Under the epidemic situation, the takeout market, which was originally controlled by meituan and hungry Yao, was quietly torn open by Tiktok. Although this is not the initiative of Tiktok. A brand of boiled fish with five offline stores in Beijing has been broadcast live on Tiktok for half a month. The restaurant manager told the alphabet that the sales of live delivery on Tiktok has reached 80% of their usual food in the classroom, "thousands of orders every day."
After the ban on in-house food in Beijing, more and more restaurants in Beijing began to sell group purchase packages in Tiktok live broadcast and provide delivery services by themselves. This is a slightly different take out service. After taking the group purchase package in the live broadcasting room, the user will inform the merchant's address, and the merchant will send the meal to the user's home by itself or by a third party. Some merchants provide distribution services within the fifth and sixth ring roads.
A Tiktok expert who originally focused on exploring stores said that he didn't rest after the May Day holiday and helped the restaurant broadcast live every day. His schedule for the next few weeks has been fully booked, "businesses" flocked to me, and I was used by 8 people alone ". On the most day, he broadcast live for 9 hours.
This alternative "live delivery" mode is not actively promoted by Tiktok. Last year, Tiktok was reported as a "heart taking out" in the internal test, but so far it has not really landed. At the end of last year, it said that the company had no business plan for the time being. When you search for "heartbeat takeout" in Tiktok, an official prompt will pop up: "the investment promotion and agency information related to" heartbeat takeout "are not true.
"Tiktok's attitude towards takeout is ambiguous," a person in charge of Tiktok's local life service provider said to the alphabet, "neither support nor encourage". But recently, Tiktok has opened an interface for them to customize and develop small takeaway programs for businesses, and realize a function similar to meituan takeaway in the live studio, "the kitchen automatically issues orders, and the third-party rider automatically receives orders."
Compared with takeout, live broadcasting is the mode that Tiktok really values in local life. According to the above-mentioned Tiktok Da, since last year, Tiktok has taken the initiative to invite Da Ren to start broadcasting, and has increased its support for business self broadcasting.
This may be related to the internal organizational structure adjustment of Tiktok last year. After the adjustment, hanshangyou was responsible for Tiktok's local life business. Many media reported that Han was also the head of Tiktok's live broadcasting business.
So far, there has been no successful case of live broadcasting in local life. Two years ago, meituan and hungry also tried the live broadcasting business, but they did not achieve remarkable results. Not long ago, meituan announced the launch of a live broadcast assistant software, which is still limited in volume.
"Tiktok hopes to replicate its success in e-commerce live broadcast to local life," said the above Tiktok local life service provider. This measure seems to have achieved initial results. The person said that before that, they helped the local shopping malls broadcast live in a third tier city in Shandong, and the single game sales exceeded one million. "We don't know what's going on."
Similar to the e-commerce business, the local life also bears the commercialization hope of Tiktok. The latest news is that Tiktok plans to offer local living service commission from June 1. Previously, Tiktok has been implementing the policy of "zero Commission" in the local life category. As of press time, byte runout did not reply to the request for comment, and the alphabet confirmed the truth of this message from multiple information sources.
Among them, the marriage category has the highest proportion of commission, which is 8%, the play category has the lowest proportion, which is only 2%, the catering category has a proportion of commission of 2.5%, and the commission rate includes 0.6% of the payment channel service fee. However, Tiktok has also formulated a series of rebate policies, and the rebate ratio is converted to 0.95%
Starting to draw Commission also means that the local life business of Tiktok is maturing.
A
After Beijing announced the suspension of food in the dining hall, almost all offline restaurants started delivery business. More than 2000 merchants applied for meituan's "city delivery" service after the suspension of food in the hall. When hungry, delivery orders increased by 30% on the second day of the May Day holiday.
But these two platforms can not meet the needs of all restaurants.
Although the unit price of takeout in China has increased year by year in recent years, it remains below 100 yuan. The average customer unit price of meituan takeout last year was 48.9 yuan, but since the GTV statistics of meituan takeout are calculated according to the amount before discount, the actual customer unit price paid will only be less than this.
After the suspension of hall food, offline restaurants, which are mainly engaged in dinner, soon found that the takeout platform could not support their original turnover. Most takeout platforms are fast food, and few people go to packages of about 100 yuan. The above boiled fish merchants said that although they opened the takeout service at the beginning of the store, they never focused on takeout. "Each order is 20 or 30 yuan, the quantity can go up, but the customer unit price is low."
The consumption habit formed for a long time makes most users equate takeout with working meals. When they open the takeout app, they first think of eating rather than improving. As for improving sexual needs, users prefer to eat directly in the restaurant.
