The real hidden agenda behind Liu Qiangdong's move into the food delivery business has finally come to light.
JD.com's food delivery business has been operating for over a year, and its key core operational leader has left the company.
On November 4, Yicai Global reported that Guo Qing, head of the Local Life Service Business Group of JD Group, recently resigned for personal reasons. TMTPost cited sources close to JD on the same day that the new person in charge and the management team have long been deeply rooted in the supply chain sector, and the business will enter the "JD Food Delivery 2.0" stage with supply chain innovation as the core.
Guo Qing is known as "Lao K" in the industry. From Meituan's hotel & travel business to JD's food delivery, he brought the experience of opening up new situations in markets where leading platforms already hold dominant advantages. Over the past year and more, JD has achieved tens of millions of daily orders by relying on zero-commission policies, subsidies and rider security guarantees, and has also paid high investment for this.
However, Liu Qiangdong, founder and Chairman of the Board of JD Group, has never only aimed at competing for orders for the food delivery business. In parallel with market expansion, JD is also promoting food material supply and catering production, and integrating instant delivery capabilities.
Guo Qing helped JD get the admission ticket to the food delivery market. Now, with the supply chain team taking over, what JD needs to prove is what the users and orders obtained through high investment can ultimately leave for the group besides food delivery market share.
01 Guo Qing Brought the Breakthrough Experience That JD Needed
In the autumn of 2023, Guo Qing, who was looking for financing for his startup project, had his first video call with Liu Qiangdong. After the discussion ended in the morning, he had a meal with his former colleague Wang Huiwen, co-founder of Meituan, at noon.
Two years later, Guo Qing recalled in an interview with *China Entrepreneur* that during the financing period of his startup, he contacted multiple investors including Meituan, and Liu Qiangdong was the one who "gave support the fastest and without any hesitation". In that communication, JD's concept of "technology + supply chain" was recognized by him, and the two sides quickly reached a consensus on business values.
This contact laid the groundwork for Guo Qing to join JD in the future. Before that, he had already fought a battle as a latecomer at Meituan.
In March 2014, Guo Qing joined Meituan, and successively served as General Manager of the Accommodation Division and Head of the Hotel & Travel Business, in charge of hotels, homestays, tickets and vacation businesses, and entered S-team, Meituan's highest management decision-making team, in January 2020.
When he joined, platforms such as Trip.com, Qunar and eLong had already occupied dominant positions in the online travel market. The breakthrough point that Meituan found was economy hotels, third- and fourth-tier cities and local accommodation demands. Relying on the users accumulated from its local life business, Meituan started from these markets and gradually expanded to high-star hotels.
With users, there must also be enough hotels to choose from. Guo Qing led the team to sign merchants through offline promotion, telemarketing and other methods, and put more hotels on the platform. After the hotels were signed in, users might not be able to check in smoothly. According to Meituan's group-buying model at that time, after consumers bought hotel group-buying vouchers, they had to call to confirm the room availability, and in peak seasons, they might even encounter the situation where there were vouchers but no available rooms.
In July 2015, Guo Qing led the team to discuss for three days in Huangshan, and finally decided to fully shift the hotel business to reservation, and the product direction was also clarified accordingly: "group-buying price, reservation experience". Consumers can confirm the room and check-in date when placing an order, without having to call after buying the voucher. By the first quarter of 2016, the proportion of hotel reservations had risen from 0 to 90%.
In addition to ensuring that users can book and check in smoothly, Meituan also had to deal with the subsidy offensive of competitors.
At that time, Qunar competed for hotel users through large subsidies, and Meituan also tried to follow up. Guo Qing later recalled that the team was approved millions of yuan of test funds, but only spent hundreds of thousands of yuan before stopping it. The repurchase performance of users attracted by subsidies was poor, and it was difficult to earn back the money.
After several years of efforts, Meituan gained a firm foothold in the hotel market. From 2014 to 2017, the number of domestic hotel room nights of Meituan increased from 45 million to about 200 million, gaining a place in the market where platforms such as Trip.com held advantages.
In October 2021, Guo Qing left Meituan. A month later, he joined the service robot company Oakloud Technology and served as co-founder and CEO. The company later shifted its business focus to commercial cooking robots, and changed its name to Oakdeer Technology in January 2024.
It was also when he was looking for financing for this company that Guo Qing had that video communication with Liu Qiangdong.
In December 2023, Oakloud Technology obtained tens of millions of yuan in financing from JD Group. In January 2024, 36Kr reported that Guo Qing had served as a consultant to Xu Ran, CEO of JD Group, responsible for researching and exploring robot-related businesses. According to the appointment announcement released by Dada Group in August of the same year, Guo Qing has served as a consultant to JD Group and Dada Group since April 2024.
