The next outlet of Internet entrepreneurship is the urban circulation of agricultural products?

For catering this huge industry, in addition to the front-end that can see the consumption and services, catering revenue the most important link from the back-end procurement throttling.

Supply chain industry In fact is very traditional, has always existed, and supply chain management is not a simple procurement. For large catering enterprises, each day to face a large number of complex types of procurement needs, only through the management of scientific systems can be satisfied, and to ensure the supply of thousands of restaurants efficient, stable and safe.

There are two main modes of supply chain management in large chain catering enterprises, one is to manage the supplier directly by the terminal enterprise, the other is the terminal enterprise only corresponding to the first level supplier and the supplier to the upstream many suppliers. Yum-Yum, there are more than 400 suppliers in China, composed of 439 professional team to manage.

And this will need to invest a huge amount of costs, for large catering enterprises can accept, but also must go to do so, and for those small and medium-sized restaurants, they also need to purchase, but also need to have a supply chain, but they can not be such a large cost.

At present, most of the small and medium-sized restaurants are owned by the owner or buyer responsible for the procurement of food materials, 3 o'clock every day to get up, drive to the wholesale market, because the need for a variety of food, a small number, limited time, often only in a limited few to buy, no choice of space, and basically every day to go.

This way down, personnel costs, transportation costs, including time costs, are very high, and as individual merchants, in the purchase of bargaining power is very low, coupled with the market price of food materials and so on, has long been a small and medium-sized restaurant procurement pain point.

In the U.S. market, the catering supply chain market leader Sysco earlier into the industry, the current annual turnover of 44.4 billion U.S. dollars, occupy the market share of 25%. But in China, despite the annual revenue of China's catering industry more than 3 trillion yuan, food procurement scale of 800 billion yuan, because the middle channel link is too long, loss too much, catering supply chain field does not appear a well-known large enterprises.

As far as Beijing is concerned, there are more than 95,000 restaurants, the small and medium-sized restaurants accounted for 70%, minus the restaurant already has a centralized procurement center, about 50,000 or so, and so many small and medium-sized restaurants will become the target users of these start-up companies.

It is understood that the current catering market services after the start-up companies have hotel alliances, chain agriculture, kitchen nets, small longnu, among them, the chain farmers in this year to get 8 million U.S. dollars financing, investment institutions are well-known Sequoia Capital, and the chef net also got 15 million U.S. financing this year, while the former Baidu vice president June also joined the entrepreneurial team.

Why so many startups and investors scramble to enter the blue sea, in addition to the industry itself long-term accumulation of pain points need to be resolved, more in the food procurement for the catering industry the importance of safety. At the same time for small and medium-sized restaurants, food procurement is a high-frequency high demand for rigid, business almost every day need to purchase, the high rate of repurchase, viscous strong, large water.

With the Chef Network CEO 袁韬 Tao, Farmers ' market is a typical bilateral markets, buyers and sellers are very large, very fragmented, very need an Internet platform tool to solve the problem of asymmetric information.

For startups, what they can do is to provide a procurement management platform for these B-side small and medium-sized restaurants, they have centralized quality procurement channels and service providers to meet different procurement needs of businesses, while providing regular distribution for businesses. and centralized procurement, will provide a relatively low market prices for businesses, you can save a large chunk of costs.

These startups have invariably chosen mobile platforms in the direction of the platform, which is also related to the development of mobile Internet. And different start-up companies, in catering procurement chain services, will take a different business model:

(1) business-to-business self-built logistics model. The main chain of agricultural, American food and other start-up companies, mainly for small and medium-sized restaurants, to provide them with raw materials booking, sorting, distribution and other services. This model is heavier and not easy to develop rapidly.

(2) business-to-business platform mode. Mainly for small and medium-sized restaurants, for them to build a procurement platform for raw materials, businesses to carry out their own. To the kitchen network for example, temporarily do not do distribution services, can be quickly replicated in the country, quickly open the national market. But later, I believe that the kitchen network will also increase distribution services in order to make the service more perfect.

(3) B2b+c mode. Mainly for small and medium-sized businesses, offline fresh shop 2C retail from the model.

That is, both for small and medium-sized restaurants for distribution, but also through the offline fresh shop to the surrounding community users to carry out their own sales.

In the case of small farmers, small farmers in the early stage of entrepreneurship, mainly to do catering business model, directly for the C-end consumers to provide food products services, in this attempt failed, the small farmers and the transformation to do the catering procurement business-to-business model, while retaining consumer-oriented fresh shop retail self-offer services.

Catering industry itself is a traditional industry, with many drawbacks and industry traditions, although the mobile platform can bring great convenience to the restaurant, but for small and medium-sized restaurants for market development, it is difficult.

First of all, small and medium-sized restaurants, small-scale, uneven composition of personnel, information level is not high, the old management habits, procurement habits, it is difficult to break.

Secondly, the platform management and service cannot keep up. At present, these catering market service platform for business management and goods management model is relatively simple, including the corresponding services did not keep up.

Also, the burning money competition is too fierce, relative to the catering front end for C consumers, back-end services, more easily replicated, so the need to quickly spread the occupation of the market, coupled with investors on the industry's optimistic, will be used to burn money competition, to expand the market scale.

Finally, the supplier quality control is very important. When the small and medium-sized restaurants to the procurement needs are given to these service platforms, the platform will be the quality of food control, whether to find both Low-cost and high-quality suppliers become the key.

For the catering industry, this oriented B-terminal procurement platform for the emergence of a certain extent to solve the business pain point, improve the catering trade operation efficiency. It is also important for entrepreneurs and investors to make a profit in the form of a business model.

June in the interview, said, "agricultural products in the urban circulation, will be the next outlet for Internet entrepreneurship." In this field, many tens of billions of dollars of startups will be born. ”