Xindong Takeaway franchise phone number, can “Xindong Takeaway” stimulate ByteDance’s ambition?

On July 14, according to Tech Planet, ByteDance's Douyin recently established a team for food delivery business and recently conducted tests within the Douyin App. Currently, Douyin’s food delivery business is called “Heart-beating Food Delivery” and its slogan is “ Heart-beating Food Delivery , Eat What You Love”. Although this is not the first time that ByteDance has "taken action" in the food delivery industry, as early as March 2020, Douyin launched the "Douyin Group Buying" function, which was later renamed "Same City Group Buying". At that time, the logistics and distribution were interpreted by the outside world as ByteDance's first attempt to enter the food delivery industry. However, it was Xindong Takeaway that clearly released its determination to develop the food delivery business, which means that it will face off against Meituan and Ele.me head-on.

Before the food delivery business, ByteDance had also made frequent moves in the new consumption field. In mid-June, ByteDance participated in the investment in the boutique coffee brand Manner. Half a month later, it invested in Li Ziqi's signed company Weinian Technology. In addition, in the first half of the year alone, ByteDance successively invested in the hot pot supermarket chain Lazy Bear Hotpot, the emerging soda brand Kongka, the light meal brand Shark Fit, the coffee chain brand Manner and the well-known oral care brand NYSCPS.

There is a reason behind every action, and there is an essence behind every phenomenon. When we see ByteDance's accelerated expansion in the past year, we need to consider what it wants from the seemingly irregular new consumer track to the targeted food delivery business? Where is the confidence behind its ambition and what is the future?

Attack from all sides: scattered in form but not in spirit

01. Invest in new consumption

According to data from Qiming Technology, ByteDance's Strategic Investment Department invested in 38 external projects in 2020. Since 2021, it has invested in 37 projects, including at least 11 related to new consumption. In fact, ByteDance began to pay attention to the new consumer sector in 2017, when it invested in Elvis Radio. However, it was not until after 2020 that it began to make real moves, with frequent investments, especially this year.

Let’s take a look at several representative companies to get a glimpse into ByteDance’s investment logic. Not to mention Li Ziqi's Weinian, in early July, ByteDance's Quantum Beat also invested in Hunan Sanfa Catering, holding over 10% of the shares. The latter's main product is "Ningji" hand-made lemon tea. It currently has about 20 stores and plans to expand to 100 stores within the year; Lazy Bear Hotpot, which has received two rounds of investment from ByteDance, is a community chain of fresh food convenience stores that provides hot pot ingredients, Chinese food ready-made, semi-finished products, barbecue, fresh ingredients, etc. It has more than 1,100 stores to date; in addition, ByteDance also led the RMB 100 million B round of financing for the light meal brand Shark Fit and a new round of financing for the emerging soda wine brand Kongka. Whether it is tea drinks represented by coffee and milk tea, or fast food and light meals represented by internet celebrity products such as Liziqi, Lazy Bear Hotpot, and Shark Fit, these are areas where ByteDance generously donates.

In the new consumption landscape, ByteDance clearly prefers start-ups, making early investments in the angel and A rounds. Only a few entered after the B round, and all of them are popular players in popular tracks. In terms of user groups, ByteDance also prefers a younger customer base. By joining hands with internet celebrity brands, it can not only create popular products for its own e-commerce, but also learn the operating logic of internet celebrity brands. For these brands, relying on the huge traffic pool of Douyin is a win-win choice.

02. Layout of home life

In addition to new types of food, drink and entertainment consumption, ByteDance has also not let go of the lifestyle consumption of young people, especially those related to home life.

Yunjing Intelligent, which focuses on sweeping robots, is one of the most eye-catching brands in the home furnishing category that has risen strongly in recent years. This rising star received another investment from ByteDance at the beginning of this year. In March 2020, ByteDance led the A round of investment. In 2020, online sales of sweeping robots reached 8.96 billion yuan, expanding rapidly. As the first tier, Yunjing’s post-investment valuation in the new round of financing is 6.5 billion. According to Latepost, at the beginning of 2021, there was fierce competition for investment in Yunjing. Another leading fund, which was also an old shareholder, also intended to participate in the investment, but ultimately failed to grab a share.

