"In Meituan's supply chain, there are two functions of purchase agreement and demand agreement. In my opinion, they are the same, which is very tasteless." Huang Xiaohui also found the person in charge of the business in Meituan, and wanted to answer his question. Confuse.

　　"The person in charge of their business can't even explain it." In Huang Xiaohui's view, it seems that most of the digital catering systems can't grasp the pain points or even go astray. He is the founder of Roast Wushuang and an "old man" in the catering industry.

　　In 2020, the "black swan" of the epidemic has taught the catering industry a hard lesson.

 

　　According to industrial and commercial information, in 2021, 885,000 catering companies will be cancelled nationwide, setting a new high in the past ten years. Counting those individual stores that have not been counted, the number of closed stores in the catering industry in 2021 is conservatively estimated to be in the millions.

　　In addition, according to statistics, China's catering revenue in 2020 will be 3,952.7 billion yuan, down 15.4% from 2019. In 2020, the turnover of China's catering industry was 603.726 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.93%.

　　But on the other side of danger, there is also an opportunity. Affected by the epidemic, the catering industry has also ushered in a new development opportunity - digitalization.

　　According to statistics, the proportion of food delivery in the post-epidemic era has increased to more than 30%. Some restaurant owners said that when the epidemic was severe, they survived by hundreds of orders a day.

　　However, digitalization is not a single tactical action, but a set of digitally connected systems. The acceleration of digitalization of all scenarios from consumption to industry can stimulate the acceleration of the real smart scenario economy.

　　"For a period of time, we implemented online business, and customers ordered online. We insisted on doing this for 5 months, and then closed the restaurant because we could not make ends meet." In the restaurant owner's view, relying only on takeout is tantamount to "dying." struggle".

　　But from the current point of view, today's catering companies have not only met the marketing needs of the front-end restaurant, but also need to meet the various needs of efficiency, operation, finance and supply chain, and realize the whole industry from upstream to downstream, from online to offline. All-round digital upgrade of the chain.

　　According to statistics from iResearch, the cost of ingredients for some listed hot pot companies such as Haidilao accounts for 42.9% of the total revenue, and the cost of ingredients for listed tea companies such as Nai Xue’s tea can also reach 38.0% of the total revenue.

　　A better solution is to reduce the cost of ingredients by controlling the upstream of the food supply chain, and achieve refined management and control to optimize costs. This is the plan for most catering companies to come back from the dead.

　　But the question is, who should be the supply chain, platform or industrial service provider? And what kind of effect should be achieved, these are the problems that many companies still face.

　　Martin Christopher, a famous British supply chain expert, once said: "There are only supply chains in the market without enterprises." The same is true for the catering industry.

　　Where will the digitalization of catering go in 2022?

　　1. The insurmountable "standardization" gap

　　A strange phenomenon is that in the supply chain links with high digital penetration in other industries, it does not seem to work in the catering industry.

　　As we all know, in the digital age, such as logistics, e-commerce and other industries, the digitalization of the supply chain has already broken the data silos between platforms and realized the mutual coordination between warehousing, shipment, and replenishment.

　　On the other hand, the catering industry is not satisfactory.

　　According to statistics from iResearch, the digital penetration rate of China's top catering brands in the supply chain will be 60% in 2021. It is conceivable that for most small and medium-sized catering companies, the supply chain penetration rate may be lower.

　　The reason is, "This is because there is an additional link in the catering industry. The store buys cabbage and sells cabbage stewed vermicelli. Standardization and refinement are too difficult. How can this work?" Facing the questions of industrialists, Huang Xiaohui gave his understanding.

　　"Different from other industries, catering is an industry that relies more on cost control for revenue, but it is also an industry where cost control is difficult. How much oil is used in a dish and how many dishes are put in it depends entirely on the chef's feeling."

　　Based on this, standardization has become an insurmountable gap in the catering industry and its supply chain. At the same time, it has also increased the difficulty of its back-end digitalization.

　　In order to achieve standardization, large catering companies have chosen to build their own supply chain or cooperate with excellent supply chain companies, which can effectively help chain layout, improve product strength and reduce costs.

　　For example, the grandmother's house, which "sells more cheaply", mainly focuses on outsourced processing, and is equipped with a light-weight and flexible central distribution center, which distributes basic raw materials and sauces that have been standardized by suppliers.

　　Among them, the quantitative, directional, standard packaging supply of raw materials, and the smooth and optimized supply channels mean that the low-cost operation of the grandmother's family also supports the standardized operation of large-scale stores.

　　This central distribution center, which is better known than the central kitchen, makes its raw material supply chain not only "cheap" but also "standardized output".

　　Another example is Haidilao.

　　In the procurement and inventory link, after being submitted by each store every day, the background system realizes the whole process of visualization, and the procurement and production tasks are issued after the summary, and the entire supply chain system realizes a rapid response mechanism. This makes the Haidilao terminal store almost zero inventory, and the inventory is only for consumption on the same day. The standardized supply chain model of "determining production based on sales" has been realized.

　　In addition, Haidilao has its own direct-supply vegetable bases across the country, and has established multiple logistics centers and central kitchens across the country.

　　Through the cases of Grandma's family and Haidilao, it is not difficult to see that catering companies want to play the catering industry. Not only must the basic elements such as food research and development and service quality be guaranteed, but also the back-end systematization support must be provided to achieve cost optimization through the digitization of the entire front-end and back-end links.

　　2. Behind the single point, integration becomes a new trend

　　The alternation of old and new is the norm in the catering industry, and there is never a shortage of new faces and new stories.

　　On Xinjian Road in Changsha, Hunan Province, the slogan of "Cow Devil Kebabs, 10 yuan for 30" kept echoing in the streets and alleys. There was a long queue in front of a snack bar called "Cow Devil Kebabs". .

