Following Meituan's renaming to "Tomorrow's Supermarket", Meituan Maicai also followed suit and changed its name to Little Elephant Supermarket.
It is understood that from December 1, users can purchase and use it in three ways: the Little Elephant Supermarket app, the Meituan app, and the Little Elephant Supermarket WeChat applet.
As early as November 26, Meituan's official WeChat account began to warm up, announcing that the brand will be upgraded in December. Today, Little Elephant Supermarket has shifted from "grocery shopping" to "supermarket", marking Meituan's strategic move to advance into the local retail sector.
What is the baby elephant supermarket
Xiaoxiang Supermarket will adhere to Meituan's self-operated retail model, and provide daily use and distribution services for fresh groceries for community residents through a convenient service station set up in the community that integrates storage, sorting and distribution, positioning it as a "30-minute express delivery supermarket".
In the past, 'Meituan Grocery Shopping' was Meituan's self-operated retail business, positioned as a '30-minute express delivery supermarket' for community residents, adopting the model of 'mobile app + offline service station', and providing fresh groceries and daily use and distribution services for community residents through a convenient service station set up in the community integrating storage, sorting and distribution. ”
According to the person in charge of the business of Little Elephant Supermarket, the new logo of "Little Elephant Supermarket" is a baby elephant with its head held high, and the bottom is marked "Meituan self-operated", which represents that it will bring more carefully selected and directly sourced high-quality products to consumers under the Meituan self-operated retail model.
The variety of categories is one of the reasons for the name change. In fact, Meituan has long been more than just "buying groceries". Over the past five years, Meituan's products have become more and more abundant, expanding to more than 10,000 products, including fresh food, casual snacks, daily cleaning, personal care and beauty, alcohol and beverages, and so on.
The second is the continuous expansion of business volume. According to Meituan's data, on the basis of continuous exploration of technology-assisted retail, the business has increased its sales by 50 times in four years, and the number of consumers served has reached tens of millions.
*。After this brand upgrade, the products of Little Elephant Supermarket have reached the level of offline large supermarkets. Up to now, Little Elephant Supermarket has been launched in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Suzhou and other cities.
From a small elephant to Meituan
Looking back on history, Meituan tried a new retail business as early as 2017, and this renaming of Little Elephant Supermarket is related to the previous business.
In July of that year, Meituan opened its first new retail project in Wangjing, Beijing. However, after nearly a year of development, "Palm Fish Fresh" was renamed "Little Elephant Fresh". At that time, Meituan set a goal of opening 20 stores by the end of 2018 and 50 stores in 2019. But in the end, Little Elephant Fresh only opened seven stores in 2018, and in April 2019, Little Elephant Fresh announced the closure of five full-scale stores in Changzhou and Wuxi. This means that the offline attempt of baby elephant fresh food has failed.
However, this has not stopped Meituan from exploring the local field. In October 2020, Little Elephant Fresh App announced that it would migrate its online service to Meituan Grocery AAP and change its name to "Meituan Grocery Life Supermarket".
At the same time, Meituan launched Meituan Optimal in a low-key manner, entered the community ** track, and upgraded to "Tomorrow's Supermarket" in 2022.
Although the "Little Elephant" offline project failed, it is still moving forward. Last year, Meituan launched a number of self-owned brands such as "Elephant Chef" and "Elephant Preferred", which also contributed to today's Little Elephant Supermarket. This not only enriches its product variety, but also strengthens the competitiveness of the platform.
Finally,
According to the recent results released by Meituan for the third quarter of 2023, Meituan achieved revenue of 76.5 billion yuan in the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 221%；Achieved a net profit of 35900 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1953%；In terms of new businesses, including Meituan Preferred, Meituan Maicai, Kuaidon, etc., in the third quarter of 2023, Meituan's revenue in this segment increased by 15% year-on-year3% to 18.8 billion yuan, and the operating loss narrowed by 24% year-on-year5% to $5.1 billion, and the operating loss ratio improved to 272%。
The financial report also revealed that, like many online fresh retailers, Meituan Grocery has emphasized the need to continuously improve its own brand in addition to consolidating its best advantages, optimizing its logistics network, and improving the efficiency of its own chain.
Regarding the brand upgrade, the person in charge of the "Little Elephant Supermarket" business said that the launch of the new brand "Little Elephant Supermarket" is a strategic move for Meituan to advance into the local retail field. After the brand upgrade, "Little Elephant Supermarket" will further promote local consumption by building local warehousing and logistics to deliver the goods needed by users to their homes instantly.
After the previous failure of "baby elephant fresh", Meituan has taken advantage of its strong platform advantage to return and shift from "fresh" to "supermarket", will this time bring a different experience?We'll see.