Meicai.com has been exposed to lay off 40% of its staff

Meicai.com has been exposed to lay off 40% of its staff, "Meicai.com" is a fresh food mobile e-commerce platform. It is important to know that the "food network" was once popular for a while. But now it's in danger of running out of steam. Meicai.com is rumored to be in the process of mass layoffs. The company is also rumored to be laying off 40% of its staff.

The US food network has been exposed to lay off 40% of the staff1

Because of two rumors, the US food a few days ago received extra attention.

One is the rumor of layoffs. on January 17, there is a dish technology post employees told the new Beijing News reporter, layoffs have been a few sets, "the company's technical system personnel from up to nearly 1,000 people cut to 200 or so." The new Beijing News reporter to the beauty of the dishes network, as of press time did not respond. In September last year, the U.S. side of the dish has said that "now and in the future will carry out normal organizational adjustment and optimization".

Another IPO rumor. The dish has repeatedly responded "no comment". There is a view that the layoffs or to pave the way for the listing. Shen Meng, executive director of Chanson Capital, thinks it's unlikely, and that listing in any market will focus on the growth and sustainability of the business.

From a valuation of 7 billion yuan to three years without financing, layoffs news, the former capital in the eyes of the "star enterprise" or is experiencing challenges. In the retail e-commerce industry experts, the founder of the Bailian Consulting Zhuang Shuai view, the dishes of the customer base is catering enterprises, but China's catering market is more dispersed, the degree of chaining is not high, the differentiation of fresh procurement around the obvious, the dishes of the U.S. catering supply chain giants Sysco model is difficult to work, coupled with the fierce competition from the outside, the dishes of the United States are facing challenges, "direct imitation of the The era of directly imitating Sysco's business model may be over, and the next step needs to find a development model and profitability path suitable for the Chinese market."

Employees said "the day you are notified to leave"

"Today you are notified to leave today." In January of this year, received layoff notification of the United States vegetable technician Li Feng (a pseudonym) is very upset, "January's social security, the company will not pay, did not finish the annual leave can not be converted into a subsidy single hair, said are included in the 'N +1 compensation'."

Li Feng said, "According to my understanding of layoffs there are several sets, the company's technical system personnel from up to nearly 1,000 people cut to about 200 people now, but also the initiative to leave. The company turned off the organizational structure information of the corporate office, we can not see the specifics of other team personnel."

The New Beijing News reporter noted that in some workplace social platforms, many employees claiming to be Meicai also released information on layoffs. Among them, someone mentioned in September last year in the personal social platform account "Meicai Beijing layoffs, probationary period all cut, only a quarter of the month's compensation". A netizen who claimed to be an employee of Meicai commented below, "Me too".

For the above layoffs, compensation and other related situations, on January 19, the new Beijing News reporter interviewed the dish, as of press time did not reply.

According to public reports, Meicai began to close some unprofitable areas in February 2021, while hundreds of counties appeared to withdraw warehouses, closed the door.2021 September, Meicai was rumored to be a large-scale layoffs, business contraction of the news also continue to spread. At that time, Meicai responded that "Meicai has been, is now and will be in the future will carry out normal organizational adjustment and optimization, and constantly improve organizational effectiveness and professional ability. At the same time, all the business cities of Meicai are operating normally."

From a valuation of $7 billion to 3 years without financing

Along with the rumors of layoffs, the Beijing company of Meicai also moved. Enterprise search shows that on January 13, the dish associated company Beijing Spruce World Information Technology Co., Ltd. has changed its residence, from 4 to 6 floors of Building 1, No. 88 Wangfujing Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing, to Room 303, 3 floors, Block C, No. 8 Beijing Station East Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing.

In Li Feng's opinion, "layoffs, cost-cutting, including office address relocation, etc., may be for the purpose of listing, and the financial report after these operations is estimated to be more sizable and more favorable to the listing."

In fact, the dish in 2021 was repeatedly rumored IPO news, the listing place from the initial to the United States into Hong Kong. 2021 November, news shows that the dish to Hong Kong IPO selected CICC, Citigroup and Nomura Holdings is responsible for the relevant matters, intended to raise 300 million -500 million U.S. dollars, the specific details are under consideration, the time of the listing and the scale of the fund-raising may be subject to change. And the U.S. side of the dish responded "no comment".

