Online food orders surge for delivery giants like Meituan as China endures heatwave

China’s spell of hot weather has seen a surge in online food deliveries as consumers opt to stay indoors and order everything from ice cream and iced watermelon to beer and barbecue skewers.

Meituan Dianping, the country’s largest online food delivery platform, saw daily orders surpass 30 million for the first time over the weekend, company co-founder and chief executive Wang Xing announced on his Weibo account on Monday.

The surge of online orders comes amid a weeks-long heatwave that has hit many parts of the country. A dozen cities, including Beijing, Chongqing and urban centres in Hebei and Shandong provinces, have registered record high temperatures, according to the National Meteorological Centre, which on Sunday extended heatwave warnings that began earlier this month.

Both Meituan and Ele.me, the country’s two major food delivery platforms, reported temporary breakdowns of their app services on Saturday, in part because of an overload of orders amid the hot weather.

A Meituan spokesman confirmed the system glitch, adding that the cause was “not entirely order spikes”, without elaborating further.

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Ele.me, owned by Alibaba Group, did not immediately respond to inquiries. Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.