This article is from WeChat official account:Shen Xiang (ID: deep-echo) , author: Tingting, title figure from: vision China
Is it a good job to go to Japan to deliver food?
After the outbreak of the epidemic has stimulated the rapid growth of the food delivery market, the social nature of Japan’s labor shortage has caused a large gap in the market for delivery personnel. According to Japanese media reports, Uber Eats Japan will provide online food delivery services in 2021. The region has expanded to the whole of Japan, and about 100,000 food delivery staff are expected to double at most to 200,000.
The fascinating thing is that Japanese takeaways seem to be a high-paying job. At the beginning of May 2020, Japanese media reported that the monthly income of some delivery staff in Fukuoka City could reach 400,000 yen(approximately 24,000 RMB), No less than most full-time salaries working in the company.
A friend living in Japan told “Shenxiang” that most of the Japanese takeaways are “part-time jobs”, which are jobs that international students can also participate in under Japanese law. He learned that many domestic students will deliver food delivery part-time in their spare time.
High salaries are not only attracting international students. Last year, Miyake Miyake, the silver medalist of the men’s foil team in Japan’s Olympic Games, posted photos of part-time food delivery in Japan and explained that “there is no other reason, it’s just because I don’t have any money.” . According to the performance report released by Miyake, he sent a total of eight meals on the first day of work. The farthest meal delivery distance is about eight kilometers, and the income is 4688 yen.( (Approximately 280 RMB).
Japanese media reports on Miyake’s takeaways
See Weizhi’s book, from the expansion of the takeaway group and the salary level, we can see a Japanese takeaway market that is in the rising sun. According to statistics from the data analysis company VALUES, in the Japanese market, only 2.94 million people ordered meals online in January 2020, and this number increased to 9.02 million by January 2021.
Under the outbreak of demand, the food delivery platform Uber Eats accelerated its expansion in the Japanese market. In addition, the domestic ride-hailing giant Didi also went to Japan to grab the beach, and officially launched the food delivery business in Japan in April last year. Li Dakuan, the operations director of Didi R Lab, who is in charge of Japanese food delivery operations, told Shenxiang: “Didi has already launched food delivery business in Osaka, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kobe and other regions, and plans to continue to expand this year.”
Under the epidemic, the Japanese food delivery market, which has entered a period of accelerated development, contains huge dividends. Whether it is an individual or a platform, delivering food to Japan is a tempting option.
The price remains high
When the epidemic just broke out last year, Afeng, who was studying in Japan, was at the busiest stage before graduation. In order to save time, he wanted to order food through the takeaway platform, but he “opened Uber Eats and went around for a while, but he was dissuaded. ,the price is too high”.
After communicating with many friends living in Japan, “Shenxiang” found that the higher price of Japanese food is the main reason that affects the frequency of user consumption.
In Japan, the price of one order of takeaway is usually 2000-3000 yen(about 120-180 yuan), including delivery The fee is usually around 300 yen(about 18 yuan). In addition, unlike in China, the items that consumers need to spend on some platforms include meal fees and delivery fees, as well as a handling fee of about 300 yen.
This price is basically the same as the price that consumers directly go to restaurants to eat in. Even in Japan, this is not cheap in daily consumption. Especially for the “office family”, an important consumer group that sells out, it only costs 400 yen to buy an ordinary bento at the convenience store downstairs. Around this price difference, wage earners rarely chooseChoose to rely on takeaways to solve daily work meals.
An interesting point is that, unlike the initial development of domestic and foreign sales markets, the idea of relying on capital to educate the market is different. At present, large subsidies initiated by the platform have not been observed in the Japanese market.
Except for the price difference, the user experience of ordering takeout in Japan is not much different from that in China. Although the meal options that the platform can provide users at this stage are not rich enough compared to those in China, it is relatively mature in the distribution link: the delivery time of takeaway is usually about 30-40 minutes, and there are very few cases of in punctuality, if there is a delay , The store will call consumers to apologize and ask if they still need to wait for a meal.
Labor issues to be solved
On the stage of “Creation Camp 2021” this year, a takeaway rider from Japan, Shingo Kadowaki, shared that when delivering food in Japan, if the customer is late for more than ten minutes to pick up the meal, the meal and delivery fee will be refunded. All the takeaways.
There are many differences in the operating mechanism of Japanese takeaway riders compared with domestic ones.
The most obvious difference is that Japanese takeaway riders mostly ride bicycles to deliver meals. Because Japan’s traffic regulations are stricter, it’s rare to see takeaway riders speeding and grabbing red lights.
In addition, Japanese takeaway riders have a large proportion of part-timers, including international students, company workers, and many people who have temporarily lost their source of livelihood during the epidemic. For these part-time riders, working hours are relatively flexible and free, and they can log on to the takeaway platform to take orders at any time after school or after get off work.
However, whether bicycles are the main means of transportation, or the proportion of part-time jobs is large, it shows that the geographical coverage and demand of Japanese food delivery business are still in the early stages of development. If the penetration rate and order volume of Japanese food delivery further increase sharply in the future, there will be higher requirements on the capacity of riders.
In addition, the work situation and livelihood security of the takeaways that are of concern in the domestic market have also attracted initial attention in Japan. According to Japanese media reports, the current employment insurance in Japan is mainly for employees officially employed by companies. Distribution “parties” do not fall into this category and cannot get these benefits. At the same time, delivery personnel are not the objects of protection recognized by the Labor Basic Law. They do not enjoy the policy care of the minimum wage system. Once a work-related injury occurs, they will not enjoy the usual work-related injury insurance in principle.
