On December 27, the 2023 Catering Digital Summit and Ningbo Strategic Cooperation Kick-off Conference was held in Ningbo. At the meeting, Ele.me announced that the "Joint Business Plan" was officially launched in Ningbo, which will drive the innovation and growth of local brands through the double helix of "brand equity + digitalization". "Through the strategic cooperation plan, we hope to better meet the consumer needs and merchant development needs of different regions, focus on the strength of the industry, and jointly promote the prosperity and development of the catering industry," said Chen Bin, general manager of Ele.me's regional chain brand in East China.
According to reports, Ele.me launched a "joint business plan" for chain brands in June this year, and has reached strategic cooperation with a number of national chain brands such as Nanjing Big Brand File and Shanghai Auntie. In addition to investing resources including 100 million yuan in brand subsidies and a number of special activities, the plan will continue to upgrade digital operation services for brands, and give priority to providing brands with various head marketing traffic resources and IP co-branded activities.
Zhang Yan, head of digitalization at Ele.me Brand Center, said that from the perspective of the development of online catering in Ningbo this year, the chain rate of the takeaway market increased by 4 compared with last year7%, compared with the new first-tier cities, there is still room for improvement as a whole. From the perspective of categories, cakes with breakfast attributes have grown rapidly, and categories such as coffee and milk tea are also favored in Ningbo, and fast-growing chain brands constitute a powerful engine for the development of these categories. At the same time, in the Chinese fast food and Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine tracks, the brand concentration is not high, and the chain brand still has a lot of room for development.
The brand on the list of Ele.me's "Rest Assured Points" is a local Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine chain brand in Ningbo, focusing on "good seafood, not so expensive". Most of the brand's main consumers are over 25 years old, and most of the offline scenes are family dinners. Transforming online, the brand requires quality and service to be consistent with offline, specifically from the best chain, dish management to packaging. In terms of service, the person in charge of takeaway in each store tracks order evaluation, response rate, number of negative reviews, etc. on a daily basis to ensure the quality and reputation of takeaway services. At the same time, the brand also actively participates in the platform's joint marketing activities such as "Five-fold Day", Seasonal, and Eat, so that the brand can get closer to young people and gain new business increments. Taking the day of the winter solstice "five-fold day" event as an example, the order volume of Amao Hotel increased by 13% month-on-day.
In addition to the dinner scene, we found that the demand for breakfast and supper in Ningbo, and the quality of one-person food are growing rapidly", Xue Hongri, general manager of Ele.me Ningbo City, introduced, "Compared with other new first-tier cities, Ningbo has a higher proportion of young and middle-aged people in the 30-50 age range, and the proportion and growth rate of the migrants representing the 'urban drifters' and the 'urban middle class' of 'high-consumption users' are all showing advantages compared with the new first-tier city agglomerations, and the demand for quality food in line with the tonality of chain brands is expected to further grow." ”
As early as 2019, the charcoal pot bullfrog brand "Frog Oh" began to develop "single products" on the first stage, and the sales of Ele.me's single store also increased by 5 times in that year. At present, the brand's highest online sales are all "One Man's Bullfrog" series of single products, and through continuous product updates to open up the market, the sales of "Frog" on the Ele.me platform have continued to soar for several consecutive years. "We are also looking forward to becoming the first batch of strategic partners of Ningbo's 'Joint Business Plan', and hope that more platform capabilities, multiple scenarios and multi-depth cooperation can bring us more certain growth opportunities," said Zhang Qiang, director of Frog Takeaway.
According to reports, the "Joint Business Plan", as a part of Ele.me's open ecological strategy, will provide multi-scenario support for brand incubation in new stores, brand power building, exclusive policy and service power upgrading through the double helix of "brand equity + digitalization". In the construction of merchants' digital capabilities, the brand management decision-making center is used as the base to comprehensively improve the growth efficiency of brand stock in multiple dimensions such as user operation and product operation. At the same time, in terms of new channels, new services and new capabilities in the ecosystem, we will continue to find new growth points for merchants and achieve win-win growth for the platform and merchants.
From helping brands expand stores and channels, we now hope to help brands improve efficiency and achieve new growth through digital capabilities in three aspects: data efficiency improvement, intelligent operation and productivity reconstruction, and at the same time help brands revitalize and accumulate more assets on the platform," said Zhang Yan. In the future, Ele.me will work with local merchants in Ningbo to customize strategic cooperation plans based on the characteristics of local merchants and consumers, and enhance the omni-channel operation capabilities of local brands through marketing innovation such as exclusive rights and interests of people, lists, and customized delivery solutions.