If you ask your friends around you, "In the winter, would you rather order takeout or go to the store to eat?" "I'm sure 9 out of 10 friends will tell you that they're willing to order takeout. However, if you ask a takeaway rider guy if he prefers to deliver food in the winter or in the spring, the answer may be various. Winter is a "peak season" for same-city distribution, and it is also a process of all-you-can-eat in the field of same-city distribution.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="21" > the challenges of same-city delivery in winter</h1>
The particularity of winter same-city distribution and the challenges for same-city distribution enterprises and teams come from the following aspects:
1, winter same city delivery orders soared, in addition to catering delivery, the growth of other categories can not be underestimated, and the time is more scattered;
2, the weather changes quickly, the rider's line rate changes greatly. Sudden cooling rains can affect the chances of riders (especially multi-platform registered crowdsourced riders) going live. More pressure on full-time riders;
3, bad weather requirements for transportation: the arrival of bad weather, especially when the ice and snow weather, the battery car has been unable to meet the requirements of distribution, whether it is the requirements of driving or the requirements of the constant temperature of the goods, is a test;
4. Winter is a period of high incidence of traffic accidents for riders, how to protect the interests of riders and control risks is a test for every distribution team.
In the winter, for the same city delivery price increase, all takeaway merchants have a certain psychological expectation. However, how much is it up? By what is the standard? To what extent can capacity services be guaranteed? What will the rate of damage be? These are also the concerns of merchants. Brand merchants and head merchants are more concerned about the quality of performance, in order to ensure the quality of performance, even regardless of the cost of their own to find someone to deliver. The middle and tail merchants are more concerned about the cost performance, that is, paying higher costs, whether there is more guarantee of performance. These problems that plague merchants are opportunities for delivery teams/businesses. How to solve their own problems at the same time, but also to provide more suitable services for merchants, has become the basis for distribution companies to open up the distance.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="26" > second, flash time delivery winter same-city distribution solution</h1>
As an omni-channel order aggregation platform, Flashtime Delivery has experienced several winter tests of same-city delivery, and has also participated in the winter delivery solution of the same-city distribution platform. Here, I would like to share a certain experience for the reference of delivery entrepreneurs in the same city.
01 What is the core of the same city distribution company?
Yes: "Continuous optimization of rider energy efficiency". What is rider energy efficiency? It is to optimize the delivery method, without violating labor regulations and labor ethics, so that riders can complete more orders at the same time. In the face of the situation of "more meat and less wolves" in the same city distribution in winter, as a standard distribution company (what is a standard distribution company, please see my previous article), improving the cost performance is to enhance competitiveness. In the same quality of delivery services, the reduction of labor costs can release more price advantages. In the face of price weapons, most of the operational strategies are ineffective, especially for mid-tail merchants.
What I actually want to talk about here is that under the existing situation of same-city distribution, how to achieve rider efficiency improvement through integrated distribution paths and unified distribution like logistics? When Flashtime Sent has a joint errands platform to specify a delivery plan for special merchants, it has proposed some solutions, and I will share it here for reference. For more detailed details, you can contact the flash time official.
02 For the optimization of capacity energy efficiency, flashtime delivery is first solved by distinguishing the distribution scenario:
Scenario 1: Campus delivery. It is divided into four steps: batch receipt, fixed vehicle delivery to the designated location, batch transfer, and single delivery. Campus delivery is relatively closed, and flash delivery will divide the distribution of merchants and the receiving area into areas. The distribution of merchants is actually relatively simple, the merchants on campus can divide the area, and the off-campus merchants can unify a region (because the off-campus orders cannot enter the school), and the front-end regional division is completed. The division of the back-end distribution needs to be carried out according to the distribution of the dormitory buildings, so that the regional division of the back end is also completed. Then there is the composition of the delivery team, front-end receiving and fixed vehicle delivery, generally undertaken by their own full-time riders, to ensure professionalism and dedication in the collection process. Single delivery, you need to recruit students through campus recruitment or cooperation with the school, let students participate in the terminal delivery, so that students have a source of income, but also experience in advance the sense of achievement of the work and the difficulty of social work. Campus delivery is one of the most energy-efficient delivery methods I've ever seen for a rider, with more than 100 orders delivered per person per day.
