Fighting for the Future, Meituan and Alibaba

In Beijing, it’s often cheaper to have food delivered than to get it yourself. Like, way cheaper. Abey Lin, a 19-year-old Californian studying at Beijing Film Academy, uses his smartphone to order a local restaurant’s roast duck dish for 20 yuan ($2.99), about 80 percent less than it costs at the register, via delivery app Meituan. He can get a 40 percent discount on two pizzas topped with golden potatoes and barbecued seafood. Meituan charges $1.46 for a bean curd dish from another shop, a little over a third of the price on the restaurant’s menu. It would be tough for Lin to beat that price even if he had a kitchenette to make the dish himself. “It blew my mind,” he says.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2019-meituan-china-delivery-empire/

-Bill