Since JD.com officially announced its entry into the food delivery track and launched the recruitment of food delivery merchants, the long-dormant food delivery market has become lively again. According to the policy announced by JD.com, merchants who settle in before May 1, 2025 will be commission-free throughout the year, and only "quality dine-in restaurants" will be recruited. Subsequently, the news of "0 commission" also spread rapidly among the merchant community, and many people took action immediately.
JD.com once revealed to a reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that just one week after it was officially launched in 39 cities, it attracted enthusiastic applications from nearly 200,000 catering merchants. The order volume in some cities achieved a hundredfold increase last week.
A few days ago, reporters from "Kechuangban Daily" visited catering businesses in Beijing, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai and other places, and interviewed some local promoters, service providers, and takeaway riders. The reporter learned that JD’s takeout order volume still lags far behind platforms such as Meituan. Subsidies and delivery fees for takeout riders have increased, but there is a lot of chaos in service providers and local promotion.
Jingdong’s takeaway is so popular that you can earn 1,000 yuan a day? A mixed bag of service providers
The reporter noticed that after JD.com disclosed its investment policy for the food delivery business, a large number of recruitment information for JD.com’s food delivery business appeared on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin social media and 51555.com. Attractive advertisements such as "170 yuan per order, making a thousand yuan a day is not a dream", "JD.com is urgently recruiting, 180 yuan/order, no threshold high income" and other attractive advertisements are everywhere, and there are even contents such as "The biggest business opportunity in 2025, you will regret it if you miss it".
In addition, online local promotion service platforms such as Jietui Alliance and Rentuibang have taken notice and launched related projects one after another, attracting the active participation of a large number of local service providers. Among them, the reward of up to 170 yuan for single store promotion has attracted many people. As of February 25, the number of people participating in JD’s food delivery promotion on the Rentibang platform alone has exceeded the 140,000 mark.
On Xiaohongshu, the reporter joined a JD.com food delivery local promotion group, and hundreds of people gathered inside to discuss how to better promote JD.com’s food delivery, how to persuade potential merchants to join, and there are many templates for JD.com’s food delivery local promotion, from clothing to speech skills and so on.
However, behind this wave of land promotion craze, there are also many hidden worries.
Wang Tao (pseudonym), a JD.com takeaway local promotion service agent from Beijing, revealed to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that JD.com’s local promotion model is self-operated and service agent agency, but large chain catering brands have been included in JD.com’s “white list” and service providers are not allowed to contact them. According to him, to become a service provider, you need to pay a deposit of 100,000 yuan to JD.com. For every successful promotion of a merchant, JD.com will provide a promotion fee of 200 yuan.
However, Wang Tao admitted that it has become more difficult to promote locally now, and the length of time a merchant has opened a store has also been included in the assessment criteria. If the merchant fails to continue operating within one month after the promotion, the promotion fee will not be settled.
For a time, negative voices such as "JD.com's local promotion is a scam", "Be careful, JD.com's local promotion is difficult to make a profit", "The unit price of 170 yuan is false propaganda" and other negative voices came one after another. Some service providers who claimed to have obtained the qualifications to promote JD.com's takeout delivery also began to send out "dissuade signals", saying that even service providers are unable to determine when they will receive promotion fees, let alone individuals who directly participate in local promotion.
Li Wei (pseudonym), a local promotion practitioner in Hubei, said that he spent 5 days and visited nearly 50 merchants. Although some merchants passed JD.com's review, they have not yet received any settlement money. The T+3 settlement cycle originally promised by the platform has now been changed to monthly settlement, and the requirements for merchant information submission have become increasingly strict, with the number of product uploads increased from the initial 5 to 15. Faced with this series of changes, Xiao Wang could only choose to suspend promotion to avoid futile efforts.
A reporter from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned from JD.com’s official customer service office that recruitment of JD.com’s food delivery service providers is only open to enterprises and does not support individual applications, and JD.com has not authorized any third-party agency to conduct fee-based investment promotion activities.
The merchant’s order volume has not yet increased, but the rider’s unit price and rewards are relatively high.
The reporter found that when he opened the JD.com APP, the center of the "Instant Delivery" section that came into view was conspicuously marked with a "Merchant Settlement" fast track.
During the entry process, merchants are required to provide multiple qualification certificates including business licenses, food business licenses and legal person identity documents. Then select the delivery mode on the mobile phone - whether to rely on Dada's fast service or the merchant's own delivery. After completing the company's real-name authentication and successfully passing the review, the contract can be formally signed.
At present, large chain brands dominate the JD.com food delivery platform, covering multiple catering categories such as coffee, tea, fast food, and barbecue. Well-known brands such as Luckin Coffee, Juewei Duck Neck, Xijie Fried Skewers, and Burger King have settled in, while there are relatively few small merchants on the streets.
When conducting surveys on merchants settled in Beijing, Zhengzhou, Shanghai and other places, reporters from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned that most merchants reported that the order volume of JD.com’s food delivery platform is still in its infancy.
For example, a store of Zui Noodles in Beijing revealed that since it was connected to the JD.com platform for a week, almost no one paid attention at the beginning. Only recently has a small number of orders gradually poured in, with an average of two to three orders per day. Mr. Li, the person in charge of a brand restaurant in Zhengzhou, also expressed similar troubles. His store received less than 5 orders for takeout on JD.com every day, compared with more than 30 orders on the Meituan platform.
On February 25, a reporter from "Kechuangban Daily" visited a business district in Pudong New Area, Shanghai. It was during the lunch break. According to the reporter's observation, the delivery riders waiting to pick up food at various restaurants in the business district and busy on the road were all wearing Meituan or Ele.me work clothes. There were not many Dada instant delivery riders serving JD.com's takeaways.
A crowdsourced (i.e. part-time rider, not working full-time on a certain platform) food delivery rider told reporters that currently there are not many orders for JD.com’s food delivery. "Meituan and Ele.me have more orders, but I compared them and found that the orders sent to me by Dada are relatively close to each other. Meituan is relatively far away, and Dada usually picks up more orders," the rider said.
According to the rider, although the order volume of JD.com's takeaways is currently small, the unit price is relatively high, and there is also a 30 yuan bonus for the first order. "The same order is only 13.4 yuan on Meituan, but you can get 21.4 yuan on JD.com," the rider said.
On the 51job recruitment website, Guangzhou Yuming Property Management Co., Ltd. is recruiting JD.com takeout riders. According to the company’s recruitment manager surnamed Chen, he told reporters that they are responsible for the online recruitment of JD.com. Takeaway riders have a base salary of 4,000 + various subsidies (order bonus + subsidy + perfect attendance) + commission. The average unit price is 7-9 yuan. The comprehensive estimated salary for novices is 7,000-8,000 yuan, and that for experienced workers is 8,000-10,000 yuan.
As for the social security issue of JD’s delivery riders. The above-mentioned supervisor surnamed Chen said that the full-time in-store rider will usually be installed on the site one month after joining the company.