New system eases concerns about food delivery

Worried about the cleanliness and safety of your food delivery? The "Sunny Kitchen" system can provide reassurance. The system provides online access to video of the restaurant's kitchen where you've ordered your food.

The Zhejiang Province Market Supervision and Management Bureau unveiled the new system in July to build public trust in the safe delivery of food across the province.

Through two months of operation, the "Sunny Kitchen" has been warmly received among customers.

When you order a meal from the delivery platforms Ele.me or Meituan, you can click the "Sunny Kitchen" button in the application and gain access to live video of the restaurant's kitchen. Closed-circuit television is used to follow every step of the process. If you notice any sanitation problems, you can immediately report these issues to the bureau.

In addition, restaurants are required to seal food packages before giving them to a deliveryman. If a consumer receives food with an intact seal, it means that the package hasn't been tampered with during delivery. If the seal is broken, customers can refuse to accept.

So far, about 89,000 restaurants in Zhejiang Province have joined the "Sunny Kitchen" system, and around 64,000 restaurants have begun to apply safety seals to their packaging. The system has gathered and compiled data on approximately 353,000 deliverymen and 293,000 business operators.

Additionally, the bureau launched the Zhejiang Food Chain project in March, which, so far, has connected with 1,831 food and beverage businesses across the province, uploaded 157,000 factory inspection reports and conducted traceability management research for 1.06 million batches of food. Consumers have scanned the QR code on food packages more than 381,000 times to check their food's production information.

Last June, imported frozen salmon caused a cluster of COVID-19 cases in Beijing. The outbreak in the capital's largest wholesale market set off alarm bells in Zhejiang Province. The bureau immediately launched the Zhejiang Frozen Food Chain project on June 22, 2020, becoming the first province in China to officially begin tracing imported frozen food.

To date, it has discovered 93 batches of food that tested positive for COVID-19.