Software vendor wars! Catering business: whoever is the most intelligent can laugh to the end

Cost reduction and efficiency improvement is an everlasting topic in the catering industry. In the Internet era, it is an irreversible trend to reduce cost and improve efficiency through intelligent software technology.

As mentioned in the "2018 China Smart Catering Industry Research Report", in the future SaaS service providers need to connect with the platform to realize value.

So, in the current scattered and chaotic smart catering development pattern, who can empower SaaS service providers to build an information highway in the catering industry?

1

Smart catering system is no longer "wisdom"

F & B merchants frustrated

The cashiers were busy in the front desk, and customers lined up waiting for the checkout. This situation was staged in most restaurants throughout the country.

In the first two years, smart POS began to rise, and long queues never returned. Customers can pay by WeChat or Alipay. The waiter only needs to guide the consumer to check out, and the guests leave the table directly, reducing the queue waiting process.

However, caterer Lin Can hit a wall in the smart catering system.

Two years ago, shortly after his hot pot store opened, he connected to a local restaurant intelligent software, but soon Lin Can found that this cash register system was not compatible with all order payment ports, and it was still inconvenient for customers to pay.

Until the end of last year, several stores have been opened, and this problem has not been resolved.

"We are a small county, and there are not many service providers that make restaurant intelligent software, and most of them are relatively simple. There is no way to meet the development needs of stores." Lin Can was very helpless.

In fact, Lin Can ’s experience is not alone. At present, due to the scale characteristics of traditional catering software, the following major problems generally exist:

â‘  The update speed of the traditional software service system is slow;

â‘¡Most of the traditional software charging model adopts a one-time charging model, and the quality of subsequent maintenance services is low;

â‘¢ The fluency between the systems is particularly poor, and various modules such as cash register products, member products, and supply chain products are separated from each other, forming an information island.

"As the threshold of the service capacity of the Chinese catering industry is getting higher and higher, it is difficult to make money from a single catering software business. The restaurant needs to have a branded, trustworthy, good experience, localized service team, and only perfectly connected to the platform Only the cash register system can bring a better service experience to catering merchants. "The relevant person in charge of Meituan Dianping Ecological Business Department told reporters.

It is understood that in order to further improve the catering ecosystem and improve the efficiency of catering merchants in all directions, Meituan Dianping has begun to increase its efforts in the B-end layout of the catering industry since the "second half of the Internet" was proposed.

In 2017, Meituan Dianping has launched a SaaS cash register business in 180 major cities across the country through direct sales, and formed a professional team to provide one-stop solutions for merchants based on various hardware and software systems required by catering merchants. need.

2

Traditional agent transformation

The restaurant has fewer employees, but the efficiency has improved

Compared with Lin Can, Mr. Li, who opened the Sichuan Restaurant in Guanghan, Sichuan, was much luckier.

At the beginning, boss Li's Sichuan restaurant also used the traditional ordering method.The waiter had to take the handwritten order every day and went to the second floor to finish the order, and then went back to the first floor to manually enter, plus take out the takeaway order. During the period, more than a dozen waiters were too busy, resulting in a bad experience for dine-in and take-out.

Moreover, after the end of business every day, they also need to arrange personnel to write off takeaway orders, a lot of waste of manpower and material resources, and the efficiency is still very low.

"Fortunately, our catering service provider made an upgrade in time. After the restaurant changed the US group cash register, many customers said that our service quality has improved a lot." Boss Li is very happy.

At the beginning of this year, the original software service provider of Sichuan Restaurant was upgraded to Meituan ’s catering SAAS channel 5S service provider, including more than ten local restaurants including Sichuan Restaurant, all of which abandoned the original old system and replaced Meituan with smart cash register. system.

"Whether it's APP ordering, cash register ordering or automatic barcode scanning ordering, Meituan Dianping's smart cash register system is completed by one-click order. In addition to the data exchange function between the cashier system and the Meituan takeout system, the new system is really a restaurant It simplifies the process and improves human efficiency. "Boss Li, who just replaced Meituan's smart cash register system, tasted the sweetness of the smart system.

In the past, all take-out orders for Sichuan restaurants required a waiter to pick up the take-out with a special machine, and had to write off the order after the business was over. Today, after using the Meituan cash register, it can seamlessly interface with the Meituan takeout. The order is automatically entered into the system and directly connected to the back kitchen. It saves the manual link in the middle. It is both accurate and efficient, and no matter how many takeouts can handle it.

