The key to whether JD.com Takeaway can burn a critical point in limited time and resources lies in whether it can quickly establish a “fast” consumer mentality through subsidies and operational strategies, and realize the category and mental migration from takeaway to instant retail.
The battlefield of the takeaway war is still expanding, and the battle situation is still escalating. The latest news is that Taotian entered the game, announcing on the last day before April that its instant retail business “Hourly Delivery” was upgraded to “Taobao Flash Sale”, and cooperated with Ele.me to provide consumers with free orders, large full discounts and other rights.
On May 2, the Taobao flash sale, which was originally scheduled to be promoted nationwide on May 6, was fully launched in advance, and each user across the country can receive two large red envelopes through Taobao flash sale every day.
The follow-up of the new opponent undoubtedly adds another level to the breakthrough difficulty of JD Takeaway.
It has been analyzed before that JD.com’s takeaway is essentially to do instant retail as an entry point for takeaway, thereby improving the operating efficiency of the entire JD.com retail. Taobao is also joining the battle in a similar way with dimensionality reduction.
JD.com’s own progress and the follow-up of competitors are constantly putting forward higher requirements for JD.com’s ambition to do takeaway and its ability to reduce costs and improve efficiency in a short period of time.
In these two points, ambition is related to JD.com’s value judgment on takeaway, of which the biggest variable comes from Liu Qiangdong; The ability is reflected in whether JD Takeaway can burn a critical point in limited resources and time, of course, the judgment of this critical point is very different from that of pure takeaway platforms.
01 JD.com takeaway needs to burn a critical point
It can be felt that JD.com is the most tense and urgent enterprise in the business promotion of instant retail on the e-commerce platform, and the most active action.
The essence is that the development of instant retail is a process of continuous expansion of business flow and continuous improvement of logistics speed. With the dynamic evolution and efficiency competition of B2C far-field fulfillment and O2O instant delivery, the retail plate will be reconstructed again, affecting all retail channels.
Especially for a platform like JD.com, whose core advantage is self-operated e-commerce + self-built logistics, the impact is more urgent.
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The delivery speed of instant retail is measured in minutes, and it will challenge JD.com’s logistics advantages of same-day delivery/next-day delivery in some categories, and then transfer some business flows through “fast” – especially in instant consumption scenarios, some categories with a high degree of branding and standardization, such as 3C digital when new phones are released. And because JD.com is a self-operated e-commerce model, it has established a faster and better consumption mentality in some categories in the far-field e-commerce, rather than a large and complete mind, when the mentality of key categories is weakened, the overall impact on the platform is greater, and it will be displayed faster.
Takeaway is the core and significant way of JD.com to maintain the “fast” mentality and take the initiative to cut into instant retail.
But as we all know, takeaway itself is a difficult business. Low gross profit, heavy model, long verification cycle, rely on scale effect to improve efficiency, dilute costs, and break even after reaching a scale critical point.
Therefore, it is necessary to spend a lot of money and time in the early stage to raise a stable distribution team, give welfare policies to attract merchants to settle in, and cultivate the minds of consumers, otherwise it is difficult to ensure distribution efficiency, supply richness, and consumer habits are difficult to develop.
Subsidies are to spend money to buy time.
Therefore, one of the keys to paying attention to JD.com’s takeaway is to pay attention to how strong its subsidies are, how long they will last, and how much quick internal strength can be exchanged for short-term subsidies.
On the consumer side, on April 11, JD.com’s takeaway 10 billion subsidy project was launched. With “universal subsidy + direct drop of explosive products” as the core mechanism, it plans to invest more than 10 billion yuan within one year.
On the supply side of merchants, JD.com provides commission and delivery fee reductions, including commission-free for merchants who settle in before May 1, and merchants can flexibly choose three methods: self-delivery, third-party service providers, and Dada delivery. The low cost of many merchants operating on JD.com is achieved through commission-free and low delivery fees.
A merchant we contacted mentioned that the delivery service fee charged by JD Takeaway to merchants is 3 yuan regardless of distance, but Meituan will charge according to the distance, if it is a long-distance business order, the delivery service fee alone can have a difference of about 8 yuan, plus different amounts of commissions, JD Takeaway will show a more obvious cost advantage (all data is in April, and only represents the individual merchant).
As for how much the commission rate of JD.com takeaway will change after the end of the commission-free policy after May Day, JD.com mentioned in its reply to “Narrow Broadcast” that JD.com’s “long-term commission rate does not exceed 5%”.
The above-mentioned merchants are the JD takeaway backstage displayed by “Narrow Broadcast”
The attraction to riders mainly focuses on employee benefits such as five insurances and one housing fund. This includes promising to recruit 100,000 full-time riders in the next three months, and giving each full-time rider a guarantee of 7,000 yuan (including a guaranteed salary of 5,000 yuan and a five-insurance, one housing fund of about 2,000 yuan).
More than 10 days after a three-pronged approach, JD Takeaway announced that it would achieve 10 million orders in a single day on April 22, covering 166 cities. The day before, Liu Qiangdong’s food delivery became a hot spot of the day.
