Preface As is well known, China's catering industry market is huge, and the procurement scale in the backend of the catering industry is massive. However, due to the cumbersome intermediate links in food ingredient procurement and the overly long channel chain, there is excessive waste, and food safety issues cannot be clearly defined. Traditional food ingredient procurement has been widely criticized. B2B platforms have entered the backend market of the catering industry, quietly changing the traditional food ingredient procurement market landscape in their own most adept way. Food ingredient B2B platforms have become the true antidote to the problems of traditional food ingredient procurement. Through a comprehensive and precise analysis of the catering market, applying internet thinking, and combining with the current state of the catering market, Tongying Youcai has targeted its customer group at the procurement industry of small and medium-sized restaurants and hotels. It was the first to enter this blue ocean of the food ingredient B2B field, starting to build a B2B food ingredient procurement platform in September 2014, filling a market gap, and rapidly growing to dominate the industry. Currently, Tongying Youcai's food ingredient procurement platform has become an excellent food ingredient procurement platform in China's B2B field. Company Profile | Deep Dive into Tongying Youcai's Food Ingredient Procurement Platform Tongying Tianxia is a vertical e-commerce platform that only deals in catering food ingredients, with its business scope limited to food products needed for three meals a day. In September 2014, Tongying Tianxia launched the Tongying Youcai catering food ingredient procurement platform. The company has first-class IT R&D talent, rich market operation and management experience, and years of channel development capability. In 2014, it segmented into the catering industry, possessing nationwide upstream and downstream food ingredient supply chain resources, business association resources, important strategic partners, and city partners who are suppliers with 5-10 years of experience in the catering industry supply. Mr. Gong Yanbin, the founder of the Tongying Youcai platform, is a seasoned serial entrepreneur with over 10 years of experience in the internet industry. He is also the vice chairman of a listed company and a participant in three B2B industry segments. He focuses on internet-based business model design and strategic planning, with rich experience in internet platform operations. He is currently fully responsible for the company's overall strategic planning and corporate management. After two years of vigorous development, the Tongying Youcai food ingredient procurement platform has matured in operation, the team has rapidly grown, and it enjoys a good reputation in the industry. Self-operated and Matchmaking "Dancing Together" With the steady growth of the B2B market, the internet + catering B2B platform business model has emerged. Building internet platforms to connect the large B and small B ends of the market, coupled with the trillion-level catering food ingredient procurement market, is undoubtedly a training ground for the rapid growth of catering B2B platforms. The catering B2B market has become a cake that many investors are vying for. Similar catering procurement internet platform companies have quickly emerged, forcing launched platforms to accelerate replication and expansion to gain as much market share and users as possible, with light and heavy models in direct opposition. Tongying Youcai quietly joined the competition in the backend market of the catering industry. Through continuous exploration and experimentation, it has drawn on the strengths of both light and heavy models to forge a unique innovative model. Abandoning the drawbacks of the heavy model (self-operated) and adopting the advantages of the light model (matchmaking), Tongying Youcai's food ingredient procurement platform is a strategic cooperation (city partner) model that sits between the heavy model (self-operated) and the light model (matchmaking platform). Initially, it focused on matchmaking. In the early stage, Tongying Youcai mainly operated with a light model, providing a trading platform for both buyers and sellers in the food ingredient supply chain. Restaurants and hotels (i.e., buyers) can place orders daily on the Tongying Youcai platform based on their next-day food ingredient needs, and each product has a specific supplier as the seller. On the other end, Tongying Youcai connects food ingredient manufacturers and first- and second-tier suppliers in various regions, helping them expand terminal users in restaurants and hotels through the platform and providing online food ingredient procurement services. Unlike the heavy model that uses subsidies to seize traditional suppliers' business and disrupt the ecosystem, Tongying Youcai helps traditional suppliers provide sales channels, optimize the supply chain, and improve the efficiency and benefits of the entire industry through internet thinking, with low investment costs and rapid market expansion after project launch. From the perspective of long-term platform development and strategic layout, "matchmaking" and "self-operated" need to integrate advantages: relying on "matchmaking" to quickly accumulate users and transaction volume and expand market share, and relying on "self-operated" to control