Exclusive article by China's well-off network.
Text|"Xiaokang", China's well-off network, Yuan Kai.
"Leftover Blind Boxes" is opening up the market. As of May 2023, the mini program has settled in more than 30 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and has reached cooperation with more than 3,000 stores, with more than 2 million users.
Photo by Ning Ying.
The original Mai Hill is sold at 10:18 every day, and it is recommended to subscribe to squat and pick up leaks; Paris Baguette is on the shelves from time to time, and there will be a reminder if you subscribe; Good palatable buns are made on the same day, highly recommended; About 399 yuan can buy a 100 yuan Dali sushi ......This is not a strategy for a certain type of limited-edition and co-branded food, but a trendy "leftover blind box" gameplay. This kind of alternative packaging leftovers into blind boxes and discounting them is being sought after by many young people, and it was once popular to the point that the alarm clock and the strategy came out together.
The leftovers in the "leftovers blind box" do not refer to eating leftover meals, but specifically to leftover food. For example, expiring food, food with damaged packaging and imperfect condition, etc. Merchants package these surplus foods into "blind boxes" and discounts, which can not only "de-stock and reduce costs" for themselves, but also give consumers benefits, reduce food waste and practice the concept of environmental protection in the process. Take a hot "leftover blind box" strategy post on the Internet as an example, the data shows that the blogger bought the blind box 180 times, saving a total of 50855 yuan, carbon reduction 44945kg。There are still many people at the bottom of the post who are exchanging blind box experiences. The popularity of "leftover blind boxes" is not accidental, and merchants and consumers are enjoying it.
As a new type of catering, the "leftover blind box" not only satisfies the curiosity and desire of consumers, but also promotes food saving and environmental protection, and has truly become a new trend of food conservation and civilized dining table in society. However, at the same time, the traceability and supervision mechanism of the food chain are also facing challenges, and "food safety" has become an obvious pain point for "leftover blind boxes".
The original intention was to reduce waste.
Just after 7 o'clock in the morning on January 5th, the Mini Program Food Wise Magic Bag shows that the price of "Daddy Candy Handmade Toast Magic Bag" is 129 yuan, only 5 copies left. In addition, there are also new brands such as Paris Baguette, Hao Palate, Jinfeng Chengxiang, Yuanmai Hill, Duki Donuts and other brands, and marked with words such as "random matching" and "surprise different". In addition to cakes and pastries, there is also a price of 119 yuan, 199 yuan "flower magic bag". On the same day, the senior user of the "leftover blind box" was 12The ** of 9 yuan made an appointment with the nearest "Daddy Candy Handmade Toast Magic Bag", and the reservation interface showed that the bag picking time was from 9:30 to 21 o'clock on the same day.
In the afternoon of the same day, when Xiao He went to the Papa Candy store in Chaoyang Joy City to pick up food, he found that all kinds of blind boxes had been packed in sealed bags and neatly placed on the counter. After Xiao He opened the bag, he found that the bag was "Brio butter toast", and there were still two days before the expiration date. In Xiao He's words, "This bag is a big profit." The table shows that the ** of a bag of butter toast is 36 yuan, 12$9 is about 1 3 of the regular price.
Xiao He is a frequent customer of the "leftover blind box", and for more than a year, he has almost visited the blind box store near 5 kilometers of his home and company. Like many young migrant workers, Xiao He bought the "leftover blind box" first because it was cheap, and secondly, he was attracted by the novelty and excitement of the blind box. Xiao He bluntly said that the "leftover blind box" not only saves money and does not waste food, but also adds surprises, which is worth buying.
Generally, it is folded in half, and occasionally there are dishes with relatively large discounts. Xiao He has opened a "hidden model", in the Dalixi sushi restaurant, Xiao He has spent 299 yuan to a sushi combination worth more than 100 yuan. "I couldn't eat it alone, so I shared it with two other colleagues that day. Later, those two colleagues also participated in the 'unboxing' of the 'leftover blind box'. Xiao He recalled. In terms of types, Xiao He basically buys pastries and sushi meals, "On the one hand, the best on the platform are mainly baked desserts, light meals, and milk products, and on the other hand, pastry meals are convenient to store and have fewer potential safety hazards." ”
Sun Guomin, the person in charge of the Food Wise Magic Bag, said that the bread, steamed buns and sushi are not deliberate, but these products happen to be the hardest hit areas of food waste. "Most of the shelf life of snacks is more than half a year or more than one year, and bakery products are destined to have a short shelf life due to the characteristics of short shelf, so it is very difficult to accurately control the quantity. "According to the 2020 China Report Network's annual report on China's catering industry, the baking industry alone wastes 23.2 billion yuan worth of food every year. As shown by the slogan "Reduce Food Waste, Combat Climate Change" on the opening screen of the Food Wise Magic Bag, the original intention of the "Leftover Blind Box" is to solve the problem of food waste while allowing consumers to buy meals at a more affordable price.
