What changes has JD Takeout brought about after two weeks of launch?

JD Takeaway was officially launched on February 11, starting a new journey in the field of food delivery. Two weeks later, JD Takeaway not only attracted nearly 200,000 catering merchants with its "commission-free" strategy, but also actively expanded the market by providing comprehensive protection for riders and issuing meal subsidies. However, facing the dominant position of Meituan and Ele.me, can the entry of JD Takeaway change the existing competitive landscape? This article will deeply analyze the industry changes brought about by JD Takeaway's launch two weeks ago, as well as the response strategies of Meituan and Ele.me, and explore new trends in the food delivery market.

The takeout market is on the rise again.

On February 11, JD Takeaway officially debuted and launched a "Quality Dine-in Catering Merchants" recruitment plan, announcing that merchants who settle in before May 1, 2025 can enjoy a year-round commission-free discount. This "commission-free" strategy directly targets the pain points of the industry, and is obviously intended to break through the high commission dilemma in the takeaway market.

Image source: JD Blackboard WeChat

Why does JD.com want to enter the food delivery industry?

Since the first takeaway order was completed in 2008, my country's takeaway market has experienced rapid development and has now become the world's largest takeaway market. According to data from the China Hotel Association, the scale of my country's catering takeaway market reached about 1.2 trillion yuan in 2023, accounting for 22.6% of catering revenue.

According to the 2023 financial report released by Meituan on April 29, 2024, the core local business revenue was 206.9 billion yuan, of which delivery services accounted for 82.2 billion yuan.

Image source: Meituan 2023 Annual Report

Another "giant" in the food delivery industry, Ele.me, also achieved revenue of 59.8 billion yuan in its local life group business, according to the 2024 fiscal year report released by Alibaba on May 14, 2024.

Image source: Alibaba 2024 fiscal year annual report

According to data from the China Internet Network Information Center, as of December 2024, the number of online food delivery users in China reached 592 million, accounting for 53.4% ​​of the total number of Internet users. In addition to the attractive market, huge traffic is obviously what JD.com is looking forward to.

As of now, JD Takeout has been officially launched for two weeks. When you open the JD App, you can see the "Instant Delivery" logo at the top. Click on it and you will find two prominent options: "Merchant Settlement" and "Quality Takeout". The former echoes the need for JD to attract a large number of merchants as it has just entered the market, and the latter echoes the focus of "quality canteen catering".

The latest data shows that this service has been launched in 39 cities across the country, and nearly 200,000 catering merchants have applied to join. In the past two weeks, what impact will JD.com's series of operations have on the industry?

01. Planning to go on stage

In fact, JD.com has already made efforts in talent layout. In April 2024, former Meituan executive Guo Qing joined JD.com as a consultant. In August, he became the chairman of the board of directors of Dada Group. Yang Wenjie, general manager of Dada's second delivery business, also came from Meituan, paving the way for entering the food delivery industry. In October 2024, JD.com's second delivery began to provide milk tea and other beverage delivery services. Although it has not officially used the name "JD Takeaway", it has already entered the field of food delivery.

After officially entering the food delivery industry, JD.com is well aware that the core of the food delivery industry lies in the scale of merchants and riders. To this end, JD.com announced on February 19 that it would pay five insurances and one housing fund for full-time riders from March 1, and provide accident insurance and health insurance for part-time riders, becoming the first platform to provide comprehensive protection for riders. However, it is worth noting that this policy only covers full-time riders dedicated to JD.com food delivery services, not all 1.3 million active riders of Dada Group.

On February 24, JD.com further announced that the cost of five social insurances and one housing fund (including personal part) for future full-time riders will be fully borne by JD.com. In addition, JD.com Food Delivery and JD.com Logistics have achieved talent exchange, and couriers can apply to become food delivery riders, and vice versa. Both Dada Express App and JD.com Second Delivery have rider recruitment portals, which simplifies the rider entry process.

After the official announcement of JD Takeout, JD's offline promotion has become a "hot spot" in the eyes of many people. Posts about super high commissions and daily income of over a thousand have aroused many people's interest in offline promotion. However, many people have jumped out to fight against counterfeiting. A Jiangsu netizen "Xiao Shuai Classmate" on Xiaohongshu said that this matter is not that simple. He found dozens of stores in a week, and only 4 were willing to settle in. He filled out information for review, and only three passed, and one review took about 3 days. When he went to provide store online services for the store, he completed the steps of creating a store, putting dishes on the shelves, etc., and then there was another review. It is equivalent to that a store needs about a week to pass the review. After that, 5 products must be put on the shelves and the official operation of the store can be completed before getting the commission.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

DoNews tried to place an order from a nearby supermarket. The order was placed at 18:44, and the goods were still being prepared 15 minutes later. They were delivered at 19:26. JD Jingdou can also be used when ordering takeout. It can be exchanged with RMB at a 100:1 ratio, and the payment ratio does not exceed 50%. It can be regarded as a connection with the JD account, which is undoubtedly beneficial to many JD users.

Image source: JD.com

Starting from February 27, JD.com also began to provide meal subsidies to college students and JD.com PLUS members. The subsidies are 10/20 yuan, which can be randomly redeemed. The subsidies are applicable to all catering outlets listed on JD.com’s food delivery service. It can be seen that JD.com is working hard to acquire customers.

Image source: JD.com

02. Fierce competition

JD.com will face the fact that Meituan and Ele.me have long dominated the Chinese food delivery market. According to data from Bocom International Securities, in 2024, Meituan's food delivery market will account for 65%, Ele.me will account for 33%, and other platforms will account for only 2%. As a new entrant, JD.com will face obvious difficulties.

