Schumpeter

The foodoo economics of meal delivery

送餐的食物经济学

Despite consolidation, it is anything but a tasty business

尽管进行了整合，但它绝不是一项美味的业务

Aug 3rd 2019

EVEN THOSE who recoil at eating supper out of a soggy box, fear being mowed down by curry-bearing cyclists or think the death of home cooking is a cultural abomination should admire Jitse Groen. The 41-year-old Dutchman, who cooked up the online food-delivery business by founding Takeaway.com in his university bedroom in 2000, is not your usual tech billionaire. He keeps a low profile, views venture capital with distaste, earns a relatively unflashy six-figure salary and sometimes hops on the firm’s delivery bikes to help out. His main extravagance is a sharp Italian suit. So why did he, on July 29th, propose shelling out £8.2bn ($10.1bn) on shares for Just Eat, a large but struggling meals-on-wheels firm based in Britain?

即便是那些不敢吃湿透了的饭盒盛着的晚饭的人、亦或担心自己的咖喱被骑着自行车的外卖员弄翻的人，还是那些认为家庭烹饪的“消亡”是被以文化层面所憎恶憎恶的人，都应该钦佩吉特斯•格伦(Jitse Groen)。这位41岁的荷兰人，经营者一家自他2000年那时，在大学寝室里创办的“打包吧”（Takeaway.com）这家外卖企业，但却不是诸位眼中普通的科技亿万富翁哪边模样。他保持低调，厌恶风险投资，工资相对不高，只有六位数，有时还会蹬上公司的送货自行车帮忙。他的主要奢侈品是一套笔挺的意大利西装。那么，为什么他在7月29日提议出资82亿英镑(合101亿美元)购买“Just Eat”（吃吧）的股票呢? Just Eat是一家总部位于英国的大型但经营不善的上门送餐公司。

词汇

Recoil/畏缩；弹回；报应

Soggy/浸水的；透湿的

mow down/撂倒

curry/咖喱

abomination/  厌恶；憎恨；令人厌恶的事物

meals-on-wheels/上门送餐服务

 

The answer says a lot about the voodoo economics of the food-delivery industry. It is a hotly competitive business, attracting the world’s biggest moneybags such as Amazon, Alibaba and SoftBank. Balancing the needs of diners, cooks and couriers is fiendishly complicated. Most startups lose platefuls of money. Yet they have received more than $30bn from spellbound venture capitalists in the past five years. And they are likely to get more.

格伦的做法在很大程度上说明了食品外卖行业的巫毒经济学。这是一项竞争激烈的业务，吸引了亚马逊(Amazon)、阿里巴巴(Alibaba)和软银(SoftBank)等全球最大的财袋。平衡食客、厨师和外卖员的需求极其复杂。大多数创业公司都会损失很多钱。然而，在过去5年里，他们已经从执迷的风险投资家那里获得了300多亿美元。而且他们有望得到更多。

词汇

Voodoo/巫毒的

Hotly/激动地；激烈地

Fiendishly/极坏地；不平凡；不简单

Spellbound/出神的；被迷住的；茫然不知所之的

 

Mr Groen is a reluctant apostle of black magic. He once said of his efforts to expand beyond the Netherlands, “It’s horrible. We’ve spent 100 times more money in Germany than I thought I’d ever be able to spend.” Takeaway’s deal with Just Eat highlights the conviction that consolidation is the only way to make the sums add up.

格伦先生是一个不情愿的黑魔法传道者。他曾在谈到自己在荷兰之外扩张的努力时说，“这太可怕了。我们在德国花的钱比我想象的要多100倍。外卖与Just Eat的交易突显出这样一种信念，即整合是实现盈利的唯一途径。

词汇

Apostle/  信徒，使徒；最初的传道者

 

The food-delivery business can be split into two camps: mostly profitable veterans and loss-making newcomers. The veterans, founded at the start of the century, are led by publicly traded Grubhub in America, and Just Eat and Takeaway in Europe. The trio are collectively worth $18bn or so. They account for the largest share of the market, offering customers online access to restaurants that already have their own delivery services, such as pizza joints, sushi bars and Chinese restaurants. Their relatively simple business model, in which they take a cut of the bill from the restaurants, has enabled Grubhub and Just Eat to turn a profit for years. Takeaway makes money in its home market of the Netherlands.

