New Online Food Regulations Take Effect, Taobao Flash Deals Completes First Batch of Merchant Labeling

The new regulations for online catering services officially took effect on June 1.

Taobao Flash Deals, in collaboration with authorities in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Anhui, Nanchang, Chengdu, Yancheng, Taizhou, and Shanwei, has completed the initial labeling of the first batch of "dine-in-free" delivery merchants based on lists provided by market supervision departments.

On the same day, the platform's merchant client began supporting businesses in submitting labels such as "dine-in-free," "dine-in-available," and "open kitchen" for verification and display by the platform.

In line with the new regulations' online review requirements, Taobao Flash Deals has strengthened food safety compliance checks across five dimensions: "personnel, certificates, location, store, and products."

This includes mandatory real-name authentication for both the online catering service provider and the legal representative, verification of license authenticity against official databases, enhanced checks for consistency between the business license registration address and the actual food preparation address, implementation of "end-to-end" video verification and offline on-site review for all newly signed catering merchants, and measures to prevent merchants from operating beyond their permitted scope for key product categories.

Data shows that since 2026, Taobao Flash Deals has removed a total of 332,000 non-compliant merchants from the platform and has required 60,000 catering merchants to complete rectifications.