Returning to the essence of service, the ticket is no longer the traffic password of takeaway merchants

In April, the release of two news messages aroused the attention of the takeaway industry and even the entire catering practitioners.

Since April 1, the Beijing Municipal Market Supervision and Administration Bureau issued the "Online Catering Service Catering Safety Management Specification" officially implemented, the specification requires that takeaway businesses should use takeaway packaging seals or disposable sealing of the outer packaging bags and other sealing methods, sealing, outer packaging bags should not be restored after opening.

With the repeated epidemics, takeaway seals can ensure that takeaways are not polluted in delivery, which protects the safety of consumers, and the interests of merchants have also been improved in the recent continuous support measures of takeaway platforms. On April 7, Meituan announced at the 2022 Takeaway Industry Conference that it will launch the "Prosperity Plan" for all merchants, and build a symbiotic and prosperous takeaway catering ecology through four major mechanisms of merchant communication, merchant development, merchant service, and merchant co-construction.

Rebates, takeaway butler services, traffic support, rate transparency... After helping merchants reduce costs and increase efficiency, the idea of "symbiosis and common prosperity" between Meituan takeaway and merchants began to go deep into the rules.

Merchant engagement: from follow-up to co-construction

In the takeaway ecosystem, the riders, users and merchants represent different interests, and Meituan, as a platform, essentially links the three parties, reasonably allocates resources, and coordinates the distribution of interests between the three parties to a certain extent.

With the rapid development of the takeaway industry, controversies around topics such as commissions and rider rights and interests continue to emerge, gradually revealing the contradictions and imbalances between the three parties and the platform. Meituan has realized this problem, in the context of the country's full support for the catering industry, it intends to enhance the voice of merchants through successive measures, and re-strive to find balance in the takeaway ecology.

At the recent takeaway industry conference, Meituan Takeaway announced the launch of the "Prosperity Plan" for catering merchants, the core content of which is four major mechanisms: merchant communication, merchant development, merchant service, and merchant co-construction.

On March 31, Meituan Takeaway held a meeting in Guangzhou for small and medium-sized catering merchants, most of whom had just launched takeaway during the epidemic and hoped to get more professional digital operation guidance. Through forms such as merchant earnest talks, intelligent response to business complaints, and bag research services, the platform can establish a routine communication mechanism with merchants to jointly discuss and solve business problems.

Meituan's prosperity plan can ensure that the voice of the merchant is heard by the platform, and allow the merchant to participate in the takeaway ecology, especially in the platform rule suggestion, which magnifies the role that the merchant can play in the dialogue with the platform.

For example, in the rules council, most of the main rules of the takeaway ecosystem are dominated by the platform, and merchants take the initiative to participate and make suggestions in order to truly improve and enhance the business operation experience. Once a long-term mechanism is formed, it will also play an important role in optimizing the takeaway ecology.

With the change of discourse power, the game between merchants and platforms or the cycle of driving the takeaway ecology is healthier.

The subsidy rules are optimized to reduce the internal volume of merchants

After the epidemic, more and more merchants have expanded their takeaway business, and while takeaway has brought increments to catering, it has inevitably intensified the competition between merchants. An offline store originally only needed to compete with its peers within a radius of 1 kilometer, but after opening takeaway, competitors expanded to a radius of 5 kilometers. In contrast, a business that relies on the takeaway business to survive, because those who do not originally do online have opened takeaway, and the number of competitors in their radiation range has also increased.

In this case, the competition for already scarce traffic is more intense. In order to attract users to place orders, they have opened large subsidies, resulting in increasing cost pressure caused by marketing subsidies, and the internal volume between merchants is becoming more and more serious.

This can also be seen from meituan's financial report that in the first three quarters of 2021, the marketing service fee actively spent by takeaway merchants was 8.211 billion yuan, accounting for 1.6% of the relevant transaction amount, while in 2016 this figure was still 0.14%.

A merchant said, "Customers generally tend to point out more preferential and low delivery costs of merchants, forcing merchants to reduce profits, but giving users more subsidies, and finally can not make money." This sentence shows the troubles of all merchants, whether it is buying traffic or increasing subsidies for users, merchants need to pay.

In the past, the takeaway platform was based on the subsidy strength of the merchant to distribute traffic, the more subsidies, the more popular with users, the higher the exposure rate, so that traffic will flow into the business. However, this kind of traffic distribution rule undoubtedly no longer matches the current focus on supporting merchants, because the growth of marketing subsidies will almost make the platform's efforts in reducing costs and increasing efficiency in vain, while merchants still increase income without increasing profits.

Finally, after the takeaway industry has developed to a new mature stage, Meituan has released a signal to optimize the takeaway marketing subsidy environment, which will undoubtedly be a rule that affects the entire industry and all participants.

In fact, in the past period of time, Meituan takeaway has made some rule adjustments, in order to put an end to the original price of merchants inflated activities, has been some of the rules and standards from the original price mechanism to the actual payment mechanism, which involves a series of changes in marketing tools, data products, traffic products, subsidy rules, etc. Through these actions, it is also guiding merchants to focus on improving service capabilities, rather than simply relying on smashing subsidies to attract users.

