JD.com has stirred up a storm

Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

At the end of the year, major companies have already set their goals for the coming year.

On December 29th, Qixian Xiaochu, a quality dining brand under JD.com, officially announced the launch of a nationwide recruitment plan for business partners. This "joint quality dining production platform," which was launched in July this year, is expanding to core regions across the country after a six-month pilot in Beijing.

As Qixian Xiaochu goes nationwide, JD.com adds some new variables to the takeaway industry, which may trigger a new wave of upheaval in the sector.

According to the plan, new stores in cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tianjin will be unveiled in January 2026, and by the end of 2026, Qixian Xiaochu plans to complete its layout in all first- and second-tier cities in China.

This accelerated expansion is seen by outsiders as a further deepening of JD.com's differentiated strategy in the takeaway battle of 2025. While Meituan and Ele.me engage in a subsidy war online, JD.com has chosen a different path—directly intervening in the food production process, attempting to reshape industry rules through supply chain innovation.

Prior to this, the "battle" in the takeaway sector in 2025 ended several years of calm in the internet industry.

At the beginning of the year, JD.com announced its entry into the takeaway industry, breaking the long-standing "duopoly" dominated by Meituan and Ele.me. For the first time in this trillion-dollar market, a third heavyweight player emerged. According to Wind data, by the end of 2024, the number of takeaway users in China exceeded 592 million, with a market size surpassing one trillion yuan.

By June 27th, JD.com announced that its daily takeaway order volume had surpassed 25 million, with over 1.5 million quality dining stores onboarded and more than 120,000 full-time delivery riders, covering 350 cities nationwide.

The market quickly entered a phase of subsidy wars. On a weekend at the end of June, Alibaba upgraded its Taobao Flash Sale and partnered with Ele.me to participate in the battle, planning to push orders on multiple weekends thereafter. Meituan quickly followed suit, launching numerous subsidy activities such as zero-yuan coupons and 0.1-second flash sales.

However, during the most intense competition, JD.com did not follow suit.

JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong previewed at a small sharing session during the "6.18" period: "In a month, JD Takeaway will unveil a business model completely different from Meituan." A month later, the debut of Qixian Xiaochu was the concrete realization of this strategic vision.

The core innovation of Qixian Xiaochu lies in its "Dish Partner" model. On July 22nd, JD.com officially launched the "Dish Partner" recruitment plan, investing 1 billion yuan in cash to recruit partners for 1,000 signature dishes from national dining brands and individual chefs.

Under the new supply chain model, partners only need to provide dish recipes and participate in research and development, while Qixian Xiaochu handles the cooking and quality control, selling through both takeaway and self-pickup options.

At that time, Liu Bin, the business head of Qixian Xiaochu, emphasized that they are not "sub-landlords," but a joint platform co-built with dining brands. "We are helping partners create incremental markets and will not seize the existing business of old stores. We hope to work with dining merchants to reclaim the business that rightfully belongs to quality dining from 'ghost takeaways' and 'black takeaways.'" In the business model emphasized by Liu Qiangdong, the biggest feature is the "standard configuration" of 24-hour kitchen live streaming, allowing consumers to check the operational status of the store's kitchen at any time.

The core advantage of this model lies in JD.com's ability to deeply control the entire process from ingredient procurement to meal preparation. Seasonings reuse JD.com's existing supply chain, such as brands like COFCO, Zhongyan, and Yihai Kerry; meat and pre-cut vegetables are processed by factories, undergoing strict factory inspections, sealed packaging, and cold chain transportation to the Qixian Kitchen stores.

The pilot of Qixian Kitchen in the Beijing market has achieved initial results. As of December 2025, Qixian Kitchen has opened 30 stores in Beijing, essentially covering all major urban areas within the Fifth Ring Road. This expansion speed demonstrates market recognition of this model.

Operational data also proves the feasibility of the model. In the first week after launch, Qixian Kitchen exceeded 1,000 daily orders, and after two months, daily orders reached 1,500. During the promotional event from December 25 to 27, the 30 stores in Beijing received over 16,000 orders.

Previously, Qixian Kitchen showed openness to cross-platform operations. On October 13, Qixian Kitchen officially launched on the Meituan platform. Based on JD.com's expansion in the hotel and travel sector, Qixian Kitchen also reached a strategic cooperation with Jinjiang Hotels, starting in October to enter some Jinjiang Inn, Baiyulan, and 7 Days brand hotels in Beijing and launching the first batch of pilot projects.

JD.com plans to invest over 10 billion yuan within three years to build more than 10,000 "Qixian Kitchens" nationwide. Entering major first- and second-tier cities by 2026 is the next step in their progress.

This rapid expansion faces multiple challenges.

On one hand, there is a contradiction between standardization and regional tastes. The catering industry is highly dependent on localization, and a "national unified menu" is difficult to meet the differentiated taste demands of various regions. On the other hand, the management complexity brought by rapid expansion. The central kitchen model has high requirements for supply chain coordination and quality control, and rapid scaling may bring greater challenges.

Additionally, competitors' counterattacks cannot be ignored. The smoke of this year's competition has not yet fully dissipated, and next year's competition in the takeaway industry is full of uncertainties, while the moves of the other two companies will inevitably affect JD.com's competitiveness.

Currently, JD's Qixian Kitchen has decided to expand nationwide. As it moves from Beijing to the rest of the country, the competitive dimension of the takeaway war has quietly changed. While other platforms are still entangled in traffic and subsidies, JD.com has shifted the battlefield deeper into the industrial chain—into the kitchen.

When Meituan CEO Wang Xing declared, "I will never personally open a store," Liu Qiangdong chose the opposite path. This differing vision for the future of the takeaway industry will be further tested by the market in 2026