The food delivery market has embraced another competing player
TikTok Takeout (internally called "Group Purchase Delivery") has covered 30 cities in two batches in early July and early September, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Changsha, Linyi, Tianjin, Chongqing, Hangzhou, Nanjing and other provincial capitals and direct-administered municipalities, sources said. This means that TikTok has gradually moved beyond its initial small-scale pilot phase since its launch at the end of last year and is expanding to more cities.
In addition, TikTok has introduced a regional agency model in these cities to accelerate the onboarding of restaurant businesses. The public announcement shows that TikTok has introduced more than 150 regional agents, each serving a different specific district and county. Actually, regional agents are the means common to various takeaway platforms such as Meituan (HK:3690) and E'leme.
The person in charge of TikTok Life Service expressed that after the introduction of the regional agent model, the agents will work together the direct BD of TikTok Life Service to help more merchants to move in as well as providing operation and other services based on the needs of the merchants.
In terms of transportation capacity, TikTok announces that the regional agents recruited this time will not provide delivery services. This means that the takeaway merchants in the above cities still need third-party cooperative carriers such as SF Intra-city Delivery (Chinese: 顺丰同城速递), Shansong Delivery (Chinese: 闪送）, Dada Express, UU Runner (Chinese: UU跑腿) and other delivery services, or the merchants should deliver by themselves.
TikTok Takeout business abandoned its 100 billion GMV target at the beginning of the year previously, according to LatePost, and its focus has shifted to running through the business process in more ways. The introduction of the regional agent model has become its latest exploratory move. It remains to be seen whether it will realize the goal of expanding merchant supply at higher speed.