Every morning and evening rush hour or weekend, the surrounding area of Chaoyang Joy City is always full of traffic. The residential areas and office buildings here are connected together, gathering a large number of fashion brands and creative restaurants, which is not only the punching place for trendy people and foodies in Beijing, but also the regional "base camp" for takeaway brothers.
One by one, waiting beside the electric take-away cars on the roadside, the riders who have taken orders are in a hurry. They go in and out of various restaurants, and the lunch boxes in their hands may be freshly baked restaurant specialties, coffee, ice cream or midnight snack.
Chaoyang Joy City is just a microcosm of the take-away market. According to the report of iResearch, there are more and more young people and office workers in China who are willing to spend money on convenience. After five years, the online penetration rate of food consumption will reach 29.5%, which is about 14.1 trillion yuan.
Behind the busy riders is the protracted battlefield of the giants. After numerous melee, killing and subsidy wars, this year, Meituan Dianping finally went public as the world’s largest food and beverage delivery service provider and the largest in-store food and beverage service platform in China. However, Ali was hungry after integration, and Enemy at the Gates.
This year, in order to achieve the goal of gaining 50% share of the take-away market, Ali took out nearly three times the subsidy of the US delegation, and claimed that there was no upper limit for the recruitment of riders.
The ultimate battle around "eating" is underway. In addition to the first-tier cities such as Beishangguangshen and Shenzhen, the war is about to spread to more cities and counties in Ali and Meituan.
In the new retail industry logistics system that pursues efficiency and speed, the rider is the most basic element, and it is also an important link in the increasingly refined life industry chain. In the world of short video, riders, as individuals with emotions, are like detectors, reflecting the changes of the whole market, the vibration of industry and the transformation of society.
From factory to takeaway
Every year, Meituan Review publishes an "Annual Report on Takeaway Development". In the report, the daily average number of active distribution riders of the US Mission increased from 100,000 in 2015 to 531,000 in 2017.
According to the statistics of "Research Report on Takeaway Riders in 2018", 75% of riders come from rural areas, and nearly 70% of riders choose to leave their hometown to work hard in other places and struggle in first-and second-tier cities. Moreover, young people after 1980s and 1990s account for 82% of the riders.
In just three years, take-away riders have changed from marginal jobs to "reliable" jobs for young rural laborers in cities. The comments of the US delegation and Hungry have created more than one million jobs, and the work of "Lingzhi Xiaoxiao" belongs to this "one in a million".
At the beginning of this year, a 21-year-old Dong girl came to Hangzhou from her hometown of Yunnan. A friend introduced her to work in a clothing factory where many fellow villagers worked. In a workshop full of girls, she kept cutting clothes and car lines from morning till night. The first month’s salary was 2,800 yuan, the second month was 2,500 yuan, and the third month found that the salary was too low. She only worked for half a month and resigned after taking 1,500 yuan.
Later, she went to work in a restaurant. I heard from a familiar rider that Meituan crowdsourced her working hours flexibly and made more money, so she wanted to try it part-time. Unexpectedly, she found a sense of belonging in this man’s industry.
"When I arrived at the US Mission, I felt that I had been mixed up before." Novel, in the past, in the clothing factory, peers always wanted to eat, wear and play. After becoming a rider, I saw that my fellow riders were racing against time to make money, and the realistic pressure of "getting married and saving money" made her mature at once.
Unlike the assembly line in the factory, the rider needs a strong "motive force". Because part-time riders have no basic salary and earn as much as they do, the real-time income of sending a few dollars makes her very economical and punctual. Short stories, those riders who earn more than 10,000 yuan a month are very hard-working, running for 15 hours every day, and often finishing work at 3 or 4 in the morning. These role models make her even reluctant to talk about her boyfriend, because time is too precious and she is afraid it will cost too much money.
