After working as a food delivery agent on JD.com for half a month, Meituan’s orders exploded

It has been two weeks since JD Takeout was launched, but this highly anticipated battle for "quality takeout" has taken an unexpected turn.

On the one hand, merchants who have settled in JD Takeout have found that although JD has few orders, the order volume of Meituan and Ele.me has unexpectedly increased. JD seems to have become a "traffic diversion tool" for other platforms.

On the other hand, JD.com’s food delivery merchant-side system has frequent loopholes, and merchants face numerous obstacles from registration to menu setting.

At the same time, although the "0 commission" policy attracts attention, in actual operations, the problem of converting merchants' orders remains prominent, and the instability of the ground sales team also exacerbates the anxiety of merchants.

It has been exactly two weeks since JD Takeout went online.

This battle, which is seen by the outside world as "disrupting the food delivery industry", is undergoing some subtle twists and turns.

The earliest batch of merchants to settle in JD.com found that the JD.com stores they carefully maintained had few orders, but the order volume in the backends of Meituan and Ele.me showed an unexpected increase.

"My boss called me and asked me how JD.com was doing. I said orders didn't increase, but the traffic on Meituan's backend suddenly increased." A person in charge of a chain restaurant brand said helplessly that JD.com's food delivery business, with the slogan of "breaking through with quality", requires merchants to have dine-in services, have a score of 3.8 or above, and promises delivery within 30 minutes.

This screening logic accurately targets mid- to high-end users, but it also triggers a tricky chain reaction - after consumers screen out high-quality merchants on JD.com, they turn to Meituan to compare prices and use red envelopes to complete transactions. The high-quality positioning of JD.com's food delivery has instead become a "traffic diversion tool" for other platforms.

Consumer Wu Jia made a direct comparison: "I found a Japanese restaurant on JD.com that I had not noticed before, and then I went to Meituan to search for the same item. As a result, not only was the delivery fee waived, but it was also 20 yuan cheaper." This phenomenon is not an isolated case. According to a field survey by New Eyes, after JD.com's food delivery service was launched, the search volume for high-rated merchants on Meituan and Ele.me increased, while the order volume of some chain brands on other platforms increased instead of decreasing.

In the eyes of most merchants, behind this seemingly "making wedding dresses for others" blunder, there is also the reality that has gradually emerged in the process of JD.com testing new businesses: compared with the high-profile marketing and new customer acquisition in the past half month, a series of problems have followed, such as the improvement of merchant-side systems, follow-up of ground promotion and operations, as well as user pages, promotional activities, and the formulation of merchant policies.

The first stage of opening a card: system difficulties on the merchant side

"The menu bar was grey and there was no response after clicking for a long time." Chen Lei still remembers the embarrassment she faced on the first day.

As the first batch of catering merchants to sign the contract, they prepared pictures of dishes, pricing strategies, and even redid the brand packaging two weeks in advance. But no one expected that from the moment they signed their names on the contract, what awaited them first was not traffic dividends, but a repeated game with the system.

System vulnerabilities on the JD Takeout merchant side broke out in the first week of its launch.

Among the large number of catering merchants that flooded into the platform at the beginning of its launch, most reported that they encountered "system incompatibility syndrome." From the registration stage, merchants were stuck in layers of obstacles: basic information was repeatedly reviewed but difficult to pass, business licenses could not be uploaded due to system bugs, and invitation codes became a scarce resource... Even if they tried their best to jump over these obstacles, the real challenge had just begun.

On Xiaohongshu, there are nearly 5,000 notes on "how to set up the JD Takeaway menu". Countless merchants who joined JD Takeaway early were stuck in the process of merchant registration and menu launch. Chen Lei was one of them. After the team spent six hours trying to transfer menu data from other takeaway platforms to no avail, they finally had to spend 80 yuan on the platform to hire professionals to do it for them.

Coincidentally, Wang Wei, the owner of a Sichuan restaurant, was also frustrated. "The system is like a rough-finished house that has not been completed yet." In the menu setting interface he uploaded, the "required dishes" function was like a missing puzzle piece. "If the spiciness cannot be set, do I have to call each one to ask?"

What gave him even more headaches was that he had successfully joined the business in the early stages but had not been able to log in, and after logging in it was always shown as offline; there was no way to sort the merchants in the second category, and he had to figure out for a long time how to set up the store settlement - in the end he successfully clicked on the business, but could not find the name of the store on the user end.

"Anyone who has worked in the takeout business should know that the first seven days of a new store's operation are the golden window period." Wang Wei smiled wryly as he demonstrated the two days of new store privileges that were swallowed up by the system. His store had just completed uploading the menu, but because the platform's product data was not synchronized in time, although some customers searched for the store during this period, they could neither find it nor place an order.