In early January this year, there are rumors that the dish plans to submit an application for listing in Hong Kong in the first half of this year. Xinjing Daily reporter interviewed the dish, as of press time has not responded.

Meicai's official website shows that the platform provides full-category one-stop catering ingredients procurement services for nearly ten million restaurants across the country, and was founded in 2014. As of September 2018, the company was valued at nearly $7 billion. According to Enterprise Search, Meicai has a record of eight rounds of financing since its establishment, and the amount of financing is at least 9 billion yuan, judging from the specific amount that has been disclosed. The Xinjing Daily reporter noted that its most recent financing record is the "E round and above" financing that took place in October 2018, amounting to about $600 million, and the financiers involved Tiger Global Management and Gao Tiling Capital. Since 2019, the company has not raised any new funding for 3 years.

3 years without financing, the listing news is rumored again and again. Shen Meng, executive director of Chanson Capital, analyzed that from the effect of the actual operation of Meicai, it may gradually lose the attention of new investors. Fresh food e-commerce than the general e-commerce requirements for logistics, but also than the traditional retail channel sales price is lower, which is a fundamental contradiction. So although there is consumer demand for such a model, but there is no commercial viability, that is, difficult to list.

For the US dish layoffs is more conducive to the listing of the argument, Shen Meng said it is unlikely: "In any market listing, will be concerned about the growth and sustainability of its business, and will not be compressed because of the management costs of the performance of the figures look good after the investor can turn a blind eye to the details."

Simply imitate the Sysco model or the end of the era

Meicai was once considered a "star enterprise" in the eyes of the capital, after many rounds of reshuffling, today's Meicai although there is a certain market, but no longer with a few years ago, the same day. The industry analyzes that large catering companies are generally not the same as they were a few years ago. Industry analysts analyze that large catering enterprises generally have their own procurement and supply chain. In the U.S. dishes in the customer base, the majority of small catering enterprises, with the purchase of irregularity, often change the characteristics of the local distributor compared to the price advantage, it is difficult to fight for more sources, and in the past two years, because of the epidemic, some of the small catering shut down, so that the U.S. dishes are facing a lot of challenges to expand the market.

The vice president of the dish, Wang Yuxiong, mentioned in 2020 at the third China Fresh Retail Conference, the dish against the U.S. Sysco (Sysco). Sysco is to rely on the scale of the amount of food and beverage enterprises, to the restaurant to get the lowest cost, but also allows these professional companies to take its profits from the scale of the situation is a win-win situation. However, in the retail e-commerce industry experts, the founder of Bailian Consulting Zhuang Shuai view, different countries have different food and beverage markets, China's food and beverage companies are more dispersed, the chain of brands is relatively small, there is also a large differentiation in the procurement of dishes around the world, the scale of procurement and distribution of dishes is not yet perfect, resulting in the centralized scale of the advantages of the procurement is not obvious, coupled with the fact that many food and beverage companies procurement more to take the offline, have a fixed or familiar procurement channels

In addition, the fresh food track is also very competitive, in addition to the Mission fast donkey, Song Xiao Cai and other fresh food B2B platforms, as well as the Daily Fresh, Dingtone buy food and community group-buying platforms to eat the C-end of the track.

In fact, Meicai is also constantly groping for new development models. According to reports, in February 2020, Meicai's Meicai Mall opened the C-end mode, adding C-end delivery services targeting individual householders.In June 2021, Meicai Vice President Zhou Feng introduced Meicai's online platform business to build an online trading platform for merchants and partners, and to attract more small and medium-sized sellers such as cooperatives to move in.

The Beijing News reporter saw on the official website of Meicai that Meicai city agents are under recruitment. According to the introduction, the agents use the brand and IT system of the dish, in the agent city to open the dish site, for the regional catering merchants and community users to provide food distribution services. Some city agents believe that "due to the city volume is not large, the supply chain will have no advantage, the volume can not get up, there will be a high unit cost, coupled with the dishes platform there are deductions, the company's support is not enough, the overall do it down to the hard to make a profit."

