Fresh food is just needed, natural and flow commodity. Suning E-Commerce, Yonghui, RT Mart, Wal Mart and other chain supermarkets launched respectively the Suxiansheng APP, the Yonghui Life APP and the Super Species APP, the RT Mart Youxian APP, the Wal Mart Home Arriving APP and the small program store, and cooperated with offline stores. Due to the limited layout of Kaicheng, insufficient store density and insufficient warehouse allocation capacity for the last kilometer, the front-end customer experience did not meet expectations and the operation was tepid. The community fresh food e-commerce companies Youxian Daily and Dingdong Buying Vegetable focus on the construction of supply chain, logistics facilities and warehouse allocation infrastructure at all levels. They have been burning money for a long time, and the development of the pre warehouse model is difficult. Both the chain store supermarket model and the front warehouse model are difficult to defeat the local forces to derive fresh food - fresh food market, traditional vegetable market and community fresh food stores. In addition, e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Taoxianda, Meituan flash store warehouse are involved in the fresh food field. In addition, the competition in the fresh food new retail market has become fiercer due to the disturbance of community group buying such as Taocai, Meituan Preferred, and Duoduo Buy. Practice has proved that if the new fresh retail lacks the community terminal infrastructure offline stores, even if it has a strong supply chain and logistics warehouse allocation capacity, it is difficult to achieve the distribution of fresh products. Fresh food chain retail brands such as Hema Fresh Food, Jingdong Seven Fresh Food, T11 and other boutique fresh food supermarkets based on home service took off, but it is still not easy to break the situation successfully.
The essence of fresh food chain
If the fresh food chain retail format is misread as traditional fresh food, no effort can be made to create characteristics, personality and value, and even less to create a brand. The fresh food chain retail business has reconstructed people, goods and markets, and has made innovations in both form and content: people boutique consumers, quality consumers, goods packaging, quantity organization and branding, market online mall, offline stores and service scenarios. Fresh food chain is based on the middle and high-end quality lifestyle. Branding, quality, scene, content and chain are effective ways to go out of the circle.
1、 Short link DTC channel mode
Based on offline stores, fresh food chain retail should build a private e-commerce market: platform brand franchise stores, APP, small program stores and official stores, so as to achieve the same quality and price of the same products online and offline, complete the transformation to the original brand of the Internet, and achieve fresh O2O (online to offline). The fresh food chain retail needs to optimize the supply chain, reduce the intermediate links, face the producers or manufacturers in the country of origin directly, create private brands, joint brands or introduce the private brands of the OEM, and form unique, different and scarce product content. The products of origin and China's geographical indication products are among them, and C2M (direct manufacturing by users) reverse OEM customization is indispensable, which forms a commodity price dislocation with the traditional fresh food business. Imported goods can not be underestimated. Although the circulation channel is relatively narrow, they can directly enter DTC (directly facing consumers) channel for online and offline interactive sales.
2、 Private brand goods are mainly sold
In the retail category, the brand rate of fresh products is the lowest, and fresh brand is a potential business opportunity. Goods are content, and content is communication. Private brands can let consumers remember the retailer's brand. Private brand is the key point to establish differentiation and highlight the core value of retailer brand. The gross profit margin of private brand goods can reach 50%, which is far higher than the gross profit margin of about 20% of the manufacturing brand, and is conducive to the brand accumulation of fresh retailers. Fresh food retailers have all strengthened their own brand building and increased their own brand sales weight. For example, Hema Xiansheng's own brand accounts for 17%, Hema X's member store's own brand accounts for 40%, SKU (minimum inventory unit) accounts for 1000+, and the sales share is targeted to exceed 50%.
