Send Meituan a bullet

On February 11, JD.com announced the launch of a "quality dine-in restaurant merchant" recruitment plan and launched a year-round commission-free policy. This move is seen as a direct challenge to Meituan Waimai. At the same time, Tencent's "Store Link" business is also trying to redefine the way merchants and consumers connect through targeted advertising and local life services. This article will explore how JD Waimai and Tencent's "Store Link" have become Meituan's two "bullets", as well as the difficulties and challenges Meituan faces in this multi-faceted attack.

On February 11, JD.com officially announced that JD Takeout has officially started recruiting "quality dine-in catering merchants". Merchants who join before May 1, 2025 will be exempt from commissions throughout the year.

The "Host Liu Wen" incident is still fermenting. Regardless of the facts, there is no doubt that she has once again brought Meituan into the public eye of "unkind and unjust".

"The world has suffered from Meituan for a long time" seems to have become a public opinion consensus, and merchants and riders have a sense of déjà vu about rising up in rebellion.

Things that come together will eventually separate. Bullets from the battlefield are coming towards me.

What I want to talk about today are the two bullets fired at Meituan’s position.

Let’s talk about JD Takeout first.

01 Where is JD.com’s food delivery target heading?

Before the Spring Festival, “JD Instant Delivery” had already appeared on JD’s homepage. When I flipped through it, I saw that all they saw were instant retail merchants.

Supermarkets, convenience stores, food delivery, medicine... But when I went to look for it today, catering businesses had already appeared: milk tea shops, pizza shops, etc.

The essence of JD.com’s focus on food delivery is not to deliver food, but to take advantage of the big pie of instant retail.

According to deepseek's data integration data, it shows:

From January to August 2024, the growth rate of instant retail sales will reach 26.2%, far exceeding the growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods (3.4%) and online retail sales (8.9%) in the same period.

In 2023, the number of instant delivery orders will reach 42 billion, with a user base of over 700 million people; it is expected that the number of orders will exceed 48 billion in 2024, accounting for nearly one-third of the national express delivery orders.

The instant retail market is expected to exceed RMB 2 trillion by 2030, becoming one of the fastest growing consumption sectors.

The consumption scenario has shifted from "emergency needs" to "daily needs", with nighttime consumption (such as snacks for watching games and breakfast ingredients) and healthy consumption (such as additive-free foods) increasing significantly.

The number of online food delivery users in China has reached 545 million, with a market size of approximately 1.2 trillion yuan, and an average daily spend on food delivery of nearly 3.3 billion yuan.

Since the birth of China's first online food delivery in 2008, the food delivery industry has risen rapidly - there are more than 10 million riders, an average of more than 80 million orders delivered per day, and related consumption exceeding one trillion yuan.

Takeout is the category with the highest frequency of instant retail consumption, the largest number of users involved, and the most mature service support.

JD.com’s involvement is an immediate extension of JD.com’s retail mall, while Meituan’s food delivery is an important foundation for its transition to the retail mall.

For the food delivery business, the key words are all about competing for the “retail” business, and the method is “instant delivery”.

02 JD.com’s Instant Retail Layout

JD.com started its layout in instant retail very early. According to public data:

1. In May 2024, JD.com will integrate and upgrade the original "JD.com Hour Delivery" and "JD.com Home Delivery" into "Instant Delivery", focusing on "fastest delivery in 9 minutes", and will move the entrance to the first screen of the JD.com App homepage.

2. Distribution capabilities and supply chain layout

Dada Group (JD.com holds a 63.2% stake) provides core delivery support, with more than 1.2 million active riders by the end of 2023, a year-on-year increase of 20%.

3. Low-price strategy and product category expansion

The "Coffee and Milk Tea" channel was launched in September 2024, attracting consumers with the "9.9 yuan free shipping" offer and expanding the instant beverage delivery market2.

4. The food delivery business releases dividends on both the riders and merchants. The newly launched zero-commission business for merchants is estimated to not result in excessive commissions on the rider side.

JD.com lists instant retail as one of the “three must-win battles” in 2024, with the goal of increasing user stickiness through high-frequency food delivery and instant retail businesses and building a full-scenario retail ecosystem.

03 The second bullet: Tencent's "Store Pass"

Before the Spring Festival, Tencent Advertising’s local life service launched the StorePass service.

The slogan is: "Business returns to the stores."

For store merchants that promote local life, it is important to keep the merchants in the stores instead of simply pulling traffic online.

Through Tencent’s precise Moments advertising, store coupons and store event information can be directly promoted to achieve precise reach.

By investing in advertising, the store can save about 20-40% of the comprehensive commission charged by the food delivery platform, which may be a healthier approach for store business.

I also made a separate video to explain it. You can spend 2 minutes to check out the core capabilities of StoreTong. It sounds like a better choice.

Of course, there is also Douyin Local Life, which has been trying to continuously erode Meituan’s position.

JD.com, Tencent, and TikTok are constantly firing bullets at Meituan’s core position.

Here I would like to focus on the characteristics of Meituan’s business.

From a business model perspective, Meituan is not considered an "Internet platform", especially its food delivery business, which does not have a "network effect", that is, the binding effect on users, merchants, and riders is not strong.

WeChat is a very typical "Internet", which means that there can only be one company left in this business, and it naturally has a monopoly effect of either this or that.

For businesses like Didi Taxi and Meituan Takeout, the network binding effect is not strong. The three users of Takeout can migrate at any time. The cost of migration will become lower and lower as awareness and infrastructure improve.

Perhaps the only barrier is the rider team, but the tens of millions of riders who rely on physical labor for a living are extremely sensitive to prices. The migration of this part is often the simplest: just pay more money.

The food delivery business may have reached a point where the market has become mature enough to allow more players to enter the market.

Meituan’s bottleneck is that if it wants to increase profits, it will provide ample room for latecomers to operate, but if it reduces profits, it will not be able to magnify the “pricing power” of its own boss.

Meituan was dragged into the battlefield again:

It is under the "anti-monopoly" supervision;

In the middle, it is bearing the revenue expectations of the capital market;

Underneath, there were verbal abuses from riders and merchants;

Bullets started to be fired continuously from other platforms outside;

Of course, the most important thing is to face your own ambitions and desires.

Bullets are coming from all directions. At this time, perhaps talking to your boss about the social value of the company may bring you some comfort.