In 2015, before Meiya and Ele.me formed their own logistics teams, Baidu saw the opportunity and took the lead in establishing its own delivery team. It also developed an industry-leading Baidu Takeaway intelligent logistics dispatch system, focusing on the white-collar market. For a time, the "Red, Yellow and Blue Team" was a beautiful landscape.

But the good times didn’t last long. In 2016, Baidu Group fell into trouble due to negative events such as the Wei Zexi incident and decided to transform into artificial intelligence, which led to the marginalization of Baidu Takeaway, which had little to do with AI, and insufficient financial support. At the same time, Baidu Takeaway made major strategic mistakes: at a critical time when Meituan and Ele.me were seizing the market through subsidies and offline promotion, Baidu Takeaway invested resources in building an ecological chain (such as central kitchens, fresh food, etc.). This advanced strategy failed to win user recognition; in the later period, in order to ease financial pressure, it increased merchants’ commissions and user delivery fees by 5%, resulting in the loss of merchants and users.

In addition, Baidu Waimai abandoned the direct operation model and turned to outsourcing and agent operation, which led to chaotic management and declining service quality, further weakening its competitiveness. Under the strong attack of Meituan and Ele.me, Baidu Waimai's market share shrank rapidly and was eventually abandoned by the market and the group. Under internal and external difficulties, Baidu Waimai's failure became inevitable.

Since then, the most popular takeaway "newcomer" is Douyin. In June 2024, Douyin's life service "group purchase and delivery" business stopped adding new merchants. The original products were removed from the shelves and stopped accepting orders on July 15, and were subsequently integrated into Douyin's e-commerce "hourly delivery" business. Industry insiders pointed out that the main reason for the contraction of Douyin's takeaway is the lack of a stable team of riders, resulting in insufficient fulfillment and delivery capabilities. At the same time, there are shortcomings in user habits and merchant scale. Although Douyin has huge traffic, its offline delivery and supply chain capabilities are weak. As an extension from online to offline, the takeaway business is difficult to implement and difficult to support with traffic alone. In contrast, JD.com has more advantages in delivery with Dada, but whether it can solve the core delivery problem of takeaway remains to be seen.

Image source: TikTok

In just a few years, the number of Meituan's food delivery riders has increased from 3.99 million in 2019 to 7.45 million in 2023, with an average annual growth rate of double digits.

The key to Meituan's continued user attraction lies in its highly certain services. To meet the needs of different users, Meituan has launched a variety of service strategies: for price-sensitive consumers, it launched "Pinhaofan"; to meet the needs of merchants to create hot products, it launched festival activities such as "Sharpshooter", combined with live broadcast, short video and other content gameplay; for time-sensitive users, it tried the 15-minute express delivery service; for quality-sensitive users, it launched the "Must-Order List".

DoNews asked an employee of a Yidiandian store in a community in Tongzhou and was told that the store may only receive 2 or 3 JD.com takeout orders a week. This is because JD.com takeout cannot automatically accept orders and requires manual ordering. This results in no time to check the messages when busy. Many times, they only know about the order when the delivery guy comes to pick it up. Usually, Meituan and Ele.me receive more orders, with a ratio of about 6:4.

From this point of view, the biggest challenge that JD.com faces on the user side is the change in user habits. Two weeks is far from enough to shake the long-standing habits of users and merchants of these two companies.

03. Take turns to attack

Facing the entry of JD.com’s food delivery service, Meituan and Ele.me also quickly adjusted their strategies to strengthen rider protection and business layout. Meituan announced that it would pay social security for full-time and “stable part-time” riders from the second quarter of 2025, cancel overtime fines, and pilot special weather exemption measures to further optimize the rider working environment. Previously, Meituan has improved rider welfare through activities such as the “717 Riders’ Day”.

On February 20, Ele.me announced that it would pilot social security payments for riders in some cities to resolve the long-standing dispute over rider protection. Previously, Ele.me had launched occupational injury insurance and "five-one" services (rider stations, apartments, meals, door entry codes, and battery replacement) to improve the rider experience in all aspects. On the merchant side, Ele.me insists on "not leaving the field" to compete, is committed to a win-win ecosystem, and improves the efficiency of the home catering platform and the capabilities of instant retail and logistics networks through the "1+2" ​​strategy.

In addition, Ele.me also focused on instant retail. On February 11, Ele.me announced the latest organizational adjustments through a company-wide letter to all employees: From now on, the company's chairman Wu Zeming will also serve as Ele.me's CEO, and Han Liu will focus on the instant logistics center and continue to report to Wu Zeming.

This adjustment is obviously to better leverage the team's strengths. Wu Zeming has a strong technical background and may bring more innovations in platform technology and intelligent scheduling after taking on the CEO role. Han Liu has extensive experience in the logistics field and previously performed very well at Fengniao Express. Letting him focus on logistics management is undoubtedly putting the right person in the right position.

It is worth mentioning that, in the context of JD.com's high-profile entry into food delivery, Wu Zeming specifically mentioned in an internal letter that instant logistics will become an important growth point for Ele.me in the future. Ele.me hopes to further win the trust of users and push the overall business to a higher level by improving its product and service capabilities. Obviously, facing the new competitive landscape, Ele.me is actively making plans and preparing to meet the challenges.

Will the competition landscape of the food delivery industry change in the future? It is still unknown.

However, JD.com's exploration of social security for riders has indeed promoted the progress of the industry. It is hoped that while Meituan, Ele.me and JD.com are engaged in healthy competition, they can continue to improve service quality, protect the rights and interests of practitioners, promote high-quality development of the industry, and create more economic and social value.

Written by | Xiaobudong Edited by | Li Xinma