The 2026 National Food Safety Publicity Week officially kicked off on September 22, marking a significant moment for the food delivery industry. In April of this year, Meituan introduced its "10 Measures for Trustworthy Food Delivery," which integrates platform technology, data advantages, and offline governance across three key areas: merchant admission, operational transparency, and multi-party co-supervision.
On the opening day of the Food Safety Publicity Week, Meituan formally launched its "Seven Food Safety Actions for Trustworthy Delivery," alongside the early rollout of a food-safety-focused version of its Meituan Delivery app. This new app displays six categories of core information upfront, including business license verification, real-store photos, and "Transparent Kitchen" live streams, allowing customers to review a merchant's food safety credentials and offline operations before placing an order, without having to dig through lengthy merchant profiles.
The feature is currently available in cities such as Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Chengdu, with plans to extend nationwide. Additionally, users of the food-safety-focused app can access Meituan's monthly-updated "Food Safety Governance Reports." Previously, the company had enabled location mapping and environment information displays for all merchants- by the end of August 2026, over 2.7 million delivery merchants had showcased location maps and real-store environment photos, with more than 1.2 million of them featuring continuous "one-take" video footage.
Alongside the new delivery app, Meituan has introduced the "Food Safety Sentinel" feature within its rider app. This function combines system-assigned collection tasks with proactive rider reporting to help verify store locations, operating status, and environmental conditions. Riders participate voluntarily, gathering information such as store position, exterior appearance, and operational status from visible areas, without bearing responsibility for issue determination or handling. The platform manages verification and follow-up actions, pushing merchants to rectify problems or delisting them if anomalies are found, while referring suspected legal violations to regulatory authorities.
During Food Safety Publicity Week, Meituan launched two special support programs focused on small and medium-sized merchant upgrades and targeted food safety supervision, with a combined investment of RMB 80 million. The first initiative establishes a merchant food safety support fund totaling RMB 50 million to help small and medium-sized merchants, particularly those operating without dine-in service, by subsidizing kitchen camera hardware to promote "Transparent Kitchen + AI" live kitchen streaming.
The second initiative involves creating a food safety supervision and unannounced inspection team with an investment of RMB 30 million to strengthen offline oversight. Meituan will collaborate with regulatory bodies, third-party agencies, riders, and the public to build this team, supplementing frontline merchant information and conducting verification, rectification, and enforcement on issues related to addresses, operating environments, and food safety concerns.
According to Meituan, over 580,000 merchants nationwide have already adopted "Transparent Kitchen" live streaming. In response to user feedback about timely reminders for merchants to check network signals, adjust camera angles, and standardize kitchen management, the product team is accelerating upgrades to AI recognition technology and dispatching additional offline inspection squads to drive merchant improvements. For merchants with repeated user complaints or who fail to rectify issues after multiple attempts, the platform will revoke their Transparent Kitchen designation and report the cases to regulatory authorities.
Meituan's offline food safety demonstration campaigns will also reach more than 30 provinces and cities across the country, highlighting governance actions and achievements in areas such as license verification, business site authentication, kitchen transparency, and multi-party oversight. These efforts include e-license awareness campaigns showcasing the digital verification chain for online food delivery in Beijing and Shanghai, "Food Safety Demonstration Street" activities in 20 key cities highlighting transparent and well-managed merchants, and "Transparent Kitchen Open Days" in 10 provinces featuring Meituan's Raccoon Kitchen demonstration stores, which will display live kitchen streams, centralized management, and food safety information disclosures while offering public consultations and training sessions.