In fact, the rise of "leftover blind boxes" has also stepped on the tuyere of social "anti-waste". In 2021, the Anti-Food Waste Law of the People's Republic of China was officially promulgated and implemented, and industries and enterprises have also contributed to their efforts. Over the past two years, the first department has strictly enforced the law, and catering enterprises around the country have actively participated in it to curb the "waste on the tip of the tongue". At present, the momentum of food waste has been initially curbed. According to the data, market supervision departments across the country inspected 200 catering service operators80,000 households, rectify the problem of food and beverage waste 2More than 70,000 cases were handled, and 8,986 administrative punishment cases were handled. Among them, Guangdong Province has inspected 16 catering service operators60,000 and 1,124 food waste problems have been required to be rectified; In Shandong Province, 1,378 catering service operators were found to have food and beverage waste, and 1,651 problems were rectified.
In this environment, "saving food" has become a trend, and "CD-ROMs" have become a new fashion, which has also promoted the popularity of "leftover blind boxes".
The "leftover" economy is getting hotter and hotter.
"Leftover Blind Boxes" is opening up the market. As of May 2023, the mini program has settled in more than 30 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and has reached cooperation with more than 3,000 stores, with more than 2 million users. In addition, there are platforms such as "After Eight O'Clock" and "Rice Grain Box" that focus on serving specific cities.
From the previous expiring food to the current leftover blind box, this batch of workers loves the business of "leftovers" + blind boxes. Why can "leftovers" and "blind box", two words that do not seem to have the same frequency, be combined? This reflects the ambivalence of workers who pay more and more attention to emotional value and cost-effectiveness.
Frequently. It is difficult to say that all kinds of IP blind boxes of 9 yuan are cheap, why when it comes to eating, workers have become keen to "pick up cheap"?Zhang Ling, who is also an IP blind box player and a consumer of "leftover blind boxes", told "Xiaokang" China Xiaokang Network: "IP blind boxes and food can make me feel happy. If the latter can have a more cost-effective option of the same quality, I am very happy. After buying blind boxes of leftovers several times, Zhang Ling believes that the taste of these foods is actually no different from that of regular-priced foods, mainly because there are fewer choices and it is more difficult to pick them up. "Like the IP blind box, once I buy it, I expect what kind of food to be opened. The freshness and sense of curiosity of the leftover blind box also provide Zhang Ling with a lot of emotional value, "Just like Taobao, you can spend money to buy the original price, but if you can buy new and cheap ones, you will have a sense of achievement."
It is not difficult to see that for consumers, "the same quality as regular-priced goods" is the key to their choice of "leftover business" such as "leftover blind boxes". Is that actually the case?
Take duki dounuts as an example, its ** on the "leftover blind box" platform is "single 5."9 yuan "" two 11$9". In the offline store, the ** of a doughnut is between 15 and 25 yuan. The person in charge of the store said that the doughnuts sold in the store are made in quantities on the same day, and because the number of customers is not fixed every day, there is often a surplus. "If you can't sell the doughnuts on the same day, you can't sell them the next day, so in order to avoid waste, we launched a donut blind box on the platform. The person in charge said that the store sells donut blind boxes not for profit. The store doesn't specialize in making extra doughnuts because they sell blind boxes, which doesn't bring profit, so there's no problem of different ingredients.
