The announcement that Huaxia Liangzi is pursuing a Hong Kong IPO has thrust the massage and foot therapy sector, a traditionally low-profile but billion-yuan industry, into the spotlight. According to iResearch, the national market size for massage and foot therapy is projected to surpass 730 billion yuan by 2026, serving nearly 250 million users. However, in stark contrast to its scale, this industry remains one of the least digitized segments within the broader life services sector.
Consumers frequently encounter frustrations such as purchasing vouchers without knowing if they can even get through the door, or arriving at a store only to face long waits for a different therapist. These common pain points highlight a deeper industrial challenge: when service quality depends so heavily on the human element, how can a business maintain its standards while scaling up? This is a critical question for companies like Huaxia Liangzi as they prepare for their capital market debut. It is also the challenge that internet platforms like Meituan are attempting to address through booking capabilities and the digitalization of skilled practitioners, offering a potential solution for the industry.
Massage and foot therapy is a centuries-old trade. From small family-run shops on street corners to modern chains expanding aggressively, the industry has experienced decades of extensive, unrefined growth. Yet, the pattern of a vast market with small, fragmented brands has not fundamentally changed. Market concentration among leading brands is extremely low, with most outlets operating as single units or small chains. This situation stems from three distinct mismatches.
The first is a supply-demand mismatch. Unlike dining or hotels, the core product in foot therapy is the immediate, physical service provided by a person. The therapist's technique, pressure, and communication style directly determine the consumer's experience. For a long time, customers had almost no way to know a therapist's true skill level before entering a store, often not even knowing who would be serving them. This made consumption a gamble, with highly variable experiences.
The second is a time mismatch. Business flow is highly uneven, with stores often empty on weekday afternoons but overcrowded in the evenings and on weekends. Customers who purchase group-buying vouchers cannot confirm how long they will wait upon arrival, while stores taking orders cannot predict when peak traffic will hit. This mutual uncertainty leads to negative experiences like being turned away or enduring long queues, which in turn drives up refund rates and customer service inquiries.
The third is a capability mismatch. A skilled therapist with excellent technique, low complaint rates, and many repeat customers often sees their abilities go unrecognized under traditional operating models, as there is no transparent system to quantify or price their skills. Without a clear evaluation system or traceable professional profile, a therapist's income frequently fails to reflect their true capability, and the phenomenon of bad money driving out good is not uncommon.
These three mismatches combine to create a ceiling for the industry's growth. Unlike the restaurant industry, which achieved large-scale franchising through standardized dishes and process management, the foot therapy sector is inherently harder to standardize because its core service depends on immediate, personalized human interaction. Notably, while AI can now handle tasks like copywriting and graphic design, it cannot perform physical therapy in a real-world space, nor can it adjust to highly personalized requests like "more pressure here" or "lighter on the left side." The practical skills and emotional value provided by therapists remain irreplaceable, making it all the more necessary for digital transformation to start with the most difficult and fundamental variables: the people and their time.
Meituan's introduction of a "multi-form booking" capability is an attempt to answer these very questions. This feature allows a single product listing to offer both group-buying and reservation-based service. When placing an order, users can select a specific time slot, confirm the service type, and even indicate a therapist preference. The order is confirmed immediately upon placement, and service begins upon arrival, eliminating the need for phone calls or hoping for availability. From an industry perspective, this is not just a simple product update but a shift in how connections are made—moving from a "traffic logic" to a "fulfillment logic." Previously, the platform's transaction ended with a voucher sold; now, it extends to a locked-in service.
The data offers a measure of how well this system is working. As of now, over 40% of foot therapy merchants on Meituan's platform have enabled booking features, a significant jump from less than 10% a year ago. Meanwhile, customer inquiries for foot therapy orders on the platform have dropped by 86%, indicating that most consumers can now complete the entire process online—from checking availability to selecting a time and confirming the order—without needing to call for confirmation. Additionally, industry refund rates have been narrowing, as more transparent inventory information and reliable time commitments reduce the number of refunds triggered by failed fulfillment or mismatched information.
Feedback from merchants provides more concrete evidence. Take "Qingsongke Chinese Massage," a local Beijing chain with four stores in the city's core Haidian business district. Before integrating Meituan's booking system, the stores relied heavily on phone confirmation and manual scheduling. After a customer placed an online order, front-desk staff had to call back one by one to confirm the time, which was inefficient and prone to errors during peak hours. After upgrading to the "multi-form booking" system in July 2025, the user's selected time, service, and therapist preferences are automatically pushed to the front desk, increasing order processing efficiency by about fourfold. Even without changing the number of available workstations, the stores saw double-digit growth in both verified sales and customer numbers, while refund amounts fell by over 20%.