　　Snacks have always been half the sky in China's catering industry, and have also become a barometer of the development trend and consumption changes of the catering industry. According to the "2020-2021 Blue Book of Catering Operation Parameters", various catering formats have been impacted to varying degrees after the outbreak, among which snacks and barbecue are two formats that will recover quickly.

　　Niu Demon Kebab is the first wave of catering companies to stand out after the epidemic. In 2021, the Bull Demon Department will add more than 400 stores.

　　And this is inseparable from the help of the digitalization of the full-link supply chain.

　　Niu Mo Department of Kebab cooperated with Ke Ruyun to realize chain management with the help of digitalization, and you can view real-time operation data of various stores across the country at the headquarters. For stores whose revenue did not meet expectations, the headquarters can quickly give operational suggestions through background data analysis, tailor-made marketing plans, and help franchisees achieve revenue growth.

　　In addition, in response to the supply chain management problem that is a headache for most chain brands, Niu Mo Keke adopts the Keruyun supply chain system, which realizes the whole chain efficiency improvement from procurement, processing, distribution to inventory management.

　　The headquarters can configure delivery prices and plan routes for different store types; improve the efficiency of store reporting and acceptance, and each store can also intelligently estimate the purchase volume based on daily sales and consumption, and at the same time realize multi-level and multi-dimensional food supervision and control costs. reduce waste.

　　Now, after digitalization, the cashier time of a single store of Niu Mo Keke has been shortened by 80%, the total delivery cost has been reduced by 3 times, and the reconciliation efficiency of more than 500 stores has been shortened to 6 hours.

　　In the catering industry, the huge changes brought about by the digitalization of the supply chain are not only reflected in catering companies, but also support another blue ocean in the field of group meals.

　　An industrial product distribution company based in the Chinese market with more than 4,000 employees. In the past, the company's employee cafeteria used paper meal coupons and manual settlement.

　　From the perspective of enterprise management, extensive management and high operating costs make it impossible to achieve unified management; from the perspective of employee experience, the use of paper meal coupons is inconvenient to check out, and the queue time is long, resulting in low dining efficiency.

　　Based on this, the company found Yonyou Catering Cloud and customized a set of enterprise meal supplement solutions for it, helping the company to achieve from front-end cashier, settlement, financial management, to back-end supply chain procurement, supply, inventory The digital transformation of the full-link catering supply chain.

　　Today, the company’s cafeteria employees have increased their dining efficiency by 30%, staff costs have been reduced by 40%, and the efficiency of reconciliation between the two parties has increased by 20%. It has realized the comprehensive transformation of enterprise catering digitalization.

　　"Because of the particularity of the industry, it is difficult for the catering industry to truly achieve standardization, and it needs to achieve refined management of the entire link from the front end to the back end." In the view of Nie Di, general manager of the transaction growth department of UFIDA's catering cloud business department, the poor Not a single part.

　　Undoubtedly, for catering companies, the digitization of a single link cannot realize the digitization of the catering supply chain. Connecting the dots into a plane, breaking the data silos, and creating a full-link digital solution is the shortcut.

　　3. In 2022, the digitalization of catering is still difficult to sink

　　At present, the digitalization of Chinese catering is in full swing. All catering digital service providers are emphasizing the digitization of the catering supply chain and seizing the track of catering digitalization.

　　But it is not an easy task to gain a firm foothold in the digitalization of catering, as Huang Xiaohui said at the beginning of the article.

　　From an objective point of view, this is a common problem of digital service providers in all industries. They cannot penetrate into the industry, and their products cannot touch deep-seated pain points. It has become an "unspeakable" in the digitalization of catering.

　　Secondly, for the catering industry, digitalization is more of a means of "discovering problems" rather than "solving problems".

　　In this regard, Roasted Wushuang seems to have more say.

　　In the past, Roasted Wushuang was not very optimistic about the takeaway business. But after opening the take-out business later, Huang Xiaohui found that the take-out business of Roasted Wushuang was surprisingly good.

　　For this reason, Huang Xiaohui also set up a business department specifically for take-out to carry out refined operation of take-out. Today, Roasted Wushuang has increased by 10% to 20% of its takeaway revenue.

　　"Actually, the great significance of digitalization to catering companies is that we have found our own advantages." Huang Xiaohui said.

　　In addition, for the catering industry, the "ease of use" of digital software is more important.

　　"Fool-like operation is my basic appeal for catering digital software, but most of them can't do it." A catering entrepreneur said to an industrialist.

　　"Cateurers are born with a sense of distance from digitalization." Qianqiu believes that the threshold for the catering industry is low, many catering practitioners have low overall quality, and many catering bosses are also chefs. It is a common operation for a group of chef brothers to start a business together. It is difficult to have Digital awareness.

　　So different from the strong subjective awareness of digitalization in other industries, for the catering industry, it will appear more passive. "What is digitalization of catering, let's talk about it." This is the attitude of general catering people towards digitalization.

　　Based on this, catering digital software needs to be easier to use in order to adapt to the usage habits of most catering people.

　　"The digitalization of catering is led by cross-border people, and it will develop faster." Qianqiu believes that for players in the digitalization of catering, it is more necessary to take on the responsibility of leading the industry change.

　　In the process of catering digitalization, there are gains and losses. On the one hand, the catering industry is in full swing, and it is more and more difficult for catering companies to travel among them, and the bitterness also comes from "internal and external troubles".

　　On the other hand, investment institutions poured hot money into the industry, and many new players quickly emerged in the market, and the track was seized in a more refined manner.

　　However, since ancient times, catering has been an enduring industry, and every industry shock is an opportunity for its evolution. At present, the catering industry is also moving from digital to digital intelligence.