Ignition Dimension (ID: chaintruth) original
Produced by Burning Finance
Author 丨 Yan Junwen Feng Xiaoting
Editor 丨 Xie Zhongxiu
How much commission does Meituan Takeaway actually draw from merchants? This question now has an official answer.
On March 25, Meituan (03690. HK) announced its fourth quarter and full year 2021 results. According to the data, Meituan's annual revenue in 2021 was 179.1 billion yuan, an increase of 56.0% year-on-year, continuing to maintain steady growth. However, at the same time, due to the increase in rider costs, R&D investment and investment in infrastructure construction of the retail business, the net loss for the whole year expanded to 15.57 billion yuan. It can be described as mixed.
As the pillar of Meituan's revenue, the catering takeaway business has also undergone new changes. In Q4 2021, Meituan disclosed the commission (technical service fee income) and delivery fee (delivery service income) separately for the first time, which also let the public see that Meituan's takeaway business does not seem to be "sexy". According to the financial report data, in 2021, the transaction amount of Meituan takeaway is 702.1 billion yuan, at the same time, in 2021, the commission income (technical service fee) obtained by Meituan takeaway through merchants is 28.5 billion yuan, compared with the annual transaction amount, the commission rate of the takeaway platform is about 4.1%.
In order to maintain the operation of the platform, the US group is still "upside down". On the rider side alone, Meituan's financial report data shows that the delivery cost of Meituan riders in 2021 is 68.2 billion yuan, but in the same year, Meituan's catering delivery service revenue from merchants and users was 54.2 billion yuan, which means that Meituan's annual cost of directly subsidizing riders reached 14 billion yuan. In 2021, the average income of riders per takeaway order is 7.07 yuan, while Meituan only earns 0.43 yuan.
The merchants, riders and consumers covered by the upstream and downstream of the entire catering takeaway industry chain, the takeaway platform in the middle of the industrial chain needs to take into account, in addition to being responsible for user drainage, business expansion, fulfillment and distribution and other links, but also to control quality, service and price. The takeaway business is really not a good business that can make money lying down.
Especially now that the catering industry is under pressure, Meituan also needs to help merchants "relieve pressure". A study on the development status of China's catering industry pointed out that the turnover of China's catering industry in 2020 was 603.726 billion yuan, down 7.93% from 2019; at the same time, the number of corporate enterprises in China's catering industry in 2020 was 32901, an increase of 9.97% year-on-year, compared with 13.9% in the previous year.
In the short term, the epidemic is a core factor affecting the performance of catering stores. Sha Sha, a catering business owner in Changsha, told Burning Finance on March 23, "Recently, the epidemic has been repeated, and the store has been hanging zero eggs at noon for several days. ”
The platform, merchants and consumers are also the three sides of the platform market, and only if the merchants are good, the platform will be good. Perhaps based on this, Meituan has also released six measures to reduce commissions for small and medium-sized merchants in difficulty under the epidemic. On March 27, it was reported that the initiative had launched a special support plan for businesses in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Jilin and other areas with serious epidemics in the country.
Merchants can not be separated from the platform, the platform can not be separated from the merchant, only to answer the doubts, solve the problem, in order to work together.
Average commission rate 4.1%
A single takeaway, what kind of money can the US group make, and how much money can it make? This has always been one of the main points of public attention.
Since Meituan's financial report before 2020, the disclosure of revenue from the catering takeaway business is mainly commissions and online marketing services, and the delivery fee paid for riders is not excluded, but the commission (Meituan takeaway platform technical service fee) and the rider delivery fee (performance service fee) are classified as commissions, thus generating the impression that Meituan's takeaway percentage is up to 20%.
However, in fact, the sources of revenue from the catering takeaway business are diverse, and the corresponding income of different delivery methods is not the same. The delivery methods of Meituan takeaway are mainly divided into 1P mode (Meituan delivery) and 3P mode (non-Meituan delivery), which account for 67% and 33% of the total takeaway transaction volume respectively.
Among them, in the 1P model, although the platform charges 1P delivery service fees to both merchants and users, the platform also needs to subsidize the corresponding delivery-related costs and provide consumer incentives to stimulate consumption.
