China Food Delivery Industry Conference: Taobao Shangou Uses AI Business Agents to Help Drive Quality Growth in Food Service

On October 30, the 12th China Food Delivery Industry Development Conference was held in Foshan. The "2026 Online Catering Industry Observation" report released at the conference shows that the industry's average daily order volume over the past year has maintained a steady baseline, with more than 90% of merchants achieving flat or increased order volumes. Driven by the benefits brought by the new competitive landscape, the industry is entering a new normal of quality development. Chen Xinhua, president of the China Hotel Association, pointed out at the conference: "The food delivery industry is an important contributor to boosting consumption, benefiting people's livelihoods, and stabilizing employment. The industry is currently advocating quality at a fair price and promoting food delivery toward quality-oriented, green, and standardized development. The association will promote win-win development between platforms and merchants, safeguarding everyday life with responsibility and winning trust with quality, and step up efforts to promote the high-quality development of the food delivery industry." Catering merchants usher in new room for growth as time-honored brands and small and medium-sized merchants expand their reach and increase income across the board. The "2026 Online Catering Industry Observation" report shows that the growth rate of the industry's average daily order volume has clearly entered a steady state. According to Xiu Siyan, a senior expert at Taobao Shangou, going online has allowed small and medium-sized merchants and regional brands deeply rooted in local markets to broaden their profit radius, and merchants at different stages of development have all enjoyed positive changes in business results brought about by full competition. Taking the Taobao Shangou platform as an example, among newly added merchants on the platform—relying on the platform to accelerate store expansion within the same city and nationwide—small, medium, and micro merchants in single-store form account for more than 80%, and newly added merchants of regional chain brands increased by 76% year on year. At the same time, century-old time-honored brands across various regions are also accelerating the opening of a "second growth curve" online: 116 time-honored brand catering merchants certified by the Ministry of Commerce have cumulatively opened nearly 2,000 new online stores on the platform over the past year, achieving efficient renewal and value conversion of traditional brand assets. The benefits that the new market landscape has brought to merchants' operations are directly reflected in store revenue. In the first quarter of 2026, the average order volume per store for catering merchants on Taobao Shangou doubled year on year, and the number of high-frequency mature users increased by more than 150%. This means that merchants not only rapidly increased revenue amid the market development of the past year, but also built up a large, stable, and repeat-purchase loyal customer base. Moreover, the "everyday-life economy" in lower-tier markets is also accelerating amid changes in the industry: over the past year, order growth in fourth- and fifth-tier cities and below on Taobao Shangou reached more than twice that of first-tier cities, more than 250,000 new small stores entered county-level markets, and total order volume tripled. At the same time, consumer groups are willing to pay a premium for quality and emotional experience, which has also driven the average order value to continue rising. Using model innovation and AI services to help catering merchants improve quality and efficiency. In the face of merchants' urgent need to improve quality and efficiency and achieve business breakthroughs amid rapid market development, the platform is also relying on cutting-edge AI technology to further help merchants improve their digital operating capabilities. According to what Taobao Shangou shared at the conference, it is currently comprehensively boosting catering merchants' ability to turn food delivery into a high-quality, sustainably growing "new business" through continuous upgrades to full-stack AI operating agents, C2M reverse customization, and model innovation. In intelligent operations, Taobao Shangou converts platform data and AI capabilities into operating tools that merchants can use directly. For example, the "AI Operations Manager" helps single stores diagnose business and improve product and customer operation efficiency; the "Chain Catering Intelligent System" supports brand site selection, product innovation, and consumer operations, and provides cross-store batch management capabilities. Merchants can quickly obtain operational strategy support through natural language conversations. Combined with business analysis, anomaly alerts, and effect reviews, whether a small store or a chain brand, they can achieve more worry-free and efficient store management. At the level of model innovation, Taobao Shangou has also helped brand merchants open more than 10,000 new brand satellite stores, bringing significant operational efficiency improvements to merchants. For example, relying on AI site selection and product selection, Grandma's Home's "Grandma Delivered to Home" increased the number of stores with monthly sales of 10,000 orders to 11 and raised profit by 14%; Haidilao has laid out more than 1,000 new online-format stores through delivery, launching innovative categories better suited to online scenarios, such as rice-accompanying hot pot dishes and mixed rice bowls. In addition, the platform has also joined hands with ecological supply chain resources such as Yimiba to create a C2M mechanism of "platform data product testing × source factory co-creation." Taking Huaxiaoxiao as an example, it completed new product R&D and validation in only 15 days, bringing a large number of new users to the brand. Taobao Shangou stated at the conference that in the future it will continue to deepen technology and fulfillment networks, so that AI operating agents benefit more street-side small stores and chain brands, and every good catering business can turn food delivery into a sustainable good business.