However, Tiktok has always followed the route of group purchase of set meal at the store, which is similar to the user's mind of public comment. The customer unit price will naturally be higher than that of the take away platform. Superimposed with short video, live broadcast and other content forms, users are easy to have an impulse to buy. "Basically, they all want to be nice to themselves and have a crayfish for supper." the boiled fish merchant said that the minimum amount of the package they sell on Tiktok is 139 yuan.
On the second day of the suspension of food in Beijing, the boiled fish restaurant began to broadcast live on Tiktok. At the beginning, they only imagined serving customers within 5 kilometers around, and employees could deliver goods by riding a battery car.
But after that, the popularity exceeded their imagination, and some customers who are farther away also hope that the restaurant can deliver. They calculated the cost of third-party distribution and decided to expand the distribution scope to the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing. On May 16, the total daily sales of their five stores in the live broadcasting room exceeded 100000.
"Some impulsive categories, such as barbecue, crayfish, hot pot and baking, can sell well." Li Yao (not his real name) is the head of a local life service provider of Tiktok. He said that there is no consumption scene for fast food on Tiktok. "No one will take the initiative to search for takeout on Tiktok." most of the merchants they serve are chain dinners. "The unit price per customer is more than 100 yuan."
Crayfish is one of the most popular categories in Tiktok recently. The online sales of crayfish in Beijing are suspended every may due to the peak season. In an interview with the media, a merchant said that the delivery of crayfish in the Tiktok live broadcasting room was in a burst state these days, and the average daily sales amount exceeded 100000.
"Gao Jin" (a pseudonym), the anchor of the search shop, said that recently the live broadcast of crayfish on Tiktok has reached the point of flooding. Even if some single store crayfish shops are broadcast for the first time, the stores have little experience. Under the cold start of the account, they can reach a single broadcast of 10000 or 20000 yuan.
Under the heat, the price of crayfish on Tiktok has been rolled up to a minimum of 99 yuan and 5 kg, but the quality has also plummeted. A girl living in Chaoyang District told the alphabet that she would never buy crayfish on Tiktok again. Not only was it small, but the shrimp didn't look clean. "Now, there are many experts in Tiktok who clearly refuse to bring low-quality crayfish with them." Gao Jin said.
B
"This is actually the independent behavior of merchants," said Li Yao. Although it looks like "take out", it is still a group purchase of Tiktok in essence. However, after placing the order, consumers no longer go to the store for consumption, but change the merchant to write off the coupon code remotely, and then deliver it to the door by themselves.
This process is very cumbersome when the official service of Tiktok has not opened takeout. The above-mentioned girl who bought crayfish in Tiktok said that after she placed an order in the live broadcasting room, she spent a lot of time to get through the merchant's phone, and then added the merchant's wechat coupon code and address. It was impossible to place an order with one click like the takeout platform.
Photo provided by interviewer
For those offline restaurants without takeout experience, the lack of platform participation also makes them make mistakes in dealing with emergencies. After a live broadcast with hot sales, there were frequent problems in the fan group of a Tiktok expert. Some of them were the merchants who delivered the wrong meal, and some of them were the customers who could not contact the merchants. The delivery information of the meal originally scheduled to be delivered at 12:00 was just released at noon. "It's so chaotic," one fan said in a group chat.
"It doesn't mean that there is a problem with the product quality, either the delivery is slow, or the merchant is sloppy with the wrong meal." Gao Jin said that many restaurants that broadcast the delivery live on Tiktok had not done the delivery business before. "They didn't expect the whole process from receiving the order to delivering the order."
"If there is Tiktok distribution, we will definitely choose Tiktok," said the above-mentioned boiled fish merchants. They mainly rely on third-party platforms such as meituan errands, Dada and flash delivery, "whichever is faster."
Although Tiktok had early heard rumors of entering the takeout field, there has been no substantive progress so far.
Last July, a number of media reported that Tiktok had set up a business team for takeout in-house and had started internal testing. In August, KFC and Xicha began to provide self operated take out service on Tiktok. In October, Tiktok's "heart taking out" applet was registered and approved. At that time, it was speculated that Tiktok might build a delivery platform in an aggregation mode to compete directly with meituan and hungry Yao.
However, later, Tiktok said that there was no business plan related to takeout, and the "heart takeout" applet could not be found in Tiktok. At the beginning of this year, there was another news in the industry that the heartbeat takeout would be tested in Shanghai, Hangzhou and other cities in March. The relevant person in charge of Tiktok later said that the rumors were untrue. As of press time, there was no comment on the takeout business related issues raised in the alphabet.
