The Survival of Fresh Discount Stores

Since the beginning of this year, Hema Xiansheng has closed stores in Nanjing, Qingdao, Chengdu, Guangzhou and other places one after another, and its community group purchase project Hema Neighborhood has also suddenly withdrawn from the city on a large scale in early April

as a supplementary

Reduce wastage

On March 31, Hema Outlet Changsha opened its first store

Hema Outlet is a new format of Hema Xiansheng

"Enterprises reduce waste, and consumers benefit from more benefits, killing two birds with one stone

Hema Outlet marked in the store: The products here are the next-day downgrade sales of Hema's "Rishixian" series products, that is, "next-day fresh", which come from Hema Xiansheng, Hema Mini Store and other channels, and are downgraded the next day.

In order to save manpower, Hemaolai mainly uses self-checkout, and most stores only have one manual cash register

In the past few months, the first stores of Hema Outlet in Xi'an, Qingdao, Chengdu, Shanghai and other cities have opened successively

As the first store in Beijing, Hema Outlet Qunfangyuan Store is located in Tongzhou District.

The discount of this first store in Beijing is higher than the "less than half" that Hou Yi said, mostly 30% to 50% off, or even as low as 10% off

But not all items here are cheap

According to the "diary" and messages on the Xiaohongshu App, customers' impressions of Hema Outlet stores are basically focused on "cheap", "good buy", "crowded" and "long queues"

Sufficient supply at low prices

Food safety is guaranteed

Although Hema Outlet is the first fresh food outlet store, it is not the first fresh food discount store in China

After the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the fresh food track was pushed to the forefront.

　　As a peer and predecessor, Yipin Fresh has also provided a lot of experience to the development of Hema Ole

　　Industry insiders pointed out that the first hurdle for fresh food discount stores is to have a sufficient supply of low-priced goods

　　Taking Hema Outlet as an example, at present, its products mainly come from Hema Xiansheng's fresh products and losses.

　　Although Hema has sunk to the place of origin, and built 550 direct mining bases and 136 Hema villages across the country, it is not easy to transform a supply chain that focuses on freshness to a supply chain that focuses on "cost-effectiveness"
.
Hema Xiansheng's procurement system at the source of the goods pays more attention to quality, while Hema Outlet requires extremely high cost performance
.
Whether the supply chain transformation can be completed in the original place of origin and the large-scale procurement of cost-effective fresh food sources that meet the requirements of discount stores is a new challenge
.

　　In order to maximize cost reduction, Hema Outlet may need to adopt a turnkey procurement model from the place of origin.
No matter how good or bad they are, they will be purchased in a unified manner.
First, the cost-effectiveness will be guaranteed.
The poor ones turn to the To B channel for wholesale, and use both channels to make profits at the same time
.

　　The second barrier comes from guaranteed food safety management
.

　　Hema Outlet currently sells "next day fresh", that is, fresh food that is about to expire
.
However, the storage conditions of fresh food in the expiry period are more complicated than that of pre-packaged food, and the requirements for the store in terms of food safety management are higher, and the investment required is larger
.
However, high investment and low price form a paradox, which objectively poses a challenge to food safety management
.

　　The management of the fresh food industry is also facing difficulties
.
Fresh products are different from general prepackaged food.
Even within the shelf life marked by the store, if they are not stored properly, they may deteriorate
.

　　Hema has been established for more than 6 years.
Although it has launched various retail formats, it is still far from being profitable
.
Now Freshippo is facing the pressure of "comprehensive profitability" and has closed stores in many cities
.
Even the Hema Neighborhood, which Hou Yi called "the most important strategy for the next decade", began to withdraw from Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and other cities in April
.

　　In this context, Hema Aole, a new business format that Hema developed "bucking the trend" in the store closing tide, was placed on new hopes
.

　　But if the positioning is only to "help reduce the loss of stores and processing centers", how big can the fresh food discount store be? For Hema, which mainly faces the mid-to-high-end market, can it really pay attention to the relatively low-end fresh food business? This is still a problem that Hema and even the fresh food industry need to face
.

　　(Comprehensive arrangement by Qu Yuening)

　　"China Food News" (08 edition on April 13, 2022)

　　(Editor in charge: Qu Yuening)