Meituan launches 30-minute delivery services for home appliances in China in Midea deal

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan has partnered with Midea, one of the world’s largest home appliances makers, to enable app users to order products ranging from refrigerators to dishwashers and receive them in as little as 30 minutes.

The collaboration will connect 25,000 Midea retail stores to the Meituan platform by the end of this year, giving the manufacturer access to hundreds of millions of users registered with China’s largest food delivery service, according to a statement published on Meituan’s website on Thursday.

Users of Meituan’s apps, including the crowdsourced review platform Dianping, can browse product listings in nearby Midea shops and have purchases delivered to their doorstep in as quickly as half an hour. To promote the new service, Meituan’s food delivery service and Dianping are handing out vouchers to consumers.

“Currently, on-demand shopping has become a … lifestyle, and we are seeing more consumers accustomed to buying electronics with the same ease as placing a food delivery order,” Wang Chao, a Meituan executive, said in the statement.

The deal with Midea is the latest in a series of tie-ups struck by Meituan in recent years, as the Beijing-based firm searches for growth in new areas.

Meituan has formed similar partnerships with international and domestic brands, such as toymaker Lego, authorised Apple resellers, confectionery and food giant Mars, sporting goods retailer Decathlon and electronics retail chain Suning, to bring those brands onto Meituan platforms.

Meituan said in its 2023 annual report that order volume for its on-demand e-commerce business grew by more than 40 per cent from a year earlier.

In the first quarter of this year, average daily orders reached more than 8.4 million, as partnership deals with various brands enticed more of Meituan’s 500 million-plus food delivery users to order a wider variety of items, the company said.

China’s on-demand e-commerce sector, which delivers goods to online shoppers within hours rather than days, is expected to double in value in the next two years, 2.5 trillion yuan (US$344 billion) by 2026, according to a report by consultancy iResearch in March.

Other Chinese e-commerce players have also taken note.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Meituan is set to report its second-quarter financial results on August 28.