In May 2021, Meituan Takeaway launched a reform of rate transparency, completely separating the "technical service fee (commission)" and "performance service fee (delivery fee)". It is reported that the "technical service fee (commission)" mainly includes the cost of business information display services, transaction services, business services and customer service services, IT operation and maintenance and other services, which are charged proportionally.
"Fulfillment service fee (delivery fee)" refers to the payment of wages, subsidies, personnel training management and other expenses of the rider. At the same time, the performance service fee will only be incurred when the merchant chooses Meituan delivery, and the merchant can choose meituan takeaway, other takeaway platforms, Mini Programs, other private domain traffic and other multi-platform operations, and can also choose Meituan delivery, self-delivery, third-party delivery and other delivery methods.
The direct impact of the reform of rate transparency is that the merchant side can be more intuitive and clear about the various fees.
According to the data on the service charges of the Meituan takeaway platform displayed by Yarn to Burn Finance, the meituan takeaway platform charges as "technical service fee = [commodity subtotal - merchant activity expenditure] * 5.80% (commission ratio), the minimum amount of 1.04 yuan", and "performance service fee = distance charge + price charge + period charge". That is to say, the merchant commission ratio drawn by Meituan is 5.80%.
The new rate policy was also reflected in the fourth quarter of 2021 in the Meituan financial report, in which commissions (technical service fee income) and distribution fees (delivery service revenue) were displayed separately.
For the first time, Meituan disclosed the takeaway delivery service fee income separately under the 1P model, and for the public, it also has a clearer understanding of the business of Meituan takeaway. Taking Meituan's 2020 financial report data as an example, in 2020, before the separate disclosure of takeaway delivery service fee revenue, the commission income of Meituan takeaway was 58.59 billion yuan, accounting for 88.42% of the catering takeaway business revenue, which is due to the statistics of merchant delivery service fees. However, after separate disclosure, the commission income of Meituan takeaway in 2020 was 18.5 billion yuan, accounting for only 27.9% of the revenue of the catering takeaway business.
This means that the actual commission rate of Meituan takeaway is not high. Meituan's 2021 financial report data shows that in 2021, the commission income (technical service fee) obtained by Meituan takeaway through merchants was 28.5 billion yuan, compared with the annual transaction amount, the commission rate of the takeaway platform was about 4.1%.
Compared with the previous rumors of 18% and 20% commission rates, the real commission of 4.1% is much lower. At the same time, for the question of rider income, Meituan also gave an answer in the financial report. According to the financial report data, the delivery fee for each rider in 2021 is 7.07 yuan.
This is also corroborated by the riders. On March 27, a Meituan crowdsourcing rider told Burning Finance, "The delivery fee for sending this single is about 6 yuan." Now the rider's delivery fee is related to the price and distance of the product. Generally, within one kilometer of the single, the delivery fee is four or five yuan. Overall, it can reach an average of about 7 yuan / single delivery income. ”
In addition, Meituan has a high investment in the distribution side. According to the data, in 2021, the cost of catering takeaway delivery in Meituan's takeaway business was 68.2 billion yuan, while the catering takeaway delivery service charged in the same period was only 54.2 billion yuan, which means that Meituan subsidized the delivery fee of takeaway by 14 billion yuan at its own expense. Based on the number of 14.4 billion takeaway transactions, Meituan's subsidy for each transaction is 0.97 yuan.
In the end, Meituan only earned 0.43 yuan per takeaway.
What do merchants get by taking out commissions?
What services does the platform provide for merchants? In the eyes of most merchants, drainage is certain.
Located in a county town in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, Yang Fei is very distressed, he began to do takeaway at the end of 2021, at the beginning of the platform has a "novice protection period", traffic protection, almost every day there are twenty or thirty singles, but once the 7-day traffic dividend has passed, the store is immediately overwhelmed by large merchants.
