The Country 20/02/25: Hunter McGregor talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Shanghai-based correspondent talks about food delivery in China. In short, it is massive and the stats are mind-blowing! More than 10 million delivery riders fulfil an average of 80 million orders daily for 545 million users. The sector is valued at 1.2 trillion yuan ($156 billion), with consumers spending nearly 3.3 billion yuan daily on food delivery.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heating all over the world today on the country shortly
to Lexington, Kentucky with our US farm and correspondent Todd Clark.
They've got all sorts of weather woes there. But our
guy in Shanghai, China is Roxburgh born and bred, Hunter
McGregor and Hunter, I know you were in Roxburgh when
the town hall and the movie theater burnt down. If
that wasn't bad enough, you got hit by flooding the

(00:23):
other night with a big thunderplump. Tough times for that
wonderful little town in central Otago.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yeah good aarsenoon, Jamie. You know I was in Roxburgh
when the town hall burnt down and actually drove past it,
so pretty incredible sight. And the firefighters at a wonderful
job to stop a spreading to other building. So how
good on them getting out there and saving the rest
of the buildings near nearby.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Well, a little place like Roxburgh, it's pretty cool to
have your own movie theater. I hope they can rebuild it.
No doubt you were to cut your teeth in the
back row of the movies.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Ah, yes, certainly. Yeah, yeah, it's not far from Jimmy's Pie. Well,
so a pretty good Bombo moving a bi Well.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
You can't go past that. What's happening in China regarding
the economy, because every time you're on you're talking it down,
but you're saying there's a bit of a recovery going
on and off the back of this deep Seek, the
Chinese AI system.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, no, Deep Seek has had a major impact to
the stock market and the share price to a lot
of tech companies here. So there's a bit of positivity
around that. And you know, and they've done a pretty
good job. And I think what's happening now is the
world starting to realize that China's moved on from being
a cheap copier of very good a copier of things,

(01:39):
and now they're starting to innovate and it's happening across
and in a few industries, and AI is one of them.
And you know, there's going to be a hell of
a lot more innovation in the future out of China.
And yeah, with the share population of people that are
that are that are studying you know, the right the
right fields mathematics and all those sort of things, so engineers,
so a lot more innovation will come out of China

(02:03):
than there has been in the past, so which is
good to see.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Well, you've got a lot of people to pick from
one point four billion today you're going to talk about
this or about food delivery in China. The stats are
nothing short of amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Well, yeah, there's another that's another innovation that's really been
driven forward out of China. So you know there's two
Food delivery here is fantastic. It's cheap, there are no
delivery fees, and it happens straight away, you know, so
you can sit here anywhere, you know, and most restaurants
do it. There's two major companies, Erla mar and may

(02:36):
twe and may one is the big player. But I
was just looking at some numbers. There's ten million delivery
guys rolling around on electric bikes in China. They average
about eighty million deliveries a day and the value of
that is about eight hundred New zealand eight hundred million
New Zealand dollars in sales up per day on food delivery,

(02:58):
food and drink delivery in China, which is incredible.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Those numbers. Ten million blogs and women are driving around
on electric bikes delivering food on a daily basis.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, no, so you know they're under pressure. They only
get paid per delivery, so they're under pressure and so
they're roaring around the streets and they're most of the
bikes that would run the red lights, and they'll be
up on the foot paths and stuff. But you know,
it's really convenient for everyone. And the thing is for restaurants.
A lot of restaurants don't actually like it because they

(03:31):
don't make any money from it, will make very small
margins from it because the delivery fees are anywhere between
twenty and forty percent of the thing, but they can't
charge any extra delivery fees because of competition. So you know,
it's a real cutthroat business and a lot of like
those ghost kitchens or kitchens set up are specifically four

(03:52):
food delivery popping up all over the shop, and you know,
it's big business. And when it rains, they're flat out
because people don't want to go outside and pick up
a cup of coffee or a meal or a sandwich,
so they get delivered.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Anyhow, let me just finish on this question. Why is
this so interesting? Well, how does this pertain to New
Zealand farmers?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, you know, I think there's two things. One of
them is that you know, the coffee and milky teas
and stuff like that. The consumption of that is continuing
to grow in China. And obviously you put milk into coffee,
which is good for dairy. So there's a lot more
dairy products consumed daily from a lot more people than
there was sitt of five ten years ago. And it's

(04:33):
mainly through you know, you've got Starbucks set up the
coffee industry here, but you've got two really big players,
luck In Coffee, which is about three times larger than
Starbucks now, another one Conti Coffee, and there's a whole
other local brands. But that's pulling through a lot of
dairy products through the system, and the other one is
around you know, when we talk about meat consumption, New

(04:54):
Zealand meat doesn't really fit into food delivery that well unfortunately.
And then you hear some people saying about, oh, you know,
pre cook meals is a real opportunity for New Zealand
bolt New Zealand products and New Zealand meat. What's not
really because it's so cheap and cheerful. You're going to
be very cheap. You've got to undercut a restaurant food

(05:15):
that's cooked fast, so that pre cook You know, if
anyone's talking about the future of New Zealand meters and
pre cook products up here, you know, I don't think
they've actually understand the market because you know, you can
get something freshly cooked from from a restaurant for a
cheaper price on what you would add a pre cook
meal which is sitting in your freezer frozen. So you know,
it's interesting the dairy products. There's a lot of coffee

(05:38):
consumed and you can see it and they roar around
and you know they get shaken up quite well on
the motorbikes before they get there, so it might be
good for milkshakes as well.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Good on you, Hunter McGregor. Thank you very much for
your time. Early morning Shanghai time. When you're head to
work this morning, don't get run over by one of
those ten million the food delivery riders on the electric bar.
We'll chat to you in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Cheer Thanks, Jeremy