"Now the restaurant has halved the number of waiters, and it receives nearly 800 diners every day. It still does not make mistakes. With less labor, the efficiency has improved."

3

Catering software vendors battle

Who sets the industry standard for the 4 trillion catering market?

Some time ago, IResearch released the "2018 China Smart Catering Industry Research Report" that SaaS service providers need to connect with the platform to realize the value.

However, according to the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2017, catering revenue was nearly 4 trillion yuan, an increase of 10.7% over the previous year. Corresponding to the rapid development of the industry, the proportion of 6 million merchants who are using intelligent catering ERP software is less than 10%, and the enjoyment of related after-sales service is less than 0.5%.

This huge market is waiting for powerful intelligent restaurant cloud ERP and SAAS service providers to develop and establish relevant industry standards.

It is understood that Meituan Dianping recently announced that it will focus on recruiting service providers in 2000 cities across the country in 2018, promoting the 5S service provider system based on Meituan Dianping SAAS cash register software, hardware and technical services, and assisting traditional single product agents to upgrade to 5S service provider.

What is Meituan's "5s service provider"? What are the criteria and profitability of becoming a Meituan's 5s service provider?

1. Meituan commented on "5s service provider"

Since 2014, a large number of participants have poured into the smart catering industry. There are as many as thousands of service providers in the country, including traditional software enterprise transformation, SaaS service providers, marketing service providers and Internet platforms. Different participants have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of resources, models and products. Like the transformation of traditional software enterprises, although they have accumulated many years of industry experience, the transformation is slow, the internal adjustment process is long, and the profit has been greatly affected, so that the traditional software agents and catering businesses are in a dilemma.

The 5S service provider, which is called Meituan Dianping 5S authorized service provider, is a collection of five (Sale), spare parts (Sparepart), after-sales service (Service), information feedback (Survey), and long-term common development (Sustainable). An integrated sales and service enterprise.

Based on the powerful Meituan Dianping complete business chain, that is, the products, services and services covered by the six major empowerments of catering 2B (IT, operation, marketing, finance, supply chain, logistics), Meituan Dianping 5S service providers can be catering merchants Provide high-quality localization and one-stop service.

2. Agents are also service providers

At present, single software companies are faced with several big mountains such as high cost, difficult profitability, and limited data value. Coupled with the large number of entrants, the competition in the smart catering industry is already fierce.

In the past, traditional SaaS services were charged on a monthly basis. However, this method is currently difficult to be accepted by many small and medium-sized restaurant owners. It is a long-term burden to maintain a large local push team that continuously needs funds.

Many companies claim that they can earn income through value-added services, data services, etc. But in fact, the data dimension that a single software vendor can precipitate is limited, and it is difficult to realize the long-term operation development path of enterprises through such value-added services.

The 5s service provider is not just an agent for a certain product, business and service of Meituan. In addition to the measurment of SaaS software and related hardware equipment through Meituan, and to earn the product difference after sale, the service provider can also serve as a catering merchant. Provide after-sales maintenance to make a profit.

In addition, 5s service providers can also receive back-end support from Meituan Dianping:

â‘  Professional team technical outline catering shop IT system integration training;

â‘¡Professional sales instructors, combined with local market conditions, imparted sales experience of Meituan to the service provider sales team;

â‘¢Professional market guidance provides new opportunities for merchants through data analysis and operation experience of Meituan Dianping platform.

"In the future, 100% of restaurants will be connected to the Internet and will be digitalized."

Indeed, driven by the development of Internet infrastructure, future restaurant operations will become more dependent on big data thinking, and Meituan Dianping's "5s service provider" not only solves the pain points of single product agents, but also further improves catering The service system and ecosystem also meet the needs of the upgrade of traditional software service providers and millions of catering businesses across the country.

Conclusion

It is understood that Meituan Dianping has accumulated more than 5 million merchants and more than 180 million monthly active users in terms of group purchases, information evaluation and take-out business.

As the world's largest life service platform, Meituan Dianping's penetration of the catering industry is becoming higher and higher, and it has become a leader in industry transformation and further advancing Internet-based standards.

The relevant person in charge of Meituan Dianping told reporters that Meituan will consider linking the income of service providers with the flow of catering merchants in the future. The blue ocean of smart catering ecosystem will appear, will you come?