June is the season when a large number of fresh fruits are on the market. Grapes from Turpan, lychees from Guangzhou, bayberry from Taizhou, cherries from Dalian, mangoes from Hainan, peaches from Yangshan, and other fresh and sweet products from all over the world travel across

html March and June are the seasons when a large number of fresh fruits are on the market. Grapes from Turpan, lychees from Guangzhou, bayberries from Taizhou, cherries from Dalian, mangoes from Hainan, peaches from Yangshan, and other fresh and sweet products from all over the world, such as the south and the north, cross the mountains and rivers through Benlife.com and reach consumers. dining table.

This is due to the improvement of the level of "freshness" preservation in the entire fresh food circulation link "from farm to table", and this field has only been developed for ten years. This is precisely the decade that China’s fresh food e-commerce has explored and developed. "When we took the lead in cold chain distribution of fresh food in 2012, there were no ready-made resources in the entire market. We made many attempts to find better solutions." Wu Jianwei, general manager of Benlilife.com Logistics Center, said frankly.

The fresh food fulfillment standards for ordinary consumers are extremely strict, and cold chain logistics has invested heavily in the construction. As a pioneer of China’s fresh food e-commerce, the practical exploration in this field is of great significance. "The fresh food field looks simple, but in fact the threshold is very high. From the perspective of the supply chain, there are two key points. One is the discovery and organization of goods, and the other is the construction of the warehousing and distribution logistics system. " Originally the group's vice president, supply chain Jia Ming, general manager of the business unit, pointed out that as the "main artery" linking upstream origins and consumers, the ability of the original life warehousing and distribution logistics system determines its fresh food service level and industry competitiveness.

Commodity flows from our hands to consumers' hands, and the quality is guaranteed

In the innovative breakthrough of fresh food e-commerce business model, fulfillment service is an important one. On the one hand, the level of contract performance is related to the sales ability of fresh food e-commerce. On the other hand, its logistics service cost affects the comprehensive cost and also determines the company's profitability.

"Fresh food supply chain is relatively difficult to build globally. This is because fresh food has four major characteristics: first, it is fragile and perishable, second, it is non-standard, third, it is short-term, and fourth, its price fluctuates greatly. If there is no modern It is very difficult to manage the fresh food supply chain without the guarantee of technical means, professional management team and management tools,” Jia Ming said bluntly.

Confined by the not-so-high unit price and extremely high fulfillment costs, fresh food companies must get rid of the curse of losses and run through the profit model. must focus on short supply chain and logistics optimization to fundamentally achieve the reduction of costs. This efficiency increase. "Unlike most of its peers, Benli's unique DTC (Direct to Consumer) model has greatly shortened the circulation of fresh agricultural products, thereby achieving the shortest transaction link from the origin to the consumer." Wu Jianwei pointed out. The success behind

is its efficient warehousing and logistics system. Wu Jianwei introduced that fresh products are pipeline products and must be traceable throughout the process. "Our self-built warehousing not only fulfills the function of contract fulfillment and delivery, but also has a very important function, which is quality control. The step of warehousing the goods means that we control the product quality before sending safe products. into the hands of customers." Wu Jianwei said.

Originally, the link of the central warehouse model of Life.com was as follows: production base-central warehouse-consumer. In this shortest circulation link, city center warehouse model can achieve more stringent quality control of fresh products through lean management.

So, how precise are the lean management requirements of Fresh Food Okura?

The complex requirements of multiple temperature zones and multiple scenarios for professional fresh food warehouses correspond to more complex operating processes. At this point, Urban Okura of Benlife.com leads the industry with its excellent construction management level of "professional, and lean ".

(Benlife.com’s city center warehouse is divided into eight temperature zones for separate temperature storage)

All city warehouses of Benlife.com are equipped with 8 temperature zones to classify and store different commodities at different temperatures from -60°C to 25°C. , and provides faster, more accurate and more refined lean management support through the independently developed fresh food WMS (Warehouse Management System) warehouse management system.

This professional management system aims to reduce inventory losses and implements dedicated personnel for the entire process from warehousing to outbound. The entire outbound package can be checked, controlled, and responsibilities can be determined. It can also check the quantity of goods in the warehouse in real time. Key data such as shelf life days and expiration date exceptions enable every step of commodity circulation to be traced in . At present, the loss rate of goods in the original life network library is only 0.4%.

In order to ensure food safety in an all-round way, Benlife.com has independently set up professional food safety testing laboratories and quality control teams in central warehouses in various cities to realize parallel management and cross-processing of all job processes and warehouse links in the quality control system. .

As of June 2022, Benlife.com has built a total of 160,000 square meters of mixed-temperature warehouses in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing. Next, Benlilife.com has more actively responded to the country’s call to accelerate cold chain construction. While strengthening the upgrading and renovation of existing fresh food multi-temperature warehouses, it will further accelerate the construction and layout of new warehouses across the country. It plans to continue to expand projects from 2022 to 2023. With capital investment, new warehouses in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu, Guangzhou and other places are under preparation.

