Open an app, place your order, and wait for your food to be delivered (递送) to your home-this is how many people eat in China these days. According to the latest report, 421 million Chinese people use online food delivery services. That's about half of the total number of internet users in China.
Which group of people is ordering food online the most? It's mainly young people. Meituan, a food delivery service, showed that 86.3 percent of the service's users are between 20 and 34 years old. These people, who live in small families, are driving the development of the food delivery industry. Small families depend greatly on food delivery services.
Chinese families have changed in size over the past years. In 2002, only 7.7 percent of them were single-person families. But this number increased to 15.6 percent in 2017. The two-person families rose from 18.4% in 2002 to 27.2% in 2017. For small families, cooking needs more time and materials, so ordering food online has become more popular.
The food delivery services have become much faster than before at present. According to Meituan's report, the time it takes to make a food delivery dropped from 38 minutes in 2016 to 29 minutes in 2019. Many delivery platforms (平台) are also offering more services, delivering products such as fruit, vegetables, medicine and flowers. More and more customers are interested in the improvement of China's food delivery services. As its services continue to improve, it's possible that the food delivery industry will keep growing.
