Capital is eyeing shared kitchens. Is there any potential for it? | gold reef city, freebet tanpa deposit dan syarat, vip 777 slot

After the star project of the sharing economy, the shared bicycle industry, suffered a huge defeat, it does not seem to have affected the popularity of the sharing economy. Shared kitchens, a new category in the current sharing economy, are still attracting capital attention.

On February 18, Huang Xiaodi received Pre-A round of financing, and Wangxiangyuan is one of its shareholders. On February 22, after the shared kitchen brand Huang Xiaodi announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan in pre-A round financing, Panda Star Kitchen also announced that it had received US$50 million in Series C investment, led by international fund organization Tiger Globa.

There are actually related cases abroad. Travis Kalanick, the star co-founder who was kicked out by Uber's management, founded a new company called Cloud Kitchens. In early February 2019, Cloud Kitchen acquired Jike Alliance.

In addition, London-based Deliveroo is providing "live kitchens" to high-end restaurants across the UK, allowing them to serve customers outside central London.

In the past, the sharing economy was oriented to the C-side, and the shared kitchen model was actually a To B business. In the past, C-side sharing models such as mini KTV and shared massage chairs are still surviving, but the momentum in other fields is basically not good. There are few successful cases of C-side sharing. Is it feasible on the B-side?

Judging from the current cases of shared kitchens, it seems to be a good business.

On the one hand, the operating costs and rents of the traditional catering industry remain high, and the income is relatively low. These kitchens are usually purchased or leased from commercial spaces that are in trouble, and then equipped with kitchen facilities, and then leased to food and beverage companies specializing in takeaways.

They also develop related software for takeout catering companies to help them manage their backend operation systems and integrate takeout delivery platforms. Through the intensification of production and management, it reduces many costs such as space rental, manpower, and operations for restaurant owners. This is a low-cost way to start a takeout business.

Secondly, the difference between a shared kitchen and a traditional restaurant is that it only does takeout, not dine-in, and does not set up dining chairs. After the meal is delivered, the meal will be delivered to the "meal packaging room" by a courier, and will be packaged by a dedicated takeout packer and placed in a unified meal pick-up window to facilitate takeout delivery.

And it serves the vast number of takeaway users in China. This market is large enough and continues to grow.

According to data from Bloomberg, China’s food delivery market has reached US$37 billion. In 2016, as many as 256 million Chinese used online ordering services, and this number is expected to increase to 346 million in 2019.

In China, cities where takeout is booming are also first-tier cities with high rents. For businesses that choose to focus on takeout in order to save rent and other costs, choosing shared kitchens is also a feasible business idea.

But the problem is that although this model helps takeaway merchants reduce costs, the costs are all on the shared kitchen itself. The location selection of shared kitchens is highly dependent on location - it requires first-class business districts for takeaway consumers.Covering a wide area and serving residents within 3 kilometers, the location cannot be too far away from the community, nor can it be opened within the community.

Secondly, it needs to choose categories that are popular in the business district. However, the cost of good business district locations is high and there are not many. If the flow of people in different areas and locations caused by large-scale expansion is different, and the benefits brought are different from the frequency of takeaways, its revenue growth will be strongly affected by regional factors.

What needs to be considered now is whetherthe shared kitchen’s profit model, which relies on space rental, can support its normal business operations. Whether the management of "shared kitchens" is standardized and whether it can reduce the food safety risks that previously existed in the takeout industry.

In addition,Can it improve the efficiency of takeaway production and delivery?

Takeaway can currently be roughly divided into five links: store opening, purchasing, ordering, production and distribution. In fact, the current shared kitchen model does not optimize the efficiency of the takeout process. The so-called value-added services are more gimmicks than reality.

If we sort out the current shared kitchen model, we will find that the current shared kitchen is more of a physical space sharing. Merchants can open a store in a shared kitchen and get a license to get on the platform ("shared kitchen" will provide merchants with a unified business license and corresponding catering equipment. Compared with store rental, shared kitchens have the advantage of low-cost investment).

However, supply chain procurement, takeout orders and production are still the original models, and delivery is also done by Hummingbird, Meituan or Dada.

In the final analysis, it still has not gotten rid of the current takeout model in terms of efficiency reform. In other words, for merchants, the competition among food delivery platforms is fierce nowadays, and the costs of various traffic and activities still cannot be saved.

Although it is said to provide merchants with integrated solutions including venue, equipment, operations, and brand promotion, the core is just a more cost-effective space rental model. If compared with the shared office field, shared kitchen is actually the catering version of WeWork.

To be more realistic,the shared kitchen model can also be seen as an upgraded version of the food court.

At present, shared kitchens at home and abroad are still in their infancy, and they still face many problems - first, in addition to the problems faced in physical operations, can the company meet the multi-dimensional service needs of merchants?

Secondly, can the shared kitchen model solve food safety problems? BecauseSince shared kitchen operators themselves need a large number of businesses to collect rent and make profits, it is difficult to conduct a complete qualification review of the businesses. To a certain extent, it also provides opportunities for some unqualified operators and provides convenience to unlicensed small workshops.

Earlier, industry insiders revealed that shared kitchens have been forced to close due to fire protection, lack of licenses, failed food safety inspections, and substandard sewage and oil fume emissions.

This is actually related to the fact that shared kitchens have not improved the efficiency and quality of the original supply chain, and have not strictly controlled the problems of merchants in procurement, processing, production and other aspects.

Thirdly, the follow-up costs for merchants are too high - industry insiders mentioned that these include public fees, taxes, garbage fees, flue cleaning, cockroach control, gas modification, etc. There may also be problems such as inflated charges.

In other words,Shared kitchens do not really reduce business costs. The income of merchants is too single and their ability to resist risks is poor, which leads to excessive liquidity of merchants and also brings the risk of unstable revenue to shared kitchen operators.