After that, JD continued to increase its investment in Oakdeer Technology, and Guo Qing's responsibilities at JD gradually increased. In July 2024, Oakdeer Technology received another nearly 200 million yuan of strategic investment from JD; on August 20, Guo Qing became the chairman of the board of Dada Group.
By July 2025, the original Dada Division was renamed the Local Life Service Business Group, with departments including Instant Delivery (including food delivery), Hotel & Travel, Housekeeping and other departments under it. Guo Qing served as the person in charge and reported to Xu Ran. Talking about his responsibilities, he said that first of all, he must implement Liu Qiangdong's strategic deployment well, and secondly, cooperate with Xu Ran's work.
From hotel & travel to food delivery, Guo Qing once again stood in the position of a latecomer. Although JD has a huge e-commerce user base and instant delivery foundation, to convert these resources into food delivery competitiveness, it still needs to expand the supply of catering merchants, cultivate user habits, and make the existing transport capacity able to take the concentrated orders during peak meal hours. These are all thresholds that must be crossed to convert existing resources into new businesses. Guo Qing has done merchant expansion at Meituan, modified the transaction process, and experienced the trade-off between subsidies and returns, which exactly matches the experience that JD needs.
02 JD Food Delivery Finds It Difficult to Break Through Only by Subsidies
When JD entered the food delivery sector, it made efforts simultaneously from the three ends of merchants, riders and consumers.
On February 11, 2025, JD Food Delivery launched the recruitment of "quality dine-in catering merchants", and implemented a full-year zero-commission policy for merchants that settled in before May 1 of that year; on February 19, JD announced that it would gradually pay five social insurances and one housing fund for full-time food delivery riders from March 1; on April 11, the "10-Billion-Yuan Subsidy" program was launched.
In less than four months, JD Food Delivery achieved a tens of millions of order scale. On June 1, 2025, JD announced that the daily order volume exceeded 25 million, and the number of settled quality catering stores exceeded 1.5 million.
What food delivery brings is not just catering orders. Guo Qing later said that food delivery has brought significant traffic and user growth to JD, and has significantly driven the sales of categories such as instant retail, daily necessities and supermarkets. Users open the JD App for a meal, and may also buy other goods by the way, so high-frequency catering consumption drives JD's original retail business.
Alibaba also wanted this high-frequency entry. On April 30, 2025, Taobao's "Hourly Delivery" was upgraded to Taobao Flash Purchase, combining Taobao's traffic entry with Ele.me's merchant supply and delivery capabilities; on July 2, Taobao Flash Purchase announced that it would invest 50 billion yuan in subsidies for consumers and merchants in the next 12 months. In the face of JD's entry and Alibaba's increased investment, Meituan also increased catering subsidies, and expanded supply through models such as "brand satellite stores" and "Pinhaofan".
The more fierce the competition for orders, the greater the cost paid by the platforms, and the pressure was quickly transmitted to the profit statement.
In 2025, the operating loss of the new business division, including food delivery, JD Industrial Development, Jingxi and overseas businesses, expanded from 2.865 billion yuan in the previous year to 46.641 billion yuan. In the same period, JD Group's marketing expenses increased from about 48 billion yuan to 84 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 75.1%, mainly due to the increased investment in new business promotion.
The extra profits earned by the core retail business also failed to offset the pressure brought by the expansion of new businesses. In 2025, JD Retail's operating profit increased from 41.1 billion yuan to 51.4 billion yuan, an increase of about 10.3 billion yuan, but the group's operating profit dropped from about 38.7 billion yuan to 2.8 billion yuan.
The other two platforms also paid a price. In 2025, Meituan's core local business turned from an operating profit of 52.4 billion yuan to an operating loss of 6.9 billion yuan. In the quarter ended September 30, 2025, Alibaba Group's adjusted EBITA fell 78% year-on-year to 9.073 billion yuan, and Alibaba attributed the decline mainly to investment in instant retail, user experience and technology.
Even under such investment pressure, JD still set a higher target for its food delivery business. On February 28, 2026, JD Food Delivery released its first anniversary open letter, stating that it had obtained more than 240 million users placing orders in the first year of launch, and proposed to increase its market share to 30% in 2026.
However, the market data disclosed half a year later shows that JD is still far away from this goal.
According to a report released by Goldman Sachs in August 2026 cited by Jiemian News, in the second quarter of 2026, the average daily order volume of Meituan, Alibaba and JD was about 80 million, 66 million and 16 million respectively, corresponding to a proportion of about 49%, 41% and 10%.
Estimates from other institutions also show a similar competitive pattern. A report released by Analysys in August shows that in the second quarter of 2026, the market shares of Taobao instant transaction, Meituan and JD were 45.7%, 45.3% and 7.7% respectively. At the special meeting organized by Guosen Securities in July, a food delivery industry person estimated that Meituan's market share in June was about 52%, Taobao Flash Purchase was about 41%, and JD was about 7%.
