On March 1, Meituan announced several initiatives to help small and medium-sized businesses hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. These initiatives mainly provide assistance from two aspects: cost reduction and income increase.
Cost reduction
For those small and medium-sized merchants in high-risk areas as well as their subordinate districts and counties (the average daily transaction volume has dropped by more than 30%), Meituan will halve the technical service fee (commission), and each order will not exceed 1 yuan after the halving.
Meituan will also evaluate the businesses based on their operating conditions and difficulties, and the technical service fee (commission) will be capped at 5%. From March 2022 to the end of December 2022, over 1 million merchants are expected to benefit from these measures. In addition, Meituan will provide special assistance to those merchants that are struggling to make a living from take-away businesses.
In 2021, Meituan carried out the pilot work of rate transparency. To provide merchants with more transparent charging guidelines, technical service fee (commission) and performance service fee will be calculated separately. At present, this transparent guideline has covered 70% of Meituan merchants. In 2022, Meituan plans to achieve nationwide coverage of rate transparency.
Income increase
Meituan intends to offer a free “takeaway butler service” for struggling merchants. This service will help merchants quickly improve online operation capacity and increase income.
Free delivery cloud printers will also be supplied to newly launched small and medium-sized businesses in high-risk regions to tackle issues such as wrong orders, missing orders, and delivery conflicts. Moreover, Meituan will give 30,000 sets of terminal intelligent hardware products to those businesses, helping them bring in more orders and improve operational efficiency.