"Businesses are still very willing to open takeout on Tiktok," said Li Yao. Before the outbreak, many businesses asked them if they could provide Tiktok takeout service. "But Tiktok has been very weak and doesn't advocate us to do takeout (service)."
Distribution may be the main reason why Tiktok hesitates in the takeout business. It took nearly 10 years for China's two major takeout giants to establish a nationwide real-time distribution system, with more than 10 million riders under their management.
This is an area far more complex and difficult than group buying and e-commerce - meituan didn't realize the profit of takeout business until 2019 for the first time. Takeout is still the business with the lowest profit margin of meituan. Last year, more than 70% of the income from meituan takeout was used to pay the wages of riders.
But Tiktok's consistent idea of doing business is light. Even in the field of logistics, the initial practice of Tiktok was to invest in logistics technology companies such as zongteng, Juxing, and gazhi technology. The express service "yinzunda" tested by Tiktok was mainly aggregation rather than personal termination.
"Delivery cannot be solved by a third party", said a person in the delivery industry. Delivery is a high-frequency and highly time-effective business, and transportation capacity is the most basic facility. Once there is a problem in delivery, "others will not choose you" and "it is impossible not to build a self built team".
C
Compared with the fear of hands and feet in the takeout business, the live broadcast is a sharp blade for Tiktok to stab into the local life battlefield.
In the early days, Tiktok mainly expanded local businesses by supporting experts to shoot short videos of "store exploration". Users were planted with grass by the videos and then promoted transactions - but the transformation effect was not obvious. The homogeneity of store exploration videos is serious in the later stage, and "counterfeiting" occurs frequently. The packages actually consumed by consumers are often significantly smaller than the shooting content when reaching the store, overdrawing the trust of users.
Last year, a number of media reported that the annual Gmv target set by Tiktok for local life business in 2021 was 20billion yuan. However, according to the report of photon planet, by the end of November last year, this target had only been completed by 10billion yuan.
After the short-term failure, Tiktok's internal organizational structure was adjusted. Seven, the former head of local life business, was replaced and replaced by hanshangyou, the head of live broadcasting. This may be one of the reasons why Tiktok has continued to make efforts to "live broadcasting + group buying" this year.
Gao Jin said that when he first tried to broadcast live in June last year, there were not many experts. However, by the end of the year, the live broadcast had become popular among the experts in exploring stores. Tiktok also launched a series of activities similar to "exciting anchor group" to encourage the experts to broadcast live. This year, we can clearly feel that the proportion of merchants' self broadcasting is increasing.
Through the alphabet list experience, it was found that the previous content related to catering in the same city channel of Tiktok was mainly short videos released by experts or merchants. Recently, in the information flow of the same city channel, there were some live broadcast content of experts or merchants.
The advantage of live broadcasting is that it is easier to conclude transactions. "Short video is a normal selling path, but live broadcast is a hot spot," said Li Yao. Compared with short video, live broadcast has more advantages in facilitating transactions. "It's easy for businesses to reach tens of thousands of yuan after a three or four hour live broadcast.". According to him, in order to encourage merchants to start broadcasting, Tiktok also gives merchants a lot of subsidies at the traffic end.
Compared with e-commerce live broadcast and fitness live broadcast, the local life live broadcast of Tiktok is still a breath away. It has not yet poured out benchmarking figures such as LuoYongHao and liuzhenhong with traffic. Fortunately, it seems that its competitors are not dedicated to the live broadcast business.
The sales model of "live + group purchase" is not new. At the beginning of 2020, meituan and hungry modu tried the water to increase the live broadcast on the local life business, but the effect was poor. Now, meituan and hungry app can't find the entrance of live service. Meituan only has a built-in entrance to the live broadcasting service in the public comments, but it is not mainly catering. It is more live broadcasting of medical beauty and tourism, and there are few broadcasting businesses.
In December last year, meituan and Kwai reached an interconnection cooperation. Meituan will launch meituan applet on the Kwai open platform to provide meituan merchants with complete service capabilities such as package, voucher, booking and other commodity display, online transaction and after-sales service. Kwai users will be able to go directly through meituan applet.
However, in less than half a year, this cooperation seems to have come to an end. At present, the scope of cooperation between the two sides is still limited to the meituan applet on Kwai, which has the same experience as the wechat applet. The local life service entrance in the navigation of Kwai home page has also disappeared.
It is obvious that if meituan does not make up for the content, the crack torn by Tiktok in the group buying and takeout markets will continue to expand. Of course, Tiktok also has her own lessons to make up in the supply chain.