"If you think about it, our county meituan averages 6,000 orders a day, and Hungry mo averages 2,000 orders." But an ordinary fast food merchant can do two or three hundred orders a day, the traffic is basically divided, the new business can not share the traffic at all, where do I get a single amount? ”
Therefore, Yang Fei can only find the business manager of the platform to help, "Two days ago, the business manager of the Meituan group told me that the dish I sold the best month was used as a drainage, selling for 9.9 yuan, and the platform supplemented four or five yuan. ”
"The problem is that the dish is small stir-fried meat, fried peppers fried until soft to understand, and now peppers are not cheap, seven or eight yuan a pound."
But Yang Fei still decided to follow the advice of the platform business manager, sacrifice dividends, and cultivate loyal customers. At the same time, through the promotion of staggered peak opening point gold and platform marketing means such as Solicitor Treasure, Yang Fei's store order volume has gradually rebounded. After two or three months, Yang Fei's store orders have risen to seventy or eighty orders per day.
According to the understanding of Burning Finance, Meituan has laid thousands of BDs offline across the country, providing BD guidance services for merchants, concentrating on serving the staff of merchants, helping merchants to launch takeaway platforms, developing dishes, helping to dock and install corresponding system equipment, and so on.
Fang Jun said in the book "Platform Era" that the platform is a connector, a matcher and a market designer, and the platform connector producer and consumer match demand. At the same time, the platform must also design rules and policies to govern the platform market.
Taking the Meituan takeaway business as an example, it connects takeaway merchants and consumers, it needs to design a system to match the needs of both sides, at the same time, to let high-quality merchants emerge, safeguard their interests, punish bad merchants and consumers who deliberately destroy market rules.
When doing takeaway, the most worrying thing for merchants is the malicious bad reviews of consumers and the malicious bad reviews of people in the same industry. In order to prevent the occurrence of this incident, the Meituan platform launched the "malicious bad review interception mechanism" and "kangaroo review" to balance the anxiety of merchants.
The so-called "kangaroo review" means that the platform will use the content of the merchant's appeal, such as user orders, evaluation information, etc. as the basis for review, to meet the "evaluation information is inconsistent with the user's order", "threaten the merchant with bad reviews to seek improper benefits", etc., the platform will block the evaluation content, and eliminate this content when calculating the store rating.
To some extent, the Meituan platform is also a producer and provider of this market service, which charges 4.1% of the technical service fee of the merchant and then outputs services, such as the BD guidance service mentioned above, such as providing basic transaction settlement services and business data services.
In addition, the huge demand for data processing and computing power also requires the platform to invest heavily in construction, that is, the basic capabilities of the platform.
Compared with physical e-commerce, local life service e-commerce has the characteristics of immediacy and band, peak period users order takeaway is similar to grabbing tickets during the Spring Festival every year, the server stability and technical capabilities are very high requirements, which requires the takeaway platform to continuously invest funds, optimize technical capabilities, improve service stability, so as to meet the service needs of takeaway ecological stakeholders.
China's catering market is a complex market that is highly non-standardized, highly competitive and highly fragmented. According to a report, in 2018, China's restaurant closure rate was as high as 70%, the average life expectancy was only 508 days, it was difficult for single operations to adapt to the industry environment, and the intensification of competition tested corporate brands and operations, and the chain rate of Chinese restaurants in 2019 was 20%, but in the same period, the United States was 74%.
Therefore, Meituan is facing a supplier whose supply of goods and services is highly dispersed and has different standards, and the platform needs to invest heavily in building and governing the market. Wang Huiwen, the inventor of Meituan takeaway, once said that at the beginning, the takeaway business was a delivery service that quickly delivered high-quality goods to consumers, but later, it was not at all, from transportation to road construction, "Originally we thought that road construction would be gradually completed by the market, but the construction progress of this road is very slow, as the main player in this industry, we want to promote road construction speed." ”
If the business is good, the platform will be better
Platform, business and consumer, is the platform market three sides of the unity, no one can leave anyone, the more merchants, the more types of goods and services provided, consumers are more willing to stay on the platform to consume, and vice versa. Trade more in order for the platform to receive higher commission income.