Scenario 2: Business district or street delivery. It is based on the business circle and the street as the dimension, and the order is distributed to the rider in batches according to the time requirements, distance length and other factors, and the single delivery income of the rider is guaranteed through multiple orders along the way. This is actually more difficult, the diversity of takeaway orders, the distance is not fixed, the delivery time is not fixed, etc. In the business circle dimension, in fact, it can also be combined by daily orders: the merchants whose daily orders are more concentrated are listed, and they are configured with rider capacity at a fixed time. At the same time, the merchants whose order time is scattered are listed separately to distinguish between categories, that is, categories with high delivery timeliness requirements and categories with low delivery timeliness. Through different combinations, let the rider go all the way to more orders. At the highest time, the flash time send assists the errands platform to achieve the rider to send more than 9 orders all the way. In your spare time, there are also 2 or 3 orders that can be sent. While ensuring rider income and reducing merchant distribution costs, energy efficiency will come up. Of course, different business districts, the specific implementation rules are not the same. Here is only a simple sharing, if there are resources in the business circle that need to be sent in a flash to cooperate, welcome to pick up.
Scenario 3: A single merchant. In fact, it is very difficult for a single merchant to balance the quality of delivery with the energy efficiency of the rider. That's why merchants recruit full-time riders on their own, and most fail. Those who did not fail, they were all on the way to failure. Rider energy efficiency can not be solved, the cost of merchant fulfillment and delivery will remain high. Flashtime delivery and errands platforms have spent a lot of time and cost, and between rider energy efficiency and merchant costs, find a relatively cost-effective solution: that is, to ensure the quality of most delivery orders, taking into account the performance costs of merchants. At present, the mainstream delivery performance guarantee on the market is to stay in the store, such as KFC, McDonald's, Luckin Coffee, etc., by the special rider full-time resident or dispatched. The service quality of the merchants is effectively guaranteed, but the loss of the rider's energy efficiency is borne by the merchant and the errand company. The flash time delivery joint cooperation errands company provides based on improving the energy efficiency of riders, so that riders, merchants, and errand companies can bear costs and benefits in a reasonable proportion, and use the advantages of flash time delivery in the same city to analyze the order time and category factors of merchants, and provide merchants with more than 2 kinds of customized in-store delivery services. Specific customized services, if interested, you can learn more about flash time delivery, here due to the length of reasons, but not too much description.
03 The problem of rider energy efficiency, if it can be treated differently according to the form of the merchant, this is the basis for the survival of the non-standard delivery team.
In the face of the short-term situation of winter riders, the standard delivery team has many ways, and the way used is very widely: the rider's salary is upside down. That is, the merchant pays less than the rider pays. For example, the freight display of the platform to the merchant is 8 yuan, the single errand platform gives the merchant a 30% discount coupon, the actual payment of the merchant is 5.6 yuan, and the rider's commission is 6 yuan after the rider takes the order. In such a situation, in the standard delivery, it is the financial strength, the financial strength is strong, then the order growth rate will be very fast, and the rider registration speed will also rise rapidly because of the order factor. At the same time, if the team with weak financial strength will choose to wait and see, wait until a certain time, when the other party subsidies stop, it will start the next round of subsidies, pulling back lost orders and riders. Such a business model, personally believes that it is a kind of behavior that does not pay off, will only make some merchants who pay attention to delivery prices sway left and right, and cannot build a real delivery service system for merchants.
At the beginning of 2020, Flashtime Sent joined forces with several errand platforms to jointly call for a healthy distribution market environment, but for some reasons, such appeals had little effect. Each company's strategic situation is different, resulting in different market means. However, in the long run, the market is bound to evolve into a healthy environment. Consumers are also willing to pay the corresponding costs, but every merchant serving consumers also needs to consider the cost performance of delivery services. Let the riders be satisfied, let the delivery team be satisfied, and finally serve the users well and make the users satisfied, this is the process of industry optimization.
Flashtime delivery is honored to be a part of it. Winter 2021 is the third winter of same-city delivery that Flashtime delivery participates in, and we have been committed to providing better solutions and working with partners to win the local life service market. We value not only short-term profits, but also long-term value. I also hope that in the winter, we will give more understanding to the same city distribution, distribution is not easy, especially every rider brother who is running around, for the sake of life, but also for the dignity of work, we should give respect.