Author | Dong Jie
Edit | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan
Meituan's organizational restructuring continues, and this time it's the turn of the food delivery division.
36Kr exclusively learned that yesterday, Meituan issued an internal letter announcing adjustments to the food delivery division, the details are as follows:
(1) Abolish the direct business department, set up the urban business department instead, and appoint Huang Xiaoqin as the person in charge, responsible for the operation and management of white-collar direct operation cities and urban businesses;
(2) Establish a chain business department and appoint Li Jiayi as the person in charge, responsible for the operation and management of national chain merchants and urban chain merchants;
(3) Establish a supply exploration department and appoint Chu Zheng as the person in charge, who is responsible for promoting the development of the supply model including food collection stores.
(4) The campus business department of the original direct business department will continue to be headed by Wu Min.
The above persons in charge all report to Xue Bing, the head of the takeaway business department.
After the adjustment is completed, the organizational structure of the food delivery division will become more flatter.
Before the adjustment, the structure of the food delivery division was roughly divided into three layers, that is, "food delivery business department - direct business department - related business group", but now the direct business department has been abolished, and the business group closer to the front line has directly become the secondary department, which is conducive to the management team to capture the changes in the needs of users and merchants and quickly make business judgments.
Takeaway is moving towards more refined operations
The abolition of the direct business department is the core part of this structural adjustment.
Previously, the main responsibility of this department was to be responsible for the operation and management of directly operated cities and businesses across the country, and its advantage lies in efficient decision-making, and the orders issued by the headquarters can be immediately implemented in each directly operated city. However, the disadvantage is that it is difficult for each directly operated city to make more independent decisions according to the characteristics of its own city, thus affecting the development of urban business.
This time, Meituan chose to abolish the direct business department and set up the urban business department instead, which is what it wants to solve this problem. Although there was a similar organization under the direct sales business department in the past, it was relatively scattered, and this time it was directly integrated into a business unit.
A person close to Meituan told 36Kr that the logic behind this change is to emphasize the refined operation of the city, and to achieve "one city, one policy" in the future, and fully give the flexibility and autonomy of decision-making in directly operated cities.
Refined operation has two meanings: one is to improve the granularity of operation, and the service of the directly operated city to the merchants in the city where it is located, and the other is to improve the efficiency of operation, how to make a larger scale and better profits than before at the same cost (or lower cost).
In Q4 last year, the average daily order volume of Meituan Takeaway reached 57 million orders, and the average daily order volume for the whole year exceeded 55 million orders, although the goal set at the beginning of the year was completed, but this is still not a small distance from the goal of 100 million orders per day by 2025 that Wang Xing is looking forward to.
Another key point of this adjustment is the establishment of a chain business department, responsible for the operation and management of national chain merchants and urban chain merchants, the logic behind which is to stratify merchants and implement separate policies for national chain merchants. At a time when the growth rate of takeaway orders is gradually slowing down, Meituan clearly knows that only by grasping the chain merchants can it open up the imagination of the takeaway business.
Previously, a Meituan takeaway person revealed to 36Kr that Meituan's measures to increase the number of takeaway orders are mainly two, one is to tap the increment, especially the development of the sinking market.
According to the number of orders placed per year, Meituan internally divides food delivery users into five levels: below 30, 30 to 50, 50 to 80, 80 to 120 and above 120. "In the past two years, the frequency of orders placed by users below 30 has not increased significantly," a Meituan mid-level told 36Kr. From the perspective of geographical distribution, this part of the users is mainly concentrated in the sinking market.
The second is to increase the order scale of the stock market. Meituan's internal observation is that users with an annual order number of 50-80 and 80-120 have grown the fastest in the past two years, and most of them are located in first- and second-tier cities.
Compared with small and medium-sized businesses, the scale of orders brought by head merchants is not the same, and the hundreds of stores of a head brand are far lower than the operating costs of 100 small businesses.