But more critically, the platform no longer uses subsidies as an important reference index for traffic distribution, which will completely rewrite the core rules of marketing subsidies for takeaway merchants, truly allowing merchants to obtain tangible benefits while returning to the essence of service.

On the one hand, merchants can greatly reduce the cost of marketing and find more profit margins, on the other hand, after not rolling around subsidies, merchants can focus more on product and service improvement and guide the industry to healthy competition.

It is undeniable that Meituan will change the rules of takeaway marketing subsidies, and the income of the platform itself may also be affected, but according to the consistent principle of long-termism, the healthy competition of merchants can maximize the interests of multiple parties in the takeaway ecosystem.

The growth of takeaway is attributed to subsidies, and now meituan has changed its subsidy rules, which shows its determination to improve the living environment of merchants.

Takeaway continues to revolutionize catering? Small and medium-sized businesses "reborn again"

The birth of takeaway has brought consumers a new catering consumption model, allowing people to enjoy food more conveniently, at the same time, it has created an increment for the entire catering industry and stimulated the vitality of the catering market. From a macro perspective, this is actually an inevitable combination of multiple factors such as urbanization, family miniaturization and changes in user consumption habits.

At the takeaway industry conference, Wang Puzhong, senior vice president of Meituan and president of the Home Business Group, proposed a novel concept - Ren Dun. We often say that three meals a day correspond to 3 people's meals, according to the model calculation, Wang Puzhong said that it is expected that in the next 30 years, the number of urban social catering people will likely exceed the number of people cooking at home.

This will be a milestone leap in the catering as a service industry, and takeaway has accelerated the formation of this trend, and it will naturally become the driving force for the catering industry to complete this leap.

Recognizing this trend is especially important for small and medium-sized businesses. At the beginning of the rise and growth of the takeaway model, the emergence of platforms such as Meituan and Ele.me can almost be said to feed the vast majority of small and medium-sized catering businesses, creating a new opportunity for them.

Today, the takeaway platform has increased the support of small and medium-sized merchants, as well as the launch of the prosperity plan, the biggest beneficiary is still small and medium-sized businesses, how to seize this opportunity is related to their own business recovery.

On March 1, Meituan Takeaway released six relief measures. For small and medium-sized merchants with operational difficulties in high-risk areas of the epidemic, Meituan Takeaway will implement a halving of the technical service fee (commission) discount, and a cap of 1 yuan per single after the halving; in addition, for merchants with difficulties in completing rate transparency, Meituan Takeaway will evaluate the business conditions and difficulty degrees in combination with the operation status and difficulty, and implement a 5% cap on technical service fees (commissions). At present, meituan's takeaway assistance measures are landing, and the first batch of small and medium-sized merchants affected by the epidemic and business difficulties have been refunded 30 million yuan.

Reducing operating costs is not enough for small and medium-sized businesses. Compared with chain catering brands, the disadvantages of small and medium-sized catering stores, in addition to the gap in hard power, the key lies in operational talents.

A fact that has to be admitted is that chain catering brands open takeaway business, relying on their influence, it is easier to find talents for online operation, and many small and medium-sized businesses although they have operated takeaway business for many years, their online operation ability may not be high.

The "takeaway butler service" launched by Meituan Takeaway is precisely to take into account the talent situation of small and medium-sized businesses. The takeaway butler service is served by a special person, teaching merchants to open online stores, especially in digital operation, and giving more professional guidance. At present, Meituan has provided free takeaway butler services for more than 10,000 merchants across the country, and will provide 100,000 "takeaway butler service" places for small and medium-sized merchants in difficulty in 2022.

The data shows that in 2021, merchants who have used "takeaway butler service" will increase their transaction volume by 79% per month, while their anti-risk ability will be significantly enhanced, and the survival rate will be 39% higher than that of merchants who have not used butler services.

The prosperity plan is also the focus of helping catering businesses, compared with the previous specific and detailed support measures, the plan is more based on communication as the starting point, from shallow to deep, from the mechanism construction to ensure the rights and interests of businesses, through in-depth platform operating rules, fundamentally adjust the relationship between the platform and businesses. Like the optimization of subsidy rules, not only subsidies are from, but also allow more high-quality small and medium-sized businesses to obtain new opportunities.

From making rules to changing rules, Meituan has changed due to the needs of merchants. In the early stage of takeaway development, merchants are eager to rely on online dividends to obtain traffic and enhance business, and in the mature period, their requirements for the operating environment and operational capabilities are gradually improved. The platform always helps merchants grow, which is the inevitable symbiosis and co-prosperity between merchants and platforms, and the participation of merchants in co-construction will make the takeaway ecosystem more prosperous.

This is also conducive to the platform to continue to stabilize the main body of the social market in the exploration and enhance the resilience of the real economy.

The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. The WeChat public account of the same name: Dao always has a reason (daotmt). This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.