21 New Cities Added: Why Is Meituan Keeta Accelerating Its Expansion in Brazil?

Meituan's food delivery business in Brazil is speeding up.

On October 6, Keeta, a food delivery brand under Meituan, announced that it would add 21 new cities in Brazil. Together with the previous 11 cities, the number of covered cities will reach 32, with its business expanding from São Paulo State to the inland areas. At present, the number of downloads of its application has exceeded 10 million.

This one-time addition of 21 new cities is the largest city-launching move since Keeta went global. According to the plan finalized in May 2025, Meituan will invest 1 billion US dollars in Brazil within five years.

How did Keeta gradually expand its presence and even speed up its development in Brazil? What is the strategic intention behind this expansion, and what challenges will it face after accelerating its pace?

I. 32 cities in one year: How did Keeta make a breakthrough in Brazil?

Keeta opened up the market in its first year of entering Brazil.

At the end of October 2025, Keeta first piloted in two small coastal cities of São Paulo State, Santos and São Vicente, with more than 700 catering brands registered at that time. Two months later, Keeta entered São Paulo, the largest city in Brazil, and covered 8 surrounding cities simultaneously. According to official data from Keeta, by the first anniversary of its entry into Brazil, Keeta had 83,000 registered restaurants and 430,000 registered riders.

The reason why it achieved such a scale within one year is that Keeta relies on its experience advantages in the food delivery sector and localized operation, and makes simultaneous investments in three directions: users, merchants and riders.

For example, on the user side, the maximum coupon for new customers is 200 reais, more than 90% of cooperating merchants waive delivery fees, and users can get compensation if their orders are delayed. On the merchant side, Keeta promises zero commission for three years, and only charges a payment fee of about 3.5%. On the rider side, the platform sets up a support plan with 100 million reais, supporting free cash withdrawal and offline training.

This strategy worked around São Paulo, but Keeta soon encountered resistance when entering big cities.

Keeta originally planned to enter Rio de Janeiro in March 2026, with a budget of more than 400 million reais, and 17,000 merchants and 27,000 riders were well prepared. However, one week before the scheduled city launch, the team found that the exclusivity ratio of chain merchants in Rio de Janeiro was far higher than expected, more than 55% of chain merchants could not settle in, while the originally estimated ratio was only 8% to 10%. The Rio de Janeiro plan had to be postponed indefinitely.

What blocked Keeta was the exclusive contracts signed between iFood (local Brazilian food delivery platform) and 99Food (under Didi) with merchants. Once merchants sign the contracts, they cannot operate on other platforms at the same time.

The ruling of the local court this year broke this deadlock. In September this year, the São Paulo State Court made a ruling on the exclusive clauses targeting Keeta in the 99Food contract, creating more space for Keeta to acquire merchants.

Only one week after the ruling took effect, Keeta announced the plan to add 21 new cities. It is worth noting that in this expansion, Keeta did not continue to compete head-on in big cities such as São Paulo, but turned to small and medium-sized inland cities.

According to Keeta's official announcement, the 21 new cities are distributed in the inland areas of multiple states such as Mato Grosso, Goiás, Paraná, and Minas Gerais, such as Sinop, Rio Verde, and Toledo. Merchants in these cities are not completely locked by exclusive contracts, and the competition is more relaxed, so Keeta focuses its expansion here.

II. Why does Meituan speed up its pace in Brazil?

Behind Keeta's accelerated layout, what is the strategic intention, which needs to be analyzed from several dimensions.

From the domestic perspective first, Meituan needs new growth space.

According to data from iiMedia Research, the penetration rate of China's online catering food delivery in 2024 was about 28%, the overall growth slowed down, and the scale of domestic merchants and users was basically stable. Wang Xing, CEO of Meituan, has listed globalization as one of the priorities of Meituan's second decade, and Latin America is recognized by Chinese Internet companies as the next overseas market after Southeast Asia.

Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America. By gaining a foothold in Brazil, Meituan's overseas layout will extend from Hong Kong of China and the Middle East to Latin America, forming a cross-regional network, and it can also export its mature domestic dispatching system and fulfillment capabilities to a larger market.

Looking at the Brazilian market itself, it has both large scale and incremental potential.

According to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics and DataReportal, Brazil had a population of about 213 million in 2025, ranking 7th in the world, with an Internet penetration rate of 86.9%. Specifically for the food delivery market, according to the calculation of China International Capital Corporation, the scale of Brazil's food delivery market in 2024 was about 18.7 billion US dollars, with a food delivery penetration rate of 19%, lower than 28% of China and the United States. By 2028, the market size is expected to reach 33.3 billion US dollars, with the penetration rate rising to 28.5%, and the average annual compound growth rate is about 15%.

