China 101
Food delivery (Meituan / Ele.me)
外卖
China's ultra-cheap, ultra-fast restaurant delivery system, dominated by Meituan (yellow) and Ele.me (blue), with riders visible on every street.
Waimai, food delivery, is a daily utility in China rather than an occasional treat. Two platforms dominate: Meituan, whose riders wear yellow, and Ele.me, owned by Alibaba, whose riders wear blue. Together they deliver hundreds of millions of orders a week, typically within about 30 minutes and often for a delivery fee of only a few yuan.
The system runs on armies of gig-economy riders on electric scooters, dense restaurant supply, and aggressive algorithmic dispatching. That efficiency has a human cost: delivery riders' working conditions, traffic risks, and lack of benefits have become major public debates and pushed regulators to intervene.
Meituan has since expanded far beyond food into groceries, medicine, hotel booking, and same-hour retail of almost anything, a category Chinese media calls instant retail. When a trend piece mentions delivery culture in China, this is the infrastructure behind it.