The article discusses the upcoming new business model of JD Takeaway, analyzes its possible strategies and reasons behind it, and emphasizes JD Takeaway’s innovative model of food safety and supply chain.
01 Meeting
“In another month, JD Takeaway will soon come out with a completely different business model from Meituan.”
At a small-scale sharing meeting on JD.com this week, Liu Qiangdong released this sentence. It should be difficult for everyone to tell that this is the first time he has used a meeting – the form of leaking the content of the meeting to dominate the screen, and here it is suggested that he strictly check the on-site staff who are still picking up their mobile phones during the meeting.
It seems that the video content was secretly recorded and transmitted, but it was full of gunpowder. Anyway, it’s not in public, and some things can be said more violently.
Last time, Liu Qiangdong scolded Meituan at an internal meeting and announced his entry into the food delivery industry. This time, he first scolded himself, “The last five years have been the lost five years of JD.com”, and then introduced JD.com’s future strategy, involving takeaway, wine and tourism, international business and even including the recently popular “stablecoin” and so on.
When talking about the takeaway business, Liu Qiangdong did not mention the profit margin of takeaway or the social security issue of riders, but emphasized business model innovation, which is the sentence I put at the beginning of the article.
I think this is the most low-key and most valuable sentence in the whole sharing session.
Whether it is investors, industry participants, merchants, consumers, or riders, what everyone expects is not JD Takeaway to defeat Meituan Takeaway, but to give birth to a better takeaway business model, so that everyone can benefit from it and no one is harmed from it.
Different from Liu Qiangdong’s “high-profile” and “sharp” when he announced his entry into takeaway a few months ago, his attitude this time seems much more low-key.
In May this year, the State Administration for Market Regulation and other five departments interviewed platform companies such as JD.com, Meituan, and Ele.me, requiring platforms to standardize their operations and compete in a fair and orderly manner. It seems that JD.com quickly put the content of the conversation into practice. Combined with JD.com’s own business needs, JD.com’s next move is more worthy of attention:
What kind of business model did Liu Qiangdong choose for JD Takeaway, which can not only “completely solve the food safety problem” and benefit the fresh food supply chain?
Is it self-employed?
02 Suspense
This view was immediately looked down upon by the daughter-in-law: Do you think your son has played with the house? Can you build “Minecraft” if you want to?
But self-operation is indeed JD.com’s trump card. In Liu Qiangdong’s words: “Without JD.com’s self-operation, we would have died long ago.” ”
After 10 years of interaction design, why did I transfer to product manager?
After the real job transfer, I found that many jobs were still beyond my imagination. The work of a product manager is indeed more complicated. Theoretically, the work of a product manager includes all aspects of the product, from market research, user research, data analysis…
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I myself am a loyal user of JD.com, a PLUS member for many years, and once spent tens of thousands of yuan a year. The reason why JD.com can keep a straight man like me is two points: fast and fidel.
However, these advantages have not been particularly outstanding in the past two years.
Instant retail volume is a “fast”, and “fidelity” is basically the standard of the channel. Therefore, recently I have been hesitating whether to renew Plus, after all, it is time to spend money and save money. In other words, I may become a “corner” that JD.com has been poached up, at least the soil has been loosened.
But for JD.com, self-operation is still a good way to enter takeaway. Because the JD.com brand can be a good endorsement.
Take a bold guess, its product model might look like this:
JD Takeaway has set up a “self-operated store”, all ingredients use JD.com’s fresh supply chain, and the whole link of production and sales is supervised by JD.com.
Self-operated stores are officially invested, and personnel are trained and managed by officials.
The platform gives profits to “merchants” and “riders”, and then uses the “repurchase” of takeaway consumers to achieve profits.
The advantage is that it can better solve the problem of food safety, but the problem is also obvious: the asset-heavy model inevitably comes with high costs. For example, operating costs, management costs, etc. incurred in the process of production and sales.
JD Takeaway entered the game under the banner of “justice”, but the necessary condition for any business to exist for a long time is that it can continue to make money.
Some people may want to say: Liu Qiangdong also built his own warehousing and logistics against the consensus, which made JD.com achieve its later status. But judging from the results, JD.com is actually engaged in a differentiated competition with Taobao. It chose 3C with high customer unit price as its advantageous category, and until now, Taobao’s position in the dominant category of women’s clothing has not been shaken.
The e-commerce track is broad enough to give it room to differentiate its routes.
But this is not the case with catering takeaway. Everyone eats three meals a day, and at most an afternoon tea. In other words, JD Takeaway needs to go straight to Meituan’s hinterland to grab business, but cannot open up a differentiated scenario.
