Text/Yiting Chen
Edit/Gale
On the morning of January 18, "Starbucks China" announced on the public account that Starbucks will launch the exclusive space service and "special star delivery" function of "1971 Living Room" on Meituan from now on.
On the first day of the launch of meituan's "special star delivery", Zinc Finance placed an order for a New Year's package. The package includes a hot fu man chestnut velvet latte, Hongyun Dangtou hawthorn cake, and the Year of the Tiger mini Spring Festival package, the original price is 77 yuan, and the US group is only 66 yuan. The takeaway was received in less than 20 minutes, the coffee packaging was specially designed, and there was a small reflux box on the inner layer of the double-layered lid, so the coffee did not spill any liquid. Under the delivery of exclusive delivery boxes, the temperature of the coffee has not changed much, and the taste is almost the same as that of in-store drinking.
Meituan "Special Star Delivery" New Year's Package
Compared with Starbucks's "special star delivery", the Meituan "special star delivery" can be more wool. A new discount page has been added to the menu bar, ranging from 40% to 20% off. Among them, the lowest discount is the Bacon Cheese Egg Burger Set, the original price of 48 yuan, the current price of 19 yuan, the discount is as low as 3.96% off. In addition, Meituan can receive a Starbucks membership card, and new users have a 20% discount coupon and a 9 yuan delivery fee reduction coupon.
Meituan's "special star delivery" shopping page
In the menu bar, users can customize the coffee according to their preferences. From capacity to temperature, from coffee concentration to milk type, almost all the factors that affect the taste of coffee are taken into account.
Coupled with the Factual takeaway delivery service itself is very mature, ordering, ordering, discounting, delivery, evaluation, complaints, every link of takeaway is covered, and it is convenient to deal with problems. As a deep user of Meituan, Starbucks' exclusive customized page does not have any obstacles to ordering food.
It seems to be a delivery of a cup of coffee, but in fact, it requires deep internal strength behind it. Nowadays, takeaway has passed the most primitive pioneering period, and after the market pattern has stabilized, takeaway has entered a more refined operation stage.
Starbucks meets Meituan
Previously, Starbucks had reached an exclusive cooperation with Ele.me, and now that the cooperation between the two sides has expired, what can the new partner Meituan bring to Starbucks?
The takeaway coffee problem is nothing more than two points, one is the problem of drink spillage, and the other is the impact of time and temperature on the taste of the drink.
For ordinary coffee takeaway, solving the first problem is already a disaster; for Starbucks, it is fatal to affect the taste of coffee. Therefore, the difficulty of delivering a cup of Starbucks coffee has three dimensions: time, temperature and packaging.
In order to meet this requirement, what can Meituan do?
First of all, Meituan provides a rider resident service for Starbucks, with a special person responsible for distribution, not afraid of no rider to take orders, and not afraid of uneven quality of riders. After all, the most contacted by consumers is the takeaway brother, and the service attitude presented by the delivery staff affects the consumer's cognition of the quality taste and service quality of the business. The familiarity of the delivery personnel with the route directly affects the timeliness of delivery, which in turn affects the quality of distribution.
In order to strengthen the professionalism of the delivery staff, Meituan customized the exclusive distribution equipment of Starbucks - customized chemical clothing + customized lunch box. Among them, the meal box separates the cold and hot boxes, which greatly reduces the phenomenon of temperature loss.
Meituan "special star delivery" customized meal box
In addition, customized distribution systems, such as Starbucks exclusive shopping pages, Starbucks member data exchange, Starbucks store smart exchange store purchases and other services, are all high-quality experience services launched from the perspective of consumers.
Starbucks has therefore confidently launched its boutique coffee series on Meituan, so that more people can taste high-quality coffee anytime, anywhere. The timely delivery service of "special star delivery" can also meet various temporary accidental events.
In addition, Starbucks member data is interconnected with Meituan, and the user's consumption point data on Meituan can also be synchronized to the Starbucks account. Behind the barrier-free switching of the two sides of the App is Starbucks' trust in Meituan Delivery.
For Starbucks, the offline store business in the past two years has obviously been strongly competed by coffee takeaways such as Luckin Coffee and Maile Delivery, and broadening online channels is an inevitable choice.
