Click to read the original text for details Today, the first Xiaorunfa RT-mini store opened at Yuelong South Road, Chongchuan District, Nantong City, Jiangsu Province. It is understood that Xiaorunfa RT-mini is created by RT-Mart, positioned as a new retail community fresh food supermarket. It leverages RT-Mart's years of rich retail experience and strong supply chain, and utilizes Alibaba's big data and digital technology, aiming to comprehensively enhance customer experience and meet customers' shopping needs anytime, anywhere. -01- Xiaorunfa RT-mini with Higher Professionalism Xiaorunfa RT-mini is a community supermarket with higher professionalism, with a store area of 500-1000 square meters, closely surrounding the community, with more than 3,000 residents within a 500-meter radius. It offers a wide range of products including fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, fresh food, noodles, refrigerated and frozen items, leisure snacks, beverages, rice, flour, oil, cleaning and skincare products, seasonings, dry goods, daily necessities, etc. Among them, fresh food is a key focus, meeting the daily dining needs of community residents. Currently, it mainly features Runfa Fresh Products·Daily Fresh series, with leafy greens picked from bases, fresh poultry slaughtered on the same day without overnight storage, and products after 22:00 that day are given free to RT-Mart members, limited to one portion per person. Xiaorunfa RT-mini also introduces Feiniu Group Buying online, where consumers can place orders on Feiniu Group Buying, and RT-Mart is responsible for distribution, delivering to Xiaorunfa, and consumers can pick up at the pickup point the next day. The combination of online and offline allows consumers to easily choose shopping methods. It also hopes to increase consumer visit frequency and shopping frequency through Feiniu Group Buying, continuously improving Xiaorunfa's sales per square meter. In addition, Xiaorunfa has not introduced any home delivery business, aiming to let consumers "take a stroll downstairs," and the first Xiaorunfa store is located next to the community, with consumers able to walk to the store in about 5 minutes, which is shorter than the typical delivery time for home delivery services. -02- Why is the First Store Located in Nantong, Jiangsu? Yonghui's 2018 annual report shows that Yonghui mini's layout focuses on Chongqing, Sichuan, Fuzhou, Shaanxi, etc. Currently, relevant data shows that Yonghui mini has over 100 stores in Sichuan, Chongqing, and other places. Hema mini first opened 6 stores in Shanghai and other places, then replicated the mature store system in Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and other places. Hema mini's plan to first cover high-tier cities is evident. The first RT-Mart mini store is located in Nantong, Jiangsu, possibly to avoid direct conflict with the two "predecessors." Secondly, although Nantong is not a high-tier city, it has a high level of economic development and a large population base, which is convenient for RT-Mart to test the small-format model. After the model is proven, it is also convenient for batch replication in other key cities. -03- Will Xiaorunfa Be Late to the Party? Whether it is Yonghui, Hema, or RT-Mart's mini layout, the purpose is to break through the current problems of low sales per square meter and high costs in large stores. Secondly, small formats are more flexible and changeable than hypermarkets, able to cover areas that hypermarkets cannot, and based on the mature and stable supply chain of hypermarkets, forming a complementary advantage. Yonghui mini has been laid out for nearly two years, but currently only some stores are profitable. Hema has achieved overall profitability, but its nationwide layout is still limited, which shows that even small formats are not easy to operate. The seemingly simple small format actually hides mysteries. On the surface, community stores like Xiaorunfa are simple community-based fresh food supermarkets. If you can grasp the store location well, you can take the lead in development advantages. But in reality, to achieve long-term development and profitability, there are very important requirements for the development model and supply chain. It can even be said that the development model and supply chain determine the life and death of small formats. Xiaorunfa first relies on RT-Mart's original strong supply chain, then continuously optimizes it as needed, changing to direct sourcing from bases that night, delivering to stores in the early morning, selling the next day, and not keeping overnight, maintaining the freshness of fresh products, reducing product loss, and also maximizing consumer experience and satisfaction. Community-based fresh food supermarkets, like community group buying, have obvious regional characteristics. Consumers in different regions have very different preferences and habits for fresh products. This is also why although community group buying giants have emerged, regional community group buying also survives well, because regional community group buying knows local consumer needs very well and can select products for sale accordingly. In addition, Xiaorunfa's current model does not use home delivery services, which is in sharp contrast to the two "predecessors." Whether not using home delivery but using group buying to attract consumers to stores can achieve the results of increasing sales per square meter and increasing shopping frequency remains to be seen. So, for now, although RT-Mart entered the game late, in the community fresh food format, grasping consumers, supply chain, and model will be the key. It may be too early to say RT-Mart is late to the party. But it is foreseeable that with RT-Mart entering the mini store, the community fresh food supermarket has another tough competitor, and the mini-format competition intensifies. Article reference source: "The 'Mixed' Xiaorunfa: We See the Shadows of Fresh Legend, Qian Damei, and Baiguoyuan in It" - Third Eye Retail Zhang Siyao