Douyin ventures into food delivery business

Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, said on Wednesday that it was testing its new food delivery service in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu.

The digital giant has approached restaurant owners and food enterprises in the three cities to promote their dishes on the app.

Douyin stated that the success of the trial run will determine whether the in-app meal delivery service will be expanded to other cities.

Bytedance, Douyin's parent firm, is also hiring operations and product managers for meal delivery.

Douyin experimented with a food app in July 2017, but it only lasted five months.

In December, Kuaishu, another Chinese short-video app, partnered with Meituan.

Kuaishou offers coupons and after-sales service to Meituan-registered food businesses.

In July 2022, Douyin piloted group-buying meal delivery services in Beijing and Shanghai.

In August, Ele.me started cooperating with Douyin and launched an app that allows its 600 million users to place meal orders and use delivery services while viewing promoted video ads.

Major e-commerce platforms are getting into the food delivery business.

In early 2022, Kuaishou and SF Express announced same-day delivery services. JD.com's retailing CEO indicated they were considering the food delivery market in June.

Zhuang Shuai, an e-commerce retailing expert, said Douyin had planned for cloud retailing since mid-2022, when they transformed their online market into an all-area platform.

Douyin's food delivery service trended on Weibo on Tuesday. Users think the competition will help registered vendors and users because customers will have more options and food business owners can use the platform that charges the lowest service fee.