Xiaoxiao also found himself "more and more tough." I remember that in the first week as a rider, the delivery road was bumpy at 11 o’clock at night. Some soup spilled on the bag, and the customer looked ugly and slammed the door. She cried sadly, thinking about "bad reviews" and "I didn’t mean to". At that time, she took a video to record an unfortunate day. As a result, fans in Aauto Quicker left messages to cheer her up, and riders left messages to teach her how to deliver a soup meal and how to appease unhappy customers.
However, Xiaoxiao is afraid to tell her family that she is running a takeaway, because a little girl who works as a rider always makes people worry. She said that if there is no income from live broadcast on Aauto Quicker, she will often deliver meals until the early hours of the morning, which is the normal state of crowdsourcing riders.
In the past six months as a rider, Xiaoxiao recorded the ups and downs of being alone in a foreign land on Aauto Quicker in the form of short video, which is also her way to fight loneliness and pressure. She said that although there are only 14,000 fans, chatting with them live every night after work, and the fatigue and grievances of work have vanished.
Although she is not as stable as her fellow villagers, Xiaoxiao is not very satisfied with her job. She can earn four or five thousand yuan by delivering food every month, and her income is several times that of a girl from her hometown.
As shown in the World Development Report 2019: Changes in the Nature of Work released by the World Bank, technological progress has accelerated the growth of platform enterprises, and is also changing the way people work, creating more non-traditional jobs and short-term "odd jobs". From the small description, we can intuitively feel that the young labor force is shifting from the traditional agricultural and manufacturing fields to the service industry, and correspondingly, it will also accelerate the rapid development of local life business.
From the third and fourth lines to the first and second lines.
In July this year, Hungry announced that it had invested RMB 3 billion in the "Summer Campaign", and what this data shows is the way to attract cooperative large, medium and small businesses and riders and incite the take-away market.
Abo can list the policies such as unit price, rewards and subsidies for the US delegation and the hungry riders. He has experienced them from the US delegation to the hungry, from the first-tier cities to the fourth-tier counties.
In 1992, A Bo once worked as a part-time delivery man in Suzhou, and later returned to Luoyang County, Henan Province to be the stationmaster of the US group delivery station for two years. Because I heard that there are many orders in first-tier cities, the unit price is high, and the monthly income can exceed 10,000 yuan, I came to Beijing this fall to become a hungry hummingbird takeaway crowdsourcing.
A Bo explained that both the US delegation and the hungry have special delivery and crowdsourcing teams. The riders who just entered the business generally choose to do "special delivery", which can guarantee the basic income in the team, but the experienced riders choose to do "crowdsourcing". It takes a little longer to take orders freely, and the price of the list that runs far away is higher.
In Abo’s view, Meituan has a very high penetration rate in third-and fourth-tier cities and sinking markets. In 2016, Meituan has opened up county markets such as Luoning, and it was not until 2018 that it was hungry to accelerate its entry into these areas.
In Beijing, the two platforms give crowdsourcing riders "almost the same amount of tickets". If you are hungry, 9 yuan crowdsourcing each ticket, praised 1 yuan, and Meituan crowdsourcing each ticket, praised 1.5 yuan. Coupled with weather subsidies, praise, attendance and other rewards, there is no difference in the overall income of riders.
There is only one difference. When the US group crowdsources meals and delivery is delayed, the rider’s deduction needs to be exempted through online appeal; When you are hungry, hummingbird crowdsourcing directly cancels the time limit for picking up meals from merchants, reducing the deduction fee for overtime delivery.
Such a difference in process is important for ABO. A Bo has always been careful. He said, "You have to run at least 7,000 yuan a month to take care of your family." He and three riders huddled in a 20-square-meter bungalow, and went out at 7: 00 a.m. until the early morning to make money and save money. He said that when his parents are old, he also wants to "marry a daughter-in-law to repair the house", and his two roommates have to support their wives and children in their hometown.