Zhuang Shuai told the New Beijing News reporter, Meicai self-managed mode higher costs, by opening up the platform business, push the city agents and other modes, to a certain extent, to help reduce the investment in capital, but the technology, operation, fulfillment, after-sales requirements are still very high, the platform is more demanding, the future development also needs time to test. Overall, the platformization and digitization of fresh supply is imperative, with the continuous application of the Internet and 5G technology, and the changing needs of consumers, all of which require enterprises to continue to deepen the structural reform of the supply side, and improve the digitization capacity of the entire industry, "The era of direct imitation of the Sysco model is over, and the next step for the enterprise needs to explore the development mode suitable for the Chinese market and profitability."

In the future, will the dish continue to benchmark against Sysco? The answer to this question is not yet available.

It has been revealed that the US food network will lay off 40% of its staff.2

A netizen once listed Jack Ma's "six sins", one of which is the rise of e-commerce impacted the traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Squeeze the survival space of the physical store, does this mean that the development of e-commerce is smooth sailing? That may not be.

This solid foundation, the seemingly stable development of fresh food e-commerce on the mass layoffs. This e-commerce business is called "beauty dishes network", is a fresh food mobile e-commerce platform. You should know that "Meicai.com" used to be popular for a while. But now it is in danger of going cold. So why is such an e-commerce platform with a "gold master" behind it also facing layoffs? What is the development situation of e-commerce nowadays? We will continue to look down.

A large-scale layoffs of the dishes network

The online exposure of a piece of news, a suspected internal staff of the dishes network users, posted on the network that the dishes network is now in the large-scale layoffs. In addition to this, it was also discovered that the headquarters of Meicai.com was moved from Beijing Wangfujing Yintai shopping mall to the vicinity of Beijing Station. What's going on here? What kind of crisis has Meicai.com encountered?

In fact, in 2021, there were rumors of layoffs at the headquarters of Meicai.com. Then someone will ask, layoffs within the company is a very normal thing, why is it so noteworthy to lay off employees at the headquarters of Meicai.com? You should know that this one layoff by Meicai.com cut 50% of the company's headquarters, and after moving to the Beijing station, another 40% was cut. That's no small number.

Market sniffing netizens must have guessed that such a massive layoff must be because of the problems at Meicai.com. However, at this time another wave of netizens came forward to say that Meicai.com is simply fine, and is even planning a listing in Hong Kong in 2022.

Even if it's layoffs or not, Meicai.com hasn't slowed down in any Internet-related areas. For example, it has been expanding its commercial footprint in recent years, expanding its technology and capital into various fields.

The previous rumors were rumored to be big capital stand Chao Duo app, there are netizens who suspect that behind the stand is precisely Meicai network. Those widely sought after by the first and second tier youth AJ, green water ghosts and other originally thousands of tens of thousands of imported goods, in the tide of more than 5 million young people to less than 200 the bottom of the price of the mad rush, the quality of its international appraisal of the masters are not even love, the scene was netizens jokingly referred to as "leeks rebel against the scythe," the spectacle. It's hard not to believe that there isn't some big capital behind the operation to enhance their leading position in certain fields.

Second, the dishes network "background"

So, while rumors of the imminent closure of the news, and plans to raise funds to go public, the current situation of the dishes network in the end how? A lot of people think that layoffs mean that there are problems within the company, or even the risk of closure. But at the end of the day, even if that's the case, Meicai.com can still go public, as long as it meets the conditions for going public. Sometimes going public doesn't increase a company's crisis, but on the contrary, it may help a company to recover its vitality.

In addition to this, the food network is not a general fresh food e-commerce platform, why do you say so? Why is that? That's why we have to mention the "golden master" behind Meicai.com. As the name suggests, Meicai.com is a platform that mainly sells fruits, vegetables and agricultural products, was founded in 2014, which is the stage of the booming development of e-commerce. Therefore, many investors were very optimistic about this platform.

