When the slogan “0 yuan delivery, 10 yuan delivery” was pasted into the college dormitory, the takeaway war officially burned into the ivory tower. Tmall, Meituan, and JD.com rolled the subsidy war to campus, capturing students’ stomachs with milk tea free of charge, while using numbers to refresh daily order records. In the face of the trillion-level campus market, the giants are not only eyeing a few late-night snacks, but also the consumption habits of young people in the next ten years.
“If I drink like this, I’m going to drink diabetes!”
This weekend, the “takeaway war” continues to be in full swing. Since July 12, Taobao flash sale, Meituan, and JD.com have once again increased takeaway subsidies, and many netizens have also posted a new round of “achievements” on social platforms, and low-priced or even free milk tea coffee is the mainstream.
“A generation has a generation of essentials eggs, you can’t drink them all at all” and “the biggest resistance to weight loss this summer”, amidst the fierce ridicule of consumers, the most fierce instant retail showdown in the history of China’s Internet has once again erupted with amazing data.
On July 14, Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me announced that the daily order volume once again exceeded a new high of 80 million (excluding self-mentioned 0 yuan purchase), and the number of daily active users of Taobao Flash Sale exceeded 200 million, a net increase of 15% month-on-month this week.
In the early morning of July 13, Meituan released a “record” saying that as of 23:36 on July 12, the daily order volume of instant retail has exceeded 150 million.
In addition to the competition of subsidizing “scattering coins”, food delivery platforms are also quietly tackling more segmented and vertical markets.
Recently, Tmall Campus launched a new takeaway brand “Tmall Campus Takeaway” focusing on college scenes, and has launched a WeChat mini program of the same name, covering relevant universities in Hainan, Hunan, Shandong, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Xinjiang and other places.
Colleges and universities have always been a battleground for soldiers. According to incomplete statistics from Yilan Commerce, as of December 2024, at least 35 tea and coffee brands have opened more than 9,000 campus stores nationwide, accounting for 6.15% of the total number of stores.
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The campus takeaway service was also a popular student entrepreneurship project, and the “last 100 meters” of “upstairs and downstairs” on campus attracted countless young entrepreneurs. Nowadays, when food delivery giants choose to further develop the campus food delivery market, what new changes can it bring? What new opportunities can the intensive cultivation of the campus market bring to the platform?
01 “0 yuan delivery fee”, Tmall campus takeaway online
“Delivery from 10 yuan, 0 yuan delivery fee”.
Open the Tmall campus takeaway applet, it is not difficult to find that the delivery threshold of Tmall campus takeaway is obviously much lower than that of mass takeaway delivery. Its ordering process is no different from that of Meituan, and consumers only need to choose their favorite meals, accurately fill in the delivery address and expected delivery time, and then submit the order.
From the perspective of settled merchants, in addition to on-campus merchants, there are also many off-campus merchants distributed around the school. The categories cover blind boxes of meals, baked desserts, campus supermarkets, fried chicken burgers, dumplings and pasta, campus canteens, special snacks, fresh fruit tea, barbecue suppers, etc. In addition to regular categories, the Tmall campus takeaway applet also has a special product area to attract more student users to place orders.
All products are delivered exclusively on campus, and the delivery time is about 35 minutes. In addition to the general takeaway delivery and appointment pick-up at the store, the delivery method has also added the option of express mail, which may be suitable for prefabricated dishes, special packaged foods and other categories.
In addition to enjoying “getting takeaway without leaving home”, students can also work part-time as riders and earn some extra money through the takeaway rider recruitment link in the mini program.
It is not difficult to see that Tmall has made preliminary preparations for entering the campus takeaway market.
In fact, “inconvenient takeaway, long delivery time, and wrong meal” are the troubles that many students have encountered when ordering takeout on college campuses, and the admission of Tmall campus takeaway can solve these problems to a certain extent. For the platform, the campus market is relatively concentrated, the location of student dormitories and teaching buildings on campus is fixed, and the distribution radius is much smaller than that of urban business districts, which is conducive to reducing distribution costs and improving distribution efficiency, so as to build an efficient and high-quality distribution system.
However, different from the point-to-point service model of ordinary takeaway scenes, the campus also has stricter safety management regulations for takeaway delivery. Whether the Tmall campus takeaway market can truly go out of the road of differentiation remains to be tested by time.
02 Under the war, we need to find a new growth curve
In the takeaway battlefield in 2025, it can be said that the war has been wave after wave and has never stopped.
Goldman Sachs said in a relevant research report that it is expected that the competition in the food delivery market will continue until the second half of the year. Taobao flash sale Ele.me, JD Takeaway and Meituan platforms have increased subsidies, which have jointly stimulated significant growth in industry orders, and industry orders are expected to increase by 30% year-on-year.
The increase in new users and the increase in the frequency of purchases by old users may drive the expansion of the potential market size and cross-sell to other instant retail scenarios in the medium term, even after subsidies return to normal.
In this takeaway war, who wins and who loses, is far from the time to draw a conclusion, why does the platform still spend effort to expand the campus takeaway market?
