On August 18, "food delivery war, slow delivery" topped Weibo's trending topics, with numerous users complaining about delivery service issues across social media platforms including Weibo and Xiaohongshu. As the "subsidy war" cools down, user sensitivity to food delivery platforms' fulfillment and service capabilities is rising.

A review of Xiaohongshu reveals over 90 complaint posts about slow food delivery within the past week, with grievances targeting JD.com, Meituan, and Taobao flash delivery. Consumer concerns include delivery times exceeding one hour, order delays, and lack of available riders to accept orders.

Behind these issues lies a significant shift: as anti-involution sentiment grows and "price wars" subside, the food delivery battle is entering the "deep waters" of service competition.

Delivery chaos during peak hours has been commonplace this summer. Over the past several months, multiple reports have documented how low-price promotions like "zero-yuan purchases" led to overwhelming orders at bubble tea shops and other establishments, resulting in merchants unable to fulfill orders, riders canceling deliveries, and overall delivery failures. However, low prices previously masked much user dissatisfaction with fulfillment.

Food delivery platforms have significantly expanded their rider workforce this summer. According to Taobao flash delivery data, Ele.me's monthly active rider count grew 181% through the end of July, with crowdsourced riders increasing 236%. The number of riders earning over 10,000 yuan in July reached 2.8 times last year's figure. By August 7, Ele.me's total rider count reached 3.5 times last year's level.

JD.com reported during its Q2 earnings announcement that JD delivery processed 25 million daily orders in Q2, with direct labor contracts signed with over 150,000 full-time riders.

From a rider quantity perspective, investing in "delivery capacity" and improving fulfillment capabilities has become a key focus for platforms in the delivery wars. However, as food delivery subsidy battles cool down, platforms may face even greater fulfillment challenges.

Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst at iiMedia Research, explained that during intense delivery wars, platforms invested heavily and allocated abundant delivery resources, supporting rapid order growth. Afterward, insufficient platform subsidies or resource support could lead to slow delivery issues. Post-battle, whether platforms can continuously improve delivery system maturity and maintain sustainable incentive measures for delivery teams presents a significant challenge.

An industry insider noted that despite increased rider numbers, rider density varies by region and time periods, with peak hours testing system coordination capabilities. Beyond delivery capacity, delivery efficiency may relate to various system issues, such as inconsistencies between merchant systems showing user delivery times and rider app displays, causing merchants to delay food preparation and slow delivery. Unreasonable navigation routes leading to slow rider delivery are also issues platforms need to optimize.

With many new riders and merchants joining delivery platforms, requirements for system maturity have actually increased, demanding more "detailed work" from platforms.

Under multiple challenges, delivery efficiency and fulfillment capability competition may play increasingly important roles in future delivery wars.

Recently, Meituan has been pushing food delivery further into "15-minute" competition territory. On Meituan's food delivery search page, some stores display delivery times as "approximately 15 minutes," attracting users to enter stores. After placing test orders, merchants completed food preparation within approximately three minutes, and riders delivered orders covering nearly two kilometers within ten minutes, representing joint "training exercises" for merchants and riders.

However, actual payment page information shows Meituan typically "extends" estimated delivery times to 20 minutes. Social media users have complained that some "15-minute delivery" orders ultimately arrive after 30+ minutes.

The industry faces a contradiction between pursuing "15-minute delivery" and experiencing "slow delivery." Food delivery platforms simultaneously display ambitions to achieve higher efficiency while confronting the awkward reality that comprehensive capabilities still need improvement.

"This round of food delivery platform competition has very clear focal points, mainly revolving around three battlefields: users, merchants, and delivery capacity," stated a retail e-commerce industry expert and founder of Bilian Consulting. From an industry perspective, user-side competition has shifted from "incremental gaming" focused on user growth to "stock gaming" focused on extracting existing user value, with user stickiness and consumption share improvement as competitive keys. On the merchant side, competition will shift from saturated online physical goods merchants to massive offline local life service merchants. For delivery capacity, competition for rider resources represents this war's unique and most challenging element, testing not only capital strength but platforms' comprehensive ability to build order ecosystems.