the next 30 minutes and a new arena for new retail business. The phrase "your takeaway has been delivered" is equivalent to "your new life has been delivered." Takeaway has reshaped our lifestyle, consumption habits, cultural entertainment and spiritual aesthetics. Takeaway is the spiritual vehicle of this era: it means outsourcing troubles, it means time freedom, and it even means a distributed state of existence. Takeaway is a kind of consumption upgrade for us, and it is also a life upgrade for us. come! Let's waste all the time we save on the good things.
A question: How many takeaways do you have for three hours and three meals?
You trot across the road and arrive at the door of the company's office building before you go to work at 9 o'clock. The night before, I watched the drama until late at night, and in the morning I habitually couldn't open my eyes and the Bed of Karai; after three intermittent alarm clocks, I hurriedly rinsed my mouth and washed my face and squeezed into the rushing subway crowd. When you arrived, the takeaway brother also happened to come downstairs, you took the breakfast ordered on the road and thanked the brother.
You glance at the clock in the lower right corner of your computer screen, and it's just after 11 a.m., and it's time to order takeout again. You flip to the company's lunch takeaway group, bark, quickly switch the background program, open hungry, fingers quickly swiped, found a new store focusing on Southeast Asian cuisine, the menu is rich and full, click "share": "This seems to be OK, order this." ”
You look at the clock on your computer again, and finally it's time to leave work, hurry up the document in the "Ctrl+S" hand, and shut down. Opening the takeaway app again, the advertisement brushed out a new copywriting - "a good life, everything". Oh, the program is updated? You find the entrance to the fresh supermarket, pick up your backpack and go outside, while ordering tenderloin, winter melon, sea bass, ginger, green onion and other condiments on the menu, and calculating to make a winter melon soup and steamed fish for dinner.
American photographer Brian Fink's Desktop Dining. The office workers in the picture are busy day and night, and meals can only be solved at the desk. /Brian Finke
Takeaway fierce. Consulting firm QuestMobile estimates that nearly 80 million people across China rely on takeout every day to heal their stomachs. Analysys data shows that the current scale of takeaway in China exceeds 2 billion yuan a day.
In addition to catering, the service scene of takeaway is also continuously extended: fresh fruits and vegetables, medicine and health, flowers and green plants, and daily beauty. Takeaway is reshaping our consumption decisions, lifestyles, cultural habits and even spiritual aesthetics.
Takeaway is becoming a reflection of this era, building a new way of life and reflecting our fiery and comfortable souls.
What form of industry is more convenient than takeaway?
The city has not yet regained its former vitality, but there are more and more businesses offering takeaway services.
Uniformed delivery riders still weave through the congested streets, speaking in different provincial accents, dialing on speeding two-wheeled electric vehicles to remind customers to go out and pick up meals: "Hello, your order has been delivered to the doorman of the community." Trouble at your own expense. ”
In the past six months, takeaway is almost the only remaining source of income for the national catering industry. Xibei Noodle Village, which once shouted that "loans and salaries can only last for three months", relies on takeaway to help itself, and Shu Congxuan, chairman of Laoxiang Chicken, believes that takeaway will take the lead in becoming a breakthrough in corporate revenue.
Everything is exactly the same as the "SARS" period in 2003: the long-established brands in Beijing at that time "have launched semi-finished dishes, table dishes, and set dishes suitable for families" takeaways to attract customers and maintain their livelihoods.
Everything is beyond the reform and upgrading of the SARS period: in this epidemic, "contactless delivery" has become the standard service of takeaway Apps, and the smart food cabinet piloted by Ele.me during this period will further expand its layout.
Ele.me fully supports the development of "contactless" distribution. /Figureworm Creative
The epidemic has intensified the delivery demand of local life, but it has also released the imagination space of "takeaway survival" - the definition of takeaway has been extended from the past porridge flour rice to more flexible and broader application scenarios such as emergency drugs and errands.
As Guo Li, vice president of Ele.me, pointed out, the development of digital technology has driven the renewal of life services, and the update of life services has further stimulated new consumer demand.
According to the analysis data on the Ele.me platform, Guo Li believes that there are three types of emerging consumer groups: the first is the pre-80s group, who are active in the consumption of various life services and grow rapidly; the second type is white-collar parents, mainly based on mothers in first- and second-tier cities, who prefer global food, fruits, and desserts, and the consumption ratio is above average; the third type is self-disciplined people in third- and fourth-tier cities, who are enthusiastic about salads and health products, and the consumption speed is significantly higher than that of first- and second-tier cities.
As early as 2018, Nielsen pointed out in its consumer report "Convenience First, The Future Can Be Expected" that whether in China or other markets around the world, the accelerating pace of life is influencing people's consumption decisions, and respondents are more inclined to buy products that bring convenience to life when they consume.
Based on the same consumer psychology, it is not difficult to understand the reasons for the transformation of takeaway to local life services: let me ask, what industrial form is more convenient than takeaway?
We are about to move from digital survival to takeaway survival. Analysys reports that the "first half" of the Internet that is racing and growing wildly has ended, and the local life service market has entered the era of new retail. After the competitive advantage of the business is no longer swayed by the traffic dividend, how to build an ecological environment for the survival of takeaway will be the key to the decisive battle of future entrants.