With the popularity of online shopping, people have gradually begun to accept the online fresh food supermarket. This approach has great advantages over the original channel of selling vegetables. For example, it can be delivered to your home, cheaper and more transparent when you participate in group buying. People can also through the online . Shopping reviews to identify the good and bad of the dishes. This is why many investors have chosen to invest in Meicai.com, they believe that this e-commerce has excellent prospects for development.

But Meicai.com isn't just developing online stores either; as Meicai.com's market valuation has risen, the company has started getting involved in offline stores as well. The process of expanding offline stores has been very smooth. at the beginning of 2021, Meicai.com's offline stores had already covered 200 cities across the country, and the number of employees had reached 35,000 people. It can be said that the development is very smooth.

Three, there is no better profit model

So why is the development of a hot food network, but now face the problem of cold? The reason for this is because there is no better way to profit from the dishes. This is the problem that many fresh food e-commerce platforms have now.

The operating model used by Meicai is the F2B model, which is based on an efficient cold chain logistics network. It connects farmers at one end and merchants and consumers at the other. On the surface, this mode of operation does not seem to have any problems, and even connects merchants and farmers. But in fact such a way in the fresh food e-commerce industry is not popular.

The reason is that this mode of operation does not solve the problem of the "last kilometer". People choose to buy food in the fresh food supermarket is valued for its efficient and convenient advantages. And to meet the "last kilometer" is actually the core of the competition of fresh food supermarkets. For example, the same was founded in 2014, "Daily Fresh", the company adopted the "city sorting center and community micro warehouse" communal secondary distribution warehouse storage system.

The biggest advantage of such a system is that the delivery time is 30 minutes, which can achieve low loss and high satisfaction. These two points are exactly what consumers focus on, after all, we buy food is certainly hope that the faster time to the table, rather than even the last kilometer of the problem can not be solved.

Although once the highest valuation of the food network reached 49 billion, but as early as 2019, the food network fell into the problem of shortage of capital chain. The financing window also lasted for a long time, so it is said that 2019 is the last glory of Meicai.com.

Fourth, the situation faced by fresh food e-commerce

In fact, Meicai.com is not the only fresh food e-commerce platform facing a crisis in the cold. Nowadays, the fresh food e-commerce industry as a whole is in the cold, and the industry has also seen a large-scale closure of the situation. Even the original development of the better fresh food e-commerce brands have been eclipsed. The reason why we can stick to the present, mainly because of its better development foundation.

Even so, it can't hide the fact that it's cold. Today's various fresh food e-commerce platforms are focusing on solving the "last kilometer" problem. As a result, the community group buying industry has evolved, and people can place orders through the small programs of the relevant fresh food e-commerce platforms. This way may be able to ease the crisis today.

In fact, the fresh food e-commerce platform has been bad from the beginning. The industry is not only the high cost of obtaining customers, product transportation is difficult, and even the process of loss, supply chain is difficult to build and other issues. This is not a small challenge for fresh food e-commerce companies. Seeing today's situation, those capitalists who once invested in the fresh food e-commerce industry do not dare to blindly make investments in the industry anymore.

So, today's fresh food e-commerce industry is facing another problem of financing difficulties. But no matter what, fresh food e-commerce companies will certainly find ways to maintain their company operations as well as performance improvement. Only, this road is not as good as imagined, as for the development of the industry, we will see.

The U.S. food network has been exposed to layoffs of 40%3

"clothing, food, housing and transportation" four things in life, "food" is undoubtedly the most important, in the "what to eat today" is gradually becoming a philosophical dilemma, "what to eat today? At the moment, "difficult to buy food", "expensive food" and other issues have plagued many young people.

2012 is the first year of fresh food e-commerce, the rise of community group purchasing in 2014, the huge changes in 2017, after borrowing the Internet wind, fresh food e-commerce has become a "favorite" sought after by the capital, especially at the end of 2020, after the major giants firefighting fire after the community fresh food.

The epidemic has created a second spring for domestic fresh food e-commerce, and capital is piling up to promote this track to usher in unprecedented development opportunities, and even more have gone to the secondary market, reaching its peak.

However, the epidemic spawned a fresh food platform, but in 2021 began to go downhill, either layoffs or cease operations.