Although coffee blind boxes are not mainstream, Whose Coffee has launched coffee blind boxes. The staff said that the launch of the coffee blind box will help merchants solve the problem of remaining raw materials, the original price of more than 20 yuan of coffee, the blind box ** in 4 5% off. "It's not a loss, but it doesn't make any money, so you can only subsidize the cost of some raw materials. At the same time, the industry generally believes that the form of coffee blind box is more interesting and can attract traffic. ”
In fact, from the perspective of merchants, selling "leftover blind boxes" is also a helpless move. Even though the negative connotation of the word "leftovers" has been dissolved in online ridicule, the concept of "leftovers" is not "good" in the traditional Chinese context. Many merchants are worried that this will affect their brand reputation and lose old customers before selling "leftover blind boxes"; More importantly, it is difficult to grasp the psychology of consumers, if the blind box is not satisfied, new customers can easily point the finger at the brand, which will outweigh the losses. But even so, many merchants still choose to sell "leftover blind boxes". The person in charge of a chain bakery brand told "Xiaokang" that the impact of "leftover blind boxes" on the brand is not yet known, but the products wasted every day are visible to the naked eye. Although our merchants can develop more ways to deal with surplus goods, such as direct price reductions in the evening, these are not as large as the current hot "leftover blind box" traffic.
"Safety" is a pain point.
In fact, the "leftover blind box" that has almost become a "traffic password" on domestic social platforms has been popular abroad for a long time. As early as 2015, a Danish company developed a software: merchants decide the content of the leftover blind box by the expiring food before closing every day, the software summarizes various merchant information, and the user can open the software to search for different types of blind boxes such as nearby restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, supermarkets, etc., make an appointment online and pick up the goods offline. This app, called Too Good to Go, translates to "lost good things". There are also different "nationalities" such as Spain, Italy, India, Belgium and so on.
As more and more people pay attention to the blind box of leftovers, controversy about its safety has also ensued. Different from other blind box economies, safety is the pain point of "leftover blind boxes". The essence of the "leftover blind box" is to clear the inventory, and some blind boxes use expiring food, which has many uncertain factors in storage and shelf life, which is easy to bring related food safety risks. For example, some merchants use shoddy quality food to put inferior food in blind boxes to seek improper benefits; The food in the blind box is not properly matched, resulting in food spoilage. How can the safety of the "leftover blind box" be guaranteed?
Buying a "blind box of leftovers" can not be "blind". In August 2023, the China Consumers Association issued a reminder on the risks related to blind boxes of leftovers, and the Consumer Association pointed out that for baked goods such as bread and cakes, once the shelf life of the food is exceeded, it is easy to deteriorate, and food safety is not guaranteed. At the same time, perishable foods such as dairy products and meat products have a short shelf life and are easy to deteriorate quickly at high temperatures, adding safety hazards.
Earlier, in June 2023, the China Consumers Association emphasized that although the "leftover blind box", as an emerging business method, is not prohibited by law, it must standardize its operation and effectively protect the rights and interests of consumers.
But in the "leftover blind box" market, merchants still seem to have loopholes to exploit. Consumers' daily buying experience is also not so optimistic. "Xiaokang" China Xiaokang Network has purchased a variety of pastry blind boxes on the market, among them, the bread and desserts that are made and sold do not have clear production dates, shelf life and other information. It is reported that according to the requirements, pre-packaged food must be marked with the production date and shelf life on the outer packaging. However, the regulations on bread, buns and other products that are made and sold are still relatively vague in this regard. For example, in offline stores, most stores will indicate the date of production on the counter where the product is stored.
As far as the ready-made "leftover blind box" is concerned, although the food is fresh and consumers are willing to believe that the food is fresh, the lack of transparent production information ultimately gives the "black-hearted" merchants an opportunity. Of course, choosing a reputable and reputable merchant to buy "leftover blind boxes" and avoiding buying food from unknown sources or food that does not meet safety requirements is one thing, and more importantly, safety issues can not only be based on conscience, but also have strict regulatory procedures. In this regard, industry insiders generally believe that for food safety concerns caused by expiring products, multiple parties should work together to promote the long-term development of leftover blind boxes. At the policy level, relevant regulations and standards should be formulated to ensure the safety and quality of food in blind boxes, and enterprises should be encouraged to adopt digital means to effectively track and manage food. At the merchant level, a strict food management system and a transparent information disclosure mechanism should be established to enhance consumer trust. Consumers should also raise their awareness of food safety and choose reputable businesses and products.
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This article was published in the late January 2024 issue of Xiaokang.