On August 22, 2018, in London, England, a takeaway company invited several lucky diners to dine in the air at a height of 450 feet (137.16 meters), recreating the scene from the famous 20th-century video "Lunchtime on the Top of a Skyscraper". /Visual China
Takeaway Lifestyle:
it is the dilemma of modern society,
It's also its possibility
The game around the local life service continues, and the actual value of takeaway survival to us is more in how it solves our appetite.
Interface culture raises a very interesting question, in the 2019 review article "The Richness and Desolation of Food Documentaries: Famine Genes, Human Relations and Takeaway Controversy", the author Dong Ziqi analyzed that foodies are so disgusted with takeaway, perhaps because "takeaway lacks the warmth of home production, nor does it have a gastronomic genealogy, and it has nothing to do with the art of drinking", and the menu on the takeaway app, although rich, is "almost the sum of the fusion of creative dishes, standardized and commercial food production".
So the question arises: if wild mountain vegetables in the famine years can occupy a place in the personal cuisine list because of memory filters, why is the oily takeaway not even worthy of "deceiving appetite"?
"Maybe what we should be looking forward to is a more nutritious, delicious, and healthy takeaway food, rather than a return to the mother's side again — and why does the mother always stay where you are to cook for you?" 」
The taste of home is irreplaceable. /"Little Forest"
Aar Terry, a French anthropologist who has long studied Chinese street food culture, believes that people prefer to linger in street stalls, "often in order to escape the unity of eating habits and choices." The same is true of the healing that takeaway gives us. It's never perfect (there's no such thing as absolute "perfect", is there?). ), but it is a free choice for the tired modern people.
Of course, you can choose to go to the community's wet market to feel the fireworks of the world (which is what we encouraged in the "Everybody Loves the Wet Market") feature), but you can also choose to steal half a day's leisure, save the trivial troubles, and pursue other forms of fun in the monotony of day after day.
This is both the dilemma of modern society and its possibilities. It is precisely because of the clear division of labor in all walks of life in the city that it can provide living space for both supply and demand sides.
Whether it's a wet market or a takeaway, the choice is leisurely.
Takeaway has not only changed the question of what we eat, where and when we eat, but it has even changed the concept, layout and even the entire industrial chain of restaurants.
More and more takeaways come from shared kitchens. According to Curiosity Daily, Beijing and Shanghai had at least 200 shared kitchens last year, making up thousands of merchants in takeaway apps. The first "Shared Kitchen Service Specification" in China will also be implemented from July 10 this year.
While traditional restaurants have been forced to close their doors due to the problem of gentrification, these new paradigms of shared kitchens have filled the gaps in the city with soft bodies and shaped new commercial spaces. In addition, because of the flexible operating model, shared kitchens can rise against the winds under the epidemic and contribute to the economic boost.
The renewal of the city's appearance is also the renewal of the way of life. But the whole picture of the survival of takeaway is still unknown.
Shared kitchens have become a new member of the sharing economy. /pixabay
Our way of living,
It can always be in the interaction with the spirit of the times
Locate the coordinates
In a sense, takeaway is the spiritual vehicle of this era: it means outsourcing troubles, it means freedom of time, and even means a distributed state of existence. It is a kind of consumption upgrade for us, and it is also a life upgrade for us.
Takeaway embodies the needs of the current era: convenient and fast delivery, non-interfering stranger relationships, new social structures and new life models derived from takeaways. These needs are closely related to the development of the times, which both constitute our lives and profoundly change the world.
Writer Xu Zhiyuan defined "takeaway survival" in an interview: "For me, 'takeaway' is a process of skipping the process, which allows us to reach an end point directly. Some scholars feel that the takeaway imagination of the accelerated era reflects the anxiety of modern people in social interaction, and to a certain extent, it has led to the weakening of social interaction.
British photographer Nikki Hamilton's Take Me Away recreates the real mood of people while waiting for a takeaway. /Nicky Hamilton
But the problem is that, like all the cautious techno-vigilants in history, what they call a terrible and obscure future has never materialized, our way of living can always find coordinates in the interrelationship with the zeitgeist.
The impact of takeaway on China's traditional catering culture is like the "infiltration" under the background of cultural globalization, such as foreign festivals, blockbusters, animations, such as consumerism, individualism, and hedonism, and their entry is always two sides of the same coin.
Insisting on the same set of cultural standards is no longer a modern way of living - it is better to understand and tolerate a new way of life, let it enter, and take its essence, so that it can enrich us.
Twenty years ago, New Weekly defined the "Drifting Generation" this way: "They don't shout the slogan of freedom, but they practice the great idea of 'freedom' in their daily lives." Today, we share the same value when we try to define "takeaway survival": everyone exalts the spirit of freedom by building a sense of participation that does not require physical involvement in their daily meals.
There is no doubt that modern society is accelerating in terms of productivity, information transmission, pace of life, and emotional perception, but this is an opportunity: we may be able to "regain our sovereignty over time and strive for a more reasonable work schedule, a more humane form of work, and a fairer distribution of labor" (scholar Wang Xingkun).
✎ Author | Zhong Huiqian
Original title: "There is a kind of freedom called takeaway freedom"
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Highlights of this issue
There is a kind of freedom called takeaway freedom
"Liquid survival" in a changeable world
How Beijing caught the subway sex wolf
Qin Lan: I don't want to live too hard
Shoji Morimoto: What I'm best at is not doing anything