The three sets of data have different statistical calibers, but they point to the same pattern: JD only accounts for 7%-10%, and Meituan and Taobao Flash Purchase together control about 90% of the market. JD has already got the admission ticket to the food delivery market, but has not formed a tripartite confrontation pattern. If it wants to catch up from about 10% to 30%, it still needs to bear high subsidies and performance costs; the investment in the past year has not shaken the duopoly pattern, and it is difficult to effectively narrow the gap by continuing to use the original strategy.
JD has begun to adjust its investment. In March 2026, Xu Ran said at the earnings call that if the market competition situation is stable, the total investment in the food delivery business in that year is expected to decrease compared with 2025. By the second quarter, the total loss of JD Food Delivery narrowed by more than 50% year-on-year, and the subsidy per order decreased significantly. In the same period, JD Group's marketing expenses decreased by 24.8% year-on-year to 20.3 billion yuan, and the financial report attributed the decrease mainly to the optimization of new business promotion investment.
30% is still the share target put forward by JD at the beginning of the year, but another set of indicators actually improved in the second quarter: losses, subsidies per order and marketing expenses are all decreasing, and commissions and advertising have begun to contribute revenue. The actual priority of JD Food Delivery has shifted from continuing to aggressively expand market share to controlling subsidies, improving delivery efficiency and accelerating commercialization.
The other two platforms are doing the same thing. In the second quarter of 2026, Meituan's core local business achieved an operating profit of 5.668 billion yuan, turning from loss to profit month-on-month; while maintaining market share, Taobao Flash Purchase continued to improve unit economic efficiency month-on-month, mainly benefiting from the increase in order value and fulfillment efficiency.
The space to continue launching the subsidy war is also restricted by supervision. On June 17, 2026, the State Administration for Market Regulation publicly solicited opinions on the "Ten Norms for Subsidy Behaviors of Food Delivery Platforms (Draft for Comment)", which proposes to clarify that long-term and large subsidies shall not be used to exclude and restrict market competition, merchants shall not be forced or disguised to participate in subsidy activities, and merchants or riders shall not be required to bear the subsidy costs.
Market share, profit performance and regulatory direction have all led to the same result: there is little room left for JD's imagination in food delivery competition. Guo Qing helped JD complete the process from 0 to 1. The next task is no longer to continue to spend money to buy share, but to keep the existing scale, reduce the cost of each order, and then let this group of users and orders generate more revenue in JD's retail, supply chain and delivery system.
03 The Supply Chain Business Behind Food Delivery Has Been Continuously Promoted
Liu Qiangdong has talked about where the revenue of food delivery can come from long ago.
On June 17, 2025, he publicly stated that what the outside world sees is the food delivery competition between JD and Meituan, but what JD really wants is the fresh food supply chain behind it. Selling meals at the front end "can never make money", and it is enough to make money from the supply chain.
More than a month later, the first 7FRESH Chef Kitchen store officially opened in Beijing. On July 22, 2025, JD launched the Dish Partner Program, investing 1 billion yuan in cash to recruit partners for 1000 signature dishes. Catering brands or chefs provide formulas and participate in R&D, and 7FRESH Chef Kitchen is responsible for on-site stir-frying and quality control; each selected dish can get a guaranteed share of 1 million yuan, and there is no upper limit for subsequent sales share.
JD also announced at the same time that it plans to invest more than 10 billion yuan in three years to build 10,000 7FRESH Chef Kitchen stores across the country.
By operating 7FRESH Chef Kitchen, JD is not just connecting merchants and consumers, but also making the meals. The food material supply chain is organized by JD. Meat and pre-processed vegetables are washed, cut, tested and packaged in the factory, and then delivered to the stores through cold chain for stir-frying after opening the bag. From food material procurement to meal production, JD is trying to establish a set of production processes that can be replicated repeatedly.
To move this process to tens of thousands of stores, the menu must first be streamlined enough. Guo Qing once introduced that even if there are 1000 cooperative dishes in the future, 7FRESH Chef Kitchen will not sell more than 30 dishes at the same time. With fewer dishes, it is easier for single product procurement to form scale, and store preparation and production are also simpler.
In the back kitchen, part of the standardization work is completed by cooking robots. When Jiemian News visited the first 7FRESH Chef Kitchen store in July 2025, it saw multiple small cooking machines in operation. The report cited people familiar with the matter as saying that Oakdeer Robot is one of the partners of 7FRESH Chef Kitchen.
Procurement and production can be unified, but whether the store can continuously receive enough orders affects whether the cost advantage of this model can be realized.
The premise for standardization to be converted into cost advantage is that the store can continuously obtain enough orders. In October 2025, a reporter from *The Beijing News* found 7FRESH Chef Kitchen stores on Meituan Food Delivery and Taobao