no matter from the upstream, middle or downstream markets, the gourmet O2O market is far from being saturated. Entrepreneurs should not only stare at BAT, hungry, and Xinmeida.
Many entrepreneurs regard the food market with a value of over one trillion as their first choice. So, hungry, beautiful group, order me, word-of-mouth take-out ... These gourmet O2O are constantly emerging, eating away at this huge cake in the gourmet market. With the arrival of the capital winter, the development of many gourmet O2O began to encounter unprecedented challenges. It has become a problem that every gourmet O2O entrepreneur must carefully consider to hand in a satisfactory answer sheet at the end of the year.
According to the latest data released by Speedway Research Institute, the market size of food industry is expected to exceed 2.8 trillion yuan in 215. With the further fermentation of the lazy economy, the market size of the food market is still expanding. It is predicted that by 216, the market size of China's food industry is expected to exceed 4 trillion yuan, thus becoming a huge market entity. The huge food market has naturally won the favor of many entrepreneurs with a keen sense of smell. With the help of their understanding of the food industry, they have continuously subdivided the food, which has led to many food O2O enterprises.
in addition to Baidu's take-out, Tencent's public comments and Ali's word-of-mouth take-out, food O2O such as Hungry, Meituan, Order Me, etc. also entered the trillion-dollar food market competition in an attempt to get a slice of this huge market. With the continuous entry of gourmet O2O entrepreneurs, the gourmet Internet market is full of smoke and disputes.
BAT's ingenious layout makes the seemingly calm gourmet O2O market surging, and the merger of meituan and public comment is a powerful proof. The dark battles in the gourmet O2O market don't all end in a happy ending like Xinmeida, and the competition between them is just like the growing demand for ordering food. Second-class food O2O markets, such as Gourmet Shake, Doudou Snack Takeaway, 8684 Takeaway and Yitao Food, are increasing their voice in this market with crazy push and increasing subsidies.
although BAT is using the power of capital to make the interests of the food market develop as far as possible in its own direction, it has not affected the entrepreneurs' enthusiasm for subdividing the food market in the slightest. As a result, O2O, a food subdivision represented by foraging, cooking and gourmet, began to appear in the download list of major application markets. Unlike BAT and Xinmeida, these gourmet apps focus on subdividing food.
Many people are beginning to worry that there will be overcapacity in so many gourmet O2O enterprises. And will there be too many food O2O enterprises represented by specialty food, which will lead to market saturation? This kind of worry is not unreasonable, because although the food market under the lazy economy model is huge, the points of use of consumers will be concentrated. Just as people's online shopping will focus on Taobao and JD.COM, people's consumption of food will also focus on several well-known O2O enterprises.
The emergence of this situation has led consumers to focus on several large food apps. For another distinctive food O2O, they will either use it occasionally in an early adopter way or as a symbolic symbol to enhance their own force.
the polarization of users' choice has resulted in the polarization of business performance of gourmet O2O enterprises. As a result, the following scenes appear at noon every day: the food delivery staff of the O2O giants represented by BAT, Hungry, and Xinmeida are as busy as a bee, while some distinctive food apps lead the food delivery staff to wander in the street because there is no order.
in the current market situation, the development of many gourmet O2O enterprises is facing unprecedented difficulties. Due to the lack of a big platform like BAT, some gourmet apps have few merchants staying. In order to expand the scale of suppliers, it is difficult to strictly audit every merchant who has settled in, which ultimately leads to the quality of food provided to users from their platforms. As a result, the products provided by these gourmet O2O enterprises to users can't get their satisfaction. End users vote with their feet and turn to gourmet O2O giants represented by BAT, Hungry, and Xinmeida.
The dual shrinkage of the upstream market and downstream market of gourmet O2O enterprises leads to the entrepreneurs in this industry being under greater pressure than those in any other industry, and the development of their enterprises is even more difficult. Many entrepreneurs of gourmet O2O enterprises lament that from the outside, a thriving and huge gourmet market will die faster than any other industry when it really enters.
Entrepreneurs' pessimism about the gourmet O2O market has made people who had doubts about the gourmet market more determined their concerns about overcapacity in the gourmet market. According to a 215 O2O death list provided by iDark Horse, catering O2O ranked first in the death list. Many entrepreneurs who had full confidence in the food market began to flinch and turned to other industries. This makes people more convinced of the judgment of the capacity saturation of the food market. However, is the trillion-dollar food market really so saturated? Can the gourmet O2O giants represented by BAT, Hungry, and Xinmeida really carve up such a huge gourmet market? I do not think this is necessarily the case.
In p>215, there were so many death cases of gourmet O2O enterprises, mainly because the contradictions accumulated behind the previous super-prosperity broke out in a concentrated way. The crazy entry of capital, the uncontrolled expansion of entrepreneurs, and the inefficient and useless marketing model have enabled these enterprises to develop geometrically and start the process of internal consumption of their own strength. The so-called money-burning marketing model represented by cash subsidies makes the way for these gourmet O2O enterprises to acquire users simple and inflexible. Once the capital is tightened or the capital chain is broken, these gourmet O2O enterprises will collapse and close down overnight.
The primary goal of many entrepreneurs who enter the food market is to expand their users in a short time. Compared with the big platforms of BAT, Hungry, and Xinmeida, these enterprises are very weak in expanding users. In order to achieve short-term and effective large-scale user expansion, crazy subsidies and crazy money burning have become the only way they can and can choose. By the time users have accumulated to a certain scale, these gourmet O2O enterprises have already been greatly weakened, and it is difficult to produce the power to play a combination boxing. By the time the new needs of users appear, these gourmet O2O enterprises have long been unable to cope, so death has become their only choice.
In fact, faced with the trillion-dollar food market, it is totally unnecessary for entrepreneurs to develop themselves in the above way. Such a huge market must be deeply cultivated in order to truly understand the real needs of consumers in this market. The food market itself is a market with a long ecological chain. If you can find your own position in this market and bend down to do it well, you can fully enjoy the benefits brought by this trillion-dollar market. This requires entrepreneurs to make precise positioning at the beginning of entering the food market, find their own seats, and subdivide the food market into upstream market, intermediate market and downstream market.
the upstream market usually refers to our food supplier market, which includes the supply of food raw materials and the processing of food. The supply of raw materials for delicious food includes staple food, side dishes, seasonings, cooking and so on. And these big aspects can be subdivided again. Entrepreneurs who really want to enter this industry can find a smaller entry point to innovate projects from these constantly subdivided food markets.
the intermediate market usually refers to our food logistics market, where we mainly undertake the task of delivering food to consumers quickly and accurately. This market bears the heavy responsibility of connecting the upstream market and the downstream market. If this industry is done well, it will produce hundreds of billions of production capacity. At present, logistics brands such as Mr. Feng and Dada, which are relatively hot in the gourmet O2O intermediate market, are a very good example. According to Hexun. com, Mr. Feng has just completed the A+ financing of $13 million, and Dada Distribution has just completed the C financing of $1 million. Compared with the trillion-dollar gourmet market, these logistics enterprises obviously cannot meet the needs of the whole market. And this also provides our entrepreneurs with an unsaturated market gap.
in many people's minds, the downstream of the gourmet market is consumers. Actually, that's not the case. Judging from the current development of the gourmet market, it is only a relatively low-level development stage for the gourmet market to directly face individual consumers. The future downstream food market will include a unit or cluster derived from a single consumer, which will bring further agglomeration and development of the food market.