Source | Paidai Recently, JD.com's self-operated food delivery store "Qixian Kitchen" quietly launched on Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase. This new dining concept, only three months old, was previously seen as a core piece of JD's delivery ecosystem, but now it is proactively stepping into competitors' core territory. Currently, Qixian Kitchen has only one store in Beijing, with over 400 monthly orders on Meituan and over 2,000 on Taobao Flash Purchase. In the "three-way split" of the food delivery war, Taobao Flash Purchase, JD Delivery, and Meituan stand as three pillars, each guarding its own ground—Qixian Kitchen's move is both a signal of JD breaking platform barriers and a microcosm of the instant retail track shifting from "subsidy war" to "long-term battle."
JD Food Delivery's Open Mindset, Multi-platform Presence On July 20 this year, Qixian Kitchen's first self-operated food delivery store opened in Beijing's Dongcheng District. Users can order online and choose delivery or pickup. All dishes are made on-site by cooking robots, with no pre-made meals. Qixian Kitchen's core model subverts the traditional "sub-landlord" logic of food delivery: JD fully bears rent, labor, and operational costs, while recruited "dish partners" only need to focus on R&D. This "low-risk entrepreneurship" model received 66,000 applications in the first week after recruitment began in July. Qixian Kitchen's ingredient procurement leverages JD's direct sourcing advantages with COFCO and Yihai Kerry, making ingredient costs lower than traditional restaurants. Short-term costs are relatively higher in central kitchen construction and smart equipment investment, such as cooking robots and cold-chain logistics. In the long run, since labor costs in traditional Chinese restaurant chains account for about 25-30% of revenue, Qixian Kitchen further reduces labor costs through robot application. Beijing market data shows that an average chef's monthly salary is about 8,000 yuan, with an annual cost of nearly 100,000 yuan, while a commercial cooking robot costs only tens of thousands of yuan and can operate 24/7, significantly reducing standardization costs. Relatively speaking, Qixian Kitchen relies on JD's supply chain to keep prices for core dishes like rice bowls stable in the 15-25 yuan range, distinguishing itself from cheap "ghost kitchens" while offering better value than traditional chain restaurants. Data shows that in the first week of opening, daily orders exceeded 1,000, and the 3-day repurchase rate was 220% higher than the industry average. When first launched, Qixian Kitchen was only available on JD Delivery. As of October, Qixian Kitchen had completed 90,000 deliveries through JD Delivery, basically completing validation on its own channel. Against this backdrop, Qixian Kitchen chose to join more delivery platforms—Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase. However, industry insiders testing found that for new users' first orders, Qixian Kitchen offers better prices on JD Delivery. For example, for an Americano, JD Delivery is cheapest at 6.18 yuan per cup with a 10 yuan minimum order; Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase prices are 10.9 yuan and 11.8 yuan per cup respectively, with a 20 yuan minimum order. JD has stated that Qixian Kitchen is very open to joining other platforms; as long as consumers need it or platforms are willing, cooperation is possible. Even "Qixian Coffee," unveiled at JD's Global Technology Exploration Conference in late September and embedded in Qixian Kitchen, has also launched on Meituan and Taobao. Before Qixian Kitchen, JD's retail businesses such as JD Pharmacy, JD Convenience Store, JD Wine World, and Qixian Supermarket had already joined Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase. JD's newly launched self-operated medical aesthetics business has also been listed on Meituan, forming a cross-platform matrix of "retail + services."
