The Control of Merchants and the Protection of Consumer Rights

and Interests: Taking Meituan Takeout as an Example

Yuehan Zheng

School of Computer and Information Engineering, Henan University of Economics and Law, Jinshui East Road, China

Keywords: Meituan Takeout, Food Safety, Platform Issues, Optimization Strategies.

Abstract: With the rapid development of Internet technology, the catering industry has undergone a digital and

intelligent transformation. Takeout services have emerged as a new force, changing people's eating habits.

With a rich variety of food options, efficient delivery, and affordable prices, takeout breaks through the time

and space limitations of traditional din in dining and is highly popular in the market. However, as an emerging

transaction model, the relevant laws for takeout are still imperfect, leading to many problems that affect

consumers' rights and interests and social stability. Therefore, implementing scientific supervision to ensure

the safety and quality of takeout food is the key to the healthy and sustainable development of the takeout

industry. This paper focuses on Meituan Takeout, and analyzes issues such as low transparency of merchant

qualifications, opaque information about pre-made dishes, and the kitchen environment. The research reveals

the potential risks in the takeout industry and proposes improvement strategies, such as optimizing the review

and qualification information update mechanism, improving the order-placing process and information

confirmation mechanism, and unblocking feedback channels. The aim is to ensure food safety and consumers'

rights and interests and promote the prosperous development of the takeout industry.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the ever-changing Internet technology, the

catering industry is experiencing a profound

transformation in the wave of digitalization and

intelligence. Among them, the rapid development of

takeout services has brought about dramatic changes

in people's eating habits. Takeout food offers a wide

variety of choices, efficient delivery, and reasonable

prices. It breaks the time and space constraints of

traditional dine-in dining and has quickly gained wide

popularity in the market. According to relevant

reports released by the China Research and Planning

Institute, the market size of China's online catering

takeout industry reached 1,525.4 billion yuan in 2023.

It is expected to maintain a strong growth trend in the

next few years, and by 2027, the market size is

expected to rise to 1,956.7 billion yuan. At the same

time, the number of takeout users is increasing

rapidly. As of December 2023, the scale of domestic

online takeout users has grown rapidly to 545 million,

accounting for 49.9% of the total number of Internet

users (Feng, 2024). However, due to the short-time

https://orcid.org/0009-0002-3652-8838

emergence of this emerging takeout transaction

model, the relevant legal framework is still not

perfect, resulting in a series of problems. These

problems not only threaten consumers' rights and

interests but also affect social harmony and stability.

Therefore, implementing scientific and effective

supervision measures to ensure the safety and quality

of takeout food is crucial for promoting the healthy

and sustainable development of the takeout industry.

Based on this background, this paper analyzes and

explores the current situation of Meituan Takeout. It

mainly discusses issues such as the low transparency

of Meituan Takeout merchant qualifications, the

opaque information about pre-made dishes for users,

the takeout kitchen environment, as well as

consumers' feedback channels and relevant

compensation mechanisms. The research reveals the

potential risks in the takeout industry and

innovatively proposes a series of improvement

strategies for the optimization path and mechanism.

By optimizing the review process, establishing a

dynamic qualification information update

mechanism, optimizing the user order-placing

538

Zheng, Y.

The Control of Merchants and the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests: Taking Meituan Takeout as an Example.

DOI: 10.5220/0013849100004719

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on E-commerce and Modern Logistics (ICEML 2025), pages 538-542

ISBN: 978-989-758-775-7

process and information confirmation mechanism,

and optimizing feedback channels, the purpose is to

effectively ensure food safety and consumers' rights

and interests and promote the prosperous

development of the entire takeout industry.

2 OVERVIEW OF THE MEITUAN

TAKEOUT PLATFORM

2.1 Platform Development History

Meituan is a technology - retail company. With the

strategy of "retail+technology", Meituan fulfills its

corporate mission of "helping everyone eat better and

live better". Since its establishment in March 2010,

Meituan has continuously promoted the digital

upgrading of service retail and commodity retail on

the demand and supply sides. It has been working

hard with its numerous partners to provide consumers

with high-quality services. Meituan Takeout was

officially launched in November 2013. Initially, its

main consumer group was college students. In early

2014, the anonymous evaluation function was

launched. In 2015, due to the slowdown in the growth

of the college takeout market, Meituan Takeout began

to target the white-collar market. On September 20,

2018, Meituan was listed on the Hong Kong Stock

Exchange. On August 5, 2024, the 2024 Fortune

Global 500 list was released, and Meituan ranked

384th.

2.2 Platform Operation Model

The platform model of Meituan Takeout is a two-

sided market model that connects consumers,

merchants, and delivery riders. It achieves

profitability and development by integrating multiple

resources and providing various services. Meituan

optimizes existing channels to encourage users to

develop new consumption habits on the platform and

conduct transactions. For example, users often

browse restaurant information on Meituan. In

Meituan's takeout business, the traditional

consumption model of "customers generate demand,

make payments, merchants provide services, and

receive fees" remains unchanged. Meituan still acts as

an intermediary connecting customers (the supply

side) and merchants (the demand side) and extracts a

certain proportion of commission from each

transaction (Lou,2023).

3 ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT

SITUATION OF MEITUAN

TAKEOUT

3.1 Problems of Merchants, Prepared

Dishes and Kitchen Environment

Meituan Takeout has many problems regarding

merchant qualifications, the disclosure of pre -made

dish information, and the takeout kitchen

environment. The transparency of merchant

qualifications is low. The review information is not

fully publicized, and the update of qualification

changes lags. It is difficult for consumers to obtain

comprehensive and timely key information about the

legality and standardization of merchants' operations.