In fact, although the current takeaway war led by subsidies is still in full swing, it is undoubtedly a costly contest. Nomura estimates that in the second quarter of 2025 alone, Alibaba, Meituan and JD.com will invest about $4 billion in various discounts. With such an almost “crazy” fight and track involution, finding new market entry points has naturally become the consensus of platforms.
On June 18, JD.com opened its first physical catering collection store Seven Fresh Food MALL in Harbin, trying to use the catering collection store model to broaden its own ecological territory, achieve deep integration of online and offline and form a joint force. Meituan also announced in July this year that it would deepen the “new takeaway infrastructure” by opening more raccoon canteen stores.
Tmall has entered the campus takeaway market, focusing on the vast college takeaway consumer market.
According to the “2024-2030 China Campus Food Delivery Industry Market Development Monitoring and Investment Potential Forecast Report”, in the past few years, China’s campus food delivery market has shown a strong growth trend, with the transaction volume of the campus food delivery market increasing from 15 billion yuan in 2018 to about 50 billion yuan in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 43.5%; The size of China’s campus takeaway market will be about 30 billion yuan in 2024, and it is expected to exceed the 60 billion yuan mark by 2025 and 120 billion yuan by 2027.
The reason why it did not go through super traffic entrances such as Ele.me and Taobao flash sales, but through Tmall Campus, to explore the campus takeaway model, may also be to open up a new independent battlefield.
According to public information, Tmall Campus was established in 2018, focusing on campus digital services, and provides students with a full-scenario service ecology such as retail shopping, smart life services and cultural experience through the dual mode operation of “online application + offline store”.
On the other hand, carrying out campus takeaway business through Tmall Campus can also further broaden the service scenarios of Tmall Campus and leverage more possibilities by using catering takeaway as a fulcrum.
03 Is campus business still good?
Behind the attractiveness of market segments are challenges far more complex than the mass standardized market.
Although the campus takeaway market has great potential and is expected to bring new increments to the takeaway industry, it is obviously not without reason why it has been left by the takeaway platform to be discovered until now.
On campus, how to maintain a “standardized and orderly campus environment and ensure food safety” is a more important issue before takeaway delivery. On the Tmall campus takeaway applet, it can also be found that the delivery time of most campuses is not available for delivery all day, and many schools are locked in 10:00-13:00 in the morning, 16:00-19:00 in the afternoon, lunch and dinner.
In addition, many campuses are currently introducing standardized on-campus distribution teams through public bidding procedures, and how to develop more campus partners and meet the on-campus distribution standards is also a “difficult bone”.
In addition to the issue of distribution standards, more and more catering stores on campus undoubtedly give young student consumers more choices.
According to the “2024 Survey and Research Report on the Consumption Behavior of Chinese College Students” released by iiMedia Consulting, the annual consumption scale of Chinese college students is expected to be about 850 billion yuan in 2024. In addition, according to the research of the Red Ginseng Industry Institute, the age group of consumers currently studying in colleges and universities is mainly concentrated in 18-25 years old, and the average monthly catering consumption expenditure has reached 1,075 yuan.
Under the huge consumption potential, colleges and universities have naturally become the “sweet spot” in the eyes of many brands, and many well-known brands such as Haidilao, Laoxiang Chicken, Ziyan Baiwei Chicken, Luckin Coffee, Heytea, Gu Ming and so on have seized the university market and opened stores on campus. According to Red Meal Big Data, as of December 2024, the number of social catering stores in university business districts across the country has increased to 620,000.
According to the “2025-2031 China University Catering Market Panoramic Survey and Development Trend Research Report”, in 2023, the scale of our country’s university catering market will grow to 483.28 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 31.6%; It is expected that the market size will further increase to 544 billion yuan in 2024 and is expected to exceed the 600 billion yuan mark in 2025.
In addition to competing for the “campus canteen” of college students to stay in school for four years, campus stores are also a step for chain brands to cultivate brand favorability. ”
Although the school’s traditional canteens, brand campus stores, and surrounding restaurants have formed a multi-layered supply, there will always be people who are lazy to go downstairs at a specific time – the distance between people and goods is getting closer, and the gaps still exist.
The “2025 Campus Industry Ecology White Paper” also shows that the number of students in colleges and universities will reach 72.11 million in 2035, with an average of 2.1 takeaways on college birthdays, and a scale of more than 1.6 trillion yuan in catering takeaways, with a compound annual growth rate of 9.6%, of which the demand for “cost-effective + instant delivery” accounts for more than 70%.
Brand campus stores also glimpse the delivery needs of student users. According to Tianlala’s relevant personnel in a public interview, some of their campus stores will have delivery services, as long as students need it, they can deliver tea to anywhere on campus, which also helps Tianlala cultivate users to a certain extent win the opportunity.
This also means that for food delivery platforms and catering brands, if they want to win the favor of student users, they need to work harder in operation and service than in the mass market. However, it is precisely because market segments like campus need to put more effort into digging a more unshakable moat for platforms and brands.
In the future, it is difficult to say whether platforms and brands can achieve a breakthrough in the campus market. But after picking the low-hanging fruit, no matter how tall and difficult the remaining fruit is, it must rise to the challenge.
