OVER the weekend, China’s three on-demand delivery giants — Meituan, JD.com, and Alibaba’s Taobao Instant Commerce — unleashed another round of a cut-throat price war, rolling out eye-watering subsidies that have ignited a nationwide feeding frenzy dubbed “the summer of free lunch.”

Meituan and Alibaba’s food delivery platform Ele.me bombarded users with jaw-dropping deals — “Spend 25 yuan [US$3.49], get 24 yuan off” vouchers and “free milk tea” — pushing order volumes to record levels. The Taobao Instant Commerce logged more than 80 million orders in a single day, and Meituan’s computer servers briefly buckled under the deluge.

Tea and coffee shops were among the hardest hit. Baristas were buried beneath an avalanche of tickets, and some caffeine-savvy shoppers seized the moment to stockpile free drinks, hauling home armfuls of “free milk tea” and enough iced coffee to fill an entire refrigerator.

“It’s been a nonstop tsunami of orders between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. We’ve already churned out over 1,000 cups,” said a staffer at Auntea Jenny’s AT Mall branch in Shenzhen’s Longhua District. All four staff members moved with factory-like precision, yet they fell hopelessly behind.

At a nearby rice-noodle shop, the manager admitted the subsidy-fueled takeout order surge has far outstripped staffing capacity. “Margins are thinner because we’re forced to co-fund the discounts with the platforms,” he said. “Still, the flood of new customers is a long-term win if we can turn them into regulars.”

While some tea shop staff reportedly made over 3,000 drinks in a single day, delivery riders hit the jackpot. A screenshot from a courier surnamed Yan went viral. He completed 127 deliveries in one day, earning 1,700 yuan, which is six-to-eight times his usual income.

“Lunch-rush fees hit 10 yuan a drop,” a Shenzhen courier surnamed Lin beamed. “I topped 1,000 last weekend, and with today’s rain bonus I might break my record.”

Chinese online retail heavyweights are waging an unprecedented funding war to dominate the burgeoning “instant retail” market, offering 30-to-60-minute deliveries and bleeding cash to win customer loyalty.

Competition between these companies has intensified this year, with all three expanding their delivery networks and pledging billions in subsidies to merchants and consumers.

“This isn’t a food fight — it’s a war for the instant retail ecosystem, which is projected to be worth 3.9 trillion yuan by 2030,” explained a senior analyst with a Shanghai-based investment firm who requested anonymity.

“Today’s heavily subsidized milk tea is tomorrow’s 30-minute delivery of everything from smartphones to refrigerators.”

(Claudia Wei)