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

Recently, there are suspected Meicai network departed employees in the social revelations, following the last 50% proportion of layoffs, Meicai Beijing headquarters cut another 40% of the staff. In addition, the original in Beijing Wangfujing Yintai shopping mall of the Meicai network headquarters, has now moved to the Beijing station near.

Another Meicai employee who has left the company said that Meicai has been laying off employees, and some time ago laid off some business directors and product directors. "Director-level employees are okay, some basic business people forced to cancel the contract, the day to go the same day to talk."

Layoffs or related to the listing?

It is reported that the move of the dish or to prepare for the listing. January 12, there are media reports that the dish network plans to submit an application for listing in Hong Kong in the first half of this year, and has selected the investment bank to prepare for the details of the listing.

In the case of nearly three years without financing, this B2B fresh food e-commerce platform has experienced several executives out of the 2C business sold by Jingdong unsuccessful, many rounds of substantial layoffs, as well as a number of transformations are not optimistic and other pain.

In September of last year, the Beijing headquarters of the US food 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 facing 50% and more layoffs.

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

According to public information, Meicai was founded in 2014 as a fresh food supply chain service platform, providing catering ingredients procurement services to nearly 10 million vegetable stores and restaurants in China, and started to provide delivery services for individual home users in the year before, with investment from Gao Ting Capital and Meituan (03690), etc.

According to the public information, Meicai is the only company in the world that can provide delivery services for individual home users, and it is not the only company in the world that can provide delivery services for individual home users.

According to its official website, the company has not received any further funding since it closed its Series E round in 2018.

Poor financing, more than burning money

Before the news of layoffs broke out, rumors of the listing of Meicai.com have been persistent.

Since its inception in 2014, Meicai has been a "star enterprise" in the eyes of capital.

In just four years, eight rounds of financing have been completed, and the cumulative amount of financing has exceeded 10 billion, making it one of the few platforms left after many rounds of reshuffling of fresh food e-commerce.

In the era of fresh food e-commerce blowout, Meicai network through the agricultural products and vegetables and fruits B2B e-commerce model, the use of controlled goods self-management model, with cold chain logistics network docking the upstream fresh food producers and downstream merchants.

This model does not sound complicated, but the long chain in the middle and the "profitability problem" has become a knife hanging over the dishes.

The specific model is to do fresh food source, self-built channels, looking for three-way merchants in different regions, partners in order to complete the quality and quantity of agricultural products, even if the supply, but also the need for city partners in a timely manner delivery.

Upstream partners need to sink to the production base of agricultural products, limited by the Internet in rural areas, the degree of information technology is low and other factors, Meicai need to invest in quality control more education costs.

In 2019, Meicai is recruiting partners across the country to manage Meicai's camping, procurement, marketing, warehouse and distribution teams in local counties to carry out the catering B2B business, while Meicai's headquarters will provide the project leader with five aspects of support: capital, personnel, supply chain, system and experience.

According to the official website of Meicai, it has up to 5,000 delivery vehicles, 74 warehousing centers in 52 cities, business coverage of more than 200 cities across the country, 5.2 million orders handled daily, and the number of daily deliveries exceeded 15,000 times.

Heavy mode means high investment, the past has been all the way by the capital to support the United States food network, so far, the amount of financing accumulated more than 10 billion yuan, but no new financing in the past three years, its expansion speed constraints, coupled with its own did not realize the overall profitability.

Liu Chuanjun, founder of Meicai, has said that he expects to have a better cash flow by the end of 2020, but its profitability is not optimistic at the moment.

From the point of view of the operating data released by Meicai, in addition to the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, in many cities to achieve profitability.

It can be seen that the first-tier cities can not be profitable to become one of the factors dragging down the overall profitability of Meicai network can not be realized.

Some media reports said that the dishes network in the layoffs at the same time, the number of employees streamlined, the dishes devolved the power of the regional cities, so that some of the suppliers in the mall stationed and self-complete to the store, completely open platform. Meicai direct deduction, the original Meicai subsidies into the supplier subsidies, so as to increase profits.

In order to reduce the cost pressure of warehousing, no longer set up a central warehouse, so that suppliers deliver directly to the front warehouse. Effectively transferring the cost of warehousing and storage losses to the supplier. At the same time also reducing the number of warehouses around.

B-end hopeless, turn to the C-end

In the B-end business is facing the dilemma of "burning money while losing money", the U.S. food network last year also tried to open up the C-end of the market, and on-line "U.S. home to buy food!

By the B-end market switch to the C-end market, B-end market and C-end market operation has a huge difference, due to the operating logic has a huge difference, perhaps in the beginning has been doomed to this U.S. buy groceries will be ushered in the failure of the situation.

Daily fresh as well as Dingtang in the front warehouse layout for many years, suddenly entered the C-end market of the U.S. buy groceries does not seem to have an advantage, in the two squeeze U.S. buy groceries under the project operating difficulties.

At the end of December last year, there is news that the U.S. buy groceries due to poor management, or less than 200 million U.S. dollars to sell to the Beijing East, the transaction was confirmed and not completed.

From the supplier's point of view of the U.S. food, U.S. food is only an important channel for suppliers, rather than relying entirely on the traditional wholesale market is their main battlefield, the wholesale market has a stable flow of lower warehousing, as well as logistics costs, which on the one hand, go to the platform of a single transaction is not very large, and also need to be prepared by the supplier of warehouses for manual sorting, packaging, the cost of a relatively higher. "

From financing interruption, to enter the C-end market, layoffs, and business contraction, the beauty of the dishes network seems to be in trouble, facing the dilemma of fresh food e-commerce difficult to profit.

Meicai network is also facing the same, self-supporting, asset-heavy, heavy operation model brings high inventory and high cargo loss rate is high, but also increased the risk and pressure, after the capital break Meicai, listing is far away, layoffs have become the Meicai must face.

This article is a synthesis of food observers, spirit animals and other media reports