Create an exclusive logistics model based on personalized needs

"What we face under the DTC business model is more personalized demand." Wu Jianwei introduced. What is “personalized” fresh food consumption demand? Originally, there was an interesting product selection story circulated on Lifestyle.com in its early years.

When cherries, which have become very popular among domestic consumers in recent years, first became popular in the market, a "science popularization group" appeared among the old users of Benlife.com - they were dissatisfied with the golden cherries ("yellow cars") sold on Benlife.com. ) are so popular that they disdain the red cherries that are commonly seen on the market.

At that time, the price of air-shipped cherries was generally around 50 yuan per catty, and air-shipped gold cherries cost at least 80 yuan per catty, but the "yellow car" did taste better than the "red car". As a result, old users have put forward higher requirements for Benlife.com: the "yellow cars" sold by Benlife must be strictly selected in variety and origin, while the "red cars" need to be further limited to the world's best-selected high-end varieties and origins. Products from the finest growing areas. There are many old users with picky tastes like this on Benlife.com. In this regard, Bian Ning, general manager of the company's operation center, pointed out that the "bulk goods" in farmers' markets cannot satisfy users who have higher requirements for product quality, and higher-end and high-quality fresh agricultural products also have higher requirements for logistics and transportation, and must be integrated throughout the chain. Quality is guaranteed throughout the entire process.

" In order to provide consumers with safe, healthy, fresh and high-quality products, in addition to checking every layer of the process of 'a seed grows into a fruit', the quality assurance in the process of 'from the origin to the table' cannot be The other leg is lame. For various specialty products with excellent quality and high degree of commercialization, we use various methods such as advance pre-ordering, dedicated charter flights, and limited-time home delivery to fully meet the needs for efficient delivery of various products. " Bian Ning said. .

(Benlife.com meets the demand for efficient delivery of high-quality fresh products through advance pre-ordering, chartered flights, limited-time home delivery, etc.)

For example, Benlife focuses on direct supply of Chu Cheng , Zespri Kiwi and exclusive customization. High-quality fruits such as Aksu Hongqipo 100 Rock Candy Hearts, Korla Crispy Fragrant Red Fragrant Pear are all based on a pre-sale ordering model and are sold and supplied through dedicated routes, chartered flights, chartered ships and other full-length cold chain logistics and transportation methods. Ensure the optimal timeliness of products from picking to storage to users.

High-quality fresh food has an exclusive logistics solution to ensure consistent quality "from origin to table". This is another pioneering work in the industry.

Two-way efforts, innovative development

After the hustle and bustle, fresh food retail companies have gradually returned to their business essence and focused more on building solid supply chain capabilities. Wu Jianwei believes that the expansion of the fresh food industry to the upstream will play a good role in promoting the construction of infrastructure in places of origin.

Improving the "pre-cooling rate" of the place of origin is a direction that was originally studied and practiced in the early years of life. Starting from 2019, Benlife.com has launched a strategic collaboration with Chinese logistics giant SF Express , and through the two parties' in-depth layout of the upstream production, they have opened up the logistics channel at the origin. On the basis of original life's strong quality control management and contract fulfillment services, commodity turnover and processing speed have been further improved, making up for the current shortcomings of the "first mile" of agricultural products.

In order to improve the efficiency of cold chain logistics and distribution more quickly, Benlilife.com has put warehousing and logistics management in the forefront, and has achieved full coverage of "pre-cooling" in major direct procurement base production areas.

At the same time, Benlife.com continues to optimize the service efficiency of the "last mile". Its direct fresh food cold chain has covered 31 provincial administrative regions across the country, among which most urban areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Nanjing have achieved "tonight" Da". The delivery service with excellent quality and efficiency complements the high-quality fresh products provided by Benlife.com.

Nowadays, , guided by the dual carbon goals, creating a green supply chain has become an industry consensus. The digital construction promoted by the original life network has also become one of the important development trends.

has built a complete digital platform through innovation, equipped with the independently developed smart system "Benxianxian Brain", enterprise resource management system (ERP), supplier management system (SRM), warehouse management system (WMS), data Warehouses, etc., Benlife.com applies AI and big data analysis engines to analyze data in each link of the supply chain in real time, thereby more specifically optimizing the efficiency of commodity procurement, processing, distribution and other links, and achieving information transparency throughout the supply chain.

It also actively promotes environmental protection measures in the "last mile" and is committed to reducing the number of packages and the amount of packaging materials used. Since 2018, Laisheng.com has launched a temperature-based free shipping mechanism, and has used backend big data to realize combined delivery of orders in different temperature zones, further reducing the use of packaging materials and refrigerants, and improving users' "green" receiving experience. .

When talking about future plans, Wu Jianwei gave several keywords: "the first mile", "the last mile", and "greener and safer". This is the continuous exploration of "keeping up with the times" in life, and it is also a hard issue facing the large market of fresh food retail.