外卖大战一年后 拼多多成最“佛系”赢家

This article walks through the full story of the 2025 "big three" food delivery war triggered by JD.com’s entry into the sector. Its core conclusion is that this competition has already reshaped the underlying landscape of China’s e-commerce industry, with Pinduoduo — the non-participant platform — emerging as an unexpected passive winner. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. The war is not fundamentally a battle for food delivery market share, but a race to dominate the new all-category instant retail track. Food service is just a customer acquisition channel, and the entire industry completed its strategic shift from food delivery to all-category instant retail in just six months.

2. Different platforms have adopted distinct competitive strategies: Meituan is defending its profit pool of mid-to-high average order value (AOV) customers; Alibaba uses food delivery as a customer acquisition lever for its entire ecosystem; JD focuses on building a brand positioning of quality differentiation; Douyin (TikTok China) pursues a light-asset model to compete in an untapped niche.

3. Changes visible to ordinary consumers: User shopping habits have already shifted, with demand for "instant gratification" growing rapidly. "Speed" now outweighs "low price" as a top decision factor for shoppers, and retail will continue to become increasingly consumer-centric going forward.

The instant retail wave behind the 2025 food delivery war has brought clear consumer trends and channel opportunities for brands. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Consumer trends: China’s instant retail market is already close to 3 trillion yuan in size, with a projected 21.4% growth rate in 2025 — far outpacing the 8% growth of overall e-commerce. Non-food categories are seeing explosive growth: orders for grain, oil, rice and flour are up 335%, and household cleaning products are up 324%. Demand for speed has risen sharply, and high-frequency, low-decision-cost categories are accelerating their shift to instant retail.

2. Channel opportunities: Multiple platforms are opening new merchant recruitment programs: Alibaba has launched an initiative to open 3,000 Taobao convenience stores and partner with 200 core university business districts; JD is recruiting high-quality food and all-category merchants; Douyin is curating premium dine-in restaurants; and Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) is well-suited for high-margin categories including beauty, home goods and baby products.

3. Pricing and profit notes: The 10-15 yuan low-AOV segment is seeing cutthroat subsidized competition with razor-thin margins, while the mid-to-high AOV market above 30 yuan still offers stable profit margins, as consumers are willing to pay a premium for trusted brands and lifestyle alignment.

The instant retail boom spawned by the food delivery war has created new growth opportunities for all types of sellers, along with risks to avoid. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Growth opportunities: Instant retail is the fastest-growing track in China’s e-commerce industry today. Its penetration rate in first-tier cities has just passed 10%, and second- and third-tier cities represent the main source of incremental growth. All non-food categories have room for expansion, with pharmaceuticals, 3C electronics, pet products and beauty seeing particularly strong demand growth. Multiple platforms are offering merchant incentives: JD waives commission fees for new merchants in its early entry stage; Alibaba opens up traffic from university business districts; and Douyin’s niche positioning leaves room for small and medium-sized sellers to operate.

2. Risk warnings: The 10-15 yuan low-AOV segment faces severe subsidized competition with extremely thin margins, so blind entry is not recommended. Regulators have already launched a special anti-involution campaign, so the subsidy war will gradually stabilize, and sellers should not rely excessively on platform subsidies to survive.

3. Platform selection advice: Sellers positioned for mid-to-high quality products can enter Meituan and JD; content and discovery-focused sellers can enter Douyin and Xiaohongshu; value-for-money categories can continue to deepen their presence on Pinduoduo.

The boom in instant retail has created new demand shifts and transformation directions for manufacturers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Changes in product design and production demand: Instant retail has driven an explosion in on-demand consumer demand, with orders for high-frequency daily goods, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, beauty, and small 3C electronics growing rapidly. Among non-food categories, orders for grain, oil, rice, flour and household cleaning products have all grown by more than 300%. Factories can adapt their offerings to instant consumption characteristics by adjusting SKU specifications and packaging design, and developing products tailored for small-batch on-demand consumption.

