Looking at the streets and alleys of the city, you can often see takeaway riders wearing blue or yellow clothes passing by you. Takeaway has become an indispensable and important element in modern people's lives. Even if you don’t eat takeout for dinner, you can’t help but want t

Looking at the streets and alleys of the city, you can often see takeaway riders wearing blue or yellow clothes passing by you. Takeaway has become an indispensable and important element in modern people's lives. Even if you don’t eat takeout for dinner, you can’t help but want to order a cup of milk tea at three o’clock in the afternoon to find some coolness in the hot summer. Compared with previous years, the delivery speed of takeaways has been qualitatively improved. Under normal circumstances, it can be delivered in about half an hour. The days of waiting for an hour or two are finally over.

However, the takeout platforms are obviously not satisfied with the current delivery speed. The two major platforms are still continuing to expand the scale of takeout riders and improve the takeout delivery speed to provide consumers with a better service experience. In addition, Meituan is actively deploying unmanned delivery services, and drones and unmanned delivery vehicles have been put into use one after another. Currently, Meituan drones have been launched in 4 business districts in Shenzhen, providing services to 20,000 residents. As of the end of June, a total of more than 58,000 orders have been completed. On the first normalized trial operation route of drones deployed in Longhua District, Shenzhen, department store products were delivered within 3 kilometers in 15 minutes.

(Source: Meituan Drone official account)

With the cooperation of takeaway riders and unmanned delivery systems, the service quality and experience of the takeout platform have been significantly improved. Consumers can get their meals faster and eat hot food, and riders can also devote more transportation capacity to areas not covered by drones, reducing order pressure during peak dining periods. This method of human + machine cooperation may become a new model for the future distribution industry.

After ten years, the delivery speed of takeout is still unsatisfactory

Unknowingly, the takeout industry has developed for more than 10 years and has thoroughly penetrated into all aspects of people's lives. In addition to ordering food, takeout also provides services such as buying medicine, buying vegetables, running errands, etc. More services have become an integral and important part of many people’s daily lives. Xiaolei first came into contact with food delivery in 2013, when he was still in college. In addition to , Eleme, , and Meituan, there is also , Baidu Food , as a food delivery platform. In order to attract users and seize the market, several major platforms have provided particularly generous subsidies and discounts. It is basically the norm for those who are over 10-6 and over 20-12. You can live a full life with only 8 yuan, not to mention how happy you are.

(Source: Meituan’s official WeChat account)

At that time, takeout was not yet widely popular, and there were not many riders. In many stores, in-store employees delivered the goods themselves. During the peak dining period, the number of orders surged, and you often had to wait for 1 to 2 people. It takes hours to eat. The most painful thing at that time was waiting for the takeout, because the merchant delivered it by itself and you couldn't see its real-time location. You could only make a phone call every ten minutes to urge you to have a cheap lunch for the discount on the Baihuo platform. It was really It's painful and happy.

In the following years, as the scale of takeaway riders continued to expand, the delivery time has greatly improved, and delivery can basically be done within an hour. The speed is indeed much faster, but for users who are in a hurry to eat or take medicine, the waiting time is still too long. Moreover, many orders are delivered close to each other, and sometimes the delivery time is very long. The rider may think that the delivery time is sufficient and prioritize urgent orders. He may also consider that the order needs to enter a community or office building, and waiting for the elevator will be occupied. If too much time is spent, the order priority will be lowered, which has caused strong dissatisfaction among a large number of consumers.

(Source: Meituan Takeout official account)

This situation has only improved significantly after the takeout platform continued to optimize the ordering system and invested more riders in areas with tight transportation capacity. However, Xiaolei learned through casual communication with riders that there are indeed certain places that may be included in the "blacklist" by riders. These places generally have the following things in common: the merchants are too slow to serve food, it is troublesome to get in and out of the place, and the waiting time for the elevator is extremely long, such as high-end communities, shopping malls, or large office buildings.Once they encounter an order that meets the above conditions, many riders are reluctant to accept the order because the order may take a long time and the gain outweighs the loss.

