As an old saying goes, we eat first with our eyes. And China’s version of TikTok is putting that adage to the test by using appetizing video clips to promote meal deliveries.
Over recent years the Douyin short-video service has been expanding into livestreaming , content creation and e-commerce. Now food delivery is on the menu. In a sign of its ambitions, the video-sharing platform has placed job ads for managers to run food delivery services on the recruitment website of parent, Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. Ltd. (BDNCE), which also owns TikTok.
With the latest venture , Douyin would be entering a market dominated by the shopping colossus Meituan (3690.HK) (OTCPK:MPNGF, OTCPK:MPNGY). Shares in Meituan fell sharply on Feb. 8 after a report that Douyin would launch its food delivery service in March. The shares plunged 9% at one point and ended with a loss of 6.5%, wiping HK$65.6 billion ($8.4 billion) off Meituan’s market value in a single day.
An executive in charge of Douyin’s local life services unit later played down the talk of a March launch for food delivery services. However, Douyin has indeed been testing a feature in large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu that enables restaurants to sell its users “group packages”, set meals consisting of several dishes on a standardized menu. If the pilot scheme goes well, it could be expanded to more cities.
Meituan, Ele.me (ELEME) and other companies developed independent platforms for takeout orders, but Douyin simply allows food merchants to promote meals in their short videos or livestreams. The audience can place orders through embedded links and have food delivered by third-party services such as Hangzhou SF Intra-city Industrial (9699.HK), Dada Nexus (DADA) and FlashEx . The whole process is similar to shopping in Douyin’s livestreaming room.
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