At the start of the new year in 2022, the once red-hot community group-buying players once again saw their demise!

This is not long ago, once and the daily fresh, Dingtone buy food together with rumors of competition for the "fresh food business first stock" news of the dishes network, was once again exposed to layoffs and headquarters to move the news.

Fresh business capital has ebbed, 3 years no financing of the dishes how to "beauty" continue?

The wave of layoffs has reached the fresh food industry?

Recently, the fresh food e-commerce track is frequently bad news.

On January 13th, Dingtone bought groceries because of "big layoffs" on the hot search. But for the layoffs, Dingtone grocery shopping and its employees have their own version of the story.

According to the Huaxia Times news, a number of certified Dingtone grocery employees revealed on social media platforms that Dingtone grocery has opened a large number of layoffs, purchasing, algorithms, operations, and recruiting departments will be laid off 20% to 50%.

Dingtone grocery shopping responded that the news is not true, there is no factual basis and rigorous data sources, the company's individual job changes are normal organizational resources adjustment.

Not coincidentally, just the day before another fresh food e-commerce player was rumored to be large-scale layoffs, and even the headquarters moved!

On January 12, fresh food e-commerce platform Meicai.com was again rumored to have laid off employees.

According to Phoenix Technology, recently, there are suspected Meicai network left the staff said in the social platform, following the last 50% proportion of layoffs, Meicai Beijing headquarters and then lay off 40%.

In addition, originally in Beijing Wangfujing Yintai shopping mall, the Meicai network headquarters has now moved to the Beijing station near.

Another has left the dishes network employees said that the dishes network has been laying off employees, some time ago, cut some business director and product director: "Director-level employees are okay, some basic business people forced to cancel the contract, the day away from the day to talk."

Meicai did not respond to the above for the time being.

Compared to the daily fresh, Dingtang buy food, beauty dishes net popularity is not high, but good things do not go out of the door, bad things spread thousands of miles, following the last September thunder, beauty dishes net has become a celebrity in the fresh food circle.

In September of last year, the Beijing headquarters of the grocery network was exploded 50% layoffs, part of the city service shutdown.

According to the interface previously reported that, from an internal e-mail shows that the Beijing headquarters product development and other technical departments, purchasing and sales and other business departments, financial and other functional departments are faced with 50% and above the proportion of layoffs.

In addition, Meicai Chengdu R & D center will be abolished as a whole, part of the city service shutdown, the merger of regions.

Throughout the past year, fresh food e-commerce, "burning money", "financing" and even "bankruptcy" has become a label that can not be pulled off.

The U.S. listed daily fresh, the first three quarters of 2021 net loss of 3.017 billion, Dingtong buy vegetables during the same period of net loss also reached 5.333 billion yuan. The listed front warehouse duo lost a lot of money, and the remaining waist and tail players without giant support, such as EGo Fresh, Tongcheng Life and Dull Carrot, declared bankruptcy and quit the competition after replenishing blood without a door.

It is important to know that the fresh food track is a relatively long track, and this long battle, all players have to cross the retail death valley.

And on this road we all need to compete for a long time, who is left at the end of the fight, is the so-called "leftover for the king"!

No longer obsessed with seeking scale expansion "bleeding", financing, listing then became a fresh food e-commerce players "stop bleeding" important means, because financing can not keep up with the speed of burning money in the end will only be a dead end.

Before the news of layoffs, the rumors of the listing of the dish have been constant.

On January 12, a media report said that Meicai.com plans to submit an application for listing in Hong Kong in the first half of this year, and has selected investment banks to prepare for the listing details;

It is reported that Meicai.com has appointed CICC, Citibank and Nomura to take charge of the listing matters, and estimates that the capital raised will be US$300-500 million (about HK$2.34-3.9 billion).

In fact, there have been rumors of an IPO for quite some time.

As early as the second half of 2019, there were rumors that a new round of financing failed, resulting in a tight capital chain, but this news was later denied by Liu Chuanjun, CEO of Meicai.com.