3、 Professional branded retail channel
Fresh food channels need to be simple and professional, because fresh food consumption has obvious purchase motivation and purposeful purchase is prominent. This is also the fundamental reason why supermarkets, chain stores or convenience stores lack competitive advantages in fresh food retail. For the sake of traffic and survival, some fresh and fresh e-commerce businesses have integrated multiple traffic elements outside the circle. For example, Daily Fresh integrates the daily necessities of small and medium-sized businesses in the community and the third and fourth tier vegetable markets as the smart food market. Dingdong also introduces daily necessities, wine, snacks and online celebrity products into the e-commerce platform to increase traffic, improve customer price and enhance consumer stickiness. DTC mode emphasizes that fresh products should face consumers directly and experience selection on the spot, and offline brand franchise stores are also experience and transformation platforms. The pre warehouse models such as Daily Fresh Food and Dingdong Food can not do this, which can not reflect the channel brand strength and channel image.
4、 Scale chain of centralized layout
The expansion of fresh food chain retail can be slow, but it is necessary to concentrate resources to open the city in depth and reasonably density cloth stores. Without the scale of city chain stores, it is impossible to achieve efficient implementation of private e-commerce, large-scale source procurement, industrial chain efficiency, supply chain cost reduction and logistics warehouse allocation cost reduction. At the beginning of 2022, this is the reason why 12 chain stores of Aunt Qian will be closed. Some fresh food chain retailers are in a state of "extensive ignition and sporadic smoking", which violates the commercial law of large-scale cloth stores in chain retail. Based on the optimal distribution frequency and branding rate target of "two matches per day" for fresh food stores, the number and scale of stores are required to support. In 2021, Hema will open more than 300 stores in 27 cities, Jingdong Qixian will open 42 stores in 13 cities, and T11 will only have 7 stores in 3 cities. Both the opening and store concentration are insufficient.
5、 Quality channel dominated by high-quality products
Some fresh food e-commerce have a tendency to seek perfection in commodity SKU. Daily Youxian, Dingdong Shopping, Meituan Shopping and other non store platform based e-commerce are acceptable, and their cloud shelves can display a large number of commodities. Although the fresh food chain retail is also supported by cloud shelves, if the goods cannot be landed in offline stores, it will bring high logistics, warehousing and distribution costs, and affect the delivery service efficiency of the last kilometer. Therefore, the fresh food chain retail does not want the traditional fresh food "all and cheap", but takes "special, new, strange, special, refined and excellent" as the selection policy, and follows the retail polarization theory. Fresh food chain retail needs to do scene, content and experience. Scene, content and experience can all add value, realize brand premium and reflect the retailer's brand value. In addition, it is not allowed to compare prices or price performance with traditional fresh food retail because of different positioning and customer groups. Traditional fresh food retailing faces the public, while fresh food chain retailing faces the middle and high-end quality consumers. It should compare with retailers of the same business type and model, and compare quality and price.
Misunderstandings of fresh food chain
Fresh food chain retailing has its own pitfall. The biggest pitfall is that it is illogical and falls into the trap of common sense and convention. Many fresh food chain retailers fell down, not necessarily because of operational errors and improper management, but because of the inclusive retail thinking, which is to fully serve all consumer needs and compete with various fresh food formats, and can not achieve the brand, scale, quality, scene, content, and chain of fresh food chain retailers, and does not achieve a real sense of marketing closed loop.
1、 Flow thinking sacrifices profits
For a long time, supermarkets, chain stores, fresh food e-commerce and community fresh food stores have been promoting their products with fresh food. However, fresh food e-commerce generally sustained losses, and was caught in the dilemma of difficulty in attracting customers and low repurchase rate of users. The daily excellent fresh food is priced at a high price and discounted at a high price, while the Dingdong food is subsidized at a high price. Although the two targeted their customers as middle and high-end consumer groups, they did not have physical stores that could be landed, and the sense of consumer experience and acquisition was insufficient. Yonghui Supermarket has created a low price fresh food model, using fresh products as a tool to drive other goods of "large amount+low frequency+high gross profit" through fresh products of "small amount+high frequency+low gross profit". However, the gross profit margin of fresh products in Yonghui Supermarket is only 13.2%, which is far behind the gross profit margin of the industry of 15-30%. It is difficult to make profits. Both Yonghui life and super species have been working extremely hard. In 2022, the super species will reduce its value and begin to try to transform into a professional fresh food store in the community.
