Lu Yunhao's drastic approach to Li Mu had caused Bull Takeout to fall into a vicious cycle that it could not extricate itself from.
Most of Bull Takeout's scooter riders hated their own scooters and their support services. The more they hated their scooters and their support services, the more they desired Hungry Mike's scooters and their support services.
Therefore, when Hungry Mike recruited these Bull Takeout scooter riders, it was a piece of cake.
After a large number of scooter riders quit their jobs, Bull Takeout had no choice but to recruit cyclists to become scooter riders in order to ensure the delivery capacity.
The cyclists had never experienced the sorrow of being a scooter rider before. When they started to get used to it, they immediately felt the intense despair. Therefore, when Hungry Mike's offline recruiters found them, they were easily converted into Hungry Mike's riders.
Now, Hungry Mike treated Bull Takeout as a talent training base. They spent money to recruit people, trained them bit by bit, and allowed these riders to master the entire process of the business. Then, Hungry Mike would turn these people away.
Moreover, Hungry Mike only targeted Bull Takeout's scooter rider team. It was a tried and tested method, forcing Lu Yunhao to have no choice but to increase the rider's base salary twice within a week. The delivery cost of the platform had reached a new peak.
This vicious cycle formed a closed vicious cycle. It made Lu Yunhao feel like he was doing elementary school mathematics. A pool could store 1,000 liters of water, and its capacity was 10,000 liters. The water injection port could store 10 liters of water per second, and the water outlet could store 10 liters of water per second. How long would it take to fill up the pool?
The answer was never.
While Lu Yunhao had countless bottlenecks that he could not break through, Li Mu was still constantly deploying troops in Shanghai, digging deep, and accumulating supplies.
It was like a war. Hungry Mike was continuously sending large amounts of supplies to Shanghai. Almost every day, there would be a truck delivering all kinds of supplies to Shanghai.
Today, it was a few hundred Hungry Mike scooters. Tomorrow, it would be a pile of clothes, insulated boxes, helmets, and other supporting equipment. The day after, it might be a truck of commercial computers that had just gone offline.
As soon as these supplies arrived in Shanghai, they were directly distributed without going through the inventory. Not only did Hungry Sheep's distribution range in Shanghai expand, but the number of riders also increased.
The more people there were, the more orders the platform could handle, and the timeliness was also greatly guaranteed. This was something that Lu Yunhao couldn't compete with.
At the same time, Li Mu was still raising the bar for entry.
For example, he decided to order no less than 100,000 custom-made mobile phones from the domestic mobile phone brand, Zhongxing, in batches.
The requirements for a mobile phone were: It doesn't matter if it's a little bigger or uglier. There was no need for a color screen, but it had to have a good battery life, a good signal, and a good quality. At the same time, it had to be waterproof. After all, the worst weather that delivery riders encountered was rain, so waterproof was very important.
Ordinary people might not even bother to use such a phone, thinking that it was big and ugly, but for riders, it was more convenient.
At the same time, he couldn't wait for the development of Apple's iOS and Android. He wanted to first bring in the GPS function and make a location-locating mobile phone.
Google's Larry Page had already settled the navigation company, Keyhole. Now, this company was jointly owned by Li Mu and Google. At the same time, all the technology and data were shared.
Therefore, Li Mu decided to use this special advantage and the GPS module to make a location-locating mobile phone. This would allow Hungry Mike's riders to achieve online location-locating.
If he wanted to implement a mobile phone's navigation function, he would first have to equip the mobile phone with a GPS module so that it could receive GPS signals and achieve the GPS function. Next, he would need a set of built-in maps to assist the GPS in positioning and navigation.
However, the traffic cost was relatively high at the current stage. Although he could make an online map, the traffic cost would increase the usage cost. Therefore, Li Mu thought of making a built-in map and localize the map.
Moreover, when the location-locating mobile phone was manufactured in the future, the map could be set according to different cities. For example, if these ten thousand mobile phones were to be used in Shanghai, they would only have a built-in map of Shanghai. This would save on storage costs.
Using the GPS module and Keyhole's advantages in electronic maps and navigation, he could achieve a mobile phone's navigation function. Then, he could add a coordinate receiving and uploading function to develop a location-locating mobile phone for Hungry Mike's riders. At the same time, he could update his location to the cloud server in real time.
For example, after the rider turns on the phone, the mobile phone would send a coordinate data to the cloud server every thirty seconds. This data was just a string of characters, and the usage of the traffic was negligible. However, after the server received the coordinates, it could mark the rider's specific location in its own location-locating system. This way, the user would be able to see the rider's current location and how far away they were from the user in front of the computer.
This function was very simple, but no one in the Internet industry had done it yet. Once this function was developed and modularized, it would have great commercial value. For example, if this module was installed on a bus, the cloud would know the real-time location of each bus. If it was installed on a taxi, the basic requirement of online hailing could be realized.
