The food delivery industry uses Internet tools to enhance business value, but the underlying business logic is still traditional industries. It doesn’t seem to have that much technical content. However, when we didn’t think food delivery was a big industry, Ele.me achieved a corporate valuation of more than nine billion US dollars. I have read some market data and found that Meituan Takeout probably accounts for a little over 60% of the market share, and Ele.me accounts for a little over 30%. The sum of the remaining brands after the top two is only a few points. Why do only Meituan and Ele.me account for such a large share in the whole of China, while others can’t do it? 1. How did you wake up when you were hungry? The Ele.me team were all college students when they started the business. Why did they enter the food delivery industry? In order to survive, a few young college students just want to do something that can make money. College students cannot do anything without resources. At noon, I felt hungry. It seemed that eating was a pain point and a necessity, so my thoughts jumped here: Can we start a business here? Suddenly my mind was opened. Ele.me’s trademark is very particular. Like Red Bull and Melatonin, it has a very cunning feature – scene-driven. The first person to use this trick was the famous beverage brand Red Bull. "Drink Red Bull when you are sleepy and tired." Red Bull = extreme, it focuses on the spirit of extreme sports, but the advertising slogan is scene-driven, and "sleepy and tired" is a user scenario. Melatonin is just as cunning. "Gift melatonin as a gift." You don't even know what functions the product has? What was given? It also targets user scenarios. "When I'm hungry or sleepy, I drink fragrant wine." This is also a scene. Ele.me abruptly turned a scene into its trademark, linking two unrelated things.
So, after a period of precipitation, in the minds of users, Ele.me = takeout. 2. Who is Ele.me’s first benchmark? SHERPA’S, the Chinese name is “Shipaishi”. This name is not easy to remember. When doing business in China, if users have no interest in Chinese brands, they will really lose at the starting line. ① The reason why Shipaishi started his business. Shipaishi is made by an American named Mark, who is an MBA student at China Europe International Business School. It is difficult for him to eat in China for three reasons: First, he is not familiar with the allusions to Chinese food names. Restaurant waiters often don't speak English.
He is a foreigner who knows a little bit of Chinese, but when he saw the menu, he was frightened. What is "ants climbing the tree", what is "lion head", what is "fish-flavored shredded pork", there are no ants, and there are no food. There are no fish. Aren’t you lying to me? Second, as a foreigner, people will watch him when he eats in a restaurant. The user experience is very bad and he doesn't like this feeling. Third, there are few Western restaurants. As a foreigner, he prefers Western-style restaurants, or some Western food cooked in places like bars. But here’s the problem. If it’s Chinese food, there are likely to be several stores within a hundred meters. But if you want to buy Western food, there may be no such store 1 kilometer away, and only two stores 3 kilometers away. What is his business based on? It’s also a scene (foreigners have a poor dining experience, which is a pain point). He has a differentiated understanding of the pain points of foreigners dining. Because of these three pain points, the business logic of doing this business is common. The business he does is also highly differentiated, and he mainly operates in three cities: Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. Started in 1998 and officially launched in 1999, it should be the originator of branded takeout in China. ② What is the comparative advantage of Shipaishi? It is the number one high-end Chinese takeout brand recognized by foreigners. Even though it is a niche, it is also number one in the category that is accepted by users. Differentiation means avoiding head-to-head confrontation with industry leaders and effectively avoiding price wars. Categories are recognized by consumers, can have natural traffic, can raise prices, and avoid vicious competition like the Red Sea.
Shipaishi has opened three platforms in three cities, serving about 600 companies, with a unit price of about 300 yuan. It is one of the food delivery platforms with the highest unit price per customer in China. It has its own comparative advantages, but its shortcomings are also obvious, that is, localized operations and Internet operations are quite insufficient, and it has failed to seize the big trend of food delivery and take advantage of the trend to expand. powerful. In 2017, Food & Beverage was acquired by Parkson China. ③ What can Ele.me learn from Foodies? The most tacky thing about Shipaisi is that they hand out pamphlets everywhere. When I saw a foreigner in the square, I gave him a leaflet with instructions in Chinese and English. Shipaishi insists on distributing brochures all year round and does a good job. Because the customer unit price is high, it can still live a prosperous life even if it does not operate on the Internet.
Ele.me Learn printed brochures for promotion, but the founding team were all students and had no money. How could they print 10,000 copies?
They thought of a way, found a Buick 4S store, jointly printed advertisements, and distributed them for free, thus covering the cost of the brochure. There is a very important concept to talk about here. There are three major battlefields in business cognition: product battlefield, mental battlefield, and financial battlefield. Ele.me's move to print leaflets was done on the financial battlefield. It used its non-existent comparative advantage to find a Buick 4S store to raise a promotional fee. Very smart. Ele.me mainly sells products to make money, but I didn’t expect that I can make a lot of money even when I’m not selling products. "It turns out that in addition to selling products and services, our company also has other places where we can make money." This is finance. Isn’t it a great idea? Many people mistakenly believe that finance is the buying and selling of products based on money. I am in the industry and it has little to do with me. This is finance in a narrow sense and a major misunderstanding of finance. Let me bring up a concept and suggest that you write it down. Finance as we understand it refers to the exchange of value across time and space. If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand finance at all. You have no idea that there are still a lot of resources being wasted by you. 3. Who is Ele.me’s first opponent? The first competitor is called Little Leaf Master. ① Cognitive advantages. In 2007, Xiaoyezi Dangjia covered most of the takeout in Shanghai, and its target was an American company, which was translated as Campus Food. Xiaoye Zijia is very accurate in finding standards, and campus food already has a complete operation plan. Ele.me learned a little bit from a foodie, but didn’t have a complete imitation plan. It is very sad that this is the learning ability and cognitive advantage of Ele.me: Ele.me learned from a high-end brand, but most of its takeaway merchants’ products are priced at around 20 yuan; Xiaoyezi learned from an American campus Food, but the price of a considerable part of its takeaway merchants' products is around 50 yuan, and the proportion of the unit price per customer of around 20 yuan does not form an absolute share. The benchmarks learned by the two companies and their actual behaviors are completely misaligned.
No matter how high prices are in Shanghai, your first target audience is students, and the price must be in line with their consumption level, and everything must be matched around this focus. Suppose I am a college student and my daily takeout costs 18 yuan. If I treat my girlfriend to takeout, will she pay 50 yuan? What are the pros and cons of $50? At this price, why not treat her to a restaurant? You see, users have entered the realm of cognitive decision-making. A revelation here: When starting a business, you must make a single breakthrough. The narrower the target audience of products and services, the better. Focus on the core interests and core needs of the core group of people, and penetrate them thoroughly. Don't be afraid that other non-core groups will not come in the future. ② Price war. Homogeneous competition will inevitably end in a price war.
Little Leaf Master and Ele.me started to fight against each other. The first one’s tactics were terrible. Little Leaf Master, as a pioneer in the market segment, acted ruthlessly, providing a large amount of subsidies, giving away iced black tea, and Poached eggs. Ele.me and these guys only have about 50,000 yuan in capital, how can they compete with Xiao Yezi’s registered capital of 1 million? If you enter someone else's sphere of influence, how can you survive in a price war if they use subsidies to beat you? ③ Execution advantages. If you want to survive the brutal price war, you must choose a battlefield and fight back through efficient operations and efficient execution: product battlefield, mental battlefield, financial battlefield, where to start? A. Only when the product battlefield is homogeneous will there be a price war. Ele.me does not have an advantage in terms of food delivery experience.