There are many big players in the vegetable market, this time it is the fresh giant Box Horse.

The first food market in Box Horse has been officially opened in Mayflower Life Plaza, Jing 'an District, Shanghai, covering an area of 1,111 square meters to 2,111 square meters. The store is mainly divided into core fresh-keeping areas, including secondary areas such as vegetables, meat products and seafood, as well as supermarkets, cooked snacks, life services and other areas.

The most conspicuous central position of the entrance is the core fresh food area

Overall, there is not much difference between the division of the box horse food market and the box horse fresh food store, but there are great differences in details such as category emphasis and catering type. These details also make it another format.

The fresh products in the Hema vegetable market are carried out separately and set in the most conspicuous central area, which is also the main area of the whole vegetable market. The supermarket format, franchisees and self-operated cooked food are on the left side of the market, and the life service format including haircut and laundry is located in a unit on the right.

On the left side of the food market are franchisees and self-operated cooked food snacks, including juice tea, cold salad, roast duck, boiled chicken, dessert, etc.

On the left side, there are also a large number of cooked food snacks made and operated by Boxma, such as crayfish seafood and fried food

Similar to Boxma Xiansheng Store, the place closest to the entrance on the right is the Life Service Center. Providing services such as haircuts and laundry

The core fresh food area is different from the "buy-and-sell system" featured in the previous Boxma Fresh Food Store. The mode of Boxma Food Market is "fresh-made and sell", which is the same as the traditional food market-all fresh products in the store will not be directly processed into meals, and they will not have the function of a restaurant, but will emphasize "returning to the family table".

keywords such as "fresh food for sale" can be seen everywhere in the gate and the store

There is also a fresh-cut meat shop in the center, which contains fresh-cut meat products shipped from various farms

In addition, there are basically no imported goods in the core fresh food area of the food market, which are all relatively cheap fresh goods. Compared with ordinary vegetable market, the biggest advantage of box horse vegetable market is that it has rich SKU, which is difficult for ordinary vegetable market vendors to do. For example, only one category of tomato includes many SKUs such as Chongming tomato, colorful tomato, yellow tomato and red tomato, and eggs are also divided into fresh eggs, double yellow eggs, wild eggs and pigeon eggs, as well as spices that are difficult to buy in general food markets, such as basil leaves, basil, mint and so on.

The egg stalls in the fresh area

Spices such as mint, rosemary, basil leaves

Different from the previous Hema Fresh Store, Hema Food Market is positioned as a "one-stop solution center for daily needs of community families", which mainly meets the shopping needs of residents within 3 kilometers. Judging from the site selection, Mayflower Life Plaza is a community-like shopping center. Although it is located in Jing 'an District, the center of Shanghai, the surrounding area is not the core business district and office buildings, but various communities that are relatively smoky.

surrounding environment of hemacai market: surrounded by high-end communities in the city center, with a strong atmosphere of life

The store is located on the basement floor of the shopping mall, and there are different types of shops nearby, without any competition. This location and environment are similar to the previous common hypermarket format.

Underground entrance

Overall, compared with Boxma Xiansheng, Boxma Food Market has smaller stores, closer distance to the community and more concentrated category display.

judging from the recent diversified layout of Box Horse, Box Horse tries to make the stores smaller and smaller while enriching the store system. Whether it is the recently opened food market, or the convenience store format box horse F2, the front warehouse box horse station, and the small shop box horse mini that landed earlier, they are all stores with the scale controlled below 1,111 square meters.

Boxma Xiansheng has a diversified store system, and the new formats are almost all small stores. Cartography: 36Kr

Boxma wants to open a smaller store, which has always been its goal. Earlier, Boxma also tried the small store format. The recent layout of food markets, convenience stores, small stores and pre-warehouses can actually be regarded as the extension and variation of Boxma.

Box Horse has its own considerations for this logic and planning of opening a store.

In essence, Box Horse Store needs to pursue higher penetration rate and coverage rate, constantly increase the frequency of interaction between stores and communities, and solve the industry chronic disease that big stores can't effectively penetrate into communities. This is also to solve a long-standing unresolved problem in the retail industry: for most users, comprehensive hypermarkets are still too far away. Previously, Boxma Xiansheng Store played a similar role as a hypermarket, and it has already opened 151 stores, but the density is still not enough.

Therefore, the only way for Box Horse at present is to make the stores smaller and smaller, so as to form a denser network of stores and cover more people.

