On December 1st, at 9 AM, Renren Waimai officially launched.
Renren Waimai uses the independent domain name www.renrenwaimai.com, but users can log in directly with their Renren Wang accounts without registering.
They only need to fill in their delivery address to automatically match surrounding commercial areas.
To coincide with the launch of the delivery service, Renren Wang pulled out all the stops, launching a set of matching titles and outfits.
"Order ten times through Renren Waimai to receive the title 'Gan Fan Ren'."
"Order twenty times through Renren Waimai to receive the title 'Xuan Fan Kuang Mo'."
Order three times to receive the complete "Gan Fan Tu" set.
This is a cute rabbit holding a rice bowl with a satisfied expression on its face.
Nowadays, those who use Renren Wang feel embarrassed to go out without a title.
In comparison, these titles and outfits are easy to obtain, and eating is a basic necessity anyway.
For Chen Pingjiang, there was one piece of good news and one piece of bad news.
The good news was that the snow had stopped.
The bad news was that it had snowed all night before stopping.
The sudden cold snap and heavy snow disrupted many people's routines.
Students without heating or air conditioning were freezing like dogs, not wanting to get up in the morning, and every extra minute spent lounging in bed was a blessing.
Some irresolute students mustered great courage to push open their dorm room doors, only for a biting cold wind to fiercely burrow into their sleeves and collars, immediately freezing them back inside.
Even the diligent students who actively attended classes had it tough, stumbling forward through the snow after leaving the dorm building.
"It's snowing, anyone want to have a snowball fight?"
"What's so special about snow? It's damn freezing; I can't even be bothered to go outside."
"Is the OP from Guangdong? So excited about a little snow?"
"We have a god in our dorm, still sleeping on a mat in this cold weather."
"I've decided not to go out all day today. I'll just huddle in the dorm, order some food from Tiantian Waimai later, and earn some achievements while I'm at it."
"Definitely, I also need to order something from there. The free coupons are too good."
"Tiantian Waimai even has Yuanfang Supermarket. Now I can even buy cotton shoes and quilts."
"..."
Under the guidance of the content department, "snow" and "Renren Waimai" quickly became hot topics on Renren Wang, with almost all discussions revolving around these two keywords.
Compared to other nationwide websites, Renren Wang's teachers and students, being in the same region and having the same identity, shared more common ground in their discussions.
"I just ordered a bunch of stuff on Renren Waimai and calculated that it saved me over ten yuan compared to buying from the school supermarket. So good!"
"Who knows if it's delivered directly to the dorm or to the Ajumma at the dorm office? Waiting online, it's urgent."
"Probably at the Ajumma's office, right? It's just going downstairs, not many steps, much better than running outside."
"I'm speechless, Chen Pingjiang, come out here! Are you looking down on us junior college students from our finance specialty? Why do other schools have delivery points but ours doesn't?"
"Haha, I'm dying of laughter. I don't think this problem should be blamed on CEO Chen. Your dilapidated school is almost in the neighboring city; if it were me, I wouldn't deliver there either."
"Just received the piping hot duck blood vermicelli soup with a beef pancake from the delivery guy. All I can say is awesome."
Chen Pingjiang hid alone in the conference room, turning on the exhaust fan and puffing on a cigarette.
He couldn't go to the front lines himself, so he could only sit at headquarters and wait for real-time data.
He wasn't overly optimistic about the data either, after all, Renren Waimai had directly skipped the group-buying era, which was undoubtedly a huge test.
This was similar to the express delivery industry in later generations, where courier companies would place packages for an area at a station for customers to pick up, or offer home delivery like EMS or SF Express.
The difference between them was quite significant.
From a productivity standpoint, in 2006, there were no smartphones or 3G networks.
Adopting a unified delivery station service could better save human resources, and considering that delivery riders were part-time university students, it was impossible for them to spend all their time on deliveries.
However, compared to the group-buying model, the home-delivery takeout model was more time-efficient, offered better service, and was more suitable for university students.
Because food and drink were basic necessities; university students didn't care too much about daily necessities or general merchandise.
Ordering and delivering anytime, which would be commonplace in later generations, was quite difficult in 2006.
Without smartphones or mobile internet, computers hadn't even fully proliferated in university dormitories.
Just to solve this one problem, Chen Pingjiang expended a great deal of effort.
He continuously guided and encouraged people in one dorm to borrow computers from each other, and boys and girls in the same class could also borrow from each other, only then barely solving the problem of lacking a channel to place orders.
Without Alipay or WeChat Pay, only online banking payments from various banks could be used.
