According to the data provided by Gesoo, the catering industry in the United States has a market size of 800 billion, but the take-away business only accounts for 5%, but the demand gap for take-away is very large. There are a large number of local Chinese in the United States, with about1.4000 Chinese restaurants. However, in the face of cultural differences, language barriers and great differences from American restaurants, it is difficult for Chinese restaurants to access the take-away business. On the other hand, the logistics in the United States is mainly aimed at long-term business, and there is little express transportation in the same city. All these have brought the possibility to the development of Gesoo.
Gesoo's business is divided into two parts: instant delivery and freight transportation in the same city. At present, it is mainly carried out in Los Angeles urban agglomeration. Instant delivery business covers restaurants, fresh food and supermarkets, and freight in the same city is mainly aimed at small packages that arrive on the same day. After the user places an order on the platform, the system automatically assigns the driver to take the meal. At present, according to the data provided by Sun Neighbours to Yiou Restaurant, there are more than 1000 registered restaurants, more than 200 active restaurants and about 30,000 monthly active users on Gesoo platform.
Different from China's takeaway brother who has an electric car, American takeaway brother's delivery vehicle is mainly cars, Gesoo mainly uses social idle capacity, and the platform and the driver adopt Uber-like cooperation mode, giving the driver a delivery fee in proportion. Due to the local traffic congestion and scattered transportation capacity, the delivery time of take-away food in the United States is relatively long, and the requirements for delivery time of cold dishes of American meals are not high, so Americans have a higher tolerance for delivery time. However, Chinese takeout is mostly hot food, which greatly increases the demand for delivery time.
For any takeaway platform, the delivery time is one of the most important issues. In 20 15, Gesoo tried to expand its business to new york and San Francisco, but at that time, the IT system was not developed enough, the business model was not mature enough, and the take-out took a long time (about 2.5 hours per order), so the plan failed. After 20 17 years, in view of the operational difficulties, Gesoo upgraded its system, conducted distance analysis to improve the accuracy and efficiency of allocating drivers, ensured the delivery within 8 km 1 hour and 16 km/0/.5 hour, and upgraded the client and driver to shorten the information chain.
In addition, Gesoo has improved the management mode of merchants, allowing merchants to give priority to the platform users in order to improve timeliness, and paying attention to the handling of customer complaints, charging users only a service fee of 1 USD. On the driver side, Gesoo improved the driver's income and working standards, and established a strict reward and punishment system. This series of measures has greatly improved the user experience of the platform. From the second half of 20 18, Gesoo restarted its expansion plan, and planned to expand its business to Phoenix in April of 20 19, and then to Houston and Seattle.
In addition to technical and management problems, local demand and policies in the United States are also a big obstacle for Gesoo. First of all, the situation in different parts of the United States is quite different. For example, the traffic in Los Angeles is very underdeveloped, and the traffic jam of private cars is serious; And the traffic in new york is in good condition, which is more conducive to the development of take-away distribution. The different urban development also brings different user needs, which requires the take-away platform to understand and take countermeasures in the process of expansion. In addition, the United States has strict policy control over the catering industry, and does not allow take-away delivery of raw meat from hot pot restaurants. Only this year 1 month can private kitchens be delivered, but at present, third-party platforms are not allowed to access, and only merchants can deliver them themselves.
To solve this problem, Gesoo team is composed of Chinese with American study background, so as to better understand the local situation. Gesoo's Chinese-English platform and two-way understanding of China's catering culture and American laws and policies simplify the process of Chinese restaurants accessing take-away business. However, whether it can flexibly cope with different situations in different parts of the United States is still a major test for Gesoo's future development.
According to the data of market analysis company Statista, the take-away market in North America will reach 219 years and 0/500 million dollars. In the North American market, Chinese take-out platforms have gradually emerged in recent years, in addition to Gesoo in the United States, Tutti and rice balls in Canada. They are all the entrepreneurial achievements of local students, and their influence in the Chinese community is growing. However, compared with large takeaway companies such as GrabHub, UberEats, DoorDash, PostMates, etc., the user groups of Chinese takeaway platforms are basically limited to Chinese, and the number of restaurants accessed is also very limited. In particular, the take-away platform such as UberEats, relying on Uber's huge driver group and existing user group, has a natural advantage in volume.
The advantage of Chinese take-out platform lies in its strong pertinence, which emphasizes service quality and user experience. For example, Tutti provides restaurants with real-time delivery services for fresh food and drinks, and also provides a smart restaurant system to help traditional restaurants access online platforms and improve the efficiency of restaurants. The rice ball App learns the domestic take-away platform, simplifies the process of ordering food for users, and builds a customer service system and comment system that foreign apps don't have. This is also reflected in Gesoo, which is extending the review business and improving the restaurant service to enhance the user experience.
Compared with the domestic and foreign selling markets, most restaurants in North America adopt the service form of telephone take-out, and online take-out accounts for less than 10% of the overall take-out market, and the payment method is mainly credit card. However, Chinese people recognize the way of ordering and paying by mobile phone, which provides soil for the development of Chinese takeaway platform, but it will inevitably become a bottleneck for its development. Fortunately, according to the data of Eater, a catering website, Chinese food is in the forefront of the most popular take-away categories for North American users, which means that Chinese take-away platforms may be widely favored by local people. In addition, there is no "subsidy war" in the take-away platform in North America. Users take it for granted to pay the delivery fee, and will give the delivery staff a certain tip, which greatly reduces the burden on the take-away platform, and Gesoo has achieved breakeven. Gesoo has obtained seed round financing before, and will start a new round of financing in the first quarter of this year.
In 20 19, Gesoo will increase cooperation with restaurants, expand the supply chain business of restaurants, and distribute ingredients for Chinese restaurants through cooperation with food companies, farms and supermarkets. Gesoo will also expand the review business and improve the service level and user experience of restaurants. The scale of real-time distribution is the development goal of Gesoo20 19. In addition to entering more cities, Gesoo will also expand the distribution team and feed back the front-end business line with logistics and distribution capabilities.