Meituan, China's largest food delivery platform, has established a legal entity and is recruiting personnel in Ho Chi Minh City

 

Meituan currently holds nearly 70% of the market share in China and is planning to enter the Vietnamese market.

 

By the end of 2025, a company named Meituan Technology Co., Ltd. will be established in Ho Chi Minh City, registered under the business sector of information technology services and computer-related services. By February, the company began recruiting business development personnel, although it has not yet announced its business plan or service launch date 

 

 

 

 

Meituan Vietnam's recruitment announcement.

 

According to job postings on recruitment platforms, Meituan Vietnam is recruiting platform promoters to find, sign contracts with, and support partners such as restaurants, hotels, and entertainment venues in Ho Chi Minh City. Applicants are also required to assist partners with submitting applications, uploading products to the platform, and ensuring smooth order processing.

 

These descriptions suggest that Meituan Vietnam is aiming to build a network of partners in the food and beverage and service sectors – a common move for food delivery platforms entering a new market. This is acknowledged by the company itself, as Meituan Vietnam identifies itself on its recruitment website as the operating unit of Meituan (China), building a team in Vietnam to develop its digital service ecosystem.

 

Although not a familiar platform to Vietnamese users, Meituan is currently one of the leading online lifestyle service companies in China. The company operates an ecosystem encompassing food delivery, instant delivery, restaurant and hotel reservations, entertainment ticket sales, and various transportation services. Of these, food delivery is considered its core business.

 

 

 

Meituan food delivery driver in Beijing, China. Photo: Reuters

 

In Vietnam, food delivery services are often associated with ride-hailing platforms. Since 2014, when foreign companies first introduced the app-based ride-hailing model to Vietnam, the market initially only offered taxi services via apps, then gradually expanded to include motorbike passenger transport, motorbike delivery, and food delivery (such as GrabFood, beFood, Shopee Food, etc.). 

 

Meituan's establishment of a legal entity in Vietnam comes amidst a booming ride-hailing and food delivery market. According to Mordor Intelligence, the Vietnamese ride-hailing market is estimated to have reached one billion USD last year and could exceed 3 billion USD by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.5% between 2025 and 2031.

 

According to a survey by market research firm Rakuten Insight, Vietnam has more than 10 active ride-hailing platforms, notably Grab, Xanh SM, and Be. According to Cimigo's May 2025 report, "Super App Usage Habits in Vietnam," Be is currently the leading domestic platform in the two-wheeled vehicle service segment, including ride-hailing, express delivery, and food delivery  

 

If officially launched, Meituan will enter a well-established market with high competition and users familiar with food delivery models integrated with ride-hailing ecosystems.

 

 

 

 

Dubbed the "King of Delivery" with an absolute dominant position in the mainland market, Meituan entered Vietnam not only with enormous financial resources but also with groundbreaking technological "weapons" capable of completely changing the game.

 

 

Meituan's capabilities and dominance in China  

 

 

 

 

To understand the immense popularity of Meituan, it's essential to first decipher the core competency that has enabled them to control 60-70% of the food delivery market in China, one of the world's largest and most complex markets.

 

Meituan is not just a simple food delivery app; they define themselves as a technology-driven retail company with the mission of "Helping people eat better, live better."

 

Meituan's strength lies in its vertical and horizontal integration capabilities. In the first quarter of 2025, Meituan recorded impressive revenue of 86.6 billion yuan (approximately $12.1 billion USD), an 18% increase year-on-year. Most notably, net profit reached 10.06 billion yuan, a surge of 87.3%. This growth demonstrates a model that has moved beyond the "burning money" phase to achieve optimal operational efficiency  

 

Meituan's "Food + Platform" strategy uses food delivery (a service with the highest usage frequency) as a "gateway" to lead users to higher-margin services such as hotel bookings, airline tickets, and on-site entertainment. In China, Meituan Instashopping also recorded explosive growth with order volume increasing by over 40% in 2023, demonstrating its ability to expand from food to all types of fast-moving consumer goods  

 

Meituan's true strength lies in its real-time intelligent dispatch system. This is the world's largest minute-by-minute delivery network processing system, capable of handling over 60 million orders per day. This system has undergone four stages of evolution, from manual allocation to city-wide optimization based on big data and machine learning.

 

Meituan's system doesn't just calculate the shortest route. It uses a space-time convolutional neural network to predict driver behavior, restaurant preparation times, and traffic conditions with extremely high accuracy. 

 

Analysis shows that the SCDN algorithm increases driver efficiency by 45-55% during peak hours while still ensuring on-time delivery. The system can perform 300,000 route calculations per second, reducing delivery time by an average of 2.5 minutes compared to traditional methods.

 

 

 

 

Meituan's technological confidence is further demonstrated by its deployment of drones and autonomous vehicles. By the end of 2024, they had completed over 450,000 drone deliveries across 53 routes in major Chinese cities. In April 2025, Meituan received China's first nationwide low-altitude logistics operation certification, allowing its fourth-generation drones to operate in harsh weather conditions  

 

 

The Hong Kong test

 

Before choosing Vietnam, Meituan used Hong Kong as a "sandbox" for its international brand, KeeTa. What happened in Hong Kong from May 2023 to the end of 2025 is proof of Meituan's ability to disrupt the market structure.

 

When KeeTa entered Hong Kong, the market was dominated by Foodpanda and Deliveroo. However, in less than a year, KeeTa captured 44% of the market share, surpassing its long-established competitors. This success stemmed not only from spending heavily on a "10 billion VND subsidy campaign," but also from a deep understanding of unmet user needs  

 

KeeTa introduced its "Meal for One" program with affordable set menus (from 60 HKD including delivery fee), targeting the segment of single office workers. In addition, its "On-time Promise" policy – ​​a first in the industry in Hong Kong – guarantees a voucher compensation if the order is delayed by more than 15 minutes, building absolute trust among users in its operational capabilities.

 

 

 

Even more remarkably, KeeTa's Hong Kong business reached break-even and began generating profits in October 2025, just 29 months after its launch. This is a significant milestone demonstrating that Meituan's model can adapt and be profitable in markets outside mainland China, shattering the stereotype that delivery apps can only survive on venture capital.

 

 

What is the current state of the Vietnamese market ?

 

The online food delivery market in Vietnam is projected to reach a total transaction value of US$2.1 billion in 2025, a 19% increase compared to 2024. However, behind this impressive growth lies a harsh consolidation process.

 

By the end of 2025, the Vietnamese market will have narrowed to a two-horse race between GrabFood and ShopeeFood, with each holding approximately 48% of the market share. Other competitors such as Baemin, Gojek (GoFood), and Loship have successively withdrawn from the market due to the pressure of competition and the challenge of profitability.

 

The emergence of Green SM Ngon in June 2025 with its "one driver - one order" policy and use of electric vehicles created a new wave, but it was still not enough to threaten the position of the two leading giants. In that context, Meituan's entry is predicted to be a real "storm," as they have the ability to combine the ecosystem strength of ShopeeFood with algorithmic capabilities superior to Grab.

 

 

 

 

Market research in 2025 revealed a clear divergence between the two regions. In Hanoi, ShopeeFood dominated with 56% market share, particularly strong in the student and young snack-eating segment. Conversely, in Ho Chi Minh City, GrabFood led with 50% market share thanks to its dense network of drivers and fast order processing speed, perfectly suited to the Southern lifestyle.

 

Meituan entered Ho Chi Minh City first not only because it's the largest market, but also because consumers there are most open to new technologies and have the habit of ordering food most frequently