New | Xiamen startup aims to change China’s US$7 billion food delivery market
Hygiene is a core selling point for ready to eat meal provider, Diet Internet
Chinese start-up Diet Internet aims to make mainland China’s US$7 billion food delivery market redundant in five years with its takeout machines, which let users order a hot meal via a mobile app and retrieve it in seconds by scanning a QR code at a machine nearby.
“The problem with food delivery in China is that hygiene is often not a priority for some restaurants. It’s not only the cooking process that is not hygienic, even the ingredients, and the delivery process are all not clean enough,” said Wang Lin, a co-founder of Diet Internet, at the Asia Beat 2016 conference last week.
In five years, we hope to completely eliminate the food delivery industry
Last week, China’s largest food delivery service Eleme, valued at US$3 billion, was being investigated by Shanghai authorities for violations against food safety laws after it was singled out by state-owned broadcaster CCTV for working with restaurants that operate without proper licenses or kitchens.
In contrast, Diet Internet, which is based in Xiamen, Fujian province, runs its own central kitchen. The kitchen mass-produces six different sets of meals for the day. Each meal comes with a side of vegetables, an appetiser, a soup and a main.
The company then stocks the 20 machines it has in Xiamen with the set meals before 11am each morning, and the food is kept warm at 65 degrees Celsius. Consumers can place an order on Diet Internet’s mobile app to purchase a meal at a specific machine, before collecting the food between 11am and 1pm each day.
“When you order takeout, delivery time is often uncertain. Sometimes the food arrives earlier than you expect it to and other times it arrives too late, and you receive a cold meal,” said Wang.