As early as 2017, Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, used the key words of "heaven, earth, and globalization" to summarize the three paths to deal with the second half. At that time, he mentioned that globalization is a great opportunity for Chinese companies, and it is also something that Chinese companies must do in the future. After years of preparation, Meituan Takeaway finally officially took its first step to go overseas in May this year, and chose Hong Kong, China as its first stop.
It is understood that Meituan Takeaway did not use this name in Hong Kong, but launched a new brand keeta. At present, the size of the relevant team is about 100 people, with Qiu Guangyu as the leader, reporting to Wang Puzhong, senior vice president of Meituan and president of the Daojia business group. In terms of coverage areas, not long ago, a relevant report quoted sources as saying that Keeta had completed the coverage of the entire Hong Kong region ahead of schedule at the end of October this year. According to Meituan's original plan, Keeta will adopt a strategy of gradual expansion in Hong Kong, that is, select the densely populated Mong Kok and Tai Kok Tsui areas as the first stop, and complete the full coverage within this year.
Although Hong Kong's food delivery market is not large compared to the mainland, as Meituan's first stop overseas, the performance of this region is undoubtedly particularly important to itself. After all, Hong Kong's catering culture is similar to that of the mainland, but the market environment, delivery methods, user habits and other aspects are different, and the challenge for Meituan Takeaway will be less in comparison. Therefore, now that Keeta has completed the goal of covering the whole territory ahead of schedule, it seems to have released a positive signal.
There is no doubt that Keeta was able to achieve this goal ahead of schedule because of the experience accumulated by Meituan Takeout in years of fierce market competition. It is reported that before Keeta's entry, the Hong Kong market was mainly divided between two food delivery platforms, foodpanda and deliveroo, which accounted for about 90% of the entire market share. In order to quickly open up the situation, Keeta chose to attack the enemy's weakness, starting from the problems of high customer unit price, high delivery fee, and unstable delivery time, both of which exist.
Among them, in terms of delivery fees, Keeta has successively launched a number of measures such as the "Billion Rewards" plan, free shipping every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, half price every day, and free shipping for all. In order to "knock down" the takeaway**, Keeta has launched activities such as "$35 Hong Kong", and even cooperated with a chain rice noodle merchant to reduce the original price of HK$70 to HK$29. According to sources, the cooperation with the chain of rice noodle stores is a turning point for Keeta, and its number of orders and users have increased significantly.
As for the delivery time, Keeta continues the Meituan takeaway style. It is understood that the average delivery time of foodpanda and deliveroo was about 30 minutes, but this time is not stable, and it often takes an hour or two to deliver. In this regard, Keeta relied on Meituan's years of accumulated operational experience and technology, as well as increased incentives for delivery staff, not only quickly built a fulfillment team from scratch, but also caught up with foodpanda and Deliveroo in terms of delivery efficiency, or even shortened to a shorter time, and brought the product to Hong Kong.
To a certain extent, Keeta, which builds the minds of users with subsidies, knocks down takeaways by reducing costs, and quickly builds its own delivery capabilities, is now replicating Meituan Takeaway in Hong Kong. As expected, KEETA will inevitably be added to the refinement of operations, such as further enriching merchants, improving distribution efficiency and service quality, so as to strengthen the user's mind.
However, as a newcomer, Meituan will eventually encounter some problems. For example, in terms of merchant expansion, it is reported that it is currently facing challenges from foodpanda and deliveroo that require merchants to "choose one or the other". It is understood that even though some merchants are willing to enter Keeta positively, after all, one more food delivery platform can provide one more revenue channel, but foodpanda and Deliveroo are obviously not willing to accept being divided by others to share the market share, so they also require merchants to "cooperate exclusively", otherwise the commission rate will be increased.
However, unlike the mainland, Hong Kong has not explicitly banned this practice at present, which means that Keeta will have to face the siege of foodpanda and deliveroo for some time to come. Therefore, how to snatch merchant resources from existing platforms is already an urgent problem for Meituan, and it may not be solved by experience.
In addition to facing competitors who already have more market share, the high cost and low penetration rate of the Hong Kong market are clearly challenges for Keeta. It is reported that factors such as higher labor and prices, complex distribution environments, and deep-rooted consumption habits have combined to create the current situation of the local takeaway market. According to estimates by data platform Statista, the total revenue of Hong Kong's food delivery market is expected to exceed $5.1 billion in 2023 and grow to $7.4 billion in 2025, but the penetration rate is only 3%. In contrast, the penetration rate of the mainland food delivery market is close to 30%.
In addition, Wong Ka-wo, chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants and Related Trades, also revealed in an interview that although the proportion of takeaway in the local catering market once reached 30% due to the need for contactless during the epidemic, with the slight easing of the epidemic from November to December 2021, the proportion of takeaway still dropped to less than 15% despite the continuous stimulation of discounts on takeaway platforms. From this point of view, although the size of Hong Kong's food delivery market is still very limited, it may also be an excellent whetstone for Meituan Takeaway to polish its ability to go overseas. It's just that Keeta is now replicating Meituan's past experience and ability to use money in Hong Kong, which seems to be a dimensionality reduction blow, but the effect remains to be verified.
Furthermore, even if the plan to cover the whole of Hong Kong was completed ahead of schedule, compared with other tracks, Meituan's overseas speed is obviously far from fast.
Not long ago, a source revealed that from October 2022 to the middle of this year, Zhu Wenqian, head of Meituan's strategic investment overseas department, has visited the Middle East several times, in addition to understanding the local business policies, "the core is to investigate the current situation of competition in the local food delivery business". And Meituan tried to hire a human resources director in the middle of this year to build a Middle East team, and considered landing its first pilot city in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But the reason why this move was ultimately shelved was that "there were differences of opinion at the top".
Although the authenticity of this news has not yet been verified by Meituan, it should be noted that there has been a gap of nearly 8 months between the news of Meituan's takeaway entry into Hong Kong and the official launch of Keeta in May this year. In the current era of efficiency, Meituan's actions seem to be a little sluggish. In contrast, Temu, which is in the cross-border e-commerce track, has conquered cities in the past year and has covered more than 40 countries and regions around the world so far.
In fact, this is not difficult to understand, after all, unlike games, short **, cross-border e-commerce and other tracks, the local life field to go overseas is also destined to reach a higher level of difficulty because it also needs to establish cooperation with local businesses, a large number of local personnel to participate, and an operation mechanism adapted to local conditions. You don't see, so far there has been no global platform in the local life track.
However, with the domestic takeaway market basically peaking and more and more players entering the market, resulting in increasingly fierce market competition, even though Meituan Takeaway is still in the leading position, there may not be much time left for it to explore calmly.
This article is from the Internet