The company’s edge comes from its massive order volume, advanced rider management, and smart dispatch algorithms. Zhao believes Meituan will maintain its lead thanks to its scale, delivery strength, and tech-driven efficiency.
Chongqing - China’s instant retail is going offline. As delivery wars heat up, giants like Meituan are investing in offline infrastructure and reshaping how on-demand services reach consumers in real life.
In July, Meituan launched its "Raccoon Canteen" project. According to the company’s WeChat account, since piloting in December last year, it has expanded to 10 locations in cities like Beijing and Hangzhou, with over 100 vendors serving hundreds of thousands of customers. After six months, the project established a traceable “farm-to-table” model.
Unlike traditional self-operated food delivery brands, Raccoon Canteen functions more like a delivery-only food hall, with multiple vendors sharing one kitchen space and no dine-in option. Meituan plans to open 1,200 of these venues across China within the next three years.
Consumers can place cross-store orders on Meituan’s delivery app or WeChat mini-program, buying from multiple vendors in one go with a single delivery fee. Riders then complete the entire order in one trip.
The Raccoon Canteen provides standardized décor, furniture, ventilation systems, and sinks. Merchants only need to bring refrigerators, cooking equipment, and ingredients to start operating. The project is open to all food vendors that meet Meituan's food safety standards and follow transparent, open operational guidelines.
The manager of Meituan's Raccoon Canteen in Beijing's Liangmaqiao area told Chinese media outlet Jiemian that the project aims to build a fully transparent, end-to-end food safety infrastructure for food delivery, establishing market-tested and replicable standards.
The supply chain for merchants is fully transparent and traceable. Raccoon Canteen ensures traceability across six key stages: origin, raw materials, production, inspection, fulfillment, and front-end operations.
Meituan's all-category food supply platform, Kuailu, has partnered with leading national suppliers, including Yihai Kerry, Charoen Pokphand Group, and Sunner, to establish a direct sourcing network. Through large-scale centralized procurement, the partnership ensures more reliable ingredient quality.
Merchants are integrated into a full-chain traceability system, with inspection records and labels tracking ingredients from source to table. Food safety logs and live kitchen cams ensure transparency, while Meituan promises to handle customer service issues within 30 minutes, according to the manager.
Meanwhile, Meituan aims to boost merchants' operational efficiency and achieve more sustainable growth. According to Jiemian, the head of the Raccoon Canteen project, merchants can open a delivery-only store with an initial investment of just 50,000–60,000 yuan (about $6,970.15 - $8364.18).
The staff member is packing the order under the live stream of the open kitchen. (Photo/Meituan)
Data from market consultancy iResearch showed that China's food delivery market has grown from 125 billion yuan in 2015 to 1.5 trillion yuan in 2024. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, as of December 2024, China had 592 million online food delivery users, accounting for 53.4% of the country’s internet population. This means more than half of all internet users regularly use food delivery services, making it an essential part of daily life.
Clusters of delivery-only kitchens had already emerged inside office buildings in busy commercial areas across Chinese cities. Compared to dine-in restaurants, these kitchens were often hidden from public view, and some posed hygiene and food safety risks. Many of the food safety incidents reported on delivery platforms were linked to vendors operating from such locations.
Zhao Quanwu, a professor at the School of Economics and Business Administration at Chongqing University, said Meituan's "Raccoon Canteen" model can help address food safety concerns by improving transparency throughout the delivery process, thereby strengthening consumer trust. And it also enables merchants to lower costs through centralized procurement and standardized operations.
Since 2025, Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan have been fiercely competing in the food delivery sector, leveraging heavy subsidies, service optimization, and category expansion to capture market share.
As the food delivery industry shifts toward higher quality standards, Zhao saw the Raccoon Canteen model as a win-win for merchants, couriers, consumers, and the platform. He expected infrastructure-led approaches like this to become mainstream and help build a real-time logistics ecosystem.
However, he noted that as merchants take orders across multiple platforms, integrating them will be the biggest challenge for the new model. For Meituan, deeper involvement in merchants' operations also means greater responsibility and higher demands on its operational capabilities.
In the future, Raccoon Canteen may focus on densely populated communities, integrating local dining options and potentially collaborating with community canteens that serve groups such as seniors, drivers, cleaners, security personnel, and delivery riders. Zhao added that regional and central business districts will resemble upgraded versions of current food courts.
He emphasized that the key to continuous innovation lies in building a real-time logistics ecosystem that involves multiple stakeholders, including the platform, merchants, delivery riders, customers, communities, property managers, traffic police, and government departments.
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