It was also very simple to use such a positioning phone for navigation. The system would directly send coordinates to the phone, and the phone would mark the coordinates on the local map and use an algorithm to calculate the route.
The only problem was that it was difficult to upgrade the map. However, it was not a big deal. In the early days, it was very difficult to upgrade the GPS map, but it still brought a revolutionary experience to the drivers. This kind of location-tracking phone was designed very quickly, and it was also produced very quickly. To a large extent, it could bring the Hungry Mike closer to the mature form of the future. At least it could be used for a long time, until the era of the mobile internet arrived.
After Lu Yunhao found out what Li Mu was doing, his sense of despair became stronger. He realized that what Li Mu wanted to do was to use a billion or even a few billion to do something that could be done with ten million yuan. This way, the entry threshold of the entire industry would be raised to the point that most people and companies could not reach it.
Now, he deeply felt the pain brought about by the continuous raising of the entry threshold. Not to mention customizing a mobile phone or a location-tracking and navigation phone, he did not even have the ability to customize an electric scooter. He could not deal with Li Mu's various tricks at all.
In the first month since the launch of Bull Takeout, the platform's daily order volume was still hovering around ten thousand orders. The amount of subsidies to users and riders per day was more than a hundred thousand yuan. The overall loss reached a few hundred thousand yuan. This made Lu Yunhao's liver tremble.
Under the current situation of maintaining the current scale, his capital could only last for a few more months. After a few months, if there was no second investment, his capital chain would be broken.
In comparison, Hungry Mike's daily order volume in Shanghai was more than eight hundred thousand orders. From white-collar workers working in office buildings to ordinary citizens surfing the Internet at home, as well as netizens in Internet cafes, everyone was using Hungry Mike to order food.
Although Hungry Mike's daily subsidy was more than two million yuan, Li Mu was not anxious at all.
Burning money was just the beginning. How much he burned today, he would get it back a hundredfold tomorrow.
However, Li Mu also began to prepare to reduce the cost of subsidies.
He held a meeting with Hungry Mike's core team and made a decision during the meeting. From that day onwards, the merchants would have to bear 50% of the national subsidies for Hungry Mike, and the other 50% would be borne by Hungry Mike.
In other words, Li Mu decided to dump half of the burden in one go.
Chairman Lei was a little worried about this. He felt that the merchants might be resistant to dumping such a huge burden in one go.
However, Li Mu said, "Don't worry, they are counting on us to make money. We are not trying to exploit them. We are just asking them to share a portion of their vested interests. If they can't even accept this, how are we going to save money for Hungry Mike in the future? All the experienced business people can see that our final profit model is dependent on the merchants' commission. If we keep spoiling the merchants, we will never be able to make a profit. "
Chairman Lei nodded and said, "Li Zong, I understand what you mean, but shouldn't we do it step by step?"
As he spoke, Chairman Lei said, "Especially in Shanghai, the subsidies there are very high. We have to subsidize an average of four to five yuan per order, and some of them are even higher."
Li Mu said, "If the subsidy is four yuan, let the merchant pay two yuan. If the subsidy is five yuan, let the merchant pay 2.5 yuan. If the merchant agrees, we will continue the cooperation. If the merchant doesn't agree, we will directly suspend their business for three days and let them think about it."
I help you sell things, and you give me a share. This was a natural thing, and it was also a healthy cooperation model. However, because Hungry Mike wanted to attract merchants to set up shop in the early stage, it had to subsidize its users. This itself went against the normal rules, so when the time was right, it naturally had to change the subsidy model.
At first, some merchants were unwilling. They felt that since Cow Takeout didn't want their subsidies, why should they?
Hungry Mike didn't give any explanation, nor did it force them to agree. It only gave the merchants two choices. If they accepted it, they would continue to distribute orders. If they didn't accept it, they would stop distributing orders.
Hungry Mike's tough attitude indeed caused many merchants to be dissatisfied, but Li Mu didn't care at all.
This was because Li Mu knew very well that he was helping the merchants earn money, and they couldn't do without him.
Now, it was just letting the merchants bear a certain portion of the subsidy. In the future, not only would the merchants have to bear the subsidy themselves, but they would also have to give 10% of the revenue to the platform. After all, the platform would earn money from the merchants, not from the consumers.
If the merchants couldn't adapt to this change, it could only be said that they didn't realize the importance of the platform.
For large supermarket chains like Walmart, because of the huge traffic and sales volume, they were incomparably strong in front of the suppliers. Not only did it take a long time to settle the payment, but all kinds of promotional activities required the suppliers to pay for them. If the suppliers didn't agree, then they would be banned from the supermarket's shelves. In this way, all the suppliers would admit defeat.
There were indeed some restaurants that didn't believe it and insisted on going head-on with Hungry Mike.
Lu Yunhao saw another opportunity in the dark. He felt that now that Li Mu was so tough on the merchants, it might be a good opportunity for him to overtake them!
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