After accessing Meituan, Starbucks will further expand its business scope, and offline stores will be able to reach more users by configuring "special star delivery". Starbucks' 17.9 million active members can communicate with Meituan's 670 million users, thereby intuitively improving performance with the help of the takeaway business. According to Starbucks' fiscal year 2021 report, the company's annual revenue from the Chinese market reached $3.7 billion. According to the official estimate that the proportion of special star delivery orders accounted for 15% of sales, Starbucks's takeaway revenue in the Chinese market is about 3.5 billion yuan.
The current demand of big brands
Like Starbucks, more and more big food and beverage brands are paying more attention to efficiency and service when working with takeaway brands.
It should be known that the "tidal phenomenon" of the takeaway industry is serious, especially during lunch and dinner, there will often be a situation of explosive orders. This has strict requirements for the speed of meals and delivery time, taking 30 minutes of delivery as an example, if the merchant has a meal in 8 minutes, then the remaining 22 minutes can only be handed over to the rider. Once a certain link is not handled well, the user experience of consumers will be very bad. Large catering brands often face the situation of multiple single delivery, and the brand's own distribution strength alone cannot guarantee such a high demand for delivery.
The problem that the category is not suitable for delivery also makes catering brands feel headaches, especially Starbucks, which makes specialty coffee, has almost strict control of time and temperature, and only in this way can the taste be guaranteed. For them, taste is word of mouth.
However, with the development of the times and the impact of the epidemic, takeaway has become a necessity for almost every young person. It is undeniable that takeaway is already one of the main ways of doing business in the catering industry. For brands, broadening takeaway channels is an effective way to increase revenue.
According to statistics, chain coffee and tea brands such as Luckin, Xicha, Costa, Naixue's tea, Yidiandian, COCO, and Michelle Ice City have all been connected to the takeaway platform.
In April 2018, Heytea fully opened its takeaway service, opening takeaway services in more than 80 stores in 12 cities across the country, with a monthly sales volume of up to 5,000 takeaways per store. According to the latest financial report data of Heytea, in 2020, about 81% of all consumers of Heytea chose to place orders online, of which takeaway delivery accounted for 24.8%, and now this data is gradually improving.
Source: Heytea 2020 Annual Report
From the most classic KFC, McDonald's independent construction of takeaway systems, to the later launch of takeaway by hot pot brands such as Haidilao, and then to the successive access to takeaway platforms of tea brands, more and more brands have accelerated the pace of online construction.
Whether or not these big catering brands can be seized has also become the most critical competitive highland for takeaway platforms.
Customized services are the focus
The next point of competition for takeaway will focus on customized services.
For big food and beverage brands such as Starbucks, they will pay special attention to whether the takeaway platform can provide consumers with quality services. Starbucks is reluctant to open a takeaway service, also because of fear that takeaway will reduce the taste of coffee and damage the brand reputation.
The reason behind this is that big brands pay more attention to brand reputation. For them, either don't do takeout or do the best quality takeaway. In addition to solving the problems of basic liquid spillage and violent delivery, whether the takeaway platform can provide customized services for itself has become the focus of attention. Because this is related to whether the brand can move the store service to the takeaway platform as perfectly as possible, and it is also related to whether the brand can stand out among the catering peers.
MANNER COFFEE
If you return to the coffee market, in addition to Starbucks, there are many "offspring" that are fiercely breaking through. Luckin, MANNER, Tims China, is taking service, cost performance, store style as the entry point, in the market to attack the city. Starbucks can't refuse takeout, in the fierce competition, Starbucks also needs to maintain its own quality status in the minds of consumers through efficient and high-quality service.
Therefore, for takeaway platforms, after the era of reckless competition, the current competition is more efficiency and service. Nowadays, the launch of Meituan's customized services has undoubtedly solved the biggest hesitation for big brands.
In addition to selling services, Meituan is also expanding the possibility of more customized services. Starbucks launched the exclusive space service of "1971 Living Room" in Meituan, that is, providing a new private coffee experience reservation service and enabling the "super store" function of Meituan, all of which have brought the customized service to the extreme.
In this post-takeaway era, the competition is more of the internal strength of the refined operation of the takeaway platform.