2、 Fight with community group purchase e-commerce
Community group buying has obviously threatened the flow of community fresh e-commerce. In pursuit of flow, customer unit price and repurchase rate, some fresh e-commerce companies introduced daily necessities. Daily Best Fresh Food "(front warehouse+smart food market) × The retail cloud model integrates community stores and general merchandise categories, becoming more and more popular and popular, which has conflicted with the high-value users with their positioning appeals. Community group buying and fresh food e-commerce also aim at fresh food categories and focus on the last mile of the community, such as Meituan Preferred, Xingsheng Preferred, and Taocai. Customers in the same community face the same category and the same commodity. The online one click order is not comparable to quality, but can only compare prices. As a result, the community group purchase has an advantage in price due to large-scale order shopping. Therefore, if the fresh food chain retail cannot jump out of the flow dispute with the community group purchase, there will be no way out.
3、 Blind sinking to the low line market
It is a wise choice to focus on the first tier, new first tier and second tier markets for daily fresh and Dingdong dishes. The daily excellent fresh food market integrates the traditional food market to build a smart food market, which is based on the third and fourth tier markets, serves as the new traffic entrance, and creates the second growth curve. It is not an ideal choice for fresh food retail to sink to the third tier and below markets. In the third tier and lower tier markets, it is bound to wade into the muddy waters because of the resistance of Pinduoduo, Meituan, Taote and other sinking e-commerce businesses, as well as the encirclement and suppression of Duoduo's group buying, Meituan's selection, Taocai and other communities. Even with the O2O mode of fresh food chain, it is not easy to operate the low-end market. Meituan's Xiaoxiang Fresh Food is an online and offline integrated fresh food supermarket, providing 3km and 30min home service. However, in less than a year, five stores in the third tier market were closed due to low fresh gross profit rate and lower than expected return on investment.
4、 Site selection indulges in community terminals
For a long time, fresh food retail location has focused on location, community population density, population characteristics, consumption capacity and other factors. If Hema Fresh Food, Jingdong Seven Fresh Food, T11 and other fresh food chain retailers adhere to this principle, they are prone to failure. The early site selection of Hema Xiansheng refers to the usage rate of Taobao, Alipay and other data of mobile phone users in the surrounding 3 kilometers to evaluate the penetration rate of e-commerce and mobile payment, and attaches importance to the size, consumption capacity and consumption quality of core consumer groups such as the "post-80s" and "post-90s". Now, Hema Xiansheng has broken through the idea of community based location selection and started to pay attention to places with a high density of young consumers, such as shopping malls with high development potential, surrounding large high-end communities, urban or suburban tourism areas. Jingdong Seven Fresh uses 7FRESH (Seven Fresh Supermarket) extreme site selection model, taking the consumption capacity of surrounding customers and well-known shopping centers as important references, such as cooperating with top 50 domestic commercial real estate developers such as Poly, Longhu, Vanke, etc. T11 site selection focuses on shopping mall stores, community business centers, property stores built on subways and transport hubs, and takes shopping mall stores as the main model of new stores, accounting for 70% of the total number of stores.
5、 Hit the market with universal stores
The market level, business circle, commercial property, community and population characteristics have been layered, and there are differences in consumption capacity and consumption characteristics among different circles. Therefore, fresh food chains must build flexible and adaptive stores, and it is difficult to take all the same types of business or stores. It can combine regional geographical characteristics, property characteristics, product characteristics, demand characteristics, etc. to create business types, scenes, contents, products, services and other elements in a differentiated way. From 2019 to 2021, Hema retail system group will launch more than 10 types of businesses, including Hema Fresh Standard Store, Hema X Member Store, Hema Neighborhood, Hema Station, Hema Food Market, Hema Xiaoma, Hema Mini, etc. T11 owns Shopping Mall stores, community stores, property stores on subways and transport hubs, and community commercial center stores, realizing full scene, full channel and full time coverage of consumption, and focusing on MSSM (food solution supermarket). In 2021, JD Seven Fresh Food will also cooperate with Bubugao and MUJI (MUJI) to create a unique fresh retail scene.
Innovation wins fresh food chain
If the fresh food chain retail competes with the public fresh food retail, it will be "hard for the strong dragon to defeat the local snake". Only the high-quality fresh food chain with high-quality products, brands and chains will have the opportunity. As representatives of boutique fresh food chain retail, Hema Fresh Food, Jingdong Seven Fresh Food and T11 need to grasp six points to win the market with high-value fresh food format:
1、 Establish chain brand system
Fresh food chains must raise their own value, promote their main brands with sub brands, highlight their value with quality, and experience premium brands. Branding is the cornerstone of survival and development, which can reap brand flow dividends, product pricing rights and price control rights, and enhance the ability to resist crises. Fresh food chain brand system includes enterprise brand, theme brand, concept brand, category brand (including private brand and joint brand), manufacturer brand, scene brand, technology brand and service brand. Category brands in product brands are crucial. Creating a special fresh food chain requires a special brand, which is an effective way to strengthen consumers' feelings and memories by basing itself on special categories and creating category brands. The store is endowed with special category identification and memory symbols, which can distinguish competitors, effectively promote repurchase, increase customer price, and solve the one-stop demand of consumers. Category brands can adopt diversified combinations of similar commodities or set up commodity combinations. For example, Hema's fresh hot pot and Dingdong Grand Slam are mainly hot pot products. For another example, the daily specialty prefabricated dishes brand of Daily Best Fresh, and the seven fresh food research room of JD Seven Fresh mainly promote baking products and card controlled meals.
2、 Ultimate optimization of product supply chain
The fresh food retail competition wins in the supply chain competition, which can reduce the cost, improve the supply chain efficiency and reduce the supply chain consumption. The supply chain is the foundation of the fresh food chain's differentiated competition, especially the ability of direct sourcing, processing, logistics, downstream reprocessing and warehouse distribution. The homogenization of the supply chain will lead to excessive competition to reduce the gross profit rate of fresh food, and the characteristics and personality of fresh food chain. Focus on the industrial belt, and compete with the ability of direct acquisition and "brand making" of landmark brands. In 2022, JD Seven Fresh Food will cover 50% of the national landmark brands, and cooperate with 21 provinces to produce more than 1636 landmark fresh products. The supply chain capacity of front warehouse mode and community group purchase also oppresses the fresh food chain. Every day, Youxian has nearly 200 direct harvesting bases of Youxian farms, about 350 Youxian factories, and more than 200 private brands enjoy peace of mind. Dingdong Food has built 350 fresh direct picking bases in more than 20 regions around the world, launched Dingdong Farm, and jointly launched co branded and customized products with manufacturers and brands. The main agricultural product brands that buy more vegetables are really fragrant, turning the 10 billion special subsidies for agricultural research into landmark brand orders, and working with China Post to build 150 agricultural product bases. Taocai adopts the agricultural aid model of direct supply and direct marketing, establishes Taocai direct mining base, and connects nearly 10000 agricultural product bases.
3、 Build quality lifestyle threshold
For the emerging middle class and the rich, creating a quality lifestyle is the advantage of fresh food chain. For example, Hema Xiansheng advocates "making cooking a kind of entertainment". Wal Mart, Metro, Costco, Carrefour, Hema X and other warehousing member stores all target the middle class, and membership cards become the exclusive lifestyle of petty bourgeoisie, middle class and urban upstarts. Therefore, fresh food chain retail brands should be synonymous with "food solutions". Creating a branded lifestyle should be based on specialization, and the categories should be professional, dedicated and attentive. It is difficult to achieve the role of diverting and solidifying flow with traditional commodity operation thinking such as multi win, explosive product thinking, low price promotion, etc. In terms of product selection, create menu based services to identify consumers' menu needs by scenario. The width and depth of categories are determined based on the commodity menu to prevent the omission of backbone categories, the deletion of key categories by mistake, and the selection of redundant categories by mistake. Personalized multi category commodity menu can be formulated according to the business type, type and scale of the store. For each category, focus on consumers' minds to define category roles, determine category width, depth and precision, and guide commodity development. There are not many commodities, and 1000-5000 SKUs are basically satisfied