Today in Shenzhen, I took a close look at Meituan's latest drone food delivery service. The location was: Coastal City.

Each delivery site has about 10 drones. Manual loading and unloading of the food is required. The batteries are hot-swappable, so there’s no need to worry about battery life.

At first, I was concerned about the risk of boxes falling from high altitudes, but later I found out that the food containers are specially made of plastic or foam, and are transported using two special hooks that secure the box to the drone body.

Meituan’s drone delivery mainly operates in densely populated CBD areas like Coastal City, where parking is difficult but delivery volumes are huge. The efficiency of the drones is very high—significantly higher than human delivery workers.

Initially, I thought this was just a marketing gimmick, but after further research, I learned that Meituan’s drone delivery is already operating regularly in domestic cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing, as well as in places like Dubai and Hong Kong. There are even night routes.

As of the end of September 2025, Meituan’s drones have launched 64 routes and completed over 670,000 delivery orders. They can also handle ranges of 5-10 kilometers and temperatures ranging from -20 to 50 degrees Celsius.

The world is really progressing so fast. Amazing.