Does the US Mission in Beijing buy food without delivery?

Recently, Meituan Youxuan announced the suspension of Beijing's self-promotion service, which attracted the attention of the industry.

In the App and WeChat applets, Meituan posted a notice on the preferred interface, which is called to provide customers with stable and reliable next-day delivery service. From April 26, 2022, the self-delivery point where customers are located will temporarily stop serving, and goods delivered on or before April 25, 2022 can be contacted for delivery.

The fact that I would rather quit the city itself was actually foreseen on the track. In fact, all the companies that have national community group buying business, including buying vegetables and optimizing the Meituan, have shrunk their areas and optimized their personnel to varying degrees this year, in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, hoping to turn losses into profits as soon as possible.

Surprisingly, the American delegation chose an unexpected city in Beijing. According to the head of the delegation, they were also informed on the 25th. What is the reason behind the US Mission's hasty withdrawal from the market at this time?

36Kr- Future consumption It is learned that Meituan chose to close the community group buying business at this time node, with the purpose of transferring core resources such as optimized warehouse allocation to ready-to-use businesses such as grocery shopping and flash purchase, which is more suitable for "wartime supply guarantee".

Ready-to-use services increase the certainty of supply security.

Due to the recent emergence of COVID-19-positive people in Beijing, many residents have joined the army of hoarding vegetables with the idea of "preparing for danger in times of peace".

On the one hand, the government and the platform have to bear the sudden surge in consumer shopping demand; On the other hand, we need to learn from Shanghai's experience and find out the most suitable retail model.

At this time, the ready-to-use platform is valued. At the press conference on epidemic prevention and control on April 24 and 25, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce repeatedly mentioned that key enterprises in this city need to play the main role and fully guarantee supply. Require Meituan to buy vegetables, buy vegetables, daily fresh and other key fresh e-commerce platforms, increase the organization of supply, increase the reserve of goods in front warehouses, and increase offline distribution personnel to ensure timely delivery.

This is because, referring to Shanghai's static management model, the business model of point-to-point distribution and direct delivery of fresh food can meet the material security needs of users more safely and effectively.

Take Shanghai as an example. In the past month, the market-oriented forces such as Meituan's grocery shopping/Meituan's running errands, and Ding Dong's grocery shopping have played a certain role in ensuring supply, while community group buying has died down at this time.

The reason is that the community group buying mode requires users to pick up the goods at the pick-up point, but once the closure is tightened, it is difficult for consumers to pick up the goods at the pick-up point outside the community. The mode of buying vegetables is to distribute materials to designated areas point-to-point through terminal distribution capacity, and to users in closed control areas through "contactless distribution".

In terms of transportation, in the community group buying mode, the goods have to go through big warehouse-transportation-head-consumer, and * * * has to go through three turns, while the fresh and ready-to-eat mode is big warehouse-rider-consumer. Less times of goods changing hands can effectively reduce the risk of epidemic spread.

Of course, the community group buying referred to here is a traditional community group buying model, which is not initiated by the community, neighborhood committees or residents themselves. The latter saves the link of "external head".

Therefore, the ready-to-eat mode can be said to be the most accurate and certain online shopping mode. Then, at this time, Meituan decided to suspend the Beijing community group buying business and transfer the warehouse allocation capacity to grocery shopping/flash shopping, which is actually an optimal scheme for the current resource allocation.

According to 36Kr-Future Consumption, it is preferred that Beijing warehouse and cold storage have been uniformly deployed by Meituan as storage and stocking bases for epidemic prevention and supply guarantee to meet the needs of users.

At present, the transfer of warehouse allocation capacity has played its due role in the supply guarantee process of Meituan.

Meituan buys food at Panjiayuan Station (a station in the closed control area) Photo: Hu Hui

On the evening of April 24, Meituan said that the delivery time of orders in Beijing will be extended to 24 o'clock from now on, so as to ensure delivery on the same day as much as possible; During the period of anti-epidemic and supply guarantee, we will stock up about 3 to 5 times of daily consumption to ensure adequate inventory and stable prices of related commodities; First-line sorting personnel increased by 70%, and distribution personnel increased by 50%.

According to the data previously disclosed by the platform, at present, the business volume of Meituan's grocery shopping has increased five times than usual, but the overall situation has remained stable.

It can be seen that Meituan has transferred its warehouse allocation capacity to the grocery shopping/flash shopping business by closing the preferred business, which on the one hand relieves the stocking pressure of Meituan's grocery shopping from the hardware, and on the other hand provides transportation support for the ready-made business.

