Interview with the American version of "Gesoo": It's called UberEats, which is what Chinese takeout should do!

Gesoo is an instant delivery platform for Chinese in North America, providing users with delivery of take-away, supermarkets, fresh food and parcels in the same city. 20 14 was established in Los Angeles at the beginning of this year. The founding team found that it is not easy for China students living in the suburbs to eat delicious Chinese food because the United States is vast and sparsely populated, and Chinese food formats are concentrated in cities. This gave the team the idea of building a Chinese takeaway platform for China people.

According to the data provided by Gesoo, the catering industry in the United States has a market size of 800 billion, but the take-away business only accounts for 5%, but the demand gap for take-away is very large. The local Chinese community in the United States is huge, with about 65,438+04,000 Chinese restaurants. However, faced with cultural differences, language barriers and huge differences with American restaurants, it is difficult for China restaurants to access the take-away business. On the other hand, logistics in the United States is mainly aimed at long-term business, and express transportation in the same city is rare. All these have brought possibilities for the development of Gesoo.

Gesoo's business is divided into two parts: instant delivery and freight transportation in the same city. At present, it is mainly carried out in the Los Angeles urban agglomeration. Instant delivery business covers restaurants, fresh food and supermarkets, and freight in the same city is mainly aimed at small packages that arrive on the same day. After the user places an order on the platform, the system automatically assigns the driver to take the meal. At present, according to the data provided by Sun Neighbors to Yiou Restaurant, there are more than 1 000 registered restaurants, more than 200 active restaurants and about 30,000 monthly active users on Gesoo platform.

Unlike China's takeaway brother who has an electric car, American takeaway brother's delivery vehicle is mainly a car, Gesoo mainly uses the idle capacity of the society, and the platform and the driver adopt a cooperation model similar to Uber, giving the driver a delivery fee in proportion. Due to the local traffic congestion and scattered transportation capacity, the delivery time of American take-out food is relatively long, and the requirements for delivery time of American cold dishes are not high, so Americans have a high tolerance for delivery time. Chinese takeout is mostly hot food, which greatly increases the demand for delivery time.

For any takeaway platform, delivery time is one of the most important issues. In 20 15, Gesoo tried to expand its business to new york and San Francisco, but at that time, the IT system was not developed enough, the business model was not mature enough, and the take-out took a long time (about 2.5 hours per order), so the plan failed. After 20 17, in view of the operational difficulties, Gesoo upgraded the system, analyzed the distance to improve the accuracy and efficiency of deploying drivers, ensured delivery within 8 kilometers, 16 kilometers 1.5 hours, upgraded clients and drivers, and shortened the information chain.

In addition, Gesoo improved the management mode of merchants, allowing merchants to give priority to platform users to improve timeliness, and attached importance to the handling of customer complaints, charging users only a service fee of $65,438 +0. On the driver side, Gesoo raised the driver's income and working standards, and established a strict reward and punishment system. This series of measures has greatly improved the user experience of the platform. From the second half of 20 18, Gesoo restarted its expansion plan, and planned to expand its business to Phoenix in April of 20 19, and then to Houston and Seattle.

In addition to technical and management issues, local demand and policies in the United States are also a major obstacle to Gesoo. First of all, the situation in different parts of the United States is very different. For example, the traffic in Los Angeles is very underdeveloped, and the traffic jam of private cars is serious; Moreover, the traffic conditions in new york are good, which is more conducive to the development of take-away distribution. Different urban development also brings different user needs, which requires the take-away platform to understand and take countermeasures in the process of expansion. In addition, the United States has strict policy control over the catering industry and does not allow hot pot restaurants to take out raw meat. Private kitchen distribution was only allowed in June of this year from 5438+ 10, but at present, third-party platforms are not allowed to access, and only merchants can distribute themselves.

In order to solve this problem, Gesoo team is composed of Chinese with American study background, so as to better understand the local situation. Gesoo's Chinese-English platform and two-way understanding of China's catering culture and American laws and policies simplify the process of Chinese restaurants accessing takeaway business. However, whether it can flexibly cope with different situations in different parts of the United States is still a big test for Gesoo's future development.

According to the data of market analysis company Statista, the scale of North American takeaway market will reach 21500 million USD in 20 19. In the North American market, in addition to Gesoo in the United States, Tutti and rice balls in Canada, the China take-out platform has gradually emerged in recent years. They are all the entrepreneurial achievements of local students, and their influence in the Chinese community is growing. But compared with large take-away companies such as GrabHub, UberEats, DoorDash and PostMates. The users of China takeaway platform are basically limited to China people, and the number of restaurants accessed is also very limited. In particular, take-away platforms such as UberEats, relying on Uber's huge driver group and existing user group, have a natural advantage in volume.

The advantage of China takeaway platform lies in its strong pertinence, emphasizing service quality and user experience. For example, Tutti provides real-time delivery service of fresh food and drinks for restaurants, and also provides an intelligent restaurant system to help traditional restaurants access online platforms and improve the efficiency of restaurants. Rice ball App learns domestic and foreign selling platforms, simplifies the ordering process of users, and builds a customer service system and comment system that foreign apps do not have. This is also reflected in Gesoo, which is extending the review business, improving the restaurant service and enhancing the user experience.

Compared with the domestic and foreign sales markets, most restaurants in North America adopt the service form of telephone take-out, and the proportion of online take-out in the overall take-out market is less than 10%, and the payment method is mainly credit card. Chinese people's recognition of mobile phone ordering payment method provides soil for the development of Chinese takeaway platform, but it will inevitably become the bottleneck of its development. Fortunately, according to the data of Eater, Chinese food ranks among the most popular take-out categories for North American users, which means that the China take-out platform may be widely favored by local people. In addition, there is no "subsidy war" on the North American takeaway platform. It is natural for users to pay the delivery fee, which will give the delivery staff a certain tip, greatly reducing the burden on the take-away platform, and Gesoo has achieved a break-even point. Gesoo has already obtained a seed round of financing before, and will start a new round of financing in the first quarter of this year.

In 20 19, Gesoo will increase cooperation with restaurants, expand the supply chain business of restaurants, and distribute ingredients for Chinese restaurants through cooperation with food companies, farms and supermarkets. Gesoo will also expand the review business and improve the service level and user experience of the restaurant. The scale of real-time distribution is the development goal of Gesoo20 19. In addition to entering more cities, Gesoo will also expand the distribution team and feed back the front-end business line with logistics and distribution capabilities.