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抖音外卖新动作!“随心团”模式缝合到店与配送

New move for Douyin takeout! The "heartwarming group" model seamlessly integrates dining in and delivery.

cls.cn ·  Oct 30, 2024 23:21

①The Douyin food delivery business was established in 2023. ②Starting from November 1, 2024, the Douyin platform will upgrade the original 'group buying delivery' business to 'Heartfelt Group', and the upgraded group purchase coupons will support both offline in-store and online takeaway redemption.

CLC|New Consumer Daily News October 30th (Researcher Liang Youyun), according to media reports, Douyin has once again adjusted its offline delivery business. Starting from November 1, 2024, the Douyin platform will upgrade the original 'group buying delivery' business to 'Heartfelt Group', and the upgraded group purchase coupons will support both offline in-store and online takeaway redemption, further combining takeaway business with the larger offline group buying traffic.

In addition, with the business transition, 'group buying delivery' will no longer support new products or new merchants, and will refund consumers who have placed orders in batches. As of now, 'Heartfelt Group' has been opened to some chain brands.

The Douyin food delivery business, established in 2023, is in an awkward situation. Data shows that Douyin's food delivery business was originally part of the local life business, an important branch of this sector, and started trial operations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu in February 2023. The platform provides display entrances and traffic support, while the specific delivery services are handled by merchants themselves or by inviting third-party suppliers such as SF Tongcheng, Shansong, Dada, etc., leveraging the strengths of multiple parties.

Initially, this feature was supported by providing takeaway ordering links in grass-rooted short videos. Other than that, you need to search for 'takeaway' on Douyin to find businesses that support takeout. Most early merchants targeted the huge traffic entrances of Douyin to boost store sales.

In 2023, Douyin's food delivery service gradually expanded to over 30 cities nationwide. Douyin's local life business has developed over 150 regional agents, covering more than 370 cities, with over 2 million cooperating stores, including many in lower-tier county markets. Additionally, Douyin has partnered with Ele.me, attempting to form a united front in the takeaway market.

However, Douyin's series of actions in the local life fields such as food delivery and group buying have triggered a 'counterattack' from Meituan.

In early 2023, Meituan officially upgraded its previous exploration of live streaming takeaway to an important marketing strategy, with official live sales of takeaway group coupons, aiming to drive a growth in platform takeaway orders with large subsidy coupons. This move has attracted widespread attention within the industry and among consumers. In 2024, Meituan introduced the low stock price 'Splice Good Rice' model, driving a significant increase in platform takeaway orders, consolidating platform activity and user base.

Douyin takeaway failed to continue the previous momentum. According to reports, after the promotion of Douyin takeaway in 2023, based on the prosperity of the local life business, the platform once set its business transaction scale target at 100 billion yuan, with high expectations. However, to achieve this goal in a short period of time, Douyin takeaway still has a long way to go in terms of market awareness, fulfillment capability, and the scale of merchant partnerships, leading to no further cooperation with Ele.me.

By the second half of 2023, due to daily takeaway orders hovering around tens of thousands for a long time, Douyin reluctantly changed its annual development target to 5 billion yuan, focusing its business on higher average order value (above 60 yuan) meal sets, avoiding direct competition with other takeaway platforms.

Unable to break through the bottleneck of order and fulfillment delivery growth, internally the platform is also cautious about its promotional investment, making Douyin takeaway an awkward sector within the rapidly expanding local life business. In this situation, the presence of Douyin takeaway continues to decline, until early 2024 when the platform transferred it from local life to e-commerce. In June of this year, Douyin takeaway was adjusted to serve "hourly delivery" and other local retail distribution.

Currently, the performance of the 'Food Delivery' entrance in the 'hourly delivery' channel of Douyin Mall is not optimistic. It not only lacks content related to recommendations, local life connectivity, and traffic introduction, requiring more steps to find the entrance, but also does not align with the quick decision-making and ordering logic of food delivery. Months later, the 'Food Delivery' entrance was removed, once again putting the delivery business in an awkward position.

It is worth noting that Douyin's attempt to drive the progress of takeaway through e-commerce is also facing difficulties. In August of this year, Douyin decided to 'take back' the takeaway business to the local life sector. As the takeaway business returns, Douyin once again needs to consider how to organically integrate takeaway with local in-store consumption, fully leveraging the synergistic effects of both sides.

Currently, the 'Sui Xin Tuan,' which simultaneously serves in-store and takeaway services, seems to be the current 'best solution,' but it still faces challenges such as the need for active searching, unclear distinction between in-store and takeaway displays, and difficulties in coordinating peak third-party delivery capacities, posing complex challenges for consumers, merchants, and the platform.

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