Orders flooding in as online delivery market reaches 30 billion yuan

Hotpot was the most popular food ordered online in China last year, comprising just over 20 percent of the market, according to a report released by online food delivery and ticketing services platform Meituan Dianping.

The hotpot delivery market reached 30 billion yuan ($4.27 billion) last year, attracting companies including restaurant chains such as Haidilao and Xiabuxiabu and online-to-offline fresh produce retailers Hemaxiansheng and Meiriyouxian.

According to Haidilao's annual report, its delivery business earned 323 million yuan last year, and it had reached 188 million yuan in the first six months of this year, a rise of nearly 41 percent on 2018.

Haidilao's delivery team ensures that orders reach clients living within a 5-kilometer radius of the company's outlets in 60 minutes and in 90 minutes if they live within a 10-km radius.

Pots and cookers pose obstacles for hotpot delivery, so chains, including Haidilao and Wangjiadu, provide a rental service. Clients pay a deposit to rent pots and cookers and the restaurants send staff members to collect them after use.

The number of diners governs the size of the pot. For example, for just one person, restaurants such as Wangjiadu supply a single pot, along with ethanol to use as fuel.

Haidilao has also introduced a hotpot using precooked ingredients. When the water is poured over the heating pad behind the box containing the ingredients, sufficient heat is released to warm the ingredients to 100 C in about 10 minutes.

All diners need do is prepare cold water to enjoy the hotpot, and this product has proved particularly popular among students and travelers.

The Xiabuxiabu chain also provides precooked hotpot for delivery. However, the company's highend subsidiary, CouCou, decided against joining the delivery market, as it does not have its own team for this purpose.

Guan Qingshan, CouCou's general manager for North China, said that as the freshness of ingredients is key for the business, it had decided for the time being not to operate such a service.

On Oct 17, Hou Yi, CEO of Hemaxiansheng, announced the launch of a project to deliver a hotpot soup base and fresh ingredients to customers within 30 minutes.

Qiu Jun, who heads the project, said the team took two months to look at soup bases from different regions, along with the ingredients to be added.

For the annual Nov 11 shopping festival on Taobao, Qiu said the team sold more than 14,000 hotpot meals in 170 stores nationwide, and this unexpected success prompted the company to feature seasonal promotions in its annual planning.

Providing hotpot styles ranging from Chaoshan to Sichuan, and Tom Yum Kung to coconut with chicken, the Hemaxiansheng app offers a range of soup bases together with all the other ingredients needed.

"The flavor of each soup base differs from region to region, with the amount of spice used for a Sichuanstyle soup base being lower in Beijing than in Chengdu," Qiu said. "We are also developing new flavors and new products specially for the hotpot market."

Hemaxiansheng does not provide a rental service for pots and cookers, but clients can buy these through the app. Friday evenings and weekends are the peak times for hotpot orders on Hemaxiansheng.

"We usually cater to families or friends gathering together," Qiu said. "Our major clients for hotpot are women ages 25 to 40, " he added.