The history of China's internet commerce in 2025 will inevitably be marked by three keywords: food delivery, subsidies, and losses. Over the past year, a subsidy war initiated with "free meals" and involving Meituan, Alibaba, and JD.com has swept through city streets at a staggering pace. Platforms competed for users with near "zero-cost" offers, consumers enthusiastically hunted for bargains, and social media feeds were flooded with pictures of "refrigerators stuffed with milk tea." This battle, first provoked by JD.com, saw Taobao enter forcefully with its massive subsidy program, while Meituan invested heavily to defend its turf. This conflict, fought under the banner of instant retail, has long transcended simple competition in meal delivery.
By gathering hot posts from employees of these companies on the Maimai platform, we gain a unique perspective on the food delivery war. Unlike the "ecosystem synergy" and "trillion-yuan vision" portrayed by executives in strategy briefings, the internal employee perspective is often more micro-level and concrete. Their complaints, confusions, insights, and frustrations piece together the most authentic backdrop of this massive battle. Behind the glossy strategic narrative lies the pain of burning cash for subsidies, the erosion of organizational efficiency, and collective questioning about the industry's ultimate outcome.
An Alibaba employee shared Viewpoint 1: "Weren't we supposed to focus on AI? How did we revert back to a food delivery war???" Employee Viewpoint 2 offered a personal opinion: "Currently, AI is the branches, but e-commerce is the roots. With e-commerce being besieged by Douyin and Pinduoduo, getting into food delivery is about driving traffic to save e-commerce. If the roots get no nutrients, the branches won't grow well, because Alibaba's main revenue source is still e-commerce." Employee Viewpoint 3 agreed: "Reasonable, and straight to the point. Who knows how big the e-commerce pie really is? The stock price is 80% correlated with e-commerce."
Employee Viewpoint 4 elaborated: "E-commerce is Alibaba's biggest cash cow, continuously providing funds for cloud and AI development. If Meituan uses instant retail to encroach on Taobao's core product categories, Taobao's business will inevitably suffer, profits will decline, cash flow will shrink, and the growth of cloud and AI will slow down. Taobao's flash sales are an offensive defense, directly attacking Meituan's core food delivery business, with the long-term goal of gradually penetrating far-field retail into the near-field. This protects the e-commerce foundation, eats into part of Meituan's business, and fulfills the new retail vision." Employee Viewpoint 5 remarked: "Richard Liu's move broke Alibaba's cognitive boundaries and brought real growth. We should thank Brother Dong." Employee Viewpoint 6 countered: "Brother Dong started the fire but isn't playing anymore. This food delivery war needs to stop sooner rather than later; it's meaningless."
Employee Viewpoint 8, from a frontline technician, expressed fatigue: "It's 2025, and we're fighting a food delivery war. The stock price keeps falling, AI isn't materializing reliably for us programmers, so we have to rely on delivery riders?" Employee Viewpoint 10 questioned the strategy deeply: "This food delivery venture will ultimately lead to a wave of promotions for some, followed by a mess. The underlying logic isn't clear. What's the endgame? What is the moat? What product improvements are there? How does it align with strategy? Can it make money? It shouldn't just be about using a trendy term like 'instant retail' and then throwing tens of billions at it." Employee Viewpoint 11 drew a parallel: "If you asked these same logical questions about the 'Ten Billion Subsidy' program five years ago, no one could answer them either. Did the Ten Billion Subsidy have a moat? Could it make money? What was the endgame? Did it need to continue subsidizing forever? How did it align with the strategy of consumption downgrading?"
Commentary: It appears that employees are also concerned about Alibaba's food delivery strategy, worried about losses, puzzled about the outcome, and questioning any product enhancements. Furthermore, when the food delivery war began, the major players' main AI products were not yet ready. However, from the second half of last year through year-end, Alibaba's AI products suddenly appeared in a blowout fashion. Alibaba wants it all: both food delivery and AI. The employees just have to bear the extra burden. The perspective that "the endgame of the food delivery war is a wave of promotions" is an insight seemingly unique to employees. Looking at the financial reports, Alibaba's main focus for 2026 is AI, suggesting the food delivery war might be in a wait-and-see state.
A Meituan employee shared Viewpoint 1 sarcastically: "Hehehe, Q3 earnings are estimated to show a loss of 19 billion yuan. You like fighting a food delivery war? You like intense competition? Sorry, it's all your fault that the DC store push, one-click payment, shelf systems, smart ordering, and the 'Divine Membership' program weren't executed well. The whip of the winter campaign cracks fiercely, and the old workhorses toil relentlessly." Employee Viewpoint 2 observed: "The moat was drained too quickly. Food delivery has become a lever for Taobao's e-commerce, traffic flows through, it's like getting three dishes from one duck." Employee Viewpoint 3 was blunt: "A fake moat. The barriers were breached long ago. Manually simulating the food delivery subsidy war simulator, predicting the endgame."