Unlike Wang Wei, when Li Lin, the owner of a light food store, saw her peers complaining about the system problems of JD.com's food delivery service, she could not empathize with them at first. Considering the freshness of the dishes, the store had not previously done food delivery business until an agent came to her with the "JD.com Ecosystem + Dada Delivery" solution. She then changed her mind. "We all believe in JD.com and want to contribute to high-quality food delivery."

Since Li Lin had no experience in food delivery, she handed over the initial registration work to the agents, and the whole process went smoothly. However, she did not expect that problems would arise one after another on the day the store went online.

"There is no option to cancel an order in the system. One day, the product was out of stock and I couldn't contact the customer, so I was finally able to get the order in time." In addition, she found that the delivery range displayed on the platform was also unreasonable. Two days ago, she received an order, which was nearly 40 kilometers away from the store. Because she chose to connect to JD.com's delivery service, the delivery fee displayed on the user side was only about 10 yuan. "There was no rider to accept the order. We called the customer to explain the situation, and the other party canceled the order."

These problems have triggered a chain reaction among merchants. Chen Lei's printer review work order number stopped at 1,000, and Wang Wei's customer service records showed that the merchant-side system had many missing functions and was still being improved and optimized. The direct reason behind the chaos was that JD Takeout, as a new entrant, had not yet perfected the maturity of its merchant-side system and user experience.

As a platform that started out as a retailer, JD.com has accumulated sufficient supply chain advantages and technical capabilities in the 3C and department store sectors. However, the business of food delivery is not consistent with the previous logic. The complexity of non-standard supply, minute-level fulfillment, and the needs of millions of merchants are challenging its technical architecture and operational thinking.

This collision between the old and new business models is essentially a test between standardized supply chain capabilities and the complexity of the catering industry.

Take Meituan Takeout as an example. It took more than ten years to develop the "catering industry operating system". From supply chain management, production management, front office management to digital operation of takeout, it has complete customized functional modules for merchants. The technical barriers between takeout platforms have long since shifted from competing for traffic to granular deconstruction of the differentiated needs of merchants.

JD.com, which has just entered the food delivery market, is clearly still in its early stages.

However, from an optimistic perspective, the food delivery industry is already quite mature, especially in terms of system-level deployment, and latecomers have sufficient ready-made experience to refer to. This is good news for JD.com.

“0 commission” is not enough to become a real barrier for JD Takeout

Recalling the day when JD.com officially announced its entry into the food delivery field, the most discussed topic in the market was undoubtedly "0 commission", with the criticism directed at Meituan Takeout's "excessively high commission".

In fact, many people are not clear about what the commission rate of Meituan Waimai is. The so-called commission refers to the fees charged by the platform from merchants, which mainly covers the platform commission and delivery service fee. Generally speaking, the delivery service fee is usually between 16%-28%, the merchant commission rate is at the level of 6-8%, and the fulfillment service fee is only incurred when the merchant chooses the special delivery service.

It should be noted that this is not the platform's final comprehensive commission. Meituan has set up many discounts and subsidies for users, which are also effective marketing methods for merchants to obtain more orders and traffic exposure. In this way, the original 30 yuan meal, after various discounts and subsidies, the actual price for consumers may be only 20 yuan, and the middle 10 yuan is given as "the merchant's subsidy to the customer". In summary, the platform's final commission ratio is as high as about 50%.

In contrast, according to the application page of JD.com's takeaway food merchants, the platform charges a commission and a delivery service fee for each order, and the current commission ratio is 0%. Some merchants even reported that in actual operations, the amount collected by the merchants was higher than the amount actually paid by the customers. This is mainly because the platform bears the delivery subsidy and activity subsidy.

So the question is, will 0 commission really become a business barrier for JD.com’s food delivery? The answer is vague.

First of all, JD.com’s zero commission for food delivery does not apply to all categories. For example, for merchants such as coffee and tea, the commission is still 5-6%. According to some merchants, the platform staff told them that although they do not need to pay commissions, they may still need to bear at least 3 yuan of platform service fees and 2-3 yuan of delivery fees for each order.

On the other hand, JD Takeaway showed the fragility of rules in the early stages of its business. Many merchants have already complained about the platform's frequent changes in rules. JD Takeaway has twice changed the product listing standards - from "5 pieces minimum" to "15 pieces minimum", and required restaurants to remain open all day in the first half of March. Many small and medium-sized merchants said in the communication group that they didn't understand, "It's difficult to make real-time adjustments, and they even started to worry about whether the 0 commission will change in the future."

The real business situation is more difficult.

Under the path dependence of traffic dependence, JD.com has achieved short-term order growth through subsidy strategies such as instant discounts for new customers' first orders, but there are hidden concerns behind this growth:

On the one hand, can the discount continue until users form the mindset of "ordering takeout on JD.com"? We still don't know. When users find that the discount on the platform is only for new customers, this "wool-grabbing" mentality leads to fluctuations in order volume and difficulty in forming stable repeat purchases. This is why many users compared prices at the beginning of the article and then turned to other platforms.

