Meituan - Country's Biggest Internet Giant

Meituan country’s biggest internet giant. remade life in China’s cities with 600,000 people delivering meals and other services. Now it just has to outlast the country’s biggest internet giant.

- Lulu Chen, David Ramli, and Peter Elstrom

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.

Lin, an aspiring director, arrived in Beijing mentally prepared for the hardships of the capital—the blackened air, the bitter winters, the government bans on Instagram and Snapchat. He wasn’t as thoroughly briefed on China’s new order of city living, but he’s quickly adapted. He mostly avoids his dorm cafeteria in favor of a steady supply of burgers, noodles, and cumin meat skewers available at any time, usually within 30 minutes. When he ventures out into the smog to pick up the latest bag at the college gates, there’s always a group of deliverymen stomping their feet to stay warm as they wait for other students. “This is way more convenient, and it costs less,” Lin says. “China has this efficiency that’s ridiculous.”