Meituan itself is a difficult opponent. Through takeaway, it has extended its business from catering to the appearance of the infinite game that Wang Xing once mentioned.
According to Liu Qiangdong, the logic of JD.com’s takeaway and wine tourism businesses is the supply chain. JD.com has also set up a new channel division, from convenience stores, catering to wine and tourism, all of which are paving the way for the supply chain behind it. In the future, this supply chain service can also be used to cover beauty, medical aesthetics, hospitals and even street foot wash shops.
This grand narrative still has only one model. However, Meituan has long taken action in the supply chain, and the supply platform “Kuaidon” for catering merchants has already run, raising the price low enough and providing door-to-door delivery services, which is still very attractive to small businesses who are incompetent and make hard-earned money.
Of course, this does not mean that JD.com has no space.
Or take the supply chain as an example. Some merchants described purchasing vegetables in Kuailu as buying lottery tickets, and the quality was very unstable. There are also many complaints caused by frozen goods. Many merchants still prefer the traditional procurement model.
JD.com can use quality supply chains to form competitiveness.
Boldly guess, even if it does not open a restaurant in person, it can provide raw materials such as ingredients to restaurants that focus on quality, and then allow stores to obtain more orders on the platform by special labeling on the takeaway platform, or even by providing traffic tilt, subsidies, etc.
There are also several uncertainties in this:
1. Ingredients are not all influencing factors of catering safety. Many ghost takeaway ingredients are also sold from the regular wholesale market. But with gutter oil, messy additives and a dirty and messy environment, the safety in front is in vain.
2. The quality of the supply chain itself. Procurement is a fat errand. Some merchants suspect that some quality problems in Kuailu may be rebates in the link. This problem also needs to be solved in JD.com’s takeaway business.
3. Can the merchant’s procurement cost be earned back? This is actually the most important. For small businesses, can they make more money by increasing costs and providing better dishes?
This question directly determines their enthusiasm for joining. After all, big entrepreneurs talk about dreams, and small businessmen try to survive.
03 Living water
From a personal point of view, I admire Liu Qiangdong’s determination and courage to open up new battlefields.
In the past few years of Liu Qiangdong’s “retirement”, the younger brothers have rapidly grown into big brothers in various fields with short videos, live streaming, cross-border e-commerce, AI, robots and other outlets, and even become representatives of the new generation of private economy.
Under pressure, JD.com has made frequent moves in the past year, promoting procurement and sales, and opening offline malls. Its financial report data for the first quarter of 2025 is also impressive, with revenue up 15.8% year-on-year, net profit up 52.7% year-on-year, and the number of active users in the first quarter achieved double-digit year-on-year growth for six consecutive quarters, with a growth rate of more than 20%.
It’s like a middle-aged person who was once brilliant and is now not favored, holding back his hard work to make his life better and help more people live a better life.
At present, whether it is a self-employed person like me, or a large company such as JD.com and Meituan, they are looking for “living water”.
For individuals, “living water” is a more sustainable source of income. For example, the jewelry and jade business I chose. For large companies, “living water” is natural flow.
Liu Qiangdong took a fancy to the high-frequency takeaway business, which was to dig a well for JD.com and eat his own “living water”. “I can never make money by selling meals on the front end, I just need to make money from the supply chain. When customers come over, they can buy our e-commerce. So the money we lose is still cost-effective compared to the money we spend on Douyin and Tencent to buy traffic. ”
High-frequency products do traffic, and low-frequency products do profits, which is also the way many Internet companies play. Liu Qiangdong’s idea of “digging a well” is almost a clear card:
“This business model will completely solve the food safety problem” – the main contradiction to be solved is also a pain point in the food delivery industry.
“The logic we do is the fresh supply chain behind it, which is what I really want” – give a solution and launch JD.com’s supply chain.
“I can never make money by selling meals on the front end, I just need to make money through the supply chain” – profit through “repurchase”.
I have to say that Liu Qiangdong’s pattern has finally opened, no longer entangled in trivial issues such as “commission” and “rider social security”, and has begun to touch the “root” of market pain points – food safety.
This is a real pain point, and it is also a rare industry problem that still exists widely after the 315 party.
Last time, Liu Qiangdong gave a solution idea: food safety problems are the “pot” of the platform, and they are too cruel to merchants and riders, resulting in food safety not being guaranteed. Therefore, the solution it gives is a large subsidy. Reflected in JD.com’s financial report for the first quarter of 2025, new business (including takeaway) revenue increased by 18.1% year-on-year, but operating losses also expanded to 1.327 billion, an increase of 657 million over the same period last year.
But this is only the first step in mathematical problem-solving, and the new takeaway method that will be announced in one month may be the real problem-solving step.