When a new market is born and a new profession is created, it will inevitably involve complex issues such as the definition of labor relations, the formulation of welfare guarantees, and the renewal of the social structure. In Japan, where labor is particularly scarce, this problem becomes even more difficult as the demand for food delivery increases.
While protecting individual interests, how to maximize labor efficiency under the general trend of aging through product technology, operations, and services is a topic that is being discussed in various industries in Japan. This is also the core problem faced by the Japanese food delivery market and must be resolved by the platform.
Platforms are trying their best to find solutions. Li Dakuan mentioned many details of the operation of Didi Takeaway in the Japanese market, such as an overview of the itinerary for Japanese riders, planning the best route in high-density Japanese cities, calculating the most appropriate rider’s arrival time through algorithms, and trying to improve it. Rider protection, such as cooperating with insurance companies to provide high-standard insurance, and insisting on distributing free masks to riders during the epidemic.
enter the acceleration period
In 2016, Uber Eats officially entered the Japanese food delivery market, representing the stage of platform development for Japanese food delivery.
In the past five years, the development of the Japanese food delivery market has been relatively slow compared to other countries. Due to the particularity of offline consumption formats, population structure, and living habits in Japan, foreignThe selling market has always been subject to many shackles.
Repro, a Japanese mobile analytics and marketing tool service provider, wrote in a report released in May last year that The size of the Japanese food delivery market is about 408 billion yen, but the growth rate is only 4%, and it can be seen everywhere in Japan. Convenience stores in China are one of the factors restricting the growth of the food delivery market. In addition, the high price of take-out meals and insufficient capacity are also problems that need to be solved urgently in the development of the Japanese take-out market.
It was not until the outbreak of the epidemic last year that the Japanese takeaway market finally waited for the opportunity.
Under the epidemic, the Japanese government issued a curfew, and the restaurant will not accept dine-in food after eight o’clock in the evening. At the same time, the government cooperates with takeaway platforms to encourage users to eat at home through subsidies. For example, Osaka Prefecture cooperates with Chuqiankan to return 500 yen points to users who order food for more than 1,000 yen. Half of the points are borne by the government, and the upper limit is 150 million yen. Uber Eats in Kobe City cooperates to register with Uber Eats. The 560 small and medium-sized restaurants offer discounts, and the city’s financial burden is estimated to be 15 million yen.
Under the influence of the external environment, Japanese food delivery demand has exploded, and various food delivery platforms have accelerated their expansion in the past year.
At this stage, the largest food delivery platforms in Japan are Uber Eats and Chuqiankan. Among them, Deqiankan is a local Japanese platform with a long operating history. According to the latest information on its official website, the number of franchise stores on March 25, 2021, has exceeded 65,000, which is about three times that of a year ago.
Uber Eats plans to expand its business in Japan to the whole country this year, and plans to increase the number of riders to 200,000, and will continue to make efforts to distribute groceries and medicines.
Last year, new players such as the domestic ride-hailing giant Didi and the German food delivery platform Foodpanda also targeted opportunities in the Japanese food delivery market. Currently, the cities where Didi Food Delivery operates in Japan include Osaka, Fukuoka, Hyogo, and Hiroshima. It is understood that Didi Food Delivery will officially enter the Kyoto market in the near future.
Picture Source: Official Website of Chuqian Museum
Domestic stories repeat?
Reviewing the history of food delivery in the Chinese market: entrepreneurs poured in, capital was crazy, while giving users money for the market, and at the same time launched a fierce push to win over merchants, the fierce battle between Meituan and Ele.me today It’s not over yet. Under the strategy of “dropping coins”, domestic and foreign selling platforms completed market education at a faster rate.
The development of the Japanese food delivery industry is much more “Buddha”. Even if the epidemic has given birth to opportunities, the market has not staged the fierce battles in the early days of the domestic O2O model, and there has been no subsidy war initiated by the platform.
The pace of development of the two markets is quite different, but the direction is the same.
For example, in recent years, the stories of the digital transformation of merchants that have been emphasized by domestic and foreign sales platforms are reflected in the current development of the Japanese food delivery industry. Li Dakuan said: “Everyone is trying to do business marketing, catering SaaS construction, smart hardware, etc., and Japan is also developing with the same business logic as that in China.”
A very interesting example is that now on the Didi Japanese take-out platform, you can see many yakiniku restaurants and ramen shops. In the past, Yakitori and ramen were almost non-delivery business. Many Japanese restaurants are used to regular customer business. They worry that the taste of barbecue and ramen will decrease due to take-out delivery, which will affect word-of-mouth. However, driven by the epidemic, the store found that the take-out platform has a more mature delivery capability to deliver the food to the place where the food is kept warm and fresh, and has the operational capability to expand the radiation user base for the store.
After merchants have truly felt the benefits of the platform, the acceptance of foreign sales in the Japanese market has naturally increased.
From this perspective, Japanese food delivery platforms seem to want to be driven by demand and technology rather than capital. This driving force comes from the food delivery business accumulated by platforms such as Uber and Didi before entering the Japanese market. Experience, data and algorithm capabilities are advantages that China’s food delivery market did not have when it developed from scratch.
Of course, the differences in online consumption formats and lifestyle habits make it difficult for the Japanese market to tie the domestic takeaway penetration rate. However, as the world’s third largest economy, Japan’s catering market is extremely large, and its penetration rate has increased by a small percentage.Rise, corresponding to considerable profit margins.
In any case, a market that is still in the morning, there are too many possibilities in the future.
This article is from WeChat official account:Shen Xiang (ID: deep-echo) , author: Tingting