The information about pre -made dishes is opaque.

The sources of raw materials are unclear, and the

processing and production process is not disclosed.

As a result, users have little understanding of the

quality of the dishes. The takeout kitchen

environment is worrying. The hygiene conditions are

poor, and the facilities and equipment are simple or

do not meet the standards, which affects food hygiene

and safety. Moreover, there are loopholes in platform

supervision.

When merchants apply to join the Meituan

platform, although it claims to adopt a triple-

verification method including optical character

recognition (OCR) image recognition, system

verification, and manual review, in actual operation,

due to reasons such as heavy workloads of reviewers

and insufficient professional knowledge, the

qualification review of some merchants may not be

rigorous enough. Some unscrupulous merchants take

advantage of review loopholes to upload false or

blurred qualification documents and get away with it.

The low transparency of merchant qualifications,

insufficient publicity of review information, and

lagging updates of qualification changes make it

difficult for consumers to obtain comprehensive and

timely key information about the legality and

standardization of merchants' operations (Ge, 2025).

Compared with traditional cooking methods, pre-

made dishes are more likely to be contaminated by

microorganisms, making it difficult for their quality

to meet the standards. Notably, excessive nitrite

content has become a common problem for many

industrially processed dishes (Tang, 2023). The

information about pre-made dishes is opaque.

Consumers have no way of knowing where the raw

materials come from, and the specific processing and

production process is not disclosed. This makes it

The Control of Merchants and the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests: Taking Meituan Takeout as an Example

539

difficult for users to clearly understand the quality of

pre-made dishes.

At the same time, the environment of takeout

kitchens is also not transparent. Among 100 selected

survey respondents, as high as 67.94% of consumers

pointed out problems with the delivery safety of

takeout food. In addition, 84.8% of consumers

expressed doubts about whether the takeout they

ordered had been contaminated (Li, 2024). The poor

hygiene conditions, simple facilities and equipment

that do not even meet the required standards

undoubtedly pose a serious threat to food hygiene and

safety. And in the whole process, there are obvious

loopholes in platform supervision, which fails to

effectively ensure the standardization of merchants'

operations and the safety and reliability of food.

3.2 User Order Issues and Liability

Disputes between Users and Riders

Problems of user operation errors and system

interaction are manifested in two aspects. On the one

hand, during the order-placing process, consumers

may accidentally select incorrect dish specifications,

flavors, etc. due to reasons such as operating too

quickly or unclear interface design. On the other hand,

the address-positioning function of the Meituan

Takeout APP may be inaccurate, or consumers may

make typos when manually entering the address. The

system fails to effectively remind users to confirm

key information when placing an order.

The order volume of Meituan Takeout is

extremely concentrated during peak hours. In order to

complete more orders within the specified time, riders

may drive at high speeds or take shortcuts in complex

road conditions, resulting in delivery delays or

damaged food. In addition, severe weather such as

heavy rain and snow will seriously affect traffic

conditions, increasing the difficulty of riders'

deliveries and prolonging the delivery time. Some

riders regard food delivery as a transitional job and

may lack professional delivery skills training. For

example, they do not take reasonable fixing measures

when placing food, resulting in the food shaking and

being damaged during transportation (Zhu, 2025). At

the same time, the platform's daily management of

riders is not strict enough. It fails to promptly correct

and punish violations during the delivery process,

allowing some bad behaviors to continue.

4 PATH AND MECHANISM

4.1 Optimize the Review Process and

Establish a Dynamic Qualification

Information Update Mechanism

Introduce an intelligent review system. In addition to

the existing OCR technology, use artificial

intelligence algorithms to deeply analyze

qualification documents. Traditional information -

extraction technology has limitations in functionality

and cannot fully meet the requirements. In contrast,

artificial-intelligence-based technology shows

significant advantages and is expected to provide a

more comprehensive solution. From the perspective

of automatically extracting useful information from

unstructured documents, artificial intelligence

methods have great potential and can more efficiently

and accurately extract key content (Baviskar, 2021).

For example, by comparing with standard

qualification templates in big data, it can identify

problems such as document tampering and

information gaps, improving the accuracy and

efficiency of reviews.

Establish a dynamic qualification information

update mechanism. The platform regularly (such as

monthly) pushes qualification-information-update

reminders to merchants, requiring them to confirm

and update relevant information. For merchants that

fail to update in a timely manner, measures such as

warnings and restricting some business permissions

are taken.

Consumers are not influenced by different

certificate levels when it comes to protecting

themselves from food - borne diseases. Therefore, an

improvement plan should be launched to clarify the

significance of these certificates (Kim and Choi,

2021). Establish data connections with the industrial

and commercial registration, food - supervision, and

other systems of relevant government departments to

obtain real-time information on changes in merchants'

qualifications and automatically synchronize it to the

platform, ensuring that the merchant-qualification

information seen by consumers is always the latest

and most accurate.

4.2 Optimize the User Order-Placing

Process and Information

Confirmation Mechanism

Improving the order-placing interface design of the

Meituan Takeout APP. Adopt a more concise and

clearer layout, highlight key information of dishes

ICEML 2025 - International Conference on E-commerce and Modern Logistics

540

such as flavors and specifications, and add a pop-up

window for secondary confirmation before

consumers click to place an order. This allows them

to check the order details again to reduce order-

information errors caused by operation mistakes.

Improving the address-positioning and error-

correction function. