Many consumers have recently received the push and tips from "Little Elephant Supermarket", which is very novel. In fact, "Elephant Supermarket" is not a pure new brand, but an upgrade of Meituan’s self-operated retail model "Meituan buys food".

From "grocery shopping" to "supermarket", it directly reflects the expansion of product categories, and also releases the signal of overweight instant retail. Not long ago, Meituan Flash Shopping, another model of Meituan’s instant retail, announced that it plans to have 30,000 stores with daily sales exceeding 10,000 yuan and 100 1 billion brands by 2026.

The real-time retail market has huge scale potential, attracting more enterprises to enter the market and overweight. Since 2023, in addition to Meituan, JD.COM has announced to focus on all categories, hourly speed and platformization in 2024, and Tik Tok App Mall has recently opened an independent entrance for hourly speed, which makes the competition on this track more intense.

Real-time retail is back.

Recently, when consumers open the Meituan App, they will receive the push and prompt of "Meituan buys food and upgrades Elephant Supermarket".

Regarding the reason for the name change, Meituan said that Meituan’s grocery shopping is more than "grocery shopping". This upgrade includes the name and brand logo, and the products distributed have also expanded from fresh to dairy products, drinks, snacks, personal care, department stores and other "everything". According to the person in charge of Xiaoxiang supermarket business, from "buying food" to "supermarket" is an intuitive embodiment of the continuous enrichment of Xiaoxiang supermarket products.

The Beijing News reporter noted that Elephant Supermarket has also added two categories, namely, Meituan Exclusive and YEATION. Under the Meituan Exclusive page, there are its own brands such as Elephant Chef, Elephant Optimization and Elephant Cost-effective. In addition, there are separate entrances for hot pot to home and bistro.

Elephant supermarket is not the only instant retail overweight action of Meituan in the near future.

In September, the 2023 Meituan Instant Retail Industry Conference revealed that in the past four quarters, the size of Meituan’s flash purchase has reached 175 billion yuan. By 2026, Meituan Flash Shopping will produce 30,000 stores with daily sales exceeding 10,000 yuan and 100 billion brands. Meituan’s flash purchase mainly adopts the mode of cooperation with retail brands and local businesses. The distribution covers nearly 3,000 counties and cities nationwide, and the performance is 24 hours. According to the financial report, in the third quarter of 2023, Meituan Flash Shopping has established cooperative relations with nearly 400 retail brands. The number of active businesses increased by 30% year-on-year, and the peak daily order volume exceeded 13 million orders.

In addition, Meituan recently released a new round of talent development and promotion list in 2023, and five managers were promoted to the company’s vice president, including Xiao Kun, head of the flash shopping business department, and Zhang Jing, head of the grocery shopping business department. This is the most important management promotion of Meituan in recent two years.

Zhuang Shuai, an expert in retail e-commerce industry and founder of Bailian Consulting, analyzed the Beijing News reporter. Meituan’s self-operated front warehouse mainly aims at improving the quality and user experience of fresh products. Renaming it "Xiaoxiang Supermarket" is based on the growth and profit demand of expanded products. The self-operated front warehouse is more autonomous in terms of inventory depth and product selection, and can also develop customized products to complement the open platform. "Instant retailing is already the second growth curve of Meituan".

A lively track

The instant retail track is growing rapidly. According to the Report on the Development of Instant Retail Industry released this year by the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, in recent years, instant retail has maintained an average annual growth rate of more than 50%. In 2022, the market size of instant retail reached 504.286 billion yuan, and it is estimated that the market size will increase by three times in 2025 compared with 2022.

This track has also received policy support. In February this year, the Opinions of the State Council City, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Doing a Good Job in Promoting Rural Revitalization in 2023 pointed out that "the construction of county-level commercial system should be comprehensively promoted, and new modes such as joint distribution and instant retail should be vigorously developed". This is the first time that the Central Document No.1 mentioned instant retailing. On September 21, the Ministry of Commerce said at a regular press conference that it would promote the healthy development of new consumption formats and new models such as instant retail, live e-commerce and social e-commerce.

The Beijing News reporter found that the real-time retail track in 2023 was more crowded, and many e-commerce platforms added code or entered the track.

According to public reports, in March this year, Taobao released a notice about adding the "hourly service specification of Taobao", which showed that Taobao planned to add the "hourly service specification", and the rule will take effect on March 31.

In September this year, JD.COM released the strategy for 2024, which mentioned that it would focus on all categories, hourly service and platformization, and the number of users of hourly service in JD.COM would increase by over 50% within three years.

After expanding the "group purchase and distribution" project at the beginning of this year, Tik Tok opened the independent entrance of "Hours" in Tik Tok App Mall. A few days ago, Tik Tok affiliated company Beijing Jingzitiao Network Technology Co., Ltd. applied for registration of several trademarks of "Tik Tok Instant Retail" and "Tik Tok Hours Da", which was also interpreted as competing with the instant retail business platforms such as Meituan Flash Shopping Service and JD.COM Hours Da.

The platform model has broad prospects.

Before the instant retail track was hot, the fresh track had experienced a wave of hot battles and elimination shuffling. In 2021, Tongcheng Life went bankrupt, the reorganization of the radish failed, and Baoneng Fresh Store closed in many cities. In 2022, every day, Youxian fell into the storm of withdrawal from the city, default on payment, delisting, etc., and Xingsheng preferred to withdraw from Shanxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hebei and Anhui provinces one after another.

Lai Yang, a member of the Expert Committee of China Business Federation and executive vice president of Beijing Business Economics Association, said in an interview with the Beijing News reporter that it is difficult to operate fresh food, which requires not only professional knowledge and experience accumulation, but also strong operational ability to do a good job in cold chain logistics and procurement. The gross profit margin of this industry is not high, but the cost and loss rate are high. "Fresh food management is a low-profit industry, but if it is not done well, every loss will result in huge losses."

Compared with the fresh food industry, the instant retail track expands the products from fresh food to multiple categories, especially the standard products of goods account for a higher proportion, which helps to balance the shortcomings of large fresh food loss and thin profits. According to the agency research report released by Anxin International in October this year, Meituan has more than 450 direct suppliers and more than 1,000 cooperative brands. From the perspective of category structure, Meituan’s fresh food category accounts for about 30%, which is close to Pupu supermarket, while Dingdong’s food category accounts for 50%-60%.

In addition, from the current entrants to the instant retail track, the platform modes include Meituan Flash Shopping, Hungry, JD.COM Arriving Home, Taoxianda, etc. The main players in the self-operated mode include Meituan Shopping, Dingdong Shopping, Boxma Xiansheng, Pupu Supermarket, etc., mostly from more mature e-commerce.

It can also be seen from the financial report data released by some platforms that the instant retail business is showing an upward trend. Among them, Meituan data shows that as of the end of the third quarter of this year, the total order volume of Meituan instant delivery, including food and beverage take-out and Meituan flash purchase, reached 6.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 23%. In the third quarter of 2023, Ding Dong realized a revenue of 5.14 billion yuan, up 6.2% from the previous quarter, and made a profit under Non-GAAP for four consecutive quarters.

The increase of players will inevitably increase the intensity of competition. Whether it is a self-operated pre-warehouse, a warehouse-store integration, a platform model, and a real-time retail track with a hundred flowers, it will also present more opportunities and innovations. However, from the data of each family, Zhuang Shuai believes that the pre-warehouse model can achieve profitability in first-and second-tier cities; The cost of warehouse-store integration is too high, and the profit pressure is still great; The platform model can achieve profitability and cover more market areas, with the broadest prospects.

For the future of instant retail track, Du Guochen, deputy director of the E-commerce Research Institute of the International Trade and Economic Cooperation Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, once said that in the future, instant retail will present all-weather consumption, all-scene penetration, all-category innovation, all-geographical coverage, full supply chain management and digitalization of the whole process. This also means that the development of instant retail needs a more perfect distribution system, digital management system and digital solution services, which may be more advantageous for a platform with rich experience in take-away business.

Beijing News reporter Qin Shengnan

Editor Li Yan

Proofread Chen Biyan