Tongcheng Life \China

A B2B fresh produce procurement platform targeting China's 8 million small restaurants, street food vendors, and convenience stores—businesses that currently wake up at 4 AM to haggle at wholesale markets. Instead of competing with Meituan for consumer eyeballs, FreshDirect Pro becomes the Sysco of China's long-tail food service industry. The platform offers next-day delivery of restaurant-grade produce with transparent pricing (no haggling), quality guarantees (returns accepted, no questions asked), and net-30 payment terms (solving the working capital crunch that kills small restaurants). The key innovation is a 'cooperative buying' model: restaurants in the same neighborhood pool orders to hit minimum delivery thresholds, and the platform uses AI to predict demand and pre-purchase from wholesale markets at 3 AM, capturing the best prices. Revenue comes from three streams: 15-20% markup on goods (vs. 30-40% at traditional distributors), a 2% payment processing fee for net-30 terms, and SaaS fees for inventory management software that integrates with the procurement platform. The moat is data: after 6 months, the platform knows each restaurant's purchasing patterns better than the owner does, enabling automatic reordering and waste reduction. Unlike consumer group-buying, B2B customers are sticky (switching costs are high), price-insensitive (they care about consistency and convenience, not 5% discounts), and have 10x higher order values ($200-500 vs. $20-50), making unit economics work at much lower density.