Coincidentally, the adjustment of the takeaway business unit this time is exactly the same as the adjustment of Douyin's local life not long ago. The latter abandoned the previous logic of dividing departments according to categories, and instead reorganized them into three regions by region: northern, central and southern, as well as the NKA department that serves large chain merchants across the country. But what they all have in common is actually a more refined and flat operation.
"This may be related to Wang Puzhong's overall management of the store and home", a person familiar with the matter revealed that since his arrival at the beginning of this year, Wang Puzhong has been integrating the store and the home, trying to streamline the organizational structure and deal with external competition more efficiently.
A person familiar with the matter said that the signal that Wang Puzhong is now sending to the internal is "resource integration and reasonable investment". After the takeaway adjustment is made, the relevant adjustment to the store may also come soon.
Takeaway dried products will be reused
As the takeaway business moves towards refined operation, several capable players in the previous takeaway business department have also been promoted or rotated.
In this adjustment, Wang Guanjie was appointed as the head of Shensought-after, and Mao Huining served as the head of the food delivery user growth and operation department, both of which reported to Zhou Mo, the head of the user growth and operation department of the Meituan platform, and the dotted line reported to Xue Bing.
As one of the most important takeaway middle-level in Wang Pu, Zhou Mo was previously responsible for the takeaway use increase and God sought-after project, and he was promoted to the head of the user growth and operation department of the Meituan platform in the recent adjustment, reporting to Li Shubin, senior vice president of Meituan.
Insiders commented that he is "capable, strategic, and very good at user operation", and Wei Wei, Xue Bing and Wang Shiyu are called the "Four Little Heavenly Kings" of takeaways, and he is Wang Puzhong's right-hand man.
As the former head of the food delivery fulfillment platform, Wei Wei was recently dispatched to the in-store catering division as the head of the head, facing the competition with Douyin. Previously, he successively served as the head of the merchant operation department, the takeaway channel distribution department, and the special delivery business department of the in-store business group, and was responsible for building Meituan's delivery network of more than 7 million riders across the country.
Regarding his transfer, an insider commented, "After managing the arrival of the store and the arrival at home, Wang Puzhong needs a trustworthy general to help him quickly sort out the store business", and Wei Wei, who has previous experience in the store, is the most suitable person.
The direct business department that was abolished in this adjustment was previously headed by Xue Bing. He was recently promoted to head the entire food delivery division. Xue Bing joined Meituan as a fresh graduate in 2010, and has been involved in the early development of Meituan Takeaway since 2014, and has been responsible for a number of key positions in the Takeaway Division and the Distribution Division, and has been responsible for the direct sales of Takeaway since March 2020.
Wang Shiyu, who is the head of the business planning department of the takeaway business department, was transferred to be in charge of overseas business this time, and she was replaced by Sun Mujie. As a post-90s generation, Wang Shiyu perfectly followed Meituan's most common promotion path - the head of war investment and business branch to the person in charge of business.
The overseas business she is now responsible for undertakes Meituan's imagination in the future. At present, Meituan's overseas expansion is still in a very early stage, and Hong Kong is the only market it has entered. However, a person familiar with the matter revealed that after Wang Shiyu's arrival, the previously rumored "Meituan Takeaway will enter the Middle East" is expected to land soon.
The above-mentioned executives who have been reassigned have had multiple job rotation experiences before, and most of them are post-85s, which is very much in line with Meituan's emphasis on the "Z-shaped" talent and younger development path.
In September 2019, at a management communication meeting on the eve of Meituan's 10th anniversary, Wang Xing said that in the next ten years, Meituan will let a new group of managers grow, which is also an important source of Meituan's future competitiveness.
At last year's shareholders' meeting, Wang Xing once again mentioned new insights on talent training. He used "TOP" to summarize Meituan's current requirements for management talents, that is, T (Technology), the best talents must have certain technical ability, O (Opportunity), which allows everyone to make mistakes and give everyone opportunities, and P (Patience), which requires patience to managers.
After the resignation of many key executives and the deterioration of external competition, Meituan has significantly accelerated its determination to promote talent since last year, which is necessary for the local lifestyle giant, which is almost 15 years old