As the stores are getting smaller and smaller, the previous mixed model needs to be changed and tilted in categories. For example, this time, Box Horse Food Market took out the best table fresh food sold by Box Horse Fresh Food Store as a separate format (41% of fresh food in Box Horse Store, 31% of non-food products, and 31% of cooked food and packaged food).

more importantly, the small store model can help restore consumers' habit of going to the store. At present, online orders of Box Horse occupy a clear advantage, exceeding 61%. 36Kr learned from a source close to Box Horse that the cost of Box Horse has been difficult to control due to the high cost of logistics and distribution. The high logistics cost brought by online business has always been a big problem for new retail, and Luckin Coffee is also crazy to open stores for the purpose of reducing distribution fees. Although the box horse food market still provides take-away service, this service has obviously been "cold-treated": there is no obvious relevant prompt in the store, and the delivery bag is also placed in an inconspicuous corner, which is difficult to find without careful inspection.

in order to restore consumers' habit of going to the store and balance online and offline orders, box horses need to stratify consumers: those who like going to the store (close to the workplace and home) and those who are used to buying at home. Based on this stratification, Box Horse has launched various types of small shops, such as Box Horse F2, which is a working meal and a pure-to-store format. Box Horse food market can not only meet the arrival experience of non-commuters but also meet the take-away needs of white-collar workers.

The accelerated adjustment of store planning and direction is also the result of box horse's reflection. At the recent internal meeting, Hou Yi once raised the problems of box horses, such as "Is big seafood still sexy?" "Is packaged food competitive", "Is innovation enough" and "Is fresh box horse the best business model?" "Can online logistics costs be covered?" . Small shops that pursue customers can obviously save logistics costs, and the declining proportion of seafood and other categories can also see the adjustment and transformation of box horses in categories.

this is obviously a relatively pragmatic approach. As a new species, fresh box horse gives consumers a strong and new consumption mentality, which also brings them a dividend period of 2 to 3 years. However, now that the dividend period has come to an end, Box Horse needs to enter a stage of high turnover and high efficiency and gain more profit space.

however, the current situation is that the turnover and operation status of some stores are still unstable. 36Kr learned from many consumers that the operation quality of some new stores is declining, and problems such as "label door", shortage of goods, and manpower allocation in stores occur from time to time. However, although the core business of Box Horse Fresh Life Store has not been fully verified, it is very wise and necessary for Box Horse to adapt to market changes and explore some new formats while it still has financial and technical advantages.

Box Horse tries to cover more people with a multi-layout store format, but it is still not an easy task.

Whether it's the box horse food market, the box horse F2 and the box horse station, they all have high requirements for site selection. It is very difficult to find these models of stores in the community, especially for community-oriented stores such as Box Horse Market and Box Horse Station, so Box Horse still needs to go to the core business circle to find stores.

There is a contradiction here: Box Horse wants to do community business, but it still hasn't really landed in the community. All the stores in Box Horse for the community cover people within 3 kilometers, but to cover the community, it is necessary to get closer to the store: within 1 kilometers. Many small shop formats of Box Horse are obviously not done at present.

If Box Horse really wants to go into the community, it needs to narrow its business scope to the mode of "community vegetable shop". However, the challenge of this mode is that the area and products of community shops are limited, and the sales rate of each SKU is required to be higher, such as zero mistakes in inventory and turnover. However, 36Kr learned from sources close to Ali that this format has not been considered or interested at present.

It is difficult to land in the community, and I don't intend to open a community-based store, so I chose the vegetable market format. However, there are still essential differences between the box horse food market and the vegetable market.

The smallest business unit of the vegetable market is the small vendors, and finally the risks and benefits can be split on the small vendors. The vegetable market only exists as a trading gathering place, and there is no business risk. The traditional market is a purely free allocation model. There will be a lot of duplicate SKUs among vendors, but there are still differences in reality. Each vendor will focus on some strong SKUs, and some are particularly good at selling tomatoes. These are the positions that occupy a lot of booths, which can ensure that every family has business to do. This can achieve a balance: residents in a community will also have their own fixed and familiar vendors.

In contrast, as a whole operation, Box Horse Vegetable Market is more complicated in category allocation, loss control and even gross profit margin control, and it is more difficult to establish a strong relationship with consumers.

The location is difficult, there is no intention to mix with the community store model, and it is impossible to learn from the advantages of traditional food markets, so the box horse food market is in a dilemma. 36Kr learned from people in the industry that the box horse food market will be in the testing stage for a long time, maintaining the status of single-digit stores, and even reinventing itself if the verification fails.

The bigger challenge is that the competition cycle of the fresh food industry is very short, and new changes can be made within one year or even half a year. For example, it took Ding Dong less than a year (the end of 2118) to buy food, and the dividend period for the box horse to quietly polish the model was very short.

In the increasingly fierce and cruel market environment, Box Horse is also actively seeking changes, and has made decisions such as changing the store system and adjusting categories. But the most urgent and intractable problem is still the box horse fresh health store. Fresh box horse accounts for more than 91% of the total sales, so it is necessary to maintain its high daily sales level, otherwise the loss of big stores will lead to higher losses, which is why box horse has to close its stores for rectification in the near future and stop losses in time.