However, it must be mentioned that despite the forward-looking preparations, due to the sudden outbreak of the epidemic in Beijing, the "stop before choose" support for "shopping/flash shopping" will inevitably lead to a sharp increase in the cost of the US delegation in Beijing in the short term.

In this regard, the insiders of the US Mission told 36Kr-Future Consumption that there are two main reasons: First, when the epidemic prevention and control measures intensify, the optimal model may not actually operate normally, so it is better to focus on "deterministic supply guarantee and performance".

The second is to avoid the possible epidemic risk under the community group buying model. For example, from 0 16 on April 25th to 0 16 on April 26th, there were two confirmed cases 1 case in Fengtai District, and two people were positive for nucleic acid detection, and they were transferred to designated hospitals. In the government notice, it has appeared "April 23 at around 2 1 o, at the entrance of Hongxing Erguotou tobacco and liquor supermarket (the US delegation preferred to pick it up).

Look back at JD. COM's "suicide one-way logistics" in Shanghai's supply war; As well as the major Internet companies such as Meituan, Ali Box Horse and Ding Dong, which have been taking precautions, they are always in the front line, regardless of gains and losses, which is worthy of recognition.

The role that Meituan can play in the supply guarantee period

Meituan is actually a guarantee platform that is very suitable for the special state of lock-up period.

This is because the blockade is not aimed at a single industry or a single link, but the temporary suspension of multiple links. Ecological platforms such as Meituan have two major advantages: multi-format collaboration; Matching ability between supply and demand.

Let's look at the first point. Meituan has a variety of formats, such as take-away, arrival at the store, wine tour, fast donkey, grocery shopping, optimization, flash purchase, group good goods and so on, spanning commodity retail and service retail.

From the epidemic prevention insurance supply in Shanghai to the epidemic prevention insurance supply in Beijing, we can see the synergy and advantages between different businesses of Meituan. In Shanghai, Meituan has a full line of business. After the optimization (community group buying mode) business is stagnant, Meituan can provide basic living materials by buying food, and meet the residents' demand for medicine by flash purchase/running errands; In the case that the takeaway brother can't go home because of community control, Meituan can provide a love hotel through the wine travel business; In the case of tight terminal production capacity, Meituan can achieve the final performance through various technical products and application solutions, such as self-equipped cars and drones.

Meituan unmanned vehicle enters Shanghai community to deliver materials. Image source: Network

In fact, the instantaneous switching of Meituan's business in Beijing is the same as the epidemic prevention guarantee in Shanghai, and it is also a manifestation of the clustering and synergy of Meituan's business.

In the days when consumers are most enthusiastic about hoarding goods, platforms providing fresh and ready-to-eat services such as Box Horse and Ding Dong Shopping are the first choice for young people to hoard goods, but they often show "sold out" or "insufficient capacity" at 3 or 4 noon, but fresh vegetables can still be bought in the flash purchase of Meituan.

Take the author's personal experience in Chaoyang District as an example. At about 7: 00 pm on April 27th, Ding Dong's grocery shopping and box horse APP both showed that they were temporarily out of stock/capacity. However, with Meituan's flash sale, you can buy all kinds of cheap vegetables from nearby markets such as Laobao and Daquan, and deliver them to your door free of charge.

There is also a difficulty in the guarantee link behind this, which is the matching of people and goods. Many times, it is not that the market is in short supply, but that it is difficult for consumers to find a place to buy food.

Meituan Flash Shopping connects hundreds of millions of consumers and tens of thousands of stores, allowing consumers to find all the nearby sources in the simplest and most accustomed way. At the same time, with its top performance ability, it gives the real economy, such as the vegetable market, the ability to reach home, so that its fresh fruits and vegetables and daily necessities can supply more consumers who can't go to the store.

According to the latest data, Meituan Flash Shopping has joined forces with nearly 20,000 supermarket chains, convenience stores, food stores and daily necessities businesses in Beijing to increase the protection of living materials. Meituan Flash Purchase has completed the distribution of 2 million orders for people's livelihood materials since April 22, and the platform has increased the rider's capacity by 60% through subsidies.

Finally, regardless of the identity of the Internet platform, as a Beijing enterprise, Meituan has given full play to its strengths in this Beijing guarantee. In today's Beijing, this is also the direction that all enterprises need to work together.