Therefore, the platform is not on the opposite side of the merchant. This can be seen from the difficulties encountered by the catering industry, and the platform makes profits.
The pandemic has exacerbated challenges for the F&B industry. Zhiyan consulting data also shows that both sales, the number of catering stores, catering industry employees, and consumer dining have all declined significantly in the past two years.
The report shows that after the epidemic, consumers are also minimizing non-essential time to eat out. In 2021, consumers eating out on weekends and holidays accounted for 32.8%, a large decline. At the same time, a research report by Western Securities also shows that the consumer confidence index shows a marginal weakening trend in 2021.
The pressure of the market is reflected in the company, which closed 230 stores in 2021. In 2021, Haidilao has closed 276 stores. This is already the case for large enterprises, and it may be more difficult for small and medium-sized businesses.
In addition to the epidemic factors, the rise in rent, labor and raw materials has also made it difficult for some ordinary businesses. For example, in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, a merchant said that local fast food chefs have opened to 5500 yuan a month, if the "small bowl dish" takeaway is the mainstay, you need to support two chefs, "this is equivalent to raising a chef, not making money." He said.
This shows that as a producer of platform services and commodities, the supply side is under pressure, there may be a withdrawal of merchants, the supply of high-quality goods and services is insufficient, at this time, it is necessary to relieve the platform, give help, and let the two wheels of the platform run.
On March 1, Meituan proposed measures such as halving commissions for small and medium-sized merchants affected by the epidemic to reduce the pressure on merchants and further promote the scope of rate transparency. In terms of increasing revenue, Meituan Takeaway will provide free "takeaway butler services" for difficult merchants with insufficient online business capacity, as well as take-out order receiving equipment such as cloud printers and food treasures, and will hold 100 merchant earnest talks to continuously improve services.
At present, the special support plan launched by Meituan Takeaway in Shenzhen, Shanghai and other places will implement the preferential measure of "halving the commission and capping it with 1 yuan" for difficult merchants in high-risk areas in the epidemic (the average daily user paid transaction volume has dropped by more than 30%), and the reduced commission will be counted according to the actual transaction amount paid by the catering merchants in March in early April this year, and returned to the merchant's Meituan account in cash.
The merchants have been rescued, the "double wheel" has run, and the US group also needs to turn back to solve its own problems. According to the data, Meituan's takeaway revenue is 96.312 billion yuan, but 68.2 billion yuan is invested in rider delivery, accounting for 71%, eating most of the income. To expand profitability, the challenges of distribution logistics must be solved.
Unmanned delivery seems to be the direction of the US group.
Burning Finance saw in the Meituan financial report that in 2021, meituan drone has provided drone instant delivery services for many areas in Shenzhen, and has covered more than 8,000 residents so far and completed 30,000 orders for real users. In addition, Meituan will gradually establish a low-altitude intelligent logistics network based in Shanghai and covering East China. In terms of automatic delivery, as of December 2021, meituan's automatic delivery vehicle service has expanded to 20 communities in Beijing's Shunyi District, delivering nearly 190,000 orders and driving more than 700,000 kilometers of autonomous driving mileage.
But what is the future of this line of thinking? A Beidou satellite system related personnel once said in small talk with Burning Finance, "Any technology, such as air speeding, these technologies are very good to achieve, but the difficulty is application, once to the society will face pressure in all aspects." ”
This is the same for the unmanned delivery of Meituan takeaway, the technology is not difficult, but if you want to invest effectively, you have to face various problems such as road conditions and supervision. What's more, the research and development of unmanned distribution also has to invest heavily. Meituan's financial report shows that in 2021, Meituan's annual R&D investment increased by about 53.1% year-on-year to 16.7 billion yuan.
One is the support of merchants, the other is the protection of riders, but also to take into account the balance of consumers, and to solve the problem of excessive investment in their own distribution, the "trouble" of the US group is endless. The "takeaway giant" is actually not as easy as it seems.
*Captions and text images are from Visual China.
*In the text, Yang Fei and Sha Sha are pseudonyms
*Disclaimer: In no event shall the information herein or the opinions expressed herein constitute investment advice to any person.