More importantly, the onlineization of Brazil's catering industry is still in the early stage. According to the research of China International Capital Corporation, non-platform orders such as those from WhatsApp account for about 30%, a large number of catering merchants still manage their operations through handwritten records, and there is considerable incremental space to be tapped after platforms enter the market.

In addition to the market space, the accumulated problems of iFood itself also provide opportunities for new platforms to enter the market.

According to data from the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants, iFood has long occupied about 80% of the national market share, and problems such as high commissions, shortage of riders, and cumbersome order cancellation processes have made both merchants and consumers dissatisfied. When new platforms offer lower rates and more stable order dispatching services, these merchants are willing to switch platforms.

iFood's monopoly status has long attracted regulatory attention. According to the announcement of CADE (Administrative Council for Economic Defense of Brazil), in February 2023, CADE reached an agreement with iFood, prohibiting it from signing exclusive contracts with chain restaurants with more than 30 stores, and the proportion of exclusive cooperating merchants in cities with a population of more than 500,000 cannot exceed 8%.

In addition, Keeta also has to face 99Food, which also comes from China, and the latter is expanding faster.

Didi restarted 99Food in April 2025, several months earlier than Keeta, and it can rely on the capacity of about 700,000 riders of its 99 mobility business and the network covering more than 3,300 towns. In October 2025, 99Food has entered Rio de Janeiro, and gained a firm foothold in the two core metropolitan areas of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, while Keeta's plan to enter Rio de Janeiro has not been implemented yet.

According to the mid-year data of the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants, 99Food's share in São Paulo is about 30%, higher than Keeta's 10%. Didi previously announced that it will invest a total of 2 billion reais in 99Food, and plans to expand to 100 cities by mid-2026.

Facing the competitive situation where 99Food is also increasing its investment, Keeta will be at a disadvantage in the competition if its expansion speed cannot keep up.

At the same time, new local competitors in Brazil are also entering the market. According to the announcement of Magalu, a retail company, Magalu has recently integrated the acquired food delivery resources and launched its own distribution service, and the market pattern is still changing continuously.

After speeding up, what problems does Keeta still need to solve?

Although the city coverage has expanded, the difficult problems in the competition have not been solved accordingly, and Keeta still faces multiple tests in the next stage.

First of all, iFood's position is difficult to shake in the short term.

China International Capital Corporation pointed out that iFood has obvious advantages in supply, and some mid-to-high-end restaurants only provide food delivery services on its platform. According to the announcement of Prosus, in the past 18 months, under the subsidy offensive of competitors, iFood only lost about 5 percentage points of market share, while market leaders in other regions would lose about 20 percentage points under similar pressure.

This shows that the share that new entrants can take away from iFood is limited, and the user habits and merchant network accumulated by the platform will not loosen soon.

At the same time, the profit margin of the food delivery industry is very thin. According to the research of JPMorgan Chase, the net profit margin of mainstream platforms is only 1.5% to 3.3%. However, the orders of Keeta in the aforementioned inland cities of Brazil are more scattered, and the delivery radius is larger. It has not been verified yet whether the experience accumulated in Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and the Middle East can bring sufficient order density.

Secondly, localization and compliance are long-term challenges.

Keeta's previously public plan is to build a network of about 100,000 delivery partners in Brazil in the next few years. However, the compliance cost of gig workers in Brazil is rising, and payment, logistics, public security and consumption habits are all different from those in China, so the platform needs time to adapt.

In order to cope with these local differences, Keeta is also trying to apply its domestic technical capabilities. At the Brazil Catering Industry Exhibition in September this year, Keeta exhibited smart helmets and solutions that use AI to optimize order allocation and delivery. Whether these technologies can improve the actual operating efficiency remains to be verified in subsequent operations.

Back to this acceleration itself, it reflects that Chinese food delivery platforms still have room for expansion overseas, and Keeta has made up its mind to tap the Brazilian market.

However, the food delivery business ultimately returns to the fundamental issue of profitability. Keeta achieved per-order profitability 22 months after entering Saudi Arabia, faster than in Hong Kong. Brazil is different. There is a local giant iFood that has been deeply cultivated for more than ten years and occupies 80% of the market share, as well as 99Food that entered earlier and has a more solid local foundation.

For Meituan, it has only covered 32 cities so far. The real test lies in the long term, to see whether Keeta can retain merchants and users, and achieve sufficient order density in inland cities. This competition has just begun.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Growth Workshop", written by Zhu Ming, edited by Xiang Qing, and published with authorization by 36Kr.