When buying new year goods for the New Year, all major platforms are offering discounts and promotions. However, Meituan and Ele.me are eager to raise prices.

Some media reported that food delivery platforms have quietly increased their commissions recently; among them, the average commission of Ele.me has increased from 18% to nearly 26%, and the maximum commission of Meituan-Dianping has increased from 18% to 22%.

1. Meituan is too dark? Take away for 100 yuan, get 22 yuan commission!

As soon as this news came out, merchants and netizens were not calm, saying that Meituan was too shady, merchants were busy in vain, and Meituan was simply making money on the sidelines!

What is the concept of 22%? To put it simply, for a takeout of 100 yuan, Meituan will take a commission of 22 yuan. If there is another merchant promotion, such as a 5 yuan discount for purchases over 50 yuan, Meituan will still charge a platform fee of 22 yuan. As a result, merchants will not make any money at all.

A restaurant owner did the math: the average gross profit of a dish is 45% to 60%! Excluding water, electricity, rent, staff wages and rising prices, the net profit in the hands of the boss is only about 15% to 30%! Meituan’s 22% commission means that Meituan can get nearly half of the merchant’s profits without doing anything.

Catering is a low-profit industry. Originally, 18% was already high enough, but now it has to be increased to 22%, squeezing out the last bit of profit from businesses. No wonder many restaurants have started Collectively say no to Meituan and Ele.me.

Even if restaurants can pass on costs to customers, consumer interests will also be greatly damaged. For example, the same food becomes more expensive, or the quality of the food becomes worse for the same price.

Among them, a merchant from @日梦_150575655 said that after staying at Meituan Takeaway for one month, he decisively terminated cooperation with outside Meituan!

Looking back at when they were first established, they provided crazy subsidies, and consumers benefited obviously: takeaways for a few yuan, free delivery, and various no-threshold red envelopes. When they defeated their opponents one after another and monopolized most of the market, they revealed their vicious fangs.

2. From "Three Kingdoms" to "Two Heroes Struggle for Hegemony"

Since 2014, Meituan, Ele.me, and Baidu Waimai have spent a lot of money to subsidize users and conduct various discount activities. Overwhelming. The three giants are fighting each other in a dark world. Baidu Waimai focuses on high-end white-collar workers. Ele.me has gained a lot of users with its cheap meals. Meituan, which started its group buying business, has a lot of resources in its hands, but it also ends up happily.

After these years of development, the online takeout market has gradually turned into a "Three Kingdoms" competition between Meituan, Ele.me and Baidu Takeout. Basically, Meituan and Ele.me’s status in the food delivery industry has been confirmed, and it is only a matter of time before they gain users. But I still didn't expect the harvest to be so strong.

In fact, rising takeout commissions are an inevitable trend. Take Meituan as an example. As early as 2016, Meituan began to charge merchant commissions, which is also commonly known as commission. From the initial 5%, to 7%-10%-15%-18%-20%, and then to 22% in the past few days.

Everyone knows that as long as a product is sold more expensively, its sales will decrease. As for Meituan, it is estimated that they are still exploring how high the deduction rate users can bear and how high the price increase can be. Therefore, raising the price to 22% is also an attempt.

But it is certain: there is a profit boundary, and monopoly does not mean raising prices at will.

Whether it is takeout, group buying, wine travel, or bicycle sharing, in recent years, they have successively reached a state of slowing growth, saturated penetration, and reduced competition.

Meituan’s stock price continues to fall, and poor performance is naturally the biggest reason.

The third quarter report shows that in the third quarter of 2018, Meituan’s operating income was 19.176 billion yuan, an increase of 97.2% from 9.7 billion yuan in the same period of 2017; the loss during the period was 83.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 157.92%. Expanded 3.3 times year-on-year! In addition, from the perspective of various businesses, food delivery is Meituan’s main source of income, accounting for 58.6%. However, the revenue share of food delivery decreased from 62.5% in the same period last year. Meituan probably raised the commission because it couldn’t bear the losses anymore. ?Some netizens said so.

The increase in costs, the decline in user and market growth rates have become the reasons why various platforms have increased commissions.

As food delivery platforms become more and more integrated, food delivery costs are also growing. Food delivery platforms need to shift from developing through subsidies in the early stages to tapping the value of merchants. Therefore, they need to increase the commission for platform merchants, etc. way to achieve the goal of achieving one's own profits.

Due to differences in user platform choices, merchants will enter more platforms at the same time to increase user traffic. But at the same time, for merchants, facing rising commissions, if they do not reduce operating costs in time and change the business model that relies too much on takeaways, it will be detrimental to the development of the company.

3. Reject high commissions and cheating operations

For merchants, facing rising commissions, they can only reduce operating costs and change the business model of over-reliance on food delivery platforms. , can we gain a firm foothold in the market.

As for those merchants who still want to continue operating despite facing high commissions, is there any way to avoid paying less commissions? The editor here gives some tips to merchants.

1. Establish a user ordering group

People who order takeout at work basically eat from those restaurants. Merchants can make small cards to invite users when delivering takeout orders. Join the group. From time to time, some promotions or red envelopes are held to attract users to order in the group.

2. Upgrade the public account

The last time I ate, the editor met a merchant who had made his own public account. He invited people to follow the public account to place orders (can be booked) and there are discounts. Vouchers are available. The WeChat public account is now very mature, and its functionality is no worse than the App. Users can just scan the code directly, and merchants can also send QR codes in the group for customers to identify and place orders. Moreover, the official account is also a window for exporting one's corporate image to the outside world, and payment can also be completed on the WeChat official account.

Scan the QR code to enter the official account to order food, which supports multiple payment methods. Ordering food or reserving a seat can be done in one go, and the customer experience is good. Build your own channels, have your own takeout (group buying) platform, keep your traffic at home, and refuse high commissions from the platform!

3. Digital operation, precision marketing

From the development of food delivery, it is not difficult to find that online food delivery platforms are moving from rough and decentralized services to efficient and intelligent. From the traditional use of mobile Internet to the use of big data, precision marketing and other high technologies. Merchants can also use tools to save commissions, service fees, bidding advertising fees, etc. from food delivery platforms.

The above are several measures to prevent merchants from being charged commissions by food delivery platforms.