Hungry Mike's request for the merchants to bear 50% of the cost of the subsidy had indeed caused a lot of dissatisfaction among the merchants.
However, the internet industry and the capital industry had seen through Li Mu's intentions.
In fact, everyone knew that Hungry Mike's final channel to cash in would definitely be the merchants. However, they did not expect Li Mu to start harvesting the merchants at this time.
In their opinion, Li Mu would probably start harvesting the merchants after dealing with Bull Take-Out and becoming the only company in the food delivery industry.
If he started to have conflicts with the merchants now, Bull Take-Out might take advantage of the situation.
However, Li Mu did not care about this at all. Be it Bull Take-Out or Lu Yunhao, they were no match for Hungry Mike at all. If Hungry Mike was a two-way high-specification highway with ten lanes, then Bull Take-Out could not even reach the standard of a one-way one-lane highway.
If Bull Take-Out could not increase its volume, it would never be able to snatch away Hungry Mike's market share.
Therefore, if Li Mu could successfully make the merchants bear the cost now, he would have more confidence to compete with Bull Take-Out to the end. If the subsidy was six yuan per order, Bull Take-Out would bear all of it, and Hungry Mike would only need to bear three yuan. If this continued, even if Wall Street threw in 200 million USD, Li Mu would not be afraid at all.
Now, be it Beijing or Shanghai, Hungry Mike's merchants had truly experienced the advantages and benefits of Hungry Mike. Through Hungry Mike, they had greatly increased their business income, and some even increased it by ten times. It could be said that Hungry Mike had become the core pillar of their income.
Although most of the merchants were not satisfied with Hungry Mike's request for them to bear 50% of the subsidy, they still chose to accept it.
However, there were still some merchants who felt that Hungry Mike should not let them bear any of the costs. Therefore, they had to fight with Hungry Mike's unyielding attitude to the end.
At the same time, Lu Yunhao was also increasing his lobbying efforts. His front-end commerce department was going around to communicate with the merchants and brainwash them, telling them that Hungry Ah Mi was doomed for committing unrighteousness. When the time came, the order traffic on his platform would definitely increase greatly. Therefore, he encouraged them to reject Hungry Ah Mi's request and enter into a deeper partnership with Bull Takeout.
Bull Take-Out tricked these merchants by saying that once Hungry Ah closed their shops, their customers would come to Bull Take-Out to place their orders. Therefore, they would not suffer any losses. Not only would Bull Take-Out give them more resources, more importantly, they would not let the merchants bear a single cent of the subsidy. This way, the merchants would earn more than working with Hungry Ah and bearing 50% of the cost.
These merchants did not know the true situation of Bull Double-food. They felt that since Bull Double-food was willing to support them, even if they did not have Hungry Goat for the time being, they would still be able to take orders from Bull Double-food. Since Hungry Goat was exploiting them, they would get closer to Bull Double-food. They believed that the one who would compromise in the end would definitely be Hungry Goat and not them.
Therefore, they chose to refuse to participate in the subsidy.
Hungry Mike didn't hold back at all. The offline team immediately went to the shops that didn't accept the hopping orders within the stipulated time. At the same time, their shops were listed as temporarily closed on Hungry Mike's website, and they couldn't place any orders.
In just one day, these people had suffered heavy losses.
There was a restaurant that sold Donkey Braised Meat. Their daily income was only one to two hundred yuan, but Hungry Mike's income was one to two thousand yuan or even more. Bull Double-food's income was more than a hundred yuan. Now, they refused to subsidize their customers with Hungry Mike. Therefore, their income was reduced to zero, and they suffered heavy losses.
What infuriated them was that without Hungry Mike's orders and a loss of one to two thousand yuan of income, their orders from Bull Double-food didn't seem to improve at all. They were still around a hundred yuan.
In other words, after their shop was closed, the potential customers of this Donkey Braised Meat directly chose to place their orders at Hungry Mike's other shops that were still in operation. They didn't switch to another platform just to eat their Donkey Braised Meat.
This made them feel extremely pained, because what they lost was actually eighty to ninety percent of their income.
Lu Yunhao also suffered a huge blow. He originally thought that this was an opportunity to overtake them. He thought that he could work closely with these merchants that fought against Hungry Mike, and at the same time, attract their traffic over.
But he quickly realized a serious problem. Hungry Mike's users didn't exist for a particular shop, but for Hungry Mike's platform.
This was just like the millions of WeChat official accounts. If any official account thought that their fans belonged to them and were even above WeChat, and thought that if they changed platforms to develop, their fans would abandon WeChat and follow them, then their brains were not in the right place.
There was a person called Fang Zhouzi who did this. Originally, he relied on scolding people to gain some traffic on Weibo.
But later, because he went against Weibo, he decided to quit Weibo and switch to another platform.
He thought that his fans would follow him, but in the end, he realized that they didn't exist at all.
Most of his fans weren't even real fans. Everyone just wanted to watch him for fun. Even if he left Weibo, there were still tens of thousands of verified accounts on Weibo. Who would be stupid enough to switch to another platform just to watch him?
Therefore, this person gradually became silent.
Then, the disappointed Lu Yunhao decided to attack Li Mu online.