Even if he delivers hungry takeout food, A Bo is proud to have been the "Minions" of the US group. Every time in the dead of night, A Bo always misses the days when he delivered takeout in his hometown, boasting and betting. At that time, he was the most famous takeaway brother of the US group. Until now, he has been wearing the work clothes of the US group when shooting videos.
At that time, whenever the take-away rush hour passed, A Bo would watch Aauto Quicker eat and shoot a video. The boss curiously bet with him that if his fans exceeded 10,000, he would give 500 yuan a reward. Unexpectedly, Abo shot more than 250 videos in one year and gained nearly 40,000 fans, which also brought him confidence and anticipation.
He said that he often feels inferior because of unclear speech. However, in Aauto Quicker, many users in the same city will follow him to order "the same paragraph" for take-out, and a little girl from school specially came to ask for his signature.
What makes A Bo most proud is a good thing he did when he was a rider of the US Mission. At that time, there were many "Bao Ma non-profit organizations" on hand. When they found him in the live broadcast room and asked Abo to help send the donated materials to the local poor households, he did not hesitate. He rode an electric car for more than ten kilometers in one breath and sent the materials and his own money to the poor families.
There are not a few take-away riders like Abo all over the country, and they grow up with the distribution system that pursues efficiency and speed. But from a personal point of view, they even hope that the competition of take-away platforms will last longer and they can get more subsidies themselves.
From sight to poetry and distance.
From the factory to the takeaway platform, from the third and fourth lines to the first and second lines, it is one of the manifestations of the continuous extension and scale of the industrial chain in the competition process of the takeaway platform. As ordinary people in the internet tide, Xiao Xiao and A Bo revealed their helplessness to the pressure of life and their longing for the future. Most riders are busy with "struggling in front of them", but some people dream of "poetry and distance".
When I met Zhou Lei, he was recording the annual finals of CCTV variety show "Avenue of Stars". His other two identity tags were "Little Takeaway Brother God" who had more than 300,000 fans in his hands and the first takeaway rider who won the monthly championship of "Avenue of Stars".
Zhou Lei, 31, has lived in the rural area of Qinhuangdao since childhood. She never thought that she would embark on the road of performing arts. Singing is just a way to entertain herself and relieve pressure.
Before joining the US Mission, Zhou Lei was unemployed at home and didn’t want to go out. He said that there were not many job opportunities in the county. He worked as an ore truck driver and sold potted plants on the roadside. In order to let his children enjoy a better education, he borrowed money to buy a house and moved to the city.
Last October, Zhou Lei took a video of singing in a fast hand wearing the take-away work clothes of Meituan. Unexpectedly, it suddenly became popular and attracted more and more fans’ attention. He said that every day, someone waited for him to sing and order songs in the live broadcast room. After two months, the income of fans’ rewards was actually 40,000 yuan, which suddenly eased the family’s economic pressure.
The real turning point comes from the attention of the "talent scout" on the fast hand. In November last year, Aauto Quicker, a private letter from Zhou Lei, received an invitation claiming to be "the crew of Jilin TV variety show Family Fun Show", and left the county life circle for the first time to start recording programs in big cities. Since then, it has moved to bigger stages such as "100 seconds of gold" and "Avenue of Stars".
Zhou Lei felt the power of the Internet. He said that TV editors and directors will not charge a penny for discovering "material" on a short video platform like Aauto Quicker. Moreover, there are many professional musicians in Kuaishou’s hands. They often interact and learn skills and give him professional guidance, which is a valuable resource for Zhou Lei who has never received professional music training.
Even when delivering takeout food, Zhou Lei obviously felt the love and respect of users. A customer named Zhou Lei to take delivery and asked him to sing a few songs on the spot. A local fast food restaurant also invited him to sing. Later, because of the popularity of Zhou Lei, it became the most famous "online celebrity Restaurant" in the county.
