China is already experiencing it

Is it worth ordering three family pizzas to take advantage of a 3 for 2 promotion? The answer is: it depends. It depends on if you are ordering just for yourself or if you are going to share them with four or five friends, although my friends would say that three pizzas for five is not enough, but that is another story.

Be that as it may, the logic is overwhelming: better price, more people among whom to divide the expense and payment for a single shipment. It makes sense. Now let’s raise this, but with all the neighbors on the block or colleagues in the office. The savings would be considerable, especially if everyone orders the same thing from the same site. Well, in China this is an increasingly popular trend.

Context. He increased cost of living It is not something that affects only us. He house pricehe rising prices of consumer goodsthe stagnant wages and other factors that make your hair stand on end mean that you have to tighten your belt and take action. In China, where eating out is practically a religion, it is acceptable A menu costs between 20 and 30 yuan (two-four euros, more or less).

Meituan delivery driver | Image: Meituan

Inequality. The problem is that salary inequality is absolutely brutal, to the point that the average really tells us little. What they tell us the data is that the top 1% of China’s earners have a larger share of the country’s wealth than the top 50%. Or what is the same, if 100 people lived in China, only one person would have half of the wealth of the entire country. Therefore, it will not surprise anyone that with the average salary of 353,000 yuan per year, about 45,000 euros at the exchange rate, it is difficult to live in many places.

Eat out. It is, as we said, something common in China. The question is: how can we make menus cheaper? Indeed, asking for a lot of the same thing from the same place. That idea is the one that applied Meituana Chinese shopping platform for consumer products and local retail services, to the delivery industry.

拼好饭. Or translated into the language of Cervantes, “group food delivery.” It is more or less the same premise that we proposed when eating this text: recommendations of popular dishes, group orders and a single delivery. This system It allows certain authorized establishments to prepare food in batches and for delivery people to make several deliveries in a single trip, since everyone is nearby and has ordered the same thing.

Image | Meituan

Coordinating. It requires more coordination and the food may take a little longer, but it allows you to save up to 50% on certain menus, as explained from Sinica Podcasts. “In central Guangzhou, a roast duck leg with rice usually costs 28.8 yuan if ordered individually, but drops to only 11.2 yuan with the group takeaway option,” they say. The cost of shipping represents up to 80% of the cost of the order, so adding dishes to the order dilutes the price for more people.

and it works. It is clear that users are willing to wait a little longer for food if it is much cheaper. Meituan began testing this system in 2020 in poorer markets and by April 2023 had already established a department dedicated only to group orders focused on first-tier cities. Only in 2023, Meituan processed 1.16 billion group orders, which represented 6% of all orders.

And in Spain? It is not a very widespread or popular thing, at least at the user level. Yes, it is possible to take advantage of promotions and share food to dilute the shipping and make the price per head better, but there is no proposal similar to the Chinese one. Companies like Uber do allow something similar, but it is focused on small groups of people or companies, not so much on large volumes.

But perhaps it is a matter of time, especially in large capitals.

Cover image | zhang kaiyv

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