Takeaway lockers have started charging deliverymen, are they crazy?

This is the 1367th original article by Half Buddha Immortal

I don’t have to write on weekends, just write something casually.

In the past two days, many people have left messages asking me what I think about the issue of delivery counters starting to charge deliverymen.

Yes, you read that right. The takeaway lockers that users have complained about for a long time have actually started charging deliverymen.

The news is this.

How should I put it? As someone who has run and failed restaurants and takeout shops, and who has actually delivered takeout when doing research, I don't think it's surprising at all.

This is not the platform going crazy, this is what is bound to happen.

Similar things have actually happened in other industries, such as the express delivery industry and post stations. They just drop the express delivery off at the post station without asking you any questions.

It's the same thing when the delivery man throws the takeaway into the takeaway cabinet, and it makes me even more unhappy. I have already ordered the takeaway and it is obvious that I don't want to leave. If I am willing to go downstairs, why not go to the store?

But there is no way, this will not prevent this matter from becoming inevitable.

Why?

Because the current takeout industry is essentially in a deformed state.

If you don't believe it, think about it yourself. A takeout order costs only a dozen to twenty yuan, and someone can deliver it to your door within 40 minutes.

For such a small amount of money, someone will deliver it to your door.

Then the question is, can the people in this link, from merchants to deliverymen to platforms, make money at this unit price?

The unit price is here, and it won’t be enough no matter how we divide it.

The landlord smiled.

Of course, delivering food abroad is profitable, but behind the deliverymen's easy and dignified delivery, consumers have to pay several times the price, lower efficiency and slower speed. Many people upload videos of delivering food abroad. You can go and watch more of them. That is the real situation of food delivery.

When there were no food delivery platforms, wasn’t it also very expensive when we called restaurants for delivery?

But now, we can actually place an order for only a dozen or twenty yuan and have it delivered by someone within 40 minutes. This world obeys the basic laws of conservation of physics.

That means someone must have paid a price.

Let’s look at the costs and options.

Since the price is unreasonable, why does such a business model still exist?

It’s not because takeout has solved everyone’s problems, but because not having takeout will only make things worse.

This is not the result of comparing the good, but the result of comparing the bad.

The delivery guy, the consumer, the store owner, and the platform, let’s look at them one by one.

The delivery guys have a miserable and hard life, right? But why do they still deliver food instead of working in factories?

It’s not because delivering food is good, but working in a factory is harder. At least delivering food is relatively free and you can get some fresh air, so it’s not that miserable.

In fact, what the guys fear most is not too many orders, but not enough orders.

Consumers are miserable, right? But why can't they just move their legs and go downstairs to eat?

Why not cook your own food? After all, the ingredients themselves are not expensive.

It’s not because takeout is good, but because office workers are too tired from being beaten by society every day. They really don’t have the time, energy or mood to cook or go out. They just want to order takeout in advance, eat quickly, take a nap or continue working.

The cost of takeout is high, but the time and emotional cost of not choosing takeout is even higher.

The merchants are miserable, right? But why don’t they just close the takeaway business and only provide dine-in services?

It’s not because takeout is good, but the commission for takeout is still based on the premise that you have a transaction, and it is taken from your transaction amount. However, rent has to be paid regardless of whether you have a transaction or not, and whether the store is open or not, and regardless of whether it is windy, rainy or Godzilla is landing. If there was no takeout business, the purchase cost and rent cost would be diluted with the order volume, which would be really unbearable.

In addition, merchants also have to compete with other merchants. If they do not start a takeout business, other merchants will. Consumers’ time and wallets are limited, so they will be doomed.

The platform complains all the time about how miserable it is, right? Why don’t they act like individuals, raise prices, reduce efficiency, and respect deliverymen?

Because there is more than one platform, if the platform itself does not compete, the rival platform will. This will cause customers to flow to the more competitive platform, deliverymen to flow to the platform with more orders, and merchants to flow to the platform with greater traffic. Unless you admit defeat and quit, this is an infinitely competitive game. Baidu Takeout was the most decent back then, and it ended up being the fastest and most peaceful.

Okay, have you discovered that the decision everyone makes is not that doing food delivery will be better, but that not doing food delivery will only be worse. This worse model leads to a series of interconnected problems, which makes everything awkward, but instead reaches a delicate dynamic balance.

Yes, the current deformed state is actually a balance achieved through game theory. It’s magical, isn’t it?

After reading the above, you will understand why charging for take-out counters is inevitable.

Because now, it's stuck.

Food delivery platforms and merchants dare not raise prices indiscriminately. If they do, consumers will leave, and they will not be able to afford so many deliverymen, and ultimately their competitors will benefit.

But if we don't raise the price, the price is unreasonable in the first place. It only costs a dozen or twenty yuan per order for a dedicated person to deliver within 40 minutes. This is too outrageous. What should we do now?

Since the total price cannot be increased (one order costs a dozen or twenty yuan and there is a special delivery person, it is really hard to say what surplus value is left, it has all become oil residue), and the landlord is unwilling to reduce the rent, there are only two things that can be done.

First, further reduce costs and switch to pre-prepared meal packages.

And they can’t be the more expensive brand meal packs, otherwise they may be suspicious meal packs.

Then, the store only does take-out and uses meal kits, reducing the size and saving on rent.

Many take-out restaurants are like this nowadays. They don’t cook any food, they just process meal packages. Strictly speaking, they are not called restaurants.

Called factory.

Produce takeout using assembly line mode.

But this alone is not enough.

Considering that most takeout restaurants have already done the first step and have reached the end, the only thing left is the second step.

There is no other choice but to further improve delivery efficiency and compress customer experience.

The takeaway cabinet is the most efficient and compromising option at present.

Sacrifice part of the consumer experience to achieve extremely high efficiency (when I deliver food, I feel that the most time-consuming thing is contacting and waiting for users), so that a deliveryman can deliver many times more. In this way, even if the unit price is reduced again, and even a few cents have to be paid to the delivery cabinet, the total revenue can still be considered good because the quantity has increased.

As for whether consumers will stop ordering takeout because of this, to be honest, takeout cabinets have been around for many years, and whether consumers accept them has long been proven. If they dare to charge deliverymen, it means that most consumers accept it.

Did you find it?

This model is exactly the same as that in the express delivery industry, with no difference at all.

Takeout is a deformed business model, and coincidentally, so is express delivery.

The current price of express delivery is also unreasonable. It costs only a few yuan (During big sales in Yiwu, the price is around 1 yuan) to send it nationwide and deliver it to your door. This price is unreasonable.

When you go out to send a courier and look at the price yourself, you will find that it is completely different from the merchant’s price, it is much higher, and that is the normal price.

However, raising the express delivery prices is not acceptable. If an express delivery company dares to raise the prices, it will lose customers (merchants) and eventually be squeezed out by other express delivery companies.

But at the same time, couriers also expect higher incomes.

Thus, the post station model came into being. The emergence of various express delivery stations allowed a young man to deliver to several communities by simply throwing the goods in bulk to the post station. Although the unit price was low, the total price was still acceptable after the quantity increased.

The end result is also to reduce user experience, save costs, and accept user complaints. After all, users are not customers (paying customers are merchants), maintaining a delicate dynamic balance.

At present, take-out has only reached this stage.

All I can say is, there is nothing new under the sun.

Official account: BanfoXianren (ID: banfoSB)