Home-style dish most popular in booming online food delivery market

Congee with preserved egg and pork was the most popular food ordered online in China's booming food delivery market in 2017, with nearly 19 million orders made on ele.me, a leading online food delivery service. The spicy Zinger Burger and sour shredded potato take second and third place, according to a report released by the company.

Food delivery couriers at work in minus 23 degrees Celsius weather in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on January 18, 2018. [Photo: VCG]

Rival takeaway service meituan.com said that 130 million people used their online food delivery service in 2017, with 3.93 million customers placing more than 100 orders – an average of two orders a week.

According to a report on the online food delivery industry by ASKCI Consulting, a leading industry research institute, the value of China's online food delivery is expected to reach 230 billion yuan (about 36.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, exceeding the 200 billion yuan reported for 2017 (31.8 billion U.S. dollars). This reflects the growing number of online food delivery service users, which increased from 135 million to 343 million between 2016 and 2017. The number of mobile food delivery users reached 322 million in 2017, an increase of 66.2 percent from the previous year.

The growth in the use of online food services reflects the growing number of Internet users in China. As of December last year, 772 million people were connected to the Internet. Of these, 753 million accessed the Internet using their mobile phone, accounting for 97.5 percent of the country's online population.