送餐业务可以分为两个阵营:主要是收获满满的老手和亏损连连的新人。老手们组织成立于本世纪初，由美国上市公司Grubhub，坐落于欧洲的Just Eat 以及 Takeaway这三巨头引领。这三家公司的总市值约为180亿美元。它们占据了最大的市场份额，为顾客提供了在线进入他们已经拥有了外卖服务的餐厅服务，比如比萨店、寿司店和中餐馆。他们相对简单的商业模式，即从餐馆中收取一定的费用，使得Grubhub和Just Eat多年来一直盈利。Takeaway在荷兰本土市场赚钱。

词汇

Veteran/老兵；老手；富有经验的人

 

The newbies, born more recently, have turned a once-tidy business into a food fight. They include listed firms such as Meituan of China and Delivery Hero of Germany, Uber Eats (part of Uber), Ele.me (owned by China’s Alibaba), and privately held DoorDash, based in San Francisco, and Deliveroo, from London. For most of them, delivery is their core business, so they share their cut of the bill with riders as well as restaurants. This substantially broadens the market to restaurants offering everything from steak to Hawaiian poké bowls. But margins suffer. Funded largely by venture capital, they have thrown subsidies at customers, forcing their veteran rivals onto the defensive. To catch up, the veterans are investing in advertising and delivery networks—at a big cost. This week Grubhub and Just Eat reported slumping earnings, and Takeaway mounting losses, as they spent heavily to fend off the upstarts.

然而这些雨后春笋般的新企业，他们把原本井然有序的生意变成了一场食物大战。这些公司包括中国的美团(Meituan)和德国的外卖英雄(Delivery Hero)、Uber Eats (Uber的一部分)、饿了么(由中国阿里巴巴(Alibaba)所有)、总部位于旧金山的私人控股公司DoorDash和总部位于伦敦的Deliveroo。对他们中的大多数来说，送货是他们的核心业务，所以他们与乘客和餐馆分享账单。这大大拓宽了市场，餐厅提供囊括牛排到夏威夷 poké bowls（食品名）的一切。但是利润受到影响。他们的资金主要来自风险资本，外卖平台向客户提供补贴，迫使老牌竞争对手采取守势。为了迎头赶上，老手们在广告和配送网络上投入了巨资。本周，Grubhub和Just Eat公布收益下滑，外卖业务亏损不断增加，因为他们投入巨资抵御新兴企业。

词汇

substantially/实质上；大体上；充分地

 

The only mouthwatering aspect of the delivery business is its potential size. According to Bernstein, a brokerage, almost a third of the global restaurant industry is made up of home delivery, takeaway and drive-throughs, which could be worth $1trn by 2023. In 2018 delivery amounted to $161bn, leaving plenty of room for online firms to expand; the seven largest increased revenues by an average of 58%. Their businesses support the trend of 20- and 30-somethings to live alone or in shared accommodation, with less time and inclination to cook. In China, by far the biggest market for food delivery, one-third of people told a survey that they would be prepared to rent a flat without a kitchen because of the convenience of delivery. Delivery also fits neatly with the gig-economy zeitgeist, alongside ride-hailing firms such as Uber, Lyft and China’s Didi.

外卖业务唯一令人垂涎的方面是其潜在的规模。据经纪公司伯恩斯坦(Bernstein)称，全球餐饮业近三分之一由送货上门、外卖和免下车服务组成，到2023年，这些服务的价值可能达到1万亿美元。2018年，外卖总额达到1610亿美元，为在线公司留下了大量扩张空间;最大的7家公司的收入平均增长58%。他们的企业支撑着20多岁和30多岁的年轻人独居或合住的趋势，他们没有那么多时间和意愿做饭。在中国这个迄今为止最大的外卖市场，三分之一的人在接受调查时表示，由于外卖方便，他们愿意租一套没有厨房的公寓。与Uber、Lyft和中国滴滴(Didi)等叫车公司一样，外卖也完全符合零工经济的时代精神。

