Over the past 72 hours, the food-delivery sector has been showered with “red-envelope” coupons. Meituan, Taobao Flash-Sales and JD Delivery rolled out steep offers such as ¥0 “free orders” and ¥24 off ¥25, driving traffic so intense that servers buckled. Yet the subsidy frenzy produced a stark capital split: shares of Meituan, Alibaba and JD all fell, while tea-drink names—Cha Baidao, Guming and Nayuki—raced to new-year highs, laying bare an unprecedented divergence in market sentiment.

Subsidy Surge: ¥50 Billion Coupon Rain Lifts Daily Orders to 120 Million

On 2 July, Taobao Flash-Sales pledged ¥50 billion in subsidies over a year, triggering rapid retaliation; on the night of 5 July, Meituan countered with hefty no-threshold coupons. That single evening Meituan’s on-demand retail orders topped 120 million—over 100 million of them in food delivery—setting a platform record. Taobao Flash-Sales aimed for 90–100 million orders the same day, vowing to catch up with Meituan’s volume within two months.

Industry insiders note that subsidies have evolved from “flash promos” into a protracted traffic-land-grab. While diluting customer-acquisition costs for high-frequency delivery may channel users toward higher-margin categories such as fresh produce and travel, fulfilment and marketing expenses will surge in the short term.

Servers Under Siege: Unprecedented Traffic Shock and Emergency Response

Minutes after the coupon blitz went live, Meituan’s app triggered traffic throttling around 18:00 on 5 July; pages froze and coupons failed to redeem in some regions. Only after overnight capacity expansion and an extended coupon validity did normal ordering resume. Taobao Flash-Sales likewise flashed “system busy” during peak time. Platform engineers report that this traffic peak tripled even the Lunar-New-Year late-night surge, putting “elastic computing” and multi-region active-active architecture to the test.

Capital Temperature Gap: Meituan, Alibaba and JD Drop as Cha Baidao, Guming Leap

Subsidies magnify earnings uncertainty: all three majors opened lower on Monday—Meituan sank more than 4% intraday, Alibaba 2.5%, JD nearly 2%—dragging the Hang Seng Tech Index down. By contrast, Hong Kong-listed new-tea names soared: Cha Baidao surged over 15%, Guming 13%, Nayuki 10%, while Mixue advanced more than 7%. Fund flows show simultaneous north- and southbound inflows into tea-drink stocks, betting that “low ticket, high repeat” demand will explode under the subsidy windfall.

Store-fronts feel the heat too: baristas in several cities said orders “ran past midnight” and “a weekend’s sales matched a whole month,” yet compressed platform fees and raw-material costs kept net margins from spiking, leaving profits still unproven.

The Ledger of Subsidy Economics: Short-Term Pain for Long-Term Moats?

A recent Goldman Sachs report estimates the trio spent ¥25 billion in June alone on this price war and outlines three scenarios: “Meituan holds leadership,” “dual oligopoly,” or “tripod standoff.” If the fight peaks through September, core local-commerce margins could be squeezed further; but if high-frequency delivery users cross-shop into e-commerce and travel, GMV margins could rebound after FY 2026.

For new-tea brands, delivery subsidies deliver unprecedented exposure and scale, but should platforms pivot to “anti-involution” or taper subsidies, traffic and profits may normalize. Both sides are settling in for a marathon: platforms test capital endurance, while brands face scrutiny of supply-chain efficiency and store-model resilience.