"Maiyouyou," another chain, faced a different but equally typical challenge. With 180 franchise stores, each location had only three to four therapists. Limited staffing meant that scheduling was based on rough estimates, making it impossible to accurately predict online customer traffic or proactively contact clients to confirm appointments. After piloting a direct connection to the "multi-form booking" system in December of last year, the stores achieved real-time synchronization of therapist availability. When a therapist was unavailable due to offline appointments or time off, the inventory on Meituan updated automatically, ensuring that users saw only genuinely bookable time slots and therapists. Following the upgrade, the brand saw a 35% increase in transaction value and a 50% rise in conversion rates.
The common thread in these two cases is that the growth driven by the booking capability did not come from increased advertising spend, but from a systematic improvement in matching supply with demand. Reducing unproductive inquiries, minimizing idle workstations, and improving scheduling accuracy are all about unlocking additional value from existing resources. To address the deeper pain point of "choosing a therapist," Meituan has focused on digitalizing the practitioners themselves. The platform is promoting a real-name registration system for massage and foot therapy practitioners, creating comprehensive digital career profiles that transparently showcase their specialties, service styles, and past cases. Through AI technology, it also aggregates and synthesizes large volumes of real customer reviews, so that consumers don't have to rely on luck; authentic experiences are the most convincing. By working with brands, the platform aims to create a positive cycle connecting a therapist's "skill development" with "income growth" through initiatives like digital profile building, professional skill enhancement, and improved online operational capabilities.
This model has already been implemented with chain brands. Meituan and Huaxia Liangzi have co-hosted therapist competitions, pushing the brand's practitioners to become fully digitalized. These events serve as a platform for demonstrating skills, fostering professional growth and income increases, and providing a tangible example of how the industry challenges mentioned earlier can be addressed.
If the "multi-form booking" system solves the "time" problem and therapist digitalization addresses the "people" issue, then together they reveal Meituan's evolving role in traditional industries like foot therapy. It is no longer just a traffic distribution channel but is emerging as a connector for building a complete fulfillment ecosystem. From an economic perspective, this role's value lies in reducing the overall transaction friction within the industry. The booking system lessens information asymmetry, inventory management improves supply efficiency, and the evaluation system and digital profiles offer a quantifiable market price for a therapist's labor. Metrics like positive ratings, order volume, and repeat customers begin to form a traceable "career resume" for therapists, establishing an initial positive feedback loop between skill development and income. This holds significant meaning for a workforce that has long lacked professional recognition. Becoming a qualified massage therapist is no easy feat; it often requires years of training and experience. Yet, the social status and professional dignity associated with the role have often lagged behind the actual skill level required. When a therapist's professional abilities are finally reflected in a traceable, comparable, and data-driven evaluation and pricing system online, professional identity can transform from an abstract idea into a tangible sense of achievement.
Of course, this system is not without its challenges. Creating online digital profiles and evaluation systems is essentially about converting a therapist's labor value into data, giving each individual their own dedicated digital resume. While this forms the basis for fair pricing, it also means that a therapist's performance becomes more transparently exposed to market competition. It serves as an incentive for high performers but adds pressure for those lagging behind, which helps drive the positive cycle forward. It's important to note that Meituan provides a set of tools—booking systems, inventory management, evaluation frameworks, and talent profile infrastructure. The responsibility for differentiating brands and building unique service standards and cultural moats still rests with the merchants themselves. A platform cannot open stores for a brand; it builds the "bridge," but whether and how to cross it depends on the brands and therapists on the other side.
The digitalization of the massage and foot therapy industry is, at its core, an attempt to answer an age-old question in the service sector: when the primary deliverable is a service, can scale and quality be achieved simultaneously? For decades, the answer has leaned toward the pessimistic. However, Meituan's implementation of "multi-form booking" capabilities and therapist digital profiles is driving tangible change in the industry. Service "time" can now be locked in, and the abilities of "people" can be made visible. As these two most challenging variables are integrated into the digital framework, the industry's transaction costs decrease, a mechanism for discovering the value of therapists gradually takes shape, and consumers gain greater certainty when using traditional services.
However, this does not mean that the challenge of service quality has been completely resolved. A booking system can secure a time slot, but it cannot guarantee the quality of the personal interaction during each session. A digital profile can fully present a therapist's background, but it cannot replace the practical feel and human connection of the service itself. The ultimate quality of service delivery still depends on the brand's internal management and the professional standards of the therapists. What a platform can do is reduce information asymmetry and uncertainty in the fulfillment process, making it easier for high-quality services to be discovered, chosen, and recognized by users. The final judgment on what constitutes "good service" remains with the market and consumers.
The foot therapy industry is at a critical juncture for upgrading. Brand management capabilities, the professional dedication of therapists, the tools provided by platforms, and the long-term choices of consumers—all are indispensable. Digitalization is not the end goal. The fulfillment infrastructure that Meituan is building through "multi-form booking" and therapist digitalization offers a replicable model for this service sector, steering the industry toward a more transparent and efficient development path. The remaining journey requires collaboration from all parties involved.