Meituan, Ele.me relax food delivery time targets after backlash over risky conditions for riders
- Many food delivery riders in China risk their lives to meet deadlines even under extreme weather conditions, according to a report that has gone viral
- Meituan will add eight minutes to its dispatch time while Ele.me will allow customers to indicate willingness to wait up to 10 minutes more for deliveries
Meituan, which accounted for more than 68 per cent of the market as of the second quarter of 2020 according to market research firm Trustdata, said in a statement on Wednesday that its dispatch system will include an extra eight minutes for riders to “wait for elevators and slow down a little bit at the crossroads”.
“We will continue to optimise the system to guarantee the riders a safe driving time,” it added. “Under bad weather conditions, the system will lengthen delivery times for riders and even stop taking orders.”
Ele.me also said on Tuesday that it will launch a function that allows customers to indicate whether they are willing to wait up to 10 minutes longer for their deliveries.
The report, based on interviews with over 30 delivery riders from Ele.me and Meituan – which collectively dominate 90 per cent of the food delivery market in China, according to Trustdata – found that many riders violate traffic laws and risk their lives to meet ever-shortening delivery windows.
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Many food delivery riders risk their lives to meet deadlines even under extreme weather conditions, according to the report, which added that platforms like Ele.me and Meituan use algorithms to reduce waiting times for customers without considering the safety of couriers.
“Being a courier, you need to race against death, ‘battle’ with traffic cops and run red lights,” the report said.
An article on the official blog of Meituan’s tech team states that riders should aim to deliver each order within 30 minutes after it is submitted, which would include the time for restaurants to accept the order, prepare the food and distribute it to riders and for riders to travel to the delivery location, sometimes having to climb up several flights of stairs in the process.
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There were more than 4.6 million riders supporting the Chinese food delivery industry in the second quarter, according to Trustdata.
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“It’s a common phenomenon [in China] that food delivery riders violate traffic rules [to meet deadlines],” said Chen Liteng, an analyst from e-commerce research company China E-Commerce Research Centre. “On one hand, it’s because of the strict requirements for delivery time on these platforms … on the other hand, food delivery is a ‘more work, more pay’ job. The eagerness of riders to earn more is another reason.”
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On social media, most reactions to the Renwu story were supportive of food delivery riders, with netizens saying they would rather wait a little longer for their food than risk couriers’ lives.
“Most of my friends say they don’t care whether their food is delivered two minutes faster or not, and they will not get angry if it is 10 minutes late,” one user said in a comment that was liked over 29,000 times on WeChat. “In fact, the platform could be more lenient with couriers. We really are not in such a hurry.”
“We’re exploiting the safety of our riders while enjoying the convenience,” another popular comment on WeChat read. “I’d rather the delivery be slower.”
However, Chen said that while the awareness generated by the story may ease the pressure on riders a bit, users’ demands will not change in the longer term.
“In the end, this is a balance of interests between the food delivery platforms and the riders,” Chen said. “Comprising the rights of consumers is a solution but it’s not reasonable and cannot solve the fundamental problem.”
