---
title: "Can Qian Dama, Which Doesn't Sell Overnight Meat, Support a Valuation of 10 Billion Yuan?"
description: "On December 23, 2019, Qian Dama announced the completion of a nearly 1 billion yuan Series D financing. In the midst of a capital winter, especially in the fresh food industry, this news has inspired entrepreneurs in the sector. However, despite its advantages, hidden risks may lead to a setback for Qian Dama, as any weakness can be fatal in entrepreneurship."
author: "刘华"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-01-18"
categories: "Capital, Earnings & M&A"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/4Gj3zkmXaunb-XXSVDAb_w"
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citation: "刘华. “Can Qian Dama, Which Doesn't Sell Overnight Meat, Support a Valuation of 10 Billion Yuan?.” New Distribution, 2020-01-18. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/can-qian-dama-which-doesn-t-sell-overnight-meat-support-a-valuation-of-1-1efac010/"
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---

# Can Qian Dama, Which Doesn't Sell Overnight Meat, Support a Valuation of 10 Billion Yuan?

> On December 23, 2019, Qian Dama announced the completion of a nearly 1 billion yuan Series D financing. In the midst of a capital winter, especially in the fresh food industry, this news has inspired entrepreneurs in the sector. However, despite its advantages, hidden risks may lead to a setback for Qian Dama, as any weakness can be fatal in entrepreneurship.