He personally went down and posted on Weibo. The content of the post was: "Li Mu used his power to force the merchants on Hungry Mike to share the subsidies. Those who were unwilling to bear the subsidies were forced to close down. Behind these merchants are countless hardworking ordinary people and their families. Now, their families are facing unprecedented threats. What difference is there between Li Mu's actions and bandits?!"
Then, he spent millions of PR fees to get many accounts to crazily forward and comment on this Weibo post. He tried to create a strong public pressure on Li Mu and force Li Mu to give up his plan to force the merchants to bear 50% of the subsidies.
The netizens who didn't know what was going on thought that Li Mu was really forcing those shop owners. Their hearts instantly exploded and they started to criticize Li Mu. They felt that his almost perfect image of a rich man was smeared by this matter.
After this Weibo post became a trending topic, Li Mu didn't let the people on Weibo interfere with its index and trending ranking. Instead, he directly posted:
"Isn't it only right and proper for a comprehensive market to provide a storefront for the merchants to operate and earn money by collecting a certain fee from them? Opening a shop in the market but not paying the market rent, and even throwing a tantrum after chasing him out. What kind of bandit logic is this? The saddest thing for some people is that they mistake the platform's ability for their own. Once such people leave the platform, they are nothing. "
Once this Weibo post was posted, the netizens immediately reacted.
Li Mu was right.
Hungry Mike was a platform built by Li Mu. This was equivalent to Li Mu spending money to build a huge shopping mall. Every merchant on Hungry Mike was equivalent to entering this shopping mall, operating and earning money from the shops provided by this shopping mall. Under such circumstances, what was the problem with collecting rent from you? There was no problem at all! It was only right and proper!
Especially Li Mu's last sentence, it made many netizens understand a principle.
The strength of the platform, not the individual's ability. When the merchants earned money on Hungry Mike, they neglected the fact that it was due to the disruptive new business model provided by Hungry Mike, as well as the huge amount of traffic on Hungry Mike. They thought that it was because of the strength of their restaurant. In the end, after leaving Hungry Mike, they realized that their own strength was not enough to fight. Without the support of the platform, they were instantly beaten back to their original state. Could they blame the platform for this?
Hence, the views on the internet had a 180-degree reversal.
In addition, the Internet Water Army under Li Mu was much stronger than the half-baked Lu Yunhao. As a result, Lu Yunhao himself was being scolded by the netizens.
There was a view on the internet that was approved and supported by the majority of the netizens. This view was that Lu Yunhao was completely unable to compete with Li Mu, so he purposely wanted to make a personal attack. This kind of trash was morally corrupt, and everyone had the right to punish him.
Lu Yunhao was a scumbag with a relatively weak psychological endurance. With so many netizens scolding him non-stop, he was on the verge of breaking down.
His Weibo post had nearly 100,000 comments in just one or two days, and more than 90% of them were scolding him.
The matter of Bull Dao-out instigating merchants to go against Hungry Mike was also leaked to the internet by someone. Subsequently, Li Mu's Internet Water Army added fuel to the fire, causing Bull Dao-out to become the target of criticism on the internet.
What caused Lu Yunhao to break down even more was that those merchants who rejected Hungry Mike all regretted it without exception. They all contacted Hungry Mike's customer service, expressing their willingness to accept a 50% subsidy, hoping to be able to connect to Hungry Mike again.
Li Mu scoffed at these people.
These people were, in essence, complete egoists. When Hungry Mike was earning money, they kept quiet about it. When Hungry Mike asked them to pay a little subsidy, they felt like their tails were being stepped on, so they stood up and scolded. These people were basically the kind of people who picked up their bowls to eat and put down their chopsticks to curse.
There was another group that was very similar to this group of people, which was a large number of self-employed e-commerce businesses.
As everyone knew, due to the lax regulation of e-commerce and the imperfect tax laws, for more than 10 years, self-employed e-commerce businesses did not have to pay a single cent of tax. Five-diamond shops that earned 10,000 a month, and five-diamond shops that earned 5,000,000 a month, almost all of them did not have to pay a single cent of business tax or personal income tax.
Because they are individuals and not registered as a business entity, business tax and corporate income tax have nothing to do with them. Their income is directly settled from Taobao to their personal accounts. Even if they earn 10 million a month, they basically don't have to pay income tax. This group of people themselves already have enough vested interests, but when the country promulgated the e-commerce law to regulate e-commerce and impose reasonable taxes, they still jumped out to oppose it. Their attitude is obvious.
Li Mu could not tolerate these people's bad habits at all. Now, he was only asking them to share 50% of the subsidy. Not only did the platform allow him to use it for free, but it also helped him bear the other 50% of the subsidy. If he had a problem with this, then when he really had to pay the rent in the future, he did not know how he would jump up and scold. Since that was the case, then he would subdue them in one go.
Therefore, Hungry Mike replied to those merchants who had already withdrawn from Hungry Mike: "There's no problem with connecting, but the subsidy will all be borne by the shops themselves. If they don't accept it, then let their shops go back online.
This move had two effects.
First, these merchants who had previously rejected Hungry Mike and wanted to wrestle with the platform were all regretting it.
Second, those merchants who had previously accepted Hungry Mike's request were all extremely glad.
This was the effect that Li Mu wanted.
Killing the chicken to warn the monkey!
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