词汇

drive-through/ 为顾客提供免下车服务的场所（或设施）

Inclination/  倾向，爱好

Zeitgeist/时代思潮，时代精神

 

Yet as with ride-hailing,, it is by no means clear if anyone can make money by delivering meals. In fact, the economics may be even worse. Co-ordination is more complicated. Meal-delivery firms must handle dishes that take different amounts of time to cook, while restaurants cope with orders from in-house customers. Most important, bookings must be split three ways: between delivery firms, restaurants and riders, rather than just between the ride-hailing firms and their drivers. The restaurants in particular are restive, not least because food is already a low-margin business. The most popular brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks wield the power to squeeze the delivery startups in exchange for access to millions of customers. Uber admits that Uber Eats may be forced to lower service fees for big restaurant chains.

然而，与叫车服务一样，目前还不清楚是否有人能通过送餐赚钱。事实上，经济状况可能更糟。协调则更为复杂。外卖公司必须处理不同烹饪时间的菜肴，而餐厅则要处理来自内部顾客的订单。最重要的是，预订必须分成三部分:外卖公司、餐厅和骑手之间的预订，而不仅仅是叫车公司和司机之间的预订。餐馆尤其不安，尤其是因为食品已经是一个低利润率的行业。麦当劳(McDonald 's)和星巴克(Starbucks)等最受欢迎的品牌利用实力排挤外卖初创企业，以换取数以百万计的客户。Uber承认，Uber Eats可能会被迫降低大型连锁餐厅的服务费。

词汇

Restive/难驾驭的；焦躁不安的，不耐烦的

not least/尤其；相当重要地

 

Moreover, potential growth may be overstated. Subsidies make true demand hard to gauge. When delivery charges and service fees eventually rise, which they will have to if profits are to materialise, some customers may flee. In the meantime, cheap money lets firms undercut rivals but distorts incentives. The war of attrition could get even worse if giants like Amazon muscle in, as it has tried to do by buying a stake in Deliveroo (the deal is stalled at present because of antitrust concerns). Alibaba, Amazon’s Chinese counterpart, uses Ele.me as a loss leader helping drive traffic to its profitable e-commerce sites.

此外，潜在的增长可能被夸大了。补贴使得真实需求难以衡量。当外卖费和服务费最终上涨时，一些客户可能会流失。如果要实现利润，外卖费和服务费将不得不上涨。与此同时，廉价的资金让企业以低于竞争对手的价格收购，却扭曲了激励机制。如果像亚马逊这样的巨头介入，这场消耗战可能会变得更糟，因为亚马逊试图通过购买Deliveroo的股份来做到这一点(由于反垄断的担忧，该交易目前处于停滞状态)。亚马逊(Amazon)的中国竞争对手阿里巴巴(Alibaba)使用饿了么作为一个亏损的领导者，帮助推动其盈利的电子商务网站的流量。

词汇

antitrust /[经] 反垄断的

Just Eat or be eaten

吞并它！还是坐以待毙？！

 

Delivery businesses have ways to cut their losses. One is to diversify further, by delivering groceries, flowers, booze, and even people (as Uber does), as well as meals. Another is to provide cheaper meals by centrally supplying ingredients to restaurants, or building “ghost kitchens” that prepare food only for delivery. In “winner takes most” markets, the best way to drive up volumes and share of the proceeds is through consolidation across countries and cities. Mr Groen’s attempt to gobble up Just Eat marks the biggest foray so far. In the unappetising dog-eat-dog world of food delivery, it will still be a hard deal to digest.

外卖公司有办法减少损失。一个是进一步多样化，送杂货、鲜花、酒，甚至送人(就像优步那样)，还有送餐。另一种方法是通过向餐馆集中供应食材，或者建造“幽灵厨房”，只为外卖准备食物，从而提供更便宜的饭菜。在“赢者通吃”(winner takes most)市场中，提高销量、提高收益份额的最佳方式，是通过国家和城市间的整合。格伦试图狼吞虎咽地吃掉“Just Eat”，这是迄今为止规模最大的一次尝试。在这个令人生厌的狗咬狗的送餐世界里，这仍然是一件很难消化的事情。

词汇

Ingredient/原料；要素；食材

Unappetizing/倒胃口的