"Pending Food": Can the new favorite of the market achieve a win-win situation?
"Use discounted prices to eat delicious food without discounts." This is the slogan of Douban's "I Love Temporary Food" group.
Only 8 months after its establishment, the group has gathered more than 60,000 members to share various ad hoc discount information in real time. “The original price of 22 yuan a box of Austrian milk won 7 yuan, and Wal-Mart’s 18.9 yuan Malaysian biscuits were “off the house price”. 2.9 yuan".
On the one hand, there are lively discussions on online social platforms, and on the other hand, offline stores such as Hey Special Purchasing, Hao Special Sale, and Sweet Food Warehouse are overcrowded. Buying temporary food has become a daily routine for some people, especially young people.
How is the huge amount of impending food produced?
Why is the price so low?
What exactly attracts consumers?
How big is the market?
A reporter from "Workers Daily" recently conducted an investigation and interview on the temporary food industry.
"Hot Potatoes" Transformed into the New Favorite of the Market
On Saturday, May 29, the reporter came to a Hi Tesco store near Zhongguancun, Beijing, and found that there was a long line at the checkout, and everyone's shopping basket was full.
"Since I discovered this place, I have come to stock up every week." Sophomore Maimai was rummaging on the shelves enthusiastically. "It's so cheap here, and I don't care about it during the period. Anyway, I can eat it up soon."
Temporary food refers to the food that is approaching the expiration date but is still within the expiration date.
Qiu Zhe, founder of the Good Eaters Alliance, said, “According to the food industry’s “acceptance period” practice, large supermarkets usually reject domestic food with a shelf life of 1/3 and imported food with a shelf life of 1/2. Food If the sales are not good after the shelves are put on the shelves, the terminal stores will also return the final products to the distributors. These foods are flowing to the tentative market at very low prices."
It was a sales problem, but it turned into a "sweet rice cake".
Offline, temporary business has experienced three stages of "buy one get one free" bundled sales in supermarkets, discount shelves specially opened by large shopping malls, and temporary discount specialty stores.
In the cloud, Taobao stores such as "bare price impending special sale" appeared sporadically, and then special apps such as good food period and fire sale were launched. Then e-commerce giants found business opportunities and began to deploy. Tmall Global and Pinduoduo have launched self-operated stores. Temporary food.
As far as physical stores are concerned, Bi Quanyang, a supplier who has been in business for many years, summarized the characteristics of the evolution of the consumer group. "The temporary store started in the vegetable market and later opened into the residential area. The customer is a single middle-aged and elderly group. From the good sale. At the beginning, physical stores tried to move to core business districts and office buildings with a large flow of people, attracting a large number of young people who paid attention to quality and were shy in their pockets."
According to statistics, about 35 million tons of grain is lost and wasted every year in my country, which is close to 6% of the total grain output.
Bi Quanyang believes that good use of temporary resources can achieve a win-win situation.
“Originally, the destination of impending food was feed mills and garbage dumps. We have built a bridge to allow consumers to get benefits and businesses to stop losses in time.”
Dynamic pricing attracts many fans
The "Anti-Food Waste Law" promulgated on April 29 this year clearly stated that food operators should categorize and manage food close to the expiration date, make special labels or display them in a centralized manner.
Reporters visited many places in Beijing and found that most physical stores use discount stores as publicity stunts, and it seems that they deliberately do not mention "discounts due to impending deadlines."
Many customers know this well, and some customers think it is only a short-term promotion.
In the fan group of an imported discount store, the reporter saw people constantly asking: "When will the event end?"
In this regard, online platforms are more open and transparent.
Open Haoshidai APP, the slogan "The closer the date, the cheaper" is very eye-catching.
The homepage is divided into 2~40% discount areas, and the price is converted according to the countdown.
Searching for keywords on Taobao reveals that there are as many as thousands of shops that directly write "provisional" into the name of the shop.
Among them, the top-selling store has 1.56 million fans. In the food introduction, not only the shelf life is displayed, but the price difference with the regular food can also be seen.
The person concerned said that consumers are really sensitive to price rather than shelf life, which is the real reason for the popularity of impending food.
Qiu Zhe believes that if the date of the food is different and the price is the same, consumers will choose the freshest when buying.
Once differentiated pricing is formed based on the date, the advantage of cost performance will be revealed, and a suitable crowd will be found for each type of food.
According to this concept, the Good Eaters Alliance tried to dynamically price based on the shelf life. “If the product is worth 100 yuan and the shelf life is 100 days, then the price of the product will be reduced by 1 yuan a day.” Qiu Zhe said.
Congenital deficiency restricts scale operation
The reporter found that the temporary discount store mainly deals in imported food and also has Internet celebrity brands, with the domestic first-line brands accounting for the least.
In this regard, Qiu Zhe explained that many imported foods are difficult to sell at high premiums.
"On the one hand, the industrial chain is long, and brand owners, importers, and distributors have to make profits and increase prices. On the other hand, the process of transportation, customs declaration, and quarantine takes a long time, and the time for food to be sold on the shelf is limited. If there is any delay, the merchant can only raise the price in order to avoid the risk."
However, it is difficult to obtain a stable and continuous supply of temporary food.
Bi Quanyang frankly said that mature brands will be supplied on demand through calculations. Except for New Year gift boxes that are prone to be produced and sold unevenly, there are few large-scale impending situations, which fundamentally limit the market size of the industry.
"Too many factors are uncontrollable." Bi Quanyang said, the sudden outbreak and sudden silence of the supply of goods brought difficulties to staffing and warehouse turnover, and hindered the formation of large-scale operations.
"Sometimes there are not many goods to be picked in a week, and everyone is idle, and sometimes 50,000 boxes of goods come through a phone call, which is simply too busy."
The epidemic has eased the tight supply, but the impact on practitioners is twofold.
Qiu Zhe said that stores were closed for a long time during the epidemic, which gave birth to a large amount of impending food, which sizzled the market to a certain extent, brought vitality to the industry, and brought newcomers into the market in a swarm.
When the epidemic tends to stabilize and resources are gradually depleted, a situation of "more monks and less porridge" will naturally appear.
The pressure of a race against time has also made people in the industry complain.
"Be cautious when entering the market!" An operator of a temporary discount store lamented to reporters that the sale of temporary products is very short, and many times they can only watch it expire.
Why is there so much impending food?
This in itself is a thought-provoking question.
Qiu Zhe shared his thoughts, “Rather than cultivating in the temporary market, we should find a way to solve the problem from the source. If food can be circulated in the terminal channel for a period of time, dynamic pricing will start from the shelf. Or even face waste?"
Chen Xi