Takeaway is a pry point, quickly cutting into instant retail, and has become a shortcut to be verified by JD.com and quickly learned by Taobao.
02 Whether the critical point has been reached depends on whether the second delivery can undertake the “fast” mentality
But what followed was that some people were worried about whether JD.com’s subsidies would decline due to the rapid increase in order volume to 10 million.
In the last week of April, some media quoted consumer experience and found that on JD.com, “ordering takeaway from the same merchant, the price was about 16 yuan higher than the previous week”; Some consumers have found that they have begun to “rarely receive 15-14 coupons, but mostly 11-10 coupons”.
If you calculate an account for JD Takeaway, a simple formula to calculate how long its subsidy will last, is: subsidy duration = total subsidy strength÷ average daily order volume÷ average loss amount.
It is known that the total amount is 10 billion, and the average daily order volume is assumed to continue to be 10 million orders, but the average loss per unit will change dynamically at any time according to the order volume, average distribution cost, and subsidy intensity. (The average loss range of JD.com’s takeaway orders on the market is between 6-12 yuan, and if calculated accordingly, the sustainable duration of the 10 billion subsidy is about 3 months to half a year.) But this data is for reference only. ）
In the same way, if the annual subsidy of 10 million orders is spent on an average of 10 million orders per day, the average loss of JD Takeaway cannot be greater than 2.7 yuan.
However, in the process of adapting the above formula to JD.com’s takeaway, the biggest problem is that JD.com is not only fighting a single point battle for takeaway, but also a comprehensive battle for instant retail, so the way of settling accounts is different, and the input-output ratio of takeaway cannot be calculated separately, but the general ledger must be calculated.
That is: the total investment in JD.com takeaway and the total harvest in JD.com’s retail.
The so-called total harvest can be understood in Xu Ran’s words: “For JD Retail, the takeaway business is done well, which can not only increase the growth of users, the frequency of shopping, but also bring about the extension of the scene.”
Therefore, the most essential purpose of JD Takeaway is to expand the business boundaries of the entire JD Retail and improve operating efficiency.
This also means that the critical point that JD.com needs to reach is different from that of the takeaway platform.
Taken apart, the critical points of JD.com’s takeaway needs include: instant retail supply, demand and distribution network form a certain consumer mentality and network density, JD.com’s business losses have been greatly narrowed, and a “faster” instant retail mentality has been cultivated in 3C and other fields.
This is probably why, in several high-profile statements by JD.com executives on takeaway, quality takeaways have been mentioned, profit margins are not higher than 5%, and social security has been mentioned for 100,000 full-time riders, but specific goals have not been set for the number of takeaway users, the number of merchants, and the average daily order volume. Because takeaway is just a process, not an end.
Of course, if the idea of calculating the general ledger is really to be established, the premise is that JD.com instant retail really seizes the time window created by takeaway and realizes the category and mental transfer from takeaway to second delivery.
So what JD.com needs to do, in addition to building a stable team of full-time riders, it must also supplement sufficient local supply and promote the combination of local supply and instant delivery capabilities – which will involve innovation in the form of local warehousing.
The second delivery page is currently mainly for takeaway supply
A few months ago, JD.com launched its “self-operated second delivery” e-commerce business, accessing more than 100,000 JD.com brand offline stores, with an average delivery time of more than 30 minutes. According to official news, JD.com’s self-operated second delivery business covers: all supermarket categories, clothing, cosmetics, home appliances and mobile phones and other electronic products, drugs and almost all categories – this is also the advantageous category accumulated by JD.com’s retail, and it is still self-operated ability.
In terms of local tripartite supply, JD.com’s recent new actions in supply replenishment include reaching cooperation agreements with FamilyMart and Heilan Home.
Convenience stores are good high-frequency entrances, with high gross profit, high unit price, and 24-hour service. According to data, Meituan’s flash sale at night (21:00-6:00) sales accounted for more than 25%, indicating that the potential of night consumption + door-to-door delivery is huge.
Previously, some practitioners told us that when JD Daojia first started to do instant retail, the offline supply was mostly supplemented by shopping mall merchants, but the shopping mall closed at 10 o’clock in the evening, so a large amount of night demand was equivalent to not undertaking it. Supplementing the supply of convenience stores like FamilyMart and husband and wife stores or doing various forms of front-end warehouse transformation will be a targeted solution.
Heilan Home has previously cooperated with JD Outlet, and Heilan Home has 5,000 offline stores. The relationship with consumer brands is JD.com’s advantage as an e-commerce platform. JD.com’s various offline formats will also have more or less connections with JD.com’s second delivery.
But on the whole, for JD.com, the supply of takeaway, as well as a wider range of instant retail, still needs to be replenished. For reference, Meituan’s flash sale, which has achieved an average of 18 million orders per day, has reached cooperation with more than 5,600 large chain retailers, 410,000 local small merchants and more than 570 brands by the end of 2024. Taobao flash sale, which joined the battle on the eve of May Day, aims to accelerate the coverage of 200 core chain brands, and more than 3 million stores have opened Taobao hourly delivery services, including 3C digital, clothing, FMCG (mother, baby, parent-child), flowers and green plants, fresh food, pets, toys, etc.