Why is JD Food Delivery Joining Competitors' Platforms? Qixian Kitchen's presence on competitor platforms is essentially JD's strategic breakout in the instant retail track. After Liu Qiangdong bluntly stated that JD had "lost five years," instant retail is seen as the most important innovation breakthrough, and Qixian Kitchen's multi-platform layout is the concrete implementation of this strategy. Its primary intent is to solve the traffic dilemma. Although JD Delivery has captured a certain market share, compared to Meituan's hundreds of millions of high-frequency users and Taobao's ecosystem traffic, a single platform's user ceiling is lower. Taobao Flash Purchase, as a first-level entry point on the platform, integrates supply from Ele.me and Hema. Qixian Kitchen's entry allows direct access to Alibaba's existing users; Meituan's deep penetration in food delivery scenarios helps cover lower-tier markets and younger demographics. This strategy of "using third-party platforms to scale" allows Qixian Kitchen to balance differentiated pricing—JD Delivery maintains price and service advantages, while Meituan and Taobao attract traffic through stacked large coupons. Cost sharing is another key logic. The core barrier in instant retail lies in fulfillment efficiency, but insufficient order density on a single channel raises marginal costs, and hiring a large number of full-time riders increases labor costs. By integrating with Meituan's courier service and Taobao Flash Purchase's delivery network, it not only reduces fulfillment costs for long-distance orders but also enhances supply chain bargaining power through order scale. A Meituan delivery rider said on social media: "JD riders aren't enough; JD's deliveries are being handled by Meituan. I've delivered for JD several times; the two companies have already started cooperating." A deeper consideration lies in ecosystem synergy. Besides joining Taobao and Meituan to bring larger order volumes and expand delivery range, JD's ultimate goal in food delivery is to build a "high-frequency driving low-frequency" flywheel effect—using the high-frequency consumption of food delivery to activate JD's low-frequency retail categories. User data and brand awareness accumulated by Qixian Kitchen on third-party platforms can feed back into JD's membership system, driving traffic to core businesses like 3C and home appliances. However, for Qixian Kitchen, multi-platform development also carries risks that cannot be ignored. There are mainly three points: First, commission costs on other platforms are high. The comprehensive fee rate (commission + advertising, etc.) for the food and beverage category on Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase is between 15%-20%, higher than JD's internal settlement costs on its own channel, directly compressing profit margins. Second, delivery coordination challenges. Qixian Kitchen relies on its own riders on JD's channel, but on third-party platforms it needs to integrate with Meituan's courier service or Fengniao Instant Delivery. Differences in service standards among different teams may affect user experience. Third, intense industry competition. Paidai testing found that on Taobao Flash Purchase and Meituan apps, when the address is within Qixian Kitchen's delivery range, Qixian Kitchen does not appear in the first three screens of recommended feeds; it can only be found after searching. This means its brand awareness on third-party platforms still needs cultivation, and relying solely on paid exposure is not sustainable.
Food Delivery Three-Way Battle: Qixian Kitchen Has a Long Way to Go Qixian Kitchen's multi-platform layout is just a small step in JD's instant retail strategy. Since the first store opened, JD has announced plans to build 10,000 Qixian Kitchen stores nationwide within three years. In the fourth quarter of this year, it will prioritize entering 10 first- and second-tier cities including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, and Hangzhou to complete the first batch of scaled store layouts. In the future, it is expected to gradually launch on multiple platforms like Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase. Paidai believes that Qixian Kitchen's scaled expansion still needs to solve the problem of "cross-regional replication of the supply chain." Currently, Qixian Kitchen's ingredient procurement and pre-processing rely on JD's supply chain. For pre-processing, Qixian Kitchen adopts a "central kitchen + clean vegetable factory" model, where partner factories complete standardized cutting and testing, then deliver via cold chain to stores. Theoretically, this avoids traditional kitchen hygiene risks and improves operational efficiency. However, its ingredient supply is still concentrated in first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. As stores expand to second- and third-tier cities, how to control cold-chain costs and fresh food spoilage rates within reasonable ranges will be the ultimate test of JD's supply chain capabilities. Qixian Kitchen's move to join Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase has opened a new gap in the instant retail industry: when the smoke of the subsidy war clears, true competition is no longer about traffic grabbing, but a comprehensive contest of supply chain efficiency, model innovation, and ecosystem synergy. JD's Qixian Kitchen's pioneering attempt, in the "three-way split" landscape, may break platform barriers and gain more growth space. From a merchant perspective, Qixian Kitchen's model innovation and multi-platform operation have a greater impact on food and beverage merchants, but more product retail merchants are paying attention to how JD will combine near-field and far-field e-commerce, i.e., the "food delivery + express delivery" model. Qixian Kitchen's cross-platform entry into Meituan and Taobao is an important strategic move by JD in the "second half" of instant retail. It no longer sticks to its own ecosystem but actively breaks boundaries to seek growth in a larger market. Behind this is JD's comprehensive consideration of traffic, costs, and synergy effects, also reflecting that industry competition is shifting from "subsidy war" to "efficiency war." In the future, whether Qixian Kitchen can achieve its "10,000-store goal" depends on whether its supply chain can be efficiently replicated, whether cross-regional operational costs can be controlled, and whether it can build sustained brand influence on third-party platforms. For the entire industry, JD's move also sends a signal: the endgame of instant retail is not about who eats whom, but how to coexist in openness and improve quality through synergy. This path is not easy, but it is worth looking forward to.