Users needed to find the corresponding bank based on their bank card, then jump to that bank's online banking payment interface to complete the payment.
Of course, the most convenient method was cash on delivery.
The rider was the primary payee; how many orders and the total amount assigned to a rider, and how much was actually due, was clear at a glance.
On-demand delivery was even more troublesome, but the only benefit was that it was controllable.
Chen Pingjiang first recruited over a hundred part-time university student delivery riders to cover Xianlin University Town, with an average of six to seven riders per university, operating on a shift system.
Even so, subsequent recruitment efforts were still in full swing.
In addition, merely equipping each rider with an electric scooter, a blue jacket, and a blue helmet was a significant expense.
Fortunately, this was a university area where delivery destinations were concentrated, making delivery convenient.
Being in the suburbs meant no traffic jams, and most merchants were concentrated in the commercial street at the school gate, which made it possible to conduct takeout business in 2006.
If this model were to leave the campus and enter society, it would undoubtedly fail spectacularly.
It wasn't that it couldn't be done at all, but rather that delivery efficiency and personnel costs could cripple the company.
"The first order has appeared!"
Miao Bingwei's surprised voice came from the technical department.
"Wow, this looks like an order for a whole dorm's worth of stuff, quickly send it to the rider."
Similarly, without mobile internet or smartphones, riders wouldn't know who ordered what item from which store, so the information had to be relayed via SMS through Renren Wang.
By 1 PM, a total of 1265 orders had been placed across the sixteen universities in Xianlin University Town, roughly 80 orders per school.
Compared to the tens of thousands of students at each university, this proportion was pitifully low.
However, these 80 orders were often placed by dorm, frequently for five or six people's portions, which added up to six or seven thousand individual orders.
Seeing these figures, Chen Pingjiang felt both relieved and secretly pained.
Given the objective context of that era, Chen Pingjiang was already very satisfied with achieving these numbers on its debut.
The pain was because, even with an average 15% commission, and consumers bearing the rider's commission themselves, Chen Pingjiang still had to subsidize roughly 1 yuan per order.
Six or seven thousand orders meant six or seven thousand yuan, and this was only for lunch.
Including dinner, the daily subsidies alone would amount to fifteen thousand yuan.
"I can't take it. If this continues, I'll be drained dry very quickly," Chen Pingjiang said grimacing.
The takeout industry is not for everyone to play in; this statement truly holds water.
Half a day after Renren Waimai launched, each department was to address the problems discovered.
"Fortunately, the boss considered the dorm-based ordering model in advance. Otherwise, if one dorm counted as one order, the riders would be devastated. Now that delivery fees are paid as a percentage of the order, the riders are overjoyed."
"Exactly! Delivering five or six portions at once means getting delivery fees for five or six portions directly. I even want to go deliver food myself now."
Everyone's faces showed relief; the initial data was good, and everyone was in the mood to chat.
However, at that moment, an employee from the technical department ran up to Miao Bingwei with a laptop and whispered for a long time.
Everyone watched Miao Bingwei's expression grow increasingly solemn.
"What's going on?"
Chen Pingjiang asked.
Miao Bingwei gave a wry smile,
"Only half a day after launching, some merchants have already started inflating orders."
"Hmm?"
"How are they doing it?"
Miao Bingwei gestured on the laptop screen,
"This shop realized the importance of sales volume and good reviews and cleverly avoided making fake purchases through external individuals, which would easily be detected by us. Instead, after receiving an order, they call the dorm landline to ask the customer to cancel and then re-place five or six separate orders."
Gao Songbin asked, puzzled,
"Does this count as inflating orders? I don't think so. The merchants are just utilizing our rules within a reasonable scope."
"I think the core of the dispute isn't whether they're inflating orders or not, but rather that splitting one order into six takes up rider resources and creates an unnecessary burden on riders, especially since our delivery capacity is already stretched."
"Whether it's one order or six, isn't the destination still the same dorm? How can that be a waste of rider resources?"
"But if our staff forwarding order information to riders aren't careful, they might assign orders for the same dorm to multiple riders. What one rider could handle now requires three or four!"
Chen Pingjiang listened to the arguments of everyone in the conference room and finally decided,
"Although strictly speaking this doesn't count as inflating orders, it definitely occupies rider resources. This situation is also easy to resolve: forcibly set a minimum delivery fee for shops, and the technical department should integrate and forcibly merge orders from the same IP address."
To minimize bugs and strive for authenticity, a lot of research was done.
This chapter was too difficult to write.
(End of this chapter)
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