Shanghai requires food delivery staff to report unlicensed restaurants

[Photo: from VCG]

Shanghai authorities have come up with a new way to guarantee food safety: by employing fast food delivery staff.

The Shanghai Municipal Food and Drug Administration has teamed up with big food delivery companies to crack down on restaurants operating without licenses or conducting illegal activities.

The administration announced that its reporting hotline 12311 will be working with Eleme, Meituan-Dianping and Baidu Waimai, and more than 30,000 delivery drivers from these companies will be keeping an eye on restaurants without licenses or fake licenses, and those without brick-and-mortar stores.

China's food delivery market registered fast growth last year as young Chinese are increasingly choosing to order food online.

A report by Meituan Waimai says, the online food delivery market hit about 205 billion yuan (about 33 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, 23 percent more than the previous year.

According to the SHMFDA, food delivery staff who ignore illegally operating restaurants will be put on a credit blacklist.

Pilot programs were already in practice before the official Thursday announcement.

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(Mews source: Xinhua)