In China, the number of take-away users has reached 360 million, and the average daily order volume is tens of millions. In order to serve these hungry diners, there are more than one million take-away riders rushing around the streets of hundreds of cities across the country.
Each color in the picture above represents a rider.
Takeaway riders are a group of energetic "little brothers":Nearly 70% of them are under the age of 35, and more than 90% are men.. Although the proportion of "little sister rider" and "big brother rider" is low, they don’t let a young man be old and strong, and their work performance is equally excellent.
On average, a riderI have to work 8 hours a day, stand by for 12 hours and deliver 48 orders.. If the average distance between merchants and diners is 3 kilometers and each order is 1.5 people, the rider travels nearly 150 kilometers every day, saving diners 100 hours and walking 400 kilometers less every day.
And this is just a microcosm of millions of riders. Behind this microcosm, there are more data details; Behind the details of the data, it is the embarrassment that riders exchange sweat for a better life.
Hard-working riders
The horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis represents order quantity.
Four o’clock in the morning is the quietest time of the day in Shanghai, a super city. Most residents have fallen asleep, and the riders have started the "handover" of work: the riders who have delivered the supper can finally get off work, and another group of riders get up early to prepare for the first breakfast today.
A qualified rider must have a good physical strength, get up in the morning and endure at night.
However, super endurance is only part of the rider’s necessary working ability.
Each horizontal rectangular combination in the figure represents the working state of a rider on a certain day in July 2018. The period marked in blue indicates that the rider is running on the road, and the period marked in white indicates that the rider has no pick-up ticket or is in a rest state.
As can be seen from the above picture (combined with the above picture), the working hours of riders are highly fragmented. The rider’s workload is not evenly distributed in all time periods: every time the order for "meals" comes like the tide, the rider must work continuously for several hours with high intensity; However, there are fewer orders during the non-"meal" period, and whether you can grab the order successfully depends on your hand speed.
Working 8 hours a day, waiting for 12 hours, cycling between high-intensity running and fragmented grabbing, this is the real working state of the rider.
These are just the "daily" of the rider. Special weather conditions are the real test for riders.
Based on non-rainy days, the heavier the rain, the more take-away orders.
It can be seen that the number of orders in rainy days is far more than that in non-rainy days, and even close to 1.7 times in rainy days. At this time, some riders will choose to rest in rainy days, while others regard rainy days as an excellent opportunity to run more singles.
Real riders dare to face up to the surge in orders and the bad weather.
A variety of styles of riders
Generally speaking, the work area of each rider is relatively fixed (you can go back to the first picture at the beginning), and it is more efficient to be familiar with the store and familiar with the door. However, the size of each rider’s "territory" varies greatly.
In the picture above, a dot represents a rider. The horizontal axis represents the main activity range of the rider (95% threshold of latitude and longitude of the area visited in a week, converted into square kilometers), and the vertical axis represents the average daily riding distance of the rider in kilometers. The more riders in this area, the deeper the blue background.
We selected a group of riders with average daily orders (about 45 orders), and counted their range of activities and average daily riding distance. It can be seen that the smallest range of activities of these riders is only 18 square kilometers, and the larger one is close to 35 square kilometers. Although the range of activities is nearly 2 times, everyone’s riding distance is about 150 kilometers. Why is this happening?
We can guess:Although the goal is "running less and running more", different riders have different working styles.
Based on this speculation, we selected 11 dimensions to represent the rider’s food delivery style, and conducted principal component analysis (PCA) on these dimensions.(These 11 dimensions include: working hours, fragmentation of order time, proportion of lunch orders, proportion of dinner orders, proportion of meal orders, proportion of supper orders, average distance per order, size of activity range, ratio of length to width and radius of activity range, proportion of drop-by orders and average delivery time per order. )

[Readers who are not interested in PCA can skip this picture without affecting the full-text reading]The above figure depicts the importance of the two principal components of PCA. The horizontal axis is principal component 1, the vertical axis is principal component 2, 11 arrows represent 11 variables, and the coordinates represent their projections on the two principal component axes. It can be seen that the rider’s food delivery style has two basic components: time (principal component 1) and space (principal component 2). And the drop-in list and the average delivery distance per order are the combination of time and space components.