An analyst in the food delivery industry pointed out: "Although JD.com may not intend to lower prices, at a time when 95% of consumers will compare prices, if the platform does not do so, it is unlikely that consumers will insist on placing orders."

On the other hand, after merchants settled in, the problem of converting orders still stands out. According to coffee shop owner Liu Ran, as one of the earliest coffee merchants to enter JD.com, in the months of operating on the platform, he only received one order every few days on average. After consulting with peers, he learned that even Luckin Coffee, which has 20,000 stores online, only has a few thousand orders per day on JD.com under normal circumstances - a hundred times lower than the data of Meituan and Ele.me.

To some extent, JD.com's commission rules have indeed loosened up the constraints on merchants, and many people choose to join for this reason. "But compared to these, what we need more is continuous business," Liu Ran said.

Many people have previously analyzed that JD.com's core advantage lies in its supply chain and logistics system. The original intention of the food delivery business is to expand the "instant retail" scenario. Ideally, by collaborating with JD.com Home Delivery, Dada Express and other businesses, it will form full coverage from goods to catering.

During this period of trial, merchants have been attracted by 0 commission, users have been recruited by word of mouth and marketing, and riders have been retained by five social insurances and one housing fund. But how can a real flywheel be built among the platform, merchants, users and riders?

More and more people realize that the answer to this question depends not only on the strategic level, but also on the execution power that can be implemented in detail.

The essence of the food delivery empire is a human resources matrix

Some time ago, JD Takeout launched offline promotion in 39 key cities. With the incentive of a signing commission of up to 200 yuan per order, online offline promotion service platforms such as Jietui Alliance and Rentuibang launched related projects, attracting hundreds of thousands of people to join the offline promotion. In less than a week, nearly 200,000 merchants applied to join.

However, this craze that quickly fermented in a short period of time once again exposed problems.

It is understood that the current JD Takeaway promotion model is divided into two types: self-operation and service provider agency. The former is responsible for exploring large chain restaurant brands, while the latter mainly connects with other small and medium-sized stores. Among the large number of newcomers who have heard the news, most of them are for the purpose of "part-time work" and bind with the service provider platform to make a quick buck. Rather than maintaining the operation of the merchants, they care more about quickly persuading merchants to settle in and getting commissions quickly.

Of course, the platform should also be aware of this part of the problem, so it has revised the settlement rules: the length of time a merchant has opened a store is included in one of the assessment criteria. If a merchant does not meet the standards and continue to operate within one month after entering the platform, the promotion fee cannot be settled. In addition, the original T+3 settlement cycle has also been changed to monthly settlement, and the merchant review standards have become higher.

For a time, according to media reports, some service providers who claimed to have obtained the qualifications for JD.com's takeaway promotion began to send out "discouragement signals". Even the service providers could not be sure when they could receive the promotion fees, not to mention the individuals directly involved in the promotion.

Faced with the same ground-promotion problems, merchants are also becoming anxious.

When they first joined the platform, the salespeople were very enthusiastic. However, since they only focused on the bugs in the rules regarding the number of promotions, many of them only did pre-sales work and not after-sales service. When merchants encountered problems with the system, they could only spend money to consult and solve them. On the other hand, as the platform rules changed, some of the previous salespeople began to withdraw voluntarily, and the merchants could find no one to solve the problems in their subsequent operations.

"Meituan has a strong offline BD team. As soon as your store sign is installed, someone will start to watch you and list your food delivery services on Dianping.com. If your selling price is not the lowest on the entire Internet, the BD will keep an eye on you to verify your price. Does JD.com have one? I don't think so." Some merchants posted directly on the social platform.

The essence of the food delivery empire is a fortress made up of manpower, and the role of door-to-door marketing is to continuously reinforce this fortress.

Take Meituan as an example. The army of 100,000 salesmen was not built overnight, but a merchant network was woven over ten years.

The role played by this group of people is not only to accumulate the number of contracts, but also to maintain and retain the relationship between the platform and merchants, and to build a service system that includes digital tools, operation training, and dispute mediation. The continuous investment in these heavy assets has helped the platform connect more than 7 million small and medium-sized catering merchants, and has also become Meituan’s most irreplaceable resource.

Half a month ago, as soon as JD.com officially announced its food delivery business, there were overwhelming statements from the outside world about "JD.com disrupting the market" and "rewriting the industry structure". Many people believed that JD.com's food delivery business broke the previous duopoly market structure, but in fact, now, from high-quality food delivery to paying five insurances and one fund for riders, JD.com has raised the entry threshold of the industry, and it also means that food delivery has truly stepped out of the fully competitive market.

But this is just the beginning.

For JD.com, how to take root in a trillion-dollar market that seems to be the most unruly is not a problem that can be solved in the short term. The underlying logic of local life services - it requires a "hot war" rather than a "cold war", and a capillary merchant service system rather than centralized traffic distribution. This may also be what JD.com, which is good at retail, needs to make up for at present.