On Aauto Quicker, Zhou Lei was often teased by netizens as "a singer who was delayed by the take-away platform". However, he believes that it is the identity of the US group rider that makes him get more attention than others. Even on the performance stage of "Avenue of Stars", the yellow take-away uniform of the US Mission is his iconic image.
Zhou Lei, who became a monk halfway, hitchhiked on the Internet, and he became "the hope of the whole village" in the eyes of the villagers. More riders need to do their best to maintain the living needs of a wanderer and support their elderly parents and school children. More importantly, they all have light in their hearts, and they all have their own "poetry and distance", just like a small goal-to save money by their own efforts, to go back to their hometown to shoot a video of the mountain village one day, and to bring the villagers together to make a fortune.
"Meituan is a mysterious organization"
In fact, in the huge life industry chain composed of more than 500,000 riders, 4.4 million merchants and 380 million users, the rider profession is getting more and more recognition and respect. In the huge social and industrial transformation, riders are burdened with the confusion of life and the burden of family, and they are also looking forward to social recognition.
In the stories of several interviewees, take-away riders are a particularly mobile industry. Sometimes, a site with about 20 people changes more than a dozen people a month. Some people envy how much money they earn by sending takeout food. There are many experienced riders who have worked for several years. Some people leave because they can’t eat hard after working for a few days, and some people leave because of bad reviews from users and family reasons, just like a song sings, "When you say goodbye, you will leave."
For many riders, Aauto Quicker is a very special circle of friends. Usually, the original intention of sending videos is to cheer themselves up and tell strangers about their troubles that they can’t tell their family and friends, but they soon find out that they have found fellow villagers and peers here and found more understanding and recognition.
According to incomplete statistics, at present, there are more than 40,000 on-the-job riders in Aauto Quicker who use short videos to communicate, and there are not a few riders with tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of fans. The "Little Fatty" with the most fans has attracted more than 950,000 people’s attention.
Xiao Pang said that in Aauto Quicker’s short videos, he could feel people’s goodwill and respect for the riders of the US Mission, and he also agreed that many videos reflected the hardships of riders’ lives.
For example, when a rider delivers food upstairs, the meal left downstairs is stolen, so he can only order another one at his own expense; When a rider comes across a slip with a wrong address or a hidden address, he can only call the customer again and again to explain it; Some riders have to pay for their own meals returned by customers because of overtime or spilled soup, so they have to take them home to eat; Some riders are sad in the center of the heavy rain, and they will stand on the road and cry while walking.
These common experiences give riders a natural sense of closeness. They cheer each other and share joys and sorrows. Xiao Pang said that he met many riders in Aauto Quicker, commented or interacted with each other live, and sometimes met and chatted in each other’s cities, just like they had known each other for many years. Now, Xiao Pang intends to transform into an e-commerce, and also find people to do business with through Aauto Quicker, and introduce and inspect the source of goods through the riders’ friends in Yiwu.
According to incomplete statistics, at present, there are more than 100,000 user-related and theme videos of Meituan riders published on Aauto Quicker platform, and many real stories of riders have been adapted into short video works. In these videos, riders use their own frustrations to dissuade boys who want to jump into the river and commit suicide. When they see kidnapped girls, they cleverly track and save people, take off their raincoats to take their babies out of the rain in the wind and rain, and try their best to rescue gas poisoning when taking meals in restaurants. They are "new urban youths" with ideals, skills and responsibilities, supporting the Internet life industry chain and conveying positive social energy, which has infected the fierce take-away business war with warmth.
In the eyes of more people in Aauto Quicker, "Meituan is a mysterious organization", because the rider brother in the video can do almost anything: they can catch thieves, help comatose old people, perform singing, play drums and even make a disc DJ in the street, draw a beautiful "Piggy Peggy" according to the requirements of the customer’s order, and even go to the kitchen to cook when the restaurant bursts …
Figure 2: Overview of nucleic acid vaccine in COVID-19 (from IMMUNOLOGY.org)
