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Author | Liu Baodan
Editor | Zhou Zhiyu
As the most social holiday for Chinese people, the Spring Festival contains quite a few business opportunities. Meituan, the “king of local life,” has already targeted growth opportunities for the 2025 Spring Festival.
The popularity of the Meituan New Year's Eve dinner continues to rise. Wall Street News learned that as of January 16, the number of orders to reserve New Year's Eve dinner half a month in advance through the Meituan App and the Dazhong Dianping App had increased by 305% compared to last year. More than 0.04 million restaurants across the country were already providing online New Year's Eve seat reservation services in Meituan.
At the same time, takeout and delivery services for New Year's Eve dinner are also gradually emerging, and the number of restaurants offering related services on Meituan increased by 220% over the same period last year.
This means that Meituan is expected to seize the 2025 Spring Festival as a consumer hotspot and usher in a wave of business growth.
At the close of trading on January 20, Meituan's stock price was reported at HK$155.500, an increase of 5.21%, setting a record for the highest increase since 2025.
To a certain extent, the number of orders for New Year's Eve dinner is an important sign. Not only does it mean that Meituan is becoming more and more involved in everyday life, but more importantly, it represents Meituan's ability to improve product supply and matchmaking efficiency as a platform for local living.
In recent years, Meituan has gradually regained its development advantage from the battlefield of local life. After stabilizing Douyin as a prominent competitor, Meituan began to take the initiative.
On November 29, Meituan announced results for the three months ended September 30, 2024. The company achieved revenue of 93.58 billion yuan, an increase of 22.4% year on year, and net profit of 12.86 billion yuan, up 258.0% year on year. The number of Meituan's annual trading users, number of active merchants, and average annual consumption frequency of annual trading users all continued to grow, breaking through record highs.
Meituan is also making intensive business adjustments to better cope with recent changes in the local lifestyle market. In February 2024, Meituan CEO Wang Xing integrated the Home Business Group and the Arrive Store Business Group into a “core local business”, with Wang Puzhong as CEO. This is the first time in three years that Meituan has made large-scale adjustments to the organization and personnel.
After the merger, Meituan began to unleash greater synergy in group buying and takeout businesses with a high supply focus. Meituan proposed a full-scenario business concept to consider the overall in-store business, takeout business, etc. This is also what motivates Meituan to launch the New Year's Eve dinner business during the 2025 Spring Festival.
Judging from current reservation data, intangible heritage cuisine and hotel New Year's Eve dinners are the new trends for New Year's Eve dinners. According to Meituan data, since January, the number of orders for the “non-heritage” themed group package on Meituan has increased more than 12 times over the same period last year, and the number of New Year's Eve dinner reservations at Black Pearl Restaurant has increased more than 120% year over year.
A person in charge of a high-end restaurant in Suzhou said that all the private rooms on New Year's Eve have already been ordered. The store launched a series of set menus this year to provide personalized dinners according to customer needs. The order rate for dishes containing intangible heritage elements, such as the Soviet-style chongqing pork stew rice, is high.
In terms of hotel New Year's Eve dinner, Meituan travel data shows that Nanjing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai are the top 5 cities for hotel New Year's Eve dinner reservations. The relevant person in charge of Meituan Hotel said, “More people are ordering New Year's Eve dinner at the hotel this year. The 8-10 person hotel New Year's Eve dinner package is a popular choice for diners. Southern users especially like to eat New Year's Eve dinner at the hotel.”
In addition, Meituan also launched the “No break during the Spring Festival” campaign, and over one million restaurants have already signed up to participate. At the same time, Meituan is also collaborating with merchants to launch a Spring Festival consumer promotion campaign. Users can go directly to the event venue by searching for “Wonderful Spring Festival”, and a limited edition of 68 yuan gift packs will also be distributed.
Over the past 10 years, Meituan has successfully broken through the battle of group buying and takeout wars, establishing its position as the king of local life. In the past two years, Meituan has once again stabilized the market competition pattern in a war with Douyin. A series of competitions have sounded a wake-up call for Meituan. In an ever-changing market, active action may be more important than passive defense.
In addition to seizing the Spring Festival holiday, Meituan is also continuing to refresh its voice. The company not only sponsored the hit variety show “Blossoming All the Way”, but also officially announced spokespersons for group buying and takeout businesses such as Hu Ge and Liu Yifei in 2024.
After more than ten years of development in the local lifestyle market, market competition has intensified. Apart from the huge threat posed by Douyin, Ali, JD, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, etc. are all seizing the local lifestyle market, and the war situation will escalate further in 2025.
For Meituan, seizing every consumer hotspot and continuously improving market penetration is not only a strategy to seize the market, but also a path of ability iteration. This time, Meituan chose to take the initiative. This is bound to be a close, hand-to-hand battle.