After the anchor created the "wealth creation myth", similar narratives began to appear in the food delivery industry. Recently, the news that a Shanghai delivery boy earned 1.02 million yuan in three years has become a hot topic on the Internet. Is "a million in three years" possible? Blue Whale reporters tried to explore the real world of food delivery behind "a million in three years" by interviewing food delivery recruiters, delivery people and related experts.
How difficult is "three years to make a million"?
The person who created this "miracle of delivery workers getting rich" is Chen Si, a Shanghai delivery worker. According to The Paper, Chen Si did not graduate from elementary school. He failed to start a business in his twenties. He came to Shanghai with debt and worked hard for three years. He eventually became one of Shanghai's "order kings" and "earned 1.02 million yuan in three years."
What level does this income actually equate to?
1.02 million for three years. If the monthly income is broken down to basically 28,000 yuan. According to the current general unit price in Shanghai of 7-12 yuan, if all 1.02 million is earned from running orders, then the rider needs to run 93 orders every day for three years without rest.
This kind of work intensity and volume of orders is almost unimaginable for normal people. Blue Whale reporters have called many rider recruiters and learned that under normal circumstances, 70 orders per day is quite a lot, let alone more than 90 orders per day, every day for three years.
Xing Bin, a teacher at the School of Liberal Arts of Linyi University who once became famous for experiencing the life of a delivery boy, is skeptical about the authenticity of the "three million years" mentioned on the Internet. He told the Blue Whale reporter: "Running 15 hours a day is the limit. I can personally run 80 orders at most. It was still the last stage of the epidemic, and the Chinese New Year was approaching. There were only a few orders, and there were basically no orders. Now there are not so many orders, and the unit price was obviously lower in December. Recently, I saw in the group that their income was more than 10% lower than last year.”
Many riders and netizens have questioned the authenticity of the "three-year million", and some netizens even reported that "it is said that this delivery boy was beaten by his peers." The peers beat and scolded: "I told you to brag again, I told you to brag again..." The picture accompanying the post was a photo of Chen Si with a bleeding nose.
However, Chen Si refuted the rumors this evening and said, "I was not beaten by my colleagues. The pictures on the Internet were because I got angry before." He said that he was working normally during this period and hoped that people would not spread rumors. In addition, according to The Paper, Chen Si’s earnings of 1.02 million yuan in three years have been confirmed from data.
Riders are still priced on a piece-by-piece basis, with an “annual fee” of 4,000-8,000 yuan
Blue Whale reporters learned from many rider recruiters that riders’ salaries mainly consist of unit price and bonuses.
The unit price varies slightly in different regions. Currently, the mainstream unit price in Shanghai is 7-12 yuan, and the daily order volume of riders is basically between 50 and 70. "If you are very familiar with the area and are very efficient, it is possible to exceed 70 orders per day, but the corresponding working hours will also be very long."
Specific to the bonus level, in addition to the novice rewards exclusive to the novice period, the food delivery platform also introduces a "retention fee" for the situation where "there are fewer riders during the New Year", which is roughly between 4,000-8,000 yuan, "but this bonus is only for the month of the New Year." In addition, the daily rewards that riders can receive mainly include perfect attendance awards, etc., but the amount of this reward is limited and usually only a few hundred yuan. Individual sites will provide cash rewards to riders with particularly outstanding performance, but there are certain differences.
To sum up, the salary of riders is still mainly based on the "price-by-piece" salary model. Although many platforms claim that riders can easily earn over 10,000 yuan for a guaranteed job of 8,000, this "price-by-piece" model naturally encourages riders to "book the length of time" and "book the volume."
Xing Bin told Blue Whale reporters that the food delivery platform encourages "full attendance" and "multiple orders" in its mechanism. "The platform will set multiple order rewards during rainy and snowy weather holidays. For example, if you run 50 orders, you will be rewarded 50, and if you run 80 orders, you will be rewarded 100. If you run 7 days in a row, you will be rewarded 150. In addition, There will also be some hidden punishment mechanisms. For example, those who have few orders and low online time will not be promoted and have no work. Many riders will run hard for 15-16 hours in rainy and snowy holidays in order to get the 100 reward for 80 orders.”
Not only that, special delivery riders are not as "free" as they imagined. Xing Bin said that special delivery riders need to ask for leave 7 days in advance. "It doesn't matter if you are sick. You have to find a dedicated delivery rider who is resting that day, or a crowdsourced part-time rider who can run."
Behind the seemingly considerable income are long working hours and great sacrifices in self-life.
Riders are still stuck in the system
In 2021, an article entitled "Takeaway Riders, Trapped in the System" hit the screen, triggering a national discussion on the business ethics, occupational risks, and user experience of the food delivery industry. Although the two major platforms Ele.me and Meituan both issued statements at the time expressing reflection, they would give users the option of "waiting for 8 more minutes" and would increase investment in capital and technology to ensure the safety and rights of riders.
But in fact, three years later, delivery riders are still stuck in the system.
According to Shangguan News, a recent complaint to Shanghai’s 12345 citizen service hotline showed that there is another reason for the rider’s retrograde behavior: the meal pickup and delivery route planned by the takeout platform system is the retrograde route. Moreover, the platform limits the food delivery time based on the mileage of the retrograde route, forcing riders to drive along the retrograde route to ensure on-time delivery. According to a reporter's investigation, the phenomenon of retrograde riders in some areas is concentrated, and the platform is behind this.
Under this planning idea, the platform adopts the "shortest path first" strategy. "The distance is shorter and the time is shorter, which not only attracts more users to the food delivery platform, but also reduces the delivery fees paid to the riders." However, this route has huge safety risks hidden, and it is easy to cause collision accidents during peak periods.
Not only the "retrograde route", Xing Bin told the Blue Whale reporter that when he was a rider, he discovered that there was a problem of "stealing distance" in the process of delivering orders. "In the beginning (five years ago), the food delivery fee was calculated based on the electric car distance on the Amap map from the merchant to the customer. Later it became a bicycle distance, and then it became a walking distance. Last winter, sometimes we even started to calculate the straight-line distance in space (the distance between points in the sky)."
Xing Bin said that food delivery is not an easy or easy job to get rich. "If my students want to be food delivery, I will definitely tell them that they must first pay attention to safety and try not to ride in rainy and snowy weather. It is too dangerous. Second, they must get ashore as soon as possible. The ceiling for food delivery riders is very low, just to make a living temporarily. The third is not to be coerced by the 'consumption logic'. If you understand the logic of the 'spectacle society', you will no longer be so anxious. The important thing is to move towards your own goals at your own pace."