2. New business opportunities: As the instant retail channel expands rapidly and multiple platforms are recruiting all-category merchants, factories can connect directly to instant retail channels to shorten distribution links, respond faster to changing consumer demand, and capture incremental growth from rising penetration in second- and third-tier cities.

3. Transformation insights: Industry competition has shifted to digital fulfillment capability. Factories need to accelerate digital transformation, upgrade inventory management and rapid response capabilities, adapt to the supply chain efficiency requirements of instant retail, and improve their ability to adapt to new channel demands.

The food delivery war has driven rapid growth of the instant retail industry, creating new market opportunities for service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: Instant retail has expanded from pure food delivery to full-category services, with a 2025 market size nearing 3 trillion yuan. Penetration in first-tier cities has just exceeded 10%, with second- and third-tier cities representing the main growth market, leaving massive room for industry expansion. Fulfillment and delivery are the core barrier to entry in instant retail, and light-asset platforms have very high demand for third-party fulfillment services.

2. Core customer pain points: Both new platform entrants and small and medium-sized merchants generally lack sufficient in-house fulfillment capacity. Douyin’s instant retail push, for example, is constrained by limited in-house delivery capacity, forcing it to rely on third parties. Small and medium-sized merchants also cannot afford to build their own delivery and digital scheduling systems, leaving inventory management and order dispatch as common pain points.

3. Opportunity for solutions: Service providers can build out third-party fulfillment and delivery businesses to meet the needs of light-asset platforms and small and medium-sized merchants; they can also develop digital inventory scheduling and order management systems tailored for instant retail to help merchants improve operational efficiency; content marketing service providers can also tap into the content ecosystems of Xiaohongshu and Douyin to serve brands’ marketing and discovery needs.

This food delivery war offers many actionable lessons for platform operators and clarifies risks to avoid. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry demand direction: Consumers’ instant consumption habits have become permanently entrenched, and all-category instant retail is the core battlefield for the future of retail. The core of competition is proximity to consumers. Alibaba’s practice has verified that combining long-distance e-commerce and near-field instant retail can significantly improve a platform’s customer acquisition capability and user activity.

2. Operations and merchant recruitment lessons: The different paths taken by multiple platforms have confirmed several viable strategies: Alibaba unified long-distance and near-field business management to achieve synergy; Meituan defended its mid-to-high AOV profit pool to avoid unsustainable growth; JD focused on building a quality differentiation positioning; Douyin pursued niche competition relying on third-party fulfillment. Convenience stores, university business districts and lower-tier markets are emerging new expansion directions, so merchant recruitment can prioritize these areas.

3. Risk avoidance: The involution model of simply burning cash on subsidies to gain market share is unsustainable, and has already triggered targeted anti-involution regulation from authorities. Fulfillment and delivery capability is the core barrier, so do not blindly enter an arms race for faster delivery speed without long-term accumulated capacity. Low-AOV market share is just unsustainable泡沫growth that cannot deliver stable profits, so do not chase it blindly.

The 2025 food delivery war is a defining event reshaping China’s e-commerce landscape, revealing many new industry trends and innovative business model experiments. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. New industry trends: The traditional boundaries of e-commerce have been broken, and long-distance traditional e-commerce and near-field instant retail are accelerating their integration. Instant retail is growing far faster than traditional e-commerce, and is permanently changing the cost structure of the retail industry. Competition has shifted from price wars to fulfillment capability and proximity to consumers. Platforms with different core competencies have all found room for growth through differentiated strategies, while non-participant Pinduoduo has maintained its growth依托ing its moat of extreme value for money.

2. New industry problems: Involutionary competition relying purely on cash-burning subsidies cannot deliver sustained stable profits, and has triggered regulatory intervention. Traffic advantage cannot replace fulfillment capability, and content platforms face hard-to-cross fulfillment gaps when pursuing asset-heavy instant retail models.

3. Innovative business models: The war has produced several innovative models worthy of study: Alibaba’s LTV model of "food delivery customer acquisition + full e-commerce monetization", Douyin’s niche competition model of "content discovery + third-party fulfillment", and Xiaohongshu’s model of "discovery traffic + open collaboration + gradual closed loop" — all provide new research samples for the industry.