Our reporter Yang Ranran 

　　The rumor that "the first fresh food e-commerce company" Daily Youxian was in trouble came too late.

On July 28, several news brought Daily Youxian to the forefront - first, the main business "30-minute speed delivery business closed", then "500 layoffs", "financing unfinished success" and "company dissolution in situ" .

The once "first fresh food stock" has been reduced to a situation of chicken feathers after burning out tens of billions of yuan in financing.

　　The lagging behind of Daily Youxian also sounded the alarm for Jisuda fresh food e-commerce represented by Dingdong and Meituan, as well as new retail businesses such as Hema Fresh and Yonghui Fresh.

　　The fate of Daily Fresh is just a microcosm of the brutally competitive fresh food e-commerce market.

From the once-famous star track with tens of billions of blessings, to now the industry has not been able to get rid of the profit dilemma, how will the fresh food e-commerce go?

　　The Status Quo of "Nine Dead Lives"

　　On July 29, the reporter found on the daily excellent fresh platform that orders in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and other places could not be placed on the grounds that "the area is out of stock".

On the previous day, a service change notice was released on the homepage of its APP.

The notice shows that the daily delivery time of Youxian has changed from the original fastest 30-minute delivery to the fastest next-day delivery.

　　As a fresh food e-commerce giant, the situation of Dingdong grocery shopping is not optimistic.

Since May this year, Dingdong Shopping has launched the “City Withdrawal” mode.

According to relevant media reports, it has successively issued the "Stop Service Announcement" in more than ten cities including Tianjin, Tangshan, Langfang, Xuancheng, Chuzhou, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Qingyuan, and Jiangmen.

　　In addition to the troubles of the "two heroes" in the industry, the announcement of the closure of "Daily Carrot", the reported layoffs and business contraction of "Meicai.com", and the closure of Hema Neighborhoods have also been reported frequently.

In fact, the arena of fresh food e-commerce has always been fiercely competitive. It can be described as "nine deaths and a lifetime". There are few fresh food e-commerce companies that survive.

　　trapped in front

　　Why don't most fresh food e-commerce companies make money?

This comes back to the business model of fresh food e-commerce.

　　Take Daily Youxian and Dingdong Maicai as examples, both of which use the "pre-positioning" model of heavy assets.

What is a preload?

Fresh food e-commerce companies configure a small storage center near consumers.

The advantage of this model lies in the rapid delivery of goods, but behind it is the high cost of fulfillment, coupled with the distribution requirements of cold chain logistics and the preferential policies for attracting new users, resulting in their high cost status.

　　Relevant industry reports show that the average gross profit of the fresh food industry is 15%, which is much lower than that of industries with higher gross profit such as cosmetics.

Relatively low profits and high logistics costs make fresh food e-commerce companies have no advantage in price, which also makes it difficult for them to break through the problem of narrow customer base.

Some consumers who are more sensitive to price will not use fresh food e-commerce to buy fresh food for a long time, and there is a "ceiling" for the expansion of consumer groups.

　　According to the statistics of the China E-Commerce Research Center, there are about 4,000 participants in the domestic fresh food e-commerce field, of which only 4% have flat revenue, 88% are in losses, and only 1% are finally profitable.

Problems such as thin profits, expensive logistics, and narrow customer base have not been solved, which restricts the development of fresh food e-commerce.

　　How is the road ahead?

　　In 2005, China's first fresh food e-commerce platform "Yiguo.com" was established.

In the following years, fresh e-commerce platforms focusing on green and safe food, such as "He Lekang" and "Tuotuo Gongshe", have emerged one after another.

Since 2013, big capital and Internet giants have begun to invest heavily in the fresh food e-commerce track, and the industry has ushered in an explosion.

From 2013 to 2017, the fresh food e-commerce industry ushered in the "golden five years" of development, such as Tmall Fresh, JD Daojia, Hema Fresh, Daily Youxian, Baiguoyuan, Tiantian Orchard, Original Life, Duodian , COFCO Womai.com, Yonghui Preferred, RT-Mart Preferred and other head platforms have been established one after another.

　　In 2018 and 2019, the cold winter of capital is coming, fresh food e-commerce companies have difficulty in financing, and the industry has ushered in an unprecedented reshuffle. Countless large and small fresh food e-commerce platforms have quietly closed down or transformed.

The epidemic in 2020 has brought the fresh food e-commerce industry another opportunity for rapid development. The top fresh food e-commerce platforms have achieved substantial growth. Meituan Maicai has been launched, Pinduoduo has launched Duoduo Maicai, Didi Plus Code Orange Heart Preferred.

From 2021, the growth rate of the fresh food e-commerce industry will slow down, and the new round of industry reshuffle will be more tragic. It will be difficult to maintain the layoffs, shrink the front line, and withdraw from the city. Daily Youxian and Dingdong Maicai IPOs are successful, but "bleeding" Behind the listing, the truth of the "blood loss" of fresh food e-commerce has been revealed.

According to incomplete statistics from Tianyancha, as of this year, the total financing of fresh food e-commerce companies is about 5 billion yuan, a 50% decrease from the same period in 2021.

　　From the rise to the outbreak to the current dilemma, the logistics and supply chain problems faced by fresh food e-commerce companies have always existed.

Some industry experts believe that from the perspective of the current industry development trend, the competitiveness of platform-based fresh food e-commerce models represented by JD Daojia, Meituan and Ele.me has begun to emerge, while the current defects of the front-end warehouse model have already emerged. Large-scale exposure, at present, the front warehouse model is not the best model choice for the development of fresh food e-commerce.

　　Chen Hudong, a special researcher of the E-commerce Research Center of Netease, believes that the plight of fresh food e-commerce is largely a reflection of a pain point in my country's cold chain market - infrastructure, cold chain equipment, cold chain supply chain, etc. There are big pain points that need to be addressed.

Therefore, the breakthrough of fresh food e-commerce requires the marketization process of the entire industry.

As the attitude of capital tends to be conservative, the fresh food e-commerce industry will enter a more difficult stage in 2022.

How can fresh food e-commerce break the "curse" of "loss"?

Let's wait and see.