service quality and obtain higher profit margins. Tongying Youcai embeds the operational plan of the heavy model into its corporate strategy, accumulating strength to achieve a complete closed ecosystem. From 0 to 1, from 1 to N In September 2014, Tongying Tianxia launched the Tongying Youcai food ingredient procurement platform. In March 2015, Tongying Tianxia held its first investment promotion meeting in Heping District, Tianjin. In August 2015, Tongying Youcai's first operation center—the Chengde Operation Center—went online. In February 2016, the Tongying Youcai APP was officially launched. ...... After more than two years of growth and expansion, the Tongying Youcai catering procurement platform has successively held Tongying Youcai project landing sharing sessions in more than a hundred cities and regions across the country, covering Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Shaanxi, Henan, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, and other provinces. As of the end of July, the Tongying Youcai catering procurement platform has laid out provincial business divisions in nearly 12 provinces, with nearly 70 city partners nationwide and a total of 66,378 registered restaurants and hotels. These city partners are all food ingredient suppliers with 5-10 years of experience in the catering industry. City partners also have their own logistics vehicles and warehousing systems and are involved in multiple product areas, including rice, flour, and cooking oil, frozen products, fresh produce, condiments, and kitchen supplies. Establishing Industry Barriers and Rapidly Growing Stronger Tongying Youcai adopts a supplier franchise model, allowing suppliers to join as regional sub-centers of Tongying Youcai. This effectively expands the company's visibility and business scope. During operation, Tongying Youcai focuses on brand building and promotion, with internet thinking running through everything. With its unique business model, the Tongying Youcai procurement platform establishes industry barriers that distinguish it from other platforms through the supplier franchise model, and it continuously maintains competitive barriers to rapidly grow stronger. Regarding how to continuously maintain competitive barriers in the long term, Tongying Youcai strives to make its products better and widen the gap with competitors. Making products better. When Tongying Youcai first entered the food ingredient procurement arena, its main strategy was to solve the pain points of traditional procurement, building dependency through high frequency and increasing user stickiness with good products. How to open the traffic entrance of the industry? Price behavior is important, logistics is important, but the biggest pain point is still food safety, i.e., product quality. This is the biggest pain point. If you solve the big pain point, you can achieve a certain scale. The suppliers on the Tongying Youcai platform are all first- and second-tier manufacturers, and it has signed strategic cooperation agreements with well-known brands such as CP Group and Huiyuan. Product and price pain points are guaranteed one by one, becoming one of Tongying's winning weapons. The product itself is very important. Widening the gap with competitors. In 2014, the "internet + catering" B2B platform business model emerged. In the same year, Tongying Tianxia launched the Tongying Youcai food ingredient procurement platform, quickly occupying the high ground in the catering B2B field, and through continuous efforts and the advantages of its own business model, it widened the gap with competitors. Direction is important, leaders are important, technology is important, models are important, and people are even more important... In the world of martial arts, only speed is unbeatable. The Tongying Youcai procurement platform, based on its own technology and talent advantages, found the right direction and took a unique path first, far ahead of other food ingredient procurement platforms. Ma Yun said: Today, the probability of getting rich on the internet is not very high, but today's internet can save everyone a lot of costs. Some people say, if Alibaba could make me rich, I would go online tomorrow. I say, no one in this world can make you rich; only you can make yourself rich. What you need is to invest and invest your time in the internet. The internet will definitely save everyone money, but it may not make you money today. Making money is for tomorrow; saving money, you can see it today. Tongying Youcai integrates traditional supply chain resources, matches supply and demand for transactions, and provides help in solving problems in catering procurement and supply. It reduces procurement costs for catering enterprises, makes transaction processes transparent, ensures food safety, and breaks through the limitations of the traditional catering food ingredient supply chain. After more than a year of mature operation, the Tongying Youcai platform has found that whether from the perspective of the huge demand from both buyers and sellers or the considerable profit prospects, the self-operated model centered on terminal group buying and centralized procurement will become the next focus of Tongying Youcai. By strengthening self-operated operations, breaking the "industry rule" of burning money through financing, Tongying Youcai's ultimate goal is to achieve self-sustaining cash flow and self-development.