Article | Radar Finance, Author | Zhang Kaijing, Editor | Deep Sea
Following the rider’s job security issue has received widespread attention, the takeaway business has recently been pushed to the forefront of the trend by public opinion because of the platform’s high commission for merchants.
On February 18, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 14 departments mentioned in the "Several Policies on Promoting the Recovery and Development of Difficult Industries in the Service Sector" (hereinafter referred to as the "Policies") issued that they would guide Internet platform companies such as food delivery to further reduce the service fee standards of catering businesses. As soon as the news came out, Meituan’s share price plummeted 14.86% that day, and its market value evaporated by more than 200 billion Hong Kong dollars.
In the eyes of investors, this is undoubtedly bad news for Meituan. In the third quarter of 2021, Meituan’s catering and takeaway section brought the company 26.484 billion yuan in revenue, of which the commission was 23.222 billion yuan, but the overall net profit of this part of the business was only 876 million yuan, which is still in the case of commission rates as high as 20% or more. If the commission is reduced and the cost of riders increases, Meituan’s "old business" takeaway business is very likely to become a loss-making business.
However, Meituan still responded to the call of the "Policy". On March 1, Meituan released commission preferential measures, including a halving of technical service fees (commissions) for small and medium-sized merchants in difficulty, and a 5% cap on technical service fees for difficult merchants who complete rate transparency. In addition, Ele.me also launched some assistance measures.
Will this be a good remedy to unblock the dilemma in the catering industry?
Two years ago, a sudden epidemic caused the entire catering industry to undergo earth-shaking changes. At that time, Jia Guolong, the founder of Xibei, once revealed in an interview with the media that the company’s predicament of "even if the loan is paid, it will not last for three months", revealing the tip of the iceberg of the catering industry crisis.
Although the follow-up relies on strict prevention and control, our country has successfully achieved the dynamic clearing of the epidemic, but this protracted war continues to this day.
Since 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has occurred from time to time in various places, especially in medium and high-risk areas. The passenger flow of catering merchants has decreased, and the operating performance has been greatly impacted. Since the beginning of 2022, HEYTEA, Wenheyou have laid off employees, and Haidilao has suffered its first annual loss. The industry situation is still not optimistic.
It is worth noting that catering companies that have been greatly discounted on the income side are also facing rising costs. According to incomplete statistics, in two months in 2021, there were price increases in more than 40 companies in the raw materials field of the catering industry, from condiments to quick-frozen food.
When this pressure is transmitted to the downstream, leading brands with strong bargaining power such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chayan Yuese, and Helen’s can respond by raising prices, but small and medium-sized catering enterprises cannot afford it.
Qichacha data shows that in 2021, a total of 1 million domestic catering-related stores were cancelled, including nearly 400,000 fast food restaurants, nearly 100,000 hot pot restaurants, and nearly 350,000 milk tea shops.
In this context, the food delivery industry, which has ushered in rapid growth in the epidemic, has become a breakthrough for the catering industry to solve the problem. According to the "2020-2021 China Food Delivery Industry Development Research Report" released by Alibaba New Service Research Center and China Hotel Association, China’s food and beverage revenue fell for the first time in nearly a decade in 2020, while the online food delivery market grew by 15% year-on-year during the same period.
In the first half of 2020, catering associations across the country, including Chongqing, Hebei, Yunnan, Shandong, and Guangdong, issued "Proposal Letters" and "Proposal Letters" calling for Meituan takeout to reduce commission rates.
Among them, the Guangdong Catering Association pointed out that the high takeaway commissions charged by Meituan Takeaway to catering companies have exceeded the limits of catering companies, and Meituan Takeaway has a share of 60-90% in the Guangdong catering takeaway market. At the same time, the association also mentioned that Meituan newly opened catering merchants receive commissions of up to 26%.
However, according to Meituan’s financial report, the company’s commission income in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the whole year increased by 36.5% and 18% year-on-year respectively, larger than the 33.0% and 16.5% increases in the company’s order volume during the same period. This means that the company’s average commission income per order is increasing. From this point of view alone, Meituan does not seem to have responded to the call of merchants.