ByteDance also invested in the angel round of smart home brand Miaodoudou, a project led by Ma Xuejun, former president of Alibaba's City Life Division and initiator of the Tmall Supermarket project, who is said to be aiming to create an "upgraded version of IKEA."

Of course, it is also worth mentioning that in March this year, ByteDance participated in the investment in the oral care brand NYSCPS, holding a 7.8% stake. At that time, the brand valuation had reached 800 million yuan. Canban’s oral care products were launched in October 2020. Its product “Canbanle Probiotic Mouthwash” had sales exceeding 100 million yuan within 80 days of its launch, ranking first in the oral care industry on platforms such as Taobao Tmall and Pinduoduo.

03. Advance into the food delivery business

There are many large Internet companies eyeing the food delivery pie. After all, this is still a business with room for imagination. According to the "2020-2021 China Food Delivery Industry Development Research Report" jointly released by the China Hotel Association and Ele.me, affected by the epidemic in 2020, the scale of China's online food delivery market reached 664.62 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Although Meituan is still the leader in the food delivery business, ByteDance has demonstrated its ambition and determination through actions.

Last year, Douyin cooperated with Ele.me and Meituan, allowing them to put their respective takeaway ordering links on Douyin personal homepages, allowing users to order takeout directly on Douyin. As for the "Xindong Takeaway" that the news leaked this time, according to sources, it is highly likely that it will invite catering merchants within Douyin to settle in, and the merchants will provide delivery services independently. It is also not ruled out that it will become an aggregated takeaway platform and cooperate with Ele.me or Meituan to divert takeaway business.

It is reported that Xindong Takeaway will first open in first- and second-tier cities, and then gradually expand to cities across the country. This is also because the consumption demand and user volume of food delivery in first- and second-tier cities are much higher than those in the lower-tier markets. As it is still in the testing phase, some functions of "Xindong Takeaway" are temporarily unknown. A person close to Douyin told Tech Planet that "Xindong Takeaway" is more like a takeaway platform with an aggregation model, which is similar to Douyin's "Mangkhut Travel" in tourism. It directly converts transactions for takeaway merchants nearby in the same city, realizing truly local life services.

ByteDance is not about investment, but about local life

From a broader perspective, new consumption is at the forefront of investment. Not only ByteDance, but other giants have also been quite fond of new consumption in recent years. According to the data from the "Panoramic Map of Investment Institutions and Invested Tracks in the New Consumption Field in 2020" released by Morketing Research Institute, in 2020 alone, 191 investors invested 357 times in 149 brands (excluding platforms, services, channels, etc., most of which are disclosed investor brands in physical consumer brands) in the three major tracks of new consumption, including food and beverages, lifestyle, and beauty. Among them, investors invested 187 times in the food and beverage track, 86 times in the lifestyle track, and 84 times in the beauty track.

For ByteDance, investing in new consumption and focusing on food delivery is an important step in completing its local life map. Data shows that from 2014 to 2018, the scale of China's local life comprehensive service market has been expanding at an astonishing annual compound growth rate of 41.3%. It is estimated that the market size will reach 2.8 trillion yuan in 2024. According to the latest statistics from iResearch Consulting, in this huge trillion-yuan market, the penetration rate of life services is only 12.7%. This means that in the race for deep penetration, whoever can take the lead will be able to gain greater value.

According to LatePost, in December 2020, ByteDance established a "Local Direct Business Center" to specifically expand local life businesses. The team size is as high as 10,000 people, focusing on catering, cultural tourism and life services. ByteDance has set a KPI for this business to achieve an annual GMV of 20 billion yuan. In March this year, the business only achieved a GMV of about 40 million yuan, which is two orders of magnitude short of the above target.

Prior to this, ByteDance had already started relevant research on the local life business architecture. In fact, this was a chess game that had been laid out three years ago.

In mid-2018, Douyin established a very luxurious POI team. The so-called POI, which stands for Point Of Interest, is a type of geographic positioning, which is presented as a positioning icon in short videos. Douyin's corporate users can attach the POI of their own store when posting videos, making it easier for users to "shop". Subsequently, Douyin added two new functions for enterprise accounts: private messaging and POI details page. On the POI details page, merchants can recommend products, coupons, store event information, etc. to users.

