During the May Holiday, China’s largest online delivery platform Meituan witnessed a rise in catering orders compared with the same period last year. The order numbers rose more than 40% compared to the previous day in Beijing.
During the May Holiday, Beijing announced that the city has suspended dine-in services and changed to take out or self-service delivery. Online food delivery giants, such as Meituan and Ele.me, have corresponded quickly in this new adjustment.
Meituan disclosed that until May 1, Beijing has 473 restaurants operating in the take-out services as an alternative business channel to raise up to 338% growth over the previous day. Once the dine-in option shuts down, Beijing has nearly 2,000 merchants actively engaged in the "citywide delivery" program, including some famous restaurants like Haidilao. In line with the pandemic prevention, over 90% of restaurant merchants in Beijing have launched the no-contact delivery services.
In terms of food supply, Meituan has increased its rider capacity by 30% and distributed nearly CNY6 million in rider subsidies. By launching a real-time and flexible dispatch distribution, the company allows cross-district and stationary operations, as well as deploy 1.5 times the capacity to guarantee delivery orders from supermarkets.
The company has also aligned with enterprises in the process of catering and retail while coordinating idle workers to participate in the delivery process in order to improve the supply capacity.
Amid the outbreak of COVID-19, Meituan explained that delivery safety is the priority while requiring riders to conduct nucleic acid testing in accordance with the latest pandemic prevention policy in China. Regulatory practices such as mask mandates are implemented in the delivery process as required by the company.
Meanwhile, to ensure a high level of sanitization, the company would conduct hospital-grade cleaning of delivery meal boxes on a daily basis and establish stationary testing sites to monitor the health conditions of riders.