On this basis, we carry out K-means clustering and divide the work style of riders into 9 categories. As shown in the figure below, each point in the figure represents a rider, and riders in the same polygon have the same style.
From the nine styles, we select four most distinctive ones and analyze them.
The first type: "velocity flow" style
The above picture shows the activity path of a rider with a "speed flow" style at a certain time of the day. Blue marks represent riders, red dots represent restaurants, yellow dots represent customers, and blue lines represent riders’ running paths. It can be seen that the rider’s activity area is not large, and the restaurants and customers are very dense.
The riders of "Speed Stream" are mostly active in densely populated and order-intensive areas (such as the city center). Their characteristics are small activity range (average 20 square kilometers) and fast food delivery (average delivery time is 23 minutes). They can usually get more orders and better customer comments.
The second type: "downstream flow" style
We define the concept of "drop-in order": the rider has also handled other orders during the process from picking up meals to delivering meals. The meaning of "downstream flow" is "high proportion of downstream bills". The above picture shows the activity path of a rider with a "downstream flow" style at a certain time of the day. In the rider’s activity area, the location of restaurants and customers is sparse. This rider often runs several restaurants and then several customers in a row.
A bold and cautious rider is not afraid of running far, and he is afraid that there are not many orders; No Jin Gangzuan, no porcelain work. The average range of activities of "Riverside Riders" is 30 square kilometers, but as high as 80%, they don’t need to run many more roads. Adopting this working style not only tests riders’ familiarity with road buildings in the area, but also tests their ability of route planning and time control, and it is also a great challenge to the ability of improvisation.
The third type: "grab a meal" style
The above picture shows the activity path of a "grab a meal" style rider at a certain time of the day. The rider didn’t go to work until 11 o’clock in the morning, and he was so busy that he flew. 1-3 pm, the rider has a long rest; Get busy again around 4 o’clock.
About 60% of the riders’ orders in a day are concentrated in lunch and dinner (the industry average is 45%). They combine work and rest, go all out at the peak of the order, their hands and feet are much faster than their peers, and they have a good rest after heavy work until the next meal arrives.
The fourth type: "Desperate Lang" style
The above picture shows the activity path of a "Desperate Lang" style rider at a certain time of the day. The rider ran continuously from 7: 00 a.m. on June 19th to 1: 00 a.m. on June 20th for nearly 18 hours.
There are some riders. They are on the road when you have breakfast, and they are still on the road when you have supper. High attendance, many running orders, flowing customers, iron brother. It’s hard to travel for an average of 12 hours? "Desperate Lang" smiled, turned around and set foot on the journey again.
In the invisible competition with time and space, take-away riders are far from being as simple as "eating bitter".In the seemingly repetitive and monotonous rush, the rider combines the characteristics of his own ability and the characteristics of his work area, and develops his own style with experience and wisdom to complete his work and serve customers more efficiently.
One order after another, day after day. Riders appear in our mobile phone call records almost every day, and they are the most familiar strangers. They work hard and struggle for wisdom, so that we can have hot meals on time.
However, in recent media reports, people tend to pay more attention to accidental events such as "being late" and "poor attitude", while ignoring the punctuality and hospitality of riders most of the time.
Like many workers who have left their homes, riders have crossed hundreds of kilometers to integrate into the cities that give them hope, and they have fulfilled their promise of "on-time delivery" to customers with hard work. On the way of the rider’s food delivery, there are storms, competition, tempering and growth. When "little brother" gradually becomes "big brother", they may say something like this:
"A man’s life should be spent like this: when he looks back, he will not regret for wasting his time, nor will he be ashamed of being mediocre. When he retired, he could say: My beautiful youth and peak energy have been dedicated to the most magnificent cause in the world-the struggle to make human beings eat.
Description:
1. The data in this paper are provided by @ Hummingbird Crowdsourcing, and the authors are Tucki, Chen Wancheng, Ruantian, Li Tingting, and Communist Youth League Secretary. This article was originally created and launched by @ City Data Group and @ Hummingbird Crowdsourcing.
2. In order to protect privacy, the geographical coordinates of restaurants and customers have been shifted to some extent, which is different from the real situation.