Staying innovative and creating new ideas is the best way for a business to thrive in China. Whenever a popular new product or service is offered, it becomes a trend and the Chinese people gravitate toward it like a shiny, new toy; mess-up and you’ve lost your customer base. Say hello to Didi Foodie in Nanjing.
By 1 June, 2018, popular car hailing application Didi Chuxing will be offering its food delivery service, Didi Foodie, in the capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, Nanjing. With other meal delivery services such as Meituan and Eleme already dominating the Nanjing market, Didi will need to up its game in order to stay competitive, not only in Nanjing, but nationally too.
Nanjing is the second city in China to receive Didi Foodie, after a successful rollout in Wuxi on 9 April this year.
“The announcement cannot guarantee business success”, says TechNode news in regard to Didi Foodie making its way to Nanjing. “At the moment, expanding national landscape and pushing competitors to corners can mean high commercial and even political cost”.
On the contrary, some customers have already started to stray away from the food delivery service craze altogether. Leslie Lee, a Nanjing resident, used to be an avid food delivery user. Recently, Lee has stopped using applications altogether, now preferring to use traditional methods of physically purchasing from restaurants.
“I have stopped ordering from the apps because they are expensive. Also, the recyclable cutlery sometimes contains harsh chemicals which is bad for the body and dangerous for the environment”, said Lee.
As of yesterday, top food delivery service, Eleme, has been given the green light to deliver food to customers in Shanghai via drones. According to the South China Morning Post, “The 17 newly approved routes over an industrial zone in Shanghai will enable consumers there to receive online takeaway meal orders via drones within 20 minutes after confirming the delivery on their smartphones”, at no extra charge.
With Eleme leading the way by utilising drone technology, the trend is sure to be followed by Didi and Meituan, and it will only be a matter of time before the skies of China are filled with drones carrying food orders.
Luckin’ Coffee has achieved yet another example of what it means to be creative with food delivery innovation. The coffee company, which has recently become famous for the speed of its deliveries, is allowing customers to watch its barristers make their coffee through live CCTV streaming via the app. Some may consider this creepy, others may appreciate the real-life similarity to having their coffee made in person, while some may just find peace of mind in it.
Through drones and live streaming coffee, delivery competition is at an all-time high.The brutal battle amongst the three key players means that each company must continue to come up with fresh and innovative ideas in order to stay relevant and on top of their game.