Under the resentment of merchants, in March 2021, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 28 departments and units mentioned in the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Cultivation of New Consumption" that it is necessary to guide online platforms such as takeout to rationally optimize the use of platform management by small and medium-sized enterprises, merchants and individuals. Commission and other expenses, and use technology to empower operators to reduce costs and increase efficiency within the platform.
Two months later, Meituan announced a transparent reform of merchant rates, transforming the extensive one-size-fits-all charging method into sub-item and step-by-step charging. When merchants choose Meituan for delivery, they only charge the "starting price" within 3 kilometers, and the price and distance of 20 yuan and more than 3 kilometers are "measured".
However, this modification did not gain wide acceptance.
CITIC Securities Research Report once analyzed this, saying that in fact, the final commission rate corresponding to different customer unit prices and distances has shown an upward trend after modification. For merchants with low customer unit prices and long distances, the commission increase can reach up to 50%.
Following this line of thinking, some people believe that Meituan’s new policy will allow merchants to increase the unit price of customers in order to increase profits, transferring the cost to users, resulting in more and more expensive takeout; and this move can also reshuffle small-scale unprofitable merchants, leaving high-priced merchants.
Therefore, on February 18 this year, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 14 ministries and commissions made it clear in the "Policy" that they would guide takeaway platform enterprises to reduce commission rates and give phased merchant service fee discounts.
Subsequently, Meituan and Ele.me successively launched assistance measures and expressed their intention to work with small and medium-sized merchants in trouble to overcome the difficulties.
Meituan’s six assistance measures can be divided into two aspects: cost reduction and revenue increase.
In terms of cost reduction, Meituan said that it will halve the technical service fee (commission) for small and medium-sized merchants in difficult areas in the middle and high-risk areas of the epidemic and their districts and counties (the average daily paid transaction volume of users has dropped by more than 30%), and cap each order at 1 yuan after the halving. The effective time of this measure is from the date when the local area is listed as a medium and high-risk area to 1 month after the lifting of the seal control.
In addition, the data shows that in February 2022, the number of merchants with a takeaway transaction volume of less than 5,000 yuan has expanded to 540,000. For difficult merchants who complete the transparency of the rate, Meituan takeaway will evaluate the operation status and the degree of difficulty, and implement a technical service fee (commission) capped at 5%. The preferential time is from March 2022 to the end of December 2022, which is expected to benefit more than 1 million merchants. For merchants who are mainly in takeaway business and are particularly difficult, Meituan takeaway will also provide designated assistance.
Meituan revealed that the current rate transparency has covered 70% of the country’s merchants, and small and medium-sized merchants have benefited more significantly.
In terms of revenue increase, Meituan said that in 2021, the company has launched the "takeaway butler service", which will be delivered by a special person to teach merchants to open online stores. In 2022, the company will provide 100,000 free "takeaway butler service" places for small and medium-sized merchants in difficulty, and will provide free takeaway cloud printers for small and medium-sized merchants in epidemic high-risk areas. It will give 30,000 food treasures to small and medium-sized merchants in difficulty across the country to help merchants bring more orders and improve business efficiency.
After the measures were introduced, some people believed that it would significantly reduce Meituan’s commission income, but others pointed out that Meituan’s move to reduce commissions would not have as great an impact on the company as imagined.
As mentioned above, after a new round of adjustment in May 2021, the new calculation method of Meituan takeaway merchant service fee is technical service fee + performance service fee. The former is the "commission" officially indicated by the platform, while the latter is basically equivalent to the distance service fee. If the merchant chooses to deliver by himself, he does not need to pay.
In this adjustment, Meituan mainly limited the technical service fee. However, Radar Finance noticed that many merchants on the social media platform pointed out that after Meituan implemented the new rate regulations, the performance service fee was the "big head".
As the screenshot posted by Xiao Huang shows, the technical service fee rate in the old regulations was 7.5%, and the proportion in the new regulations was changed to 5.8%. At the same time, the distance charge has been increased on the original basis. This makes an order that customers actually paid 22.88 yuan only 9.69 yuan distributed to merchants, of which the technical service fee, the performance service fee and the merchant activity expenditure were deducted 1.04 yuan, 7.15 yuan and 11.92 yuan respectively.