On December 23, 2019, Qian Dama announced the completion of a nearly 1 billion yuan Series D financing. In the midst of a capital winter, especially in the fresh food industry, this news has inspired entrepreneurs in the sector, who see a bright future and believe that the current difficulties are just the darkness before dawn.
However, is that really the case?
Analyzing Qian Dama, its advantages need no further elaboration; rather, various hidden dangers may lead to a Waterloo for this aggressive player. Because entrepreneurship is like that: as long as you have a short board or a hidden danger, you may fall before the entire industry. Optimistically, it may also continuously shrink its battle lines, slow down expansion, and truly become a company that transforms itself amidst strong competitors.
**-01-**
**The Franchise Model Is Uncontrollable,**
**Planting Hidden Dangers for Future Management and Standardization**
In the fresh food retail sector, **Qian Dama can be said to be the fastest in expansion, with no other store daring to claim second place.** It is certain that expansion leads to scale, and scale gives bargaining power in procurement from origin and secondary distributors, as well as economies of scale, resulting in lower costs and fresher ingredients, especially for fresh foods like meat and poultry.
In fact, it is precisely because of aggressive expansion and controllable costs that Qian Dama coined the slogan "No Overnight Meat." Friends who have visited or passed by Qian Dama stores know that **the slogan "No Overnight Meat" in the storefront is particularly eye-catching.** This slogan has also led consumers to believe that Qian Dama can "not sell overnight meat" and will inevitably not sell overnight vegetables, etc. It can be said that this planning and creativity closely aligns with consumer psychology and expectations.
However, **Qian Dama's easy expansion is not all direct-operated; more than half of its stores are franchised.** As for Qian Dama's current management capabilities, whether it can truly achieve unified high-standard management like KFC franchises, everyone knows the answer.
It can be said that although Qian Dama has achieved rapid, even carpet-like expansion through franchising, with some stores as close as 250 meters to communities, truly solving the last-mile fresh food consumption problem.
However, franchising is a double-edged sword. While it can achieve widespread expansion in a short time, as the number of franchised stores increases, especially without regular training and guidance for store managers and staff, franchised stores may actually lower Qian Dama's brand image among users. This is like lifting a rock to drop on one's own feet for the sake of expansion and data.
Especially in terms of store standardization, it is a long-term, continuous process of construction and improvement, but franchise owners often only consider their own interests, find it hard to build a bigger business with the "boss," and are only willing to guard their own small plot.
This is naturally detrimental to Qian Dama's future development. In fact, if Qian Dama does not spend time clarifying its franchise system and building standardization, its valuation of 10 billion yuan will be hard to support.
**-02-**
**Surrounded by Strong Competitors,**
**Community Fresh Food Is Coveted by All**
Qian Dama started early in the community fresh food sector, which gave it a first-mover advantage. Through continuous store expansion and the "No Overnight Meat" slogan, it has seized the minds of community residents.
However, fat meat is always coveted. **Looking at the current community fresh food track, both Hema Fresh and traditional retailers like Yonghui are heavily betting on community fresh food.** For Qian Dama, its total financing cannot compete with such giants behind it. A fierce battle in community fresh food may begin in 2020.
At that time, how Qian Dama will defend its existing achievements and advantages, keep up with the pace of capital, and develop steadily when community fresh food becomes a capital game remains a big question mark.
In recent years, how to connect the last mile and last 300 meters has been an important topic explored from the once-hot community O2O to today's community fresh food enterprises. For Qian Dama, through franchising, it has even achieved connectivity to the last 250 meters, which is indeed an advantage.
However, is the barrier to entry high in community fresh food? For Hema Fresh and Yonghui, it is not a barrier at all. If they want to enter, they can open stores densely in minutes. This forces us to question whether Qian Dama's 10 billion yuan valuation can be supported. After all, surrounded by giants, startups often either get acquired or buried.
**Whether Qian Dama can choose a side or even be acquired might be a topic worth pondering in community fresh food in 2020.** After all, both sides are giant-level competitors, and Qian Dama's franchise model is inherently unstable, with franchisees' loyalty predictable. Thus, overnight, the community fresh food landscape could undergo earth-shaking changes.
**-03-**
**Aggressive Offline Expansion, Weak Online Presence,**
**Uneven Legs Hide Crisis**
Although the community O2O connecting online and offline failed in previous years, **community fresh food now truly cannot do without online-offline linkage and integration.**
This is undoubtedly a major challenge for Qian Dama. Always good at aggressive offline expansion, Qian Dama also offers online ordering, but **compared to Hema Fresh's front-store-back-warehouse model and Miss Fresh's front warehouses, Qian Dama's weak online presence needs serious improvement.**
Because even elderly people around 60 are now proficient in online shopping and using various apps, they naturally become fascinated by buying vegetables and meat online. In fact, this is not just consumption but a pastime. While playing with their phones, they conveniently order ingredients for lunch and dinner.
**This is actually a battle of deep online-offline integration and efficiency of warehouse and distribution systems.** Although Qian Dama has many stores, most are relatively small, with SKUs that can be counted, making it difficult to implement Hema Fresh's front-store-back-warehouse model. And since Qian Dama focuses on offline stores, it is unlikely to build front warehouses across the city in the short term.
This uneven development may hide a crisis for Qian Dama. Because when even aunties are used to buying ingredients online, what value will Qian Dama's stores have? From this perspective, **its 10 billion yuan valuation based solely on the slogan "No Overnight Meat" is also hard to support.**
**-04-**
**Store Timing Design Fails to Capture Young People's Stomachs**
Buying vegetables can be divided into three waves a day: early morning for fresh vegetables, noon for lunch preparation, and 6-7 PM when young people buy ingredients after work.
In contrast, Qian Dama can satisfy the elderly who buy fresh vegetables in the morning and consumers buying lunch ingredients. But awkwardly, during the peak of young people buying vegetables at 6-7 PM, Qian Dama is crowded with community aunties waiting to buy discounted meat and vegetables, which is exactly the timing design of Qian Dama: using discounts to clear inventory.
Clearly, **whether in atmosphere, vibe, or tone, this makes young people feel it's not a place for them.** And worse, at this time, there are basically no fresh vegetables, so young people cannot get consumption satisfaction.
Simply put, young people will naturally turn to their phones and order on apps like Hema or Miss Fresh. As the saying goes, a fall into a pit, a gain in your wit. Whether young white-collar workers will still visit Qian Dama, which is only a few hundred meters away, remains a question mark.
Overall, Qian Dama's ability to raise funds during the capital winter is indeed inspiring. But if its 10 billion yuan valuation merely continues and replicates the existing model without adapting to user segmentation and market changes, next year Qian Dama might truly become marginalized.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 刘华
- Published: 2020-01-18
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/can-qian-dama-which-doesn-t-sell-overnight-meat-support-a-valuation-of-1-1efac010/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/4Gj3zkmXaunb-XXSVDAb_w

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