美团、阿里、京东摊上事了 大批商家被立案调查

This article covers the rampant "ghost takeaway" problem in China's food delivery industry, discloses the latest regulatory crackdown, and organizes key information to help ordinary consumers avoid risks.

1. Shenzhen recently launched a city-wide law enforcement campaign targeting ghost takeaways. It has investigated over 100 leads, opened 153 cases of violations, and summoned three major platforms — Meituan, Taobao Flash Sale, and JD.com Food Delivery — to demand comprehensive rectification. In April this year, seven platforms were fined a total of nearly 3.6 billion yuan for the ghost takeaway problem.

2. Ghost takeaways typically operate via three common schemes: first, complete qualification fraud, including unlicensed operation and forged or stolen business certificates; second, false operating address, where online storefronts are disconnected from physical locations and multiple stores share a single registered address; third, multilayer order subcontracting, which forces downstream operators to use low-quality ingredients and leaves food hygiene and safety completely unguaranteed.

3. When ordering, consumers should prioritize merchants with "open kitchen" transparency and formal in-dining store labels. Consumers can report violations via platform supervision channels to protect their own rights and interests.

This analysis of the ghost takeaway crackdown summarizes the latest regulatory trends, consumer demand, and operational notes for F&B brand owners, offering valuable actionable insights.

1. On the demand side: Consumers are increasingly prioritizing food delivery safety today, making compliant operation the foundation for long-term brand growth. The low-price traffic-grabbing model used by non-compliant ghost takeaways is illegal and will eventually result in removal from platforms, so brands should never imitate this practice.

2. Regulators have explicitly designated platforms as the primary party responsible for food safety. Major platforms are now tightening onboarding checks and introducing requirements such as in-person verification and dynamic re-audits. Brands must ensure complete, valid qualifications and authentic, compliant registered addresses when onboarding platforms to avoid being removed for violations, which would damage brand reputation.

3. Brands can proactively cooperate with platform initiatives such as open kitchen transparency and in-store verification, showcase their compliant, hygienic operational advantages to build consumer trust, stand out from non-compliant competitors, and improve market competitiveness.

This article summarizes the latest regulatory policies and platform rule changes in the food delivery industry, clarifies operational risks and growth opportunities for takeaway sellers, and offers abundant practical insights.

1. On the latest policies and rules: A new regulation from the State Administration for Market Regulation took effect on June 1 this year, which explicitly designates platforms as the primary party responsible for food safety, requires in-person verification and dynamic re-audits for all onboarding merchants, and mandates the removal of non-compliant sellers. The three major platforms have also signed an agreement to establish a cross-platform blacklist sharing mechanism, meaning violating merchants cannot re-register under new identities on other platforms, sharply increasing the cost of illegal operation.

2. Risk warning: All common ghost takeaway practices including qualification fraud, address fraud, and profit-driven subcontracting are now listed as key crackdown targets. Violators will not only be removed from platforms but also face official investigation. Sellers should never take the risk of violating rules.

3. Opportunity outlook: The crackdown has cleared a large number of non-compliant stores. Compliant sellers can meet the platform's compliance requirements, highlight their own safety advantages, capture the market share vacated by violators, and gain more traffic.

The ongoing crackdown on ghost takeaways brings new business opportunities and digital transformation inspiration for upstream and downstream factories in the F&B supply chain.

1. On the demand side: As regulation tightens and consumers raise requirements for food safety, formal F&B merchants have seen sharply growing demand for compliant, high-quality ingredient supply and processing support. The market space previously seized by ghost takeaways is gradually being released. Factories producing ingredients and F&B processing equipment can target compliant F&B clients for expansion to grow market share.

2. On business strategy: After ghost takeaways are removed, formal brick-and-mortar F&B stores have gained greater room for growth, and demand for compliant store renovation, kitchen equipment, and packaging materials will gradually increase. Factories can adjust their product portfolios to adapt to this new market demand.

3. Key takeaway: The food delivery industry is already adopting digital technologies such as large AI models for compliance management. Upstream and downstream F&B supply chain factories need to accelerate digital upgrading to improve their own operational compliance and adapt to the industry's overall digital regulatory trend.

This article summarizes the core pain points and governance needs of the current food delivery industry, and points out clear business directions for service providers serving the sector.

1. The core industry pain point today is that ghost takeaways have developed a mature fraud process that is difficult to eradicate. Major food delivery platforms have strong demand for compliance governance, which has created substantial new service opportunities. For example, technical services for AI-powered qualification verification and violation scenario identification meet platforms' governance needs and carry large market potential.

2. After the cross-platform blacklist sharing mechanism was implemented, the industry needs supporting services for violating merchant information connection and verification. Service providers can develop relevant information sharing and connection systems to meet the compliance needs of major platforms.

3. New regulations require platforms to conduct in-person verification and dynamic re-audits for onboarding merchants, but many platforms do not have enough in-house staff to complete this work. Service providers can develop standardized in-store verification and regular inspection services to help platforms cut auditing costs and meet regulatory requirements.

Analysis of the ghost takeaway crackdown clarifies regulatory requirements, existing risks, and referenceable rectification and operation experience for food delivery platforms.

1. On the regulatory front: Regulators have explicitly designated platforms as the primary party responsible for food safety. Platforms with poor governance will be summoned and even face heavy fines — seven platforms were fined a total of nearly 3.6 billion yuan for the ghost takeaway problem earlier this year, highlighting extremely high compliance risk. Platforms must prioritize merchant qualification verification and control, and must not relax screening standards to chase growth scale.

2. Core existing problems: In the past, platforms relaxed screening to gain market share, and frontline auditors often loosened requirements under the pressure of merchant recruitment targets. In addition, there was no cross-platform blacklist system before, so violating merchants could re-register on other platforms after being removed, making governance far more difficult.

3. Referenceable compliance practices: Platforms can implement open kitchen transparency, require new merchants to submit location-stamped in-store video for verification, establish a cross-platform blacklist sharing mechanism, and adopt large AI models for qualification verification and violation identification. These measures block ghost takeaways at the source and reduce regulatory risk.

This article discloses the causes of the ghost takeaway problem in the food delivery industry and the latest regulatory and governance trends, offering valuable new insights for industrial research.

1. New industry challenges: Ghost takeaways have already formed a complete, mature black and gray industry chain covering certificate forgery, address proxy services,审核代过, and order subcontracting. Combined with platforms' relaxed screening during the early expansion stage and low costs for violations, ghost takeaways have repeatedly rebounded after crackdowns and become a long-standing persistent problem for the food delivery industry.

2. New industry trends: Regulators have introduced new regulations clarifying platforms' primary responsibility for food safety; the industry has launched its first cross-platform blacklist sharing mechanism; and platforms have begun adopting new governance tools such as large AI models and crowd-sourced supervision from delivery riders. Multi-stakeholder collaborative governance has become the new trend for addressing malpractices in the food delivery industry.

3. Future research directions: Further studies can examine the actual on-ground effect of this new governance model, and track new adjustments adopted by the black and gray industry in response to crackdowns, to provide references for improving industry governance policies.