In February this year, a small merchant in Chengdu revealed in an interview with the media that the commission ratio shown in the column of technical service fees has dropped from 20% to 6.2% now, but the platform will still pick up the ante from other places.
The merchant gave an example of an order for Meituan takeaway that day. The customer actually paid 27.36 yuan, the technical service fee was 1.51 yuan, the performance service fee was 3.55 yuan, and the environmental protection donation was 0.02 yuan. According to Meituan, if these two parts are taken out, Xu Gang should have received 22.28 yuan, but the background of Meituan takeaway shows that he actually received 19.24 yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the price difference in the middle is 3.04 yuan, which is exactly the same as the delivery fee. If the amount is calculated as "delivery fee + technical service fee + performance service fee", the amount taken by the platform in this order accounts for 29.7%, even higher than the previous fixed rate of 20%.
In addition, the details of the technical service fee displayed by Meituan show that it includes the merchant’s information display service, but several merchants said in interviews that the promotion fee is not included in the commission. "The promotion fee is recharged to the account and is only used when it needs to be promoted." This means that merchants have to pay an additional fee if they want to get traffic promotion and increase the exposure of their stores.
Although merchants are complaining, according to the financial data disclosed by Meituan, the company has limited room for decline in takeaway commissions.
In response to a letter of representation from the Guangdong Catering Association, Meituan said that 80% of her commission income was used to pay riders’ salaries. And the data is also close to this claim.
In 2020, a total of 9.50 million takeaway riders increased their income through the Meituan platform, and Meituan spent as much as 48.692 billion yuan on food and beverage riders. In comparison, Meituan’s total revenue was 114.795 billion yuan, and the commission income brought by the food and beverage takeaway business was 58.592 billion yuan.
But 80% may not be the limit. In 2021, various policies and trends show that the social security issue of takeaway riders is receiving more and more attention from regulators. For example, in July 2021, the State Administration for Market Supervision and other seven departments jointly issued the "Opinions", which set out requirements for seven aspects such as the labor income and social security of takeaway deliverymen.
How much money does Meituan have to pay for social security for nearly 10 million riders? Radar Finance once calculated in the article "Over one million Meituan Ele.me takeaway riders have been forced to become the" boss ", with a conservative calculation of 500 yuan/month, Meituan or a third-party partner needs to bear a monthly social security fee of up to 950 million yuan, and a year is 11.40 billion yuan.
Some industry experts have pointed out that with the further increase in rider costs, Meituan has little room to reduce commissions.
From the data point of view, in the third quarter of 2021, Meituan’s total revenue of food takeaway business was 26.485 billion yuan, but the operating profit was only 876 million yuan, the average profit per order was 0.22 yuan, and the operating profit margin had dropped to 3.3%.
On this basis, Meituan also has to consider the cash flow problem of developing new businesses. At present, the company’s other new businesses except takeaway and to-the-shop wine hotels are in a period of burning money and cultivation, and there is no obvious profit signal. In the third quarter of 2021, the operating loss of new businesses and other divisions has expanded to 10.90 billion yuan. At this time, the cash flow of takeaway business, which has long brought the most revenue to the company, has dropped sharply, which is bound to bring a lot of pressure to the new business end.
However, Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, told Radar Finance that while reducing commissions will put pressure on Meituan’s costs in the short term, in the long run, Meituan’s efforts to improve its ecology will help attract more people and merchants to enter its ecosystem, thereby enhancing Meituan’s value.
After the commission rate for takeout is reduced, can merchants’ profits be improved immediately?
Analysts point out that things may not go as smoothly as imagined. Judging from the past situation, the catering industry has the "three highs" saying that the cost of rent, raw materials and labor accounts for 30%, 40% and 30% respectively. The "roots" of most merchants in the market are still in the offline entity.
"For dine-in merchants, takeaway is an incremental business. Without takeaway business, you have to pay a penny for rent, labor, and raw materials," said a merchant from Sichuan.
Deloitte China related research report shows that after the epidemic broke out, most of the surveyed companies mentioned the pressure on rents and wanted to reduce rents.
"For the catering industry, it is true that the cost of raw materials and rent is very high. Meituan’s approach is helpful, but this help is limited to the takeaway market. The key depends on the catering enterprise’s own operating ability and operating conditions." Jiang Han pointed out.