In March 2020, Douyin Enterprise Account was upgraded and a group-buying function was introduced; in June, ByteDance’s Xingtu platform launched the expert store exploration mission; then a series of actions were carried out in full swing - hotel reservation and ticket reservation buttons were launched on the Douyin Enterprise Account page; activities such as Heart-beating Restaurants and City Big Players were launched, covering thousands of catering businesses in multiple cities, encouraging users to shoot store exploration videos, etc., and also launched a list... all centered around local life.

It was not until the beginning of this year that Douyin began internal testing of group buying, targeting Meituan. Douyin is well prepared and has already opened up search and payment businesses that are strongly related to local life businesses. Local life is inseparable from active search. Just last month, Zhang Nan, CEO of Beijing ByteDance, revealed that the number of monthly active users of Douyin video search has exceeded 550 million. At the beginning of the year, Douyin payment was also officially launched.

As the Internet continues to penetrate into local life services and consumers' life needs and consumption requirements continue to rise, only by seizing the initiative, optimizing services, and focusing on experience can we share market dividends and form an advantageous position. ByteDance is investing in new consumer brands and developing local life businesses, forming a complete link with Douyin's localized intelligent push, channels and e-commerce. Perhaps the local life business can form a truly closed loop.

Each contestant has his own unique strategy. Can ByteDance win?

Looking at the leading companies that have established a firm foothold in the local comprehensive life service market, they are all accelerating the pace of empowerment.

Meituan, which has been committed to expanding its services from "nothing" to "something" and then to "more", has been deeply engaged in local services for many years. From its acquisition of Dianping in 2015 to the launch of a full range of local life services, Meituan achieved annual revenue of 97.5 billion yuan in 2019, and its net profit in the second quarter of 2020 increased by more than 150% year-on-year.

Later this year, Alibaba Local Life held the "2020 Merchant Conference" and announced the launch of "seven empowerments", including bringing more than 100 million visitors to merchants every day and serving 5,000 local life merchants to open Tmall flagship stores, to achieve retail e-commerce access and accelerate store operations in the local life service market.

Baidu also launched a service center this year, covering various areas such as convenient life, food, entertainment, travel and transportation, benchmarking against Meituan and Alipay, to achieve a "meeting" between the giants in local life business. Baidu's big moves in the field of local life services caused its stock price to rise by about 25.6 billion yuan in 6 days.

Faced with various tricks from various players, ByteDance’s first card played was “price”. Compared with Meituan, Douyin has a lower entry threshold and commission. Meituan merchants need to pay a certification fee of 1,800 yuan, and if they launch group buying packages, they need to pay 5-10% of the transaction amount of each order. Douyin group buying only requires merchants to register users and pay 600 yuan to register and certify a corporate account, and there is no commission on transactions. Merchants have room to give bigger discounts, so at present, 20% to 40% of the original price is the common price for Douyin group buying.

However, this method is currently more suitable for businesses that have low overall scores on Dianping or have just opened and hope to attract traffic. It is not applicable to businesses that already have a solid position in Meituan. In other words, given the current situation of Douyin, it is still difficult to shake Meituan's position in the local life business. As for the food delivery business other than group buying, Douyin's advantage lies in its more dynamic short videos and huge online traffic pool. Meituan’s barrier lies in its years of offline data accumulation and its mature network delivery and fulfillment capabilities with 5 million riders.

ByteDance still faces considerable challenges in getting a piece of the pie in local services. Unlike Meituan's proactive purchases, Douyin short videos are random, and users passively see restaurant information. Conversion rate is also one of the biggest problems facing Douyin.

Although catering accounts for a large proportion of local life service business, it is a risky business. There is no shortage of cases in history where catering was popular for a while and then disappeared. It is still difficult for ByteDance to grab this business at the moment. Not to mention that Meituan's position in local life after years of deep cultivation is still difficult to shake, even Alibaba, JD.com, Baidu and even Kuaishou are sharpening their knives and are ready to move. However, although the impact has not been achieved, the water in the pool has been stirred. It is still worth looking forward to what ByteDance, which claims that "no one on earth can stop its expansion", will do next.