Commentary: For Meituan, the core issue of the food delivery war is whether it truly possesses a "moat." It now seems that despite massive losses, Meituan's moat has surfaced: efficiency. Its efficiency in fulfillment and in burning money is superior to its rivals. While defending this moat, Meituan should aggressively pursue AI this year; employees are already impatiently building simulators. Should Meituan develop general-purpose AI tools or AI tools embedded within its delivery app? Meituan has already launched the AI Agent 'Xiaomei' and a weight-loss AI assistant, but neither has been heavily promoted.
A JD.com employee expressed loyalty: "The food delivery war is here, of course I stand with our Dong. We have the delivery resources, victory is assured." Another JD.com employee pointed out a systemic issue: "From the focus of JD.com's R&D system over the past year, one conclusion is inevitable: the explosive growth of the food delivery business必然 leads to the system being on the verge of collapse, and subsequent disconnects between system support and business development should continue to occur. The current product and R&D system is exhausted daily dealing with endless various assessment metrics,俨然已经 [resigned/trapped]. Various formalistic practices introduced from the Alibaba and Pinduoduo systems keep piling up,疯狂 destroying JD.com's original technical culture."
Employee Viewpoint 3 urged reflection: "Regarding these situations in the food delivery business, the bosses really need to learn from this pain. Stop being misled by people coming from Alibaba, Meituan, and Pinduoduo. Besides the founders, these companies are largely professionalized, and their suggestions are often impractical, only focused on bridging useless things while demanding extreme speed and being boastful. JD.com's inherent cultural genes have been completely ruined." Employee Viewpoint 4 noted a shift: "No one is burning money recklessly now, things are more rational. Why create a separate app? Whose idea was that? Meituan and Taobao are both moving towards all-in-one apps, which are more convenient for users and allow better cross-section traffic synergies."
Employee Viewpoint 6 raised a related issue: "Let me talk about an extended topic: I feel JD.com lacks bottom-up feedback channels. The voices of frontline employees are not heard, and employees are exceptionally, exceptionally obedient. Having worked at several companies, internal forums like intranet posts can still reflect some problems, although they are indeed a mixed bag with some internal friction. But the positive side is that upper management can still sense employees'困惑 and sentiments. I can only say the culture is different; at JD.com, top-down execution is the way, regardless of right or wrong~"
Commentary: Compared to the other two companies, why do many JD.com employees complain about imported culture and internal feedback issues? If true, it is advised to listen more to frontline employees' voices. It is believed that as Richard Liu deepens his hands-on management, the situation will improve. Regardless of the company, in the extreme competition for scale and efficiency, more attention should be paid to the people beneath the algorithms and management. JD.com has also demonstrated its ability to stir the industry in this battle. Taking the lead in providing full social security benefits for riders has also earned widespread praise.
The food delivery war of 2025 is a landmark event marking the Chinese internet industry's transition from the illusion of "infinite growth" to the reality of "finite games." It is no longer a heroic tale of disruption and innovation, but a real-life drama of defense, involution, and survival. From the employees' perspective, it is both a battle over the boundaries between the giants' "far-field e-commerce" and "near-field retail," and a pragmatic choice made under stock price fluctuations and strategic vacillations; it is both the exhausting rush of frontline technicians and riders, and a concentrated stress test on internal corporate culture and management.
The collective voice of employees raises the three core controversies of this food delivery war. First, the迷茫 regarding the endgame and profitability. As employees asked, "The logic of the Ten Billion Subsidy couldn't be answered five years ago; how can the current food delivery war be profitable?" The three giants combined reported over 50 billion yuan in losses in Q3; order volumes decline after subsidies taper, high-value customer habits are hard to change, and a clear profit model remains elusive. Second, the lack of a true moat. Competition remains at the price war level. Employees question "what product improvements are there?"; merchants complain subsidies disrupt pricing systems; user loyalty largely depends on discounts. This competition, lacking technological barriers and service innovation, struggles to form a genuine moat. Third, the system's pressure-bearing capacity and ecological balance. This "system" refers not just to the order delivery system, but to a higher-dimensional system including merchants' own subsidy capabilities, employee endurance, etc. Is there an ecosystem-level algorithm? The "lack of bottom-up feedback channels" pointed out by employees exposes the giants' neglect of frontline voices during rapid expansion, leading to deviations and inefficiencies in strategy implementation.
Currently, these three companies are conducting internal referral recruitment on platforms like Maimai; one can go and take a look. The final whistle for this great battle has blown. It leaves behind not a clear winner, but a new starting point—a tired one that must move towards rationality, requiring joint repair by all participants: platforms, merchants, riders, and even regulators. Future competition will no longer be about who can "burn money" more fiercely, but about who can "do the accounts" better—calculating both the economic ledger and the significant ledger of social responsibility.