In July 2020, Wang Can, former CFO of Fosun Group, joined Meicai.com as CFO, which was seen as a prelude to Meicai.com's listing. But Meicai.com later denied the news, saying that Wang Can's joining has nothing to do with the listing. However, only six months after Wang Chan joined Meicai.com, the news of his departure was rumored.

In May of last year, Meicai.com was again revealed to be going to the U.S. for an IPO, with plans to raise $500 million. Sources familiar with the matter said that Meicai.com is working with a financial advisor on the potential IPO.

Meicai would not comment on this, but it is clear that Meicai is in a hurry!

Because, in the absence of financing for nearly three years, this B2B fresh food e-commerce platform has experienced several executives out, 2C business sold by Jingdong unsuccessful, many rounds of substantial layoffs, as well as a number of transformations is not optimistic and other multiple bouts of pain.

According to public information, Meicai was founded in 2014, for fresh food supply chain service platform, providing catering ingredients procurement services to China's nearly 10 million vegetable stores and restaurants, the year before the start of individual home users to provide delivery services.

Since its inception, Meicai has been a "star enterprise" in the eyes of capital.

In just four years, it has completed eight rounds of financing, with a cumulative amount of nearly 10 billion yuan, and its investors include well-known investment institutions such as Shunwei Capital, Zhenge Fund, and Gao Tiling Capital.

Its most recent financing occurred in October 2018, when Meicai.com was invested by Tiger Global and Gao Tilai Capital in the amount of $600 million, with a valuation of more than $7 billion.

Since then, however, there have been no new public financings for Meicai.com. Now, the rumors of IPO plans, is it related to the recent financial chain tension?

Early with the capital to quickly open the door to the Internet to sell food, once tried to seize the "first fresh stock" but the results are not satisfactory.

Internet 3.0 era, young people no longer walk into the market, the traditional catering supply chain status is in jeopardy. The eyes of the capital are gradually cast to the dish network such as the emerging catering supply chain service providers.

The new catering supply chain industry is booming, and is rapidly morphing into a blue ocean.

In 2020, as many as 14 platforms in the domestic fresh food e-commerce field have been financed, with a total financing of more than 13.65 billion yuan.

If there is no accident, the fresh food e-commerce market in 2021 will continue the phenomenon of being chased by capital in 2020. However, the fresh food e-commerce track is constantly shuffling out, burning money problem has not been able to crack.

The root of this is that the fresh food e-commerce platform in order to capture the market, began the most brutal and effective "price war" means;

As long as the price is cheap enough, not afraid of consumers do not buy, this is the prevalence of community group-buying platform mode of marketing logic and financing means.

Also, the main difficulty faced by the fresh food e-commerce market is the difficulty of profitability, on the one hand, the customer unit price increase to reach the bottleneck, on the other hand, the existing supply chain model to further reduce the cost of the difficulties encountered.

For now, the fresh food e-commerce track has not run out of real winners.

Entrepreneurship has never been nine deaths, especially in the fresh food track, almost ten deaths!

At present, there are more than 4,000 fresh food e-commerce companies in China, only about 100 break-even, losses accounted for 95%, of which 7% are huge losses, and only 1% of the final profit.

If it were not for the sudden epidemic, fresh food e-commerce could have died a little faster and more suddenly.

Starting in the second half of 2021, layoffs, city closures, and delinquent payments became keywords for veteran community group-buying players.

With the successive collapse of platforms, the big pit of community group buying eventually came into full focus.

Because the quality of goods on the major community group-buying platforms is so poor, especially some vegetables and fruits, there is no user loyalty and serious attrition. The traffic gathered by low prices and promotions is difficult to convert into sticky users, which has become a potential persistent problem for many community group-buying players.

As Hou Yi, vice president of Ali and founder of Boxcar Fresh Sang, said, "In terms of value itself, community group buying does not advocate value, and is driven solely by a large amount of marketing research. This business model can not create real business value, as a marketing tool is really good, but does not create value."

The persistent problem is getting worse and worse, and there is no great value, the defeat is a matter of time sooner or later. From this point of view, the community group buying shuffle has the first, there will soon be the next.

Just like the dilemma of the US food network, can continue to "beautiful" continue?