China's online food takeout sector has been booming, with online orders making up more and more of some restaurants' business. The trend has been driven in large part by young people with busy lifestyles, according to a recent report on the industry. The online takeout boom has also affected restaurants, some of which have started to tailor meals specifically for the takeout. Although the industry took criticism for lax sanitation standards following a television news expose in March, experts remain confident in its prospects due to the increased government oversight.
"Food is the first necessity of the people," according to an ancient Chinese saying.
Since ancient times, food has become far more than just a necessity in China, where people pride themselves on their appetite for eating, cooking and all things related to food.
China's booming online food takeout industry is feeding that appetite.
Due to the industry's rapid growth, it is now possible to order almost all kinds of food online, from Hong Kong dim sum to Beijing roasted duck, from nearby restaurants. With a few clicks, a meal can be delivered to a customer's door within around an hour.
In the past two years, the growth in the online takeout business has exploded due to the prevalence of mobile Internet and the popularity of ordering in.
In the second quarter of 2016, China's online takeout businesses took 25.28 billion yuan ($3.79 billion) in orders, up 200 percent from the previous year, according to a report Beijing-based market researcher Enfodesk sent to the Global Times on Thursday.
Start-up companies like Baidu Waimai, ele.me, and Meituan Waimai - backed by Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba, respectively - have quickly scaled up after launching at the end of 2013. The three services can take orders for food from hundreds of thousands of restaurants across more than 250 cities in China.
The ubiquity of uniformed food deliverymen racing around city streets illustrates the popularity of online takeout in China. One such deliveryman, surnamed Li, who works for Baidu's takeout service, has experienced the market's lightning growth. He said that he has delivered around 1,200 orders per month this year, almost double the number in 2014.
Restaurants have also taken up the online to offline (O2O) business model, according to industry insiders.
At a 50-square-meter restaurant in Beijing's Chaoyang district that sells salads and other low-calorie dishes, an employee told the Global Times on Friday that sales have surged due to online orders, which bring the restaurant an extra 2,000 yuan a day.
"Online delivery revenues account for 30 percent to 40 percent of a restaurant's total income," a PR representative for ele.me, who did not want to be named, told the Global Times.
"Even for snack bars that don't do as much business, online orders can total hundreds of thousands of yuan per month."
Youth driven
A 24-year-old white-collar worker in Beijing surnamed Huang said that she often orders takeout online after a long day at work. The food usually shows up hot just as she arrives home.
"I order as often as five or six times a week," Huang told the Global Times on Thursday. "This is because I'm too busy and under too much pressure to start peeling onions in my kitchen."
Young people are also drawn in by the discounts offered by online takeout platforms, said Yang Xu, an industry analyst with Enfodesk.
"Due to the cutthroat competition for users, some companies offer discounts as high as 50 percent on food ordered through their apps," Yang told the Global Times on Thursday.
The discounts are a big deal for younger people, especially those born in the 1990s, who generally earn less than 100,000 yuan per year, Yang noted.
According to the Enfodesk's report, white-collar workers and students under 30 account for 86.9 percent of the online takeout market. Consumers born in the 1990s alone represent 64.7 percent of the market.
"The online takeout industry emerged just when people born in the 1990s graduated from university and entered the workforce," a PR representative of Baidu Waimai told the Global Times on Thursday.
"It means that the market has a lot of room to grow."