03 The competition continues to escalate, and the biggest variable is still Liu Qiangdong
As mentioned earlier, the takeaway war will continue, and the competition for instant retail on the main battlefield has also accelerated. The war situation is becoming more and more complicated, and whether JD.com can use the takeaway war to realize its strategic intentions, there are still many variables that will be encountered next.
For example, after the cancellation of the commission-free policy for merchants after May Day, will the willingness of old merchants to continue to operate will change, and whether the difficulty of new merchants will continue to increase.
And what some people are already discussing: whether merchants need to share the cost of consumer subsidies together. In this regard, JD.com has issued a post refuting rumors, and once again emphasized in its reply to “Narrow Broadcast” that “it will not force cost sharing and follow the principle of merchant voluntariness”, and at the same time, “the current policy of merchant sharing ratio remains far lower than the industry average”.
JD.com also mentioned that consumers and merchants are now very familiar with subsidies, so the efficiency of subsidies will be improved, and JD.com’s 10 billion subsidies “focus on quality merchants, rather than fighting from top to bottom, which is more controllable for us.”
Variables also come from outside.
Meituan has not followed up on tens of billions of subsidies, but Meituan has been making various changes, and is also releasing its achievements in takeaway and flash sales.
On April 15, Xue Bing, general manager of Meituan Takeaway, said at the 2025 China Chain Catering Summit that 100 billion yuan will be invested in the next three years to subsidize consumers and merchants and reward high-quality merchants.
On April 25, Meituan Takeaway released the “2025 Must-Order List”, covering more than 30,000 merchants in 40 cities, which not only emphasizes the encouragement of quality takeaway, but also emphasizes that it will encourage many small and medium-sized businesses with local characteristics. Meituan is still the most advantageous platform in terms of supply richness.
There are also many new changes in the Meituan APP. The “Takeaway-Milk Tea” page on the homepage will directly appear at the bottom of the “Delivery” and “Self-pickup” options, allowing consumers to have a variety of fulfillment options. The AI assistant “Ask the Pouch” will intelligently recommend packages.
According to industry insiders who have been paying attention to instant retail for a long time, Meituan’s flash sale also exceeded 18 million orders in a single day a few days ago. According to “Lei Feng.com”, before May Day, Meituan’s non-meal instant retail (Meituan flash sale + Little Elephant Supermarket) achieved one million orders in a single day in Shenzhen, and previously, Meituan’s non-meal instant retail in Beijing had taken the lead in breaking one million.
Ali also joined before May Day.
On April 30, Taobao Tmall’s instant retail business “Hourly Delivery” was officially upgraded to “Taobao Flash Sale”, and displayed on the homepage of Taobao APP as a “flash sale” first-level traffic entrance.
The upgraded Taobao flash sale is cooperating with Ele.me to provide consumers with super rights and interests such as free red envelopes, free milk tea, and large discount takeaway coupons.
The addition of competitors will make the competition more intense, put forward higher requirements for JD.com’s takeaway, which is already difficult, and constantly test JD.com’s value judgment and price space for takeaway.
How JD.com judges the value of takeaway, what kind of patience and funds it is willing to pay for, a variable that cannot be ignored comes from the founder Liu Qiangdong himself.
JD.com has tried instant retail for a long time, instant retail was one of JD.com’s three “must-win battles” last year, but it suddenly accelerated this year, and the founder personally delivered food, there are reasons for the development stage of the industry, which must also be related to the founder’s personal thinking and judgment.
We mentioned earlier that “looking for increments” is Liu Qiangdong’s order to JD.com this year. In fact, in the past two years, JD.com has been looking for increments, doing procurement and sales live broadcast rooms, doing Jingxi, and doing overseas, including now doing takeaway. At present, it seems that takeaway is the “increment” found by JD.com, which is currently more powerful and making faster progress.
The biggest reason for the rapid progress of takeaway is of course Liu Qiangdong personally delivering takeaway, so Liu Qiangdong will be the biggest variable in the process of JD.com’s takeaway that has occurred and will be in the future development, and his personal will, strategic judgment, and participation method will greatly affect the rhythm and strength of JD.com’s takeaway.
For a public company like JD.com, there is obviously a clear difference between the business promoted by founders and the business led by professional managers in terms of playing style, style, combat effectiveness, and external attention. After all, internally, Liu Qiangdong is the founder and No. 1 position of the company; Externally, he is JD.com’s most influential salesman.
But no matter how the war situation and tactics change, JD.com’s strategic intention for takeaway will most likely not change. Takeaway is to serve the entire JD.com retail. Therefore, even if takeaway does not reach the critical point of its own break-even, if the fast mind is cultivated, if the linkage with the second delivery is realized, it can be regarded as a definite business increment for JD.com.
Of course, this road to find increment is very dangerous, its investment is very strong (JD.com’s net profit in Q4 2024 is only 10.864 billion yuan), in the current market environment, the window period given by the capital market will not be very long, and because it is popular in the entire instant retail market, all sleeping tigers will wake up. In the end, each company still has to go head-to-head in a comprehensive competition of distribution system, warehousing system, supply chain capability, and service capability.