For this situation, it is difficult to solve the problem by continuing to send more riders. How to serve the "last mile" of takeout delivery has become an urgent problem for the two takeout platforms. Therefore, the unmanned delivery system was born. . In 2016, Meituan established the W project team internally to specialize in the development of autonomous vehicle delivery in specific scenarios. In 2019, Meituan began trial operations in some areas. The following year, with the release of the "Magic Bag 20" automatic delivery vehicle, the scope of Meituan's unmanned delivery services continued to expand. In addition to unmanned delivery vehicles, Meituan also released self-developed drone products last year and disclosed a self-developed urban low-altitude logistics model. It plans to build a low-altitude logistics network with delivery within 3 kilometers and 15 minutes.

(Source: Dianping’s official Weibo)

Ele.me also made its first public debut of the takeout drone E7 in 2017. The following year, it opened delivery routes in some areas and put them into commercial operation, with an average delivery time of 20 minutes. However, Ele.me drones seem to have disappeared in the past two years, and we don’t know the specific internal reasons. Unmanned delivery is indeed very convenient, but there are many problems that need to be solved, and the applicable scenarios are relatively limited. Maybe Ele.me has a more far-reaching layout, but Meituan drones are getting closer and closer to us.

In the ten years since the takeout industry has developed rapidly, it has indeed changed everyone’s traditional lifestyle and brought great convenience. However, there are still many unresolved problems. In addition to the above-mentioned terminal distribution problems in residential areas/office buildings, food safety also urgently needs attention. If the food delivery industry wants to further develop and reach a new level, it still faces many difficulties and challenges.

Is unmanned delivery the future of the takeout industry?

The food delivery platform has survived the initial stage of spending money to grab users and seize share. The market is basically stable. Without the intervention of third-party platforms, it will be difficult to break the current pattern. Therefore, competition in the food delivery industry will also enter a new track. It is time to compete in service quality, improve consumer experience, and increase brand influence. The addition of unmanned delivery vehicles and drones obviously adds a lot to this.

(Source: Meituan UAV official account)

For office workers in large office buildings and residents in high-end communities, they often don’t care too much about how many discounts the online sales platform gives you, but pay more attention to delivery. speed and quality of service. The unmanned delivery system can achieve fast delivery in 15 minutes, and through drones, a more technological delivery method, it can naturally bring a more novel experience to these user groups, which can improve service quality and enhance user stickiness. Big help. After enjoying the joy of delicious food falling from the sky, I believe you will want to have this experience several more times in the future.

Compared with traditional human delivery, unmanned delivery on the one hand solves the problem of insufficient rider capacity and poor service experience in special places; on the other hand, it also helps takeaway platforms optimize labor costs. Investment bank CICC once predicted in a special report that the cost of each order for unmanned delivery will drop to 1.5 yuan after 2023. The cost of serving an unmanned vehicle for more than 10 months will be cheaper than recruiting a rider. Therefore, Meituan’s vigorous development of drones and unmanned vehicle delivery is also one of the ways for the platform to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Of course, there is still a long way to go before unmanned delivery can be commercialized on a real scale. First of all, there are many problems in terms of safety and supervision during the unmanned delivery process. At present, many urban roads/building complexes are relatively complex, and it is difficult for unmanned delivery to ensure that food is delivered to customers intact. Secondly, the laws and regulations for unmanned delivery are not perfect. Who should be held responsible for accidents during the delivery process can easily lead to disputes. Finally, there is also the issue of user acceptance. Some users may not want to go to a designated location to pick up food and must request food to be delivered to their door, so unmanned vehicles will not be able to be used.

(Source: Meituan UAV official account)

From an industry perspective, unmanned delivery is indeed a more efficient and convenient delivery method, which will greatly improve the platform’s service quality and industry influence. It also has a more futuristic sci-fi feel. But for consumers, drones may just be a more interesting experience, and everyone's enthusiasm will fade away once the novelty wears off. Before autonomous vehicles and drones cannot solve the problem of door-to-door food delivery, it will be difficult to completely replace takeaway riders simply by being ahead in speed.

At this stage, it is difficult for unmanned delivery to be commercialized on a large scale. The infrastructure conditions and management regulations are not perfect, and consumers may not be willing to buy it. Most of them still stay in the platform layout and planning stage to prepare for the future. Perhaps, as conditions mature in the future, unmanned delivery will become one of the main delivery methods in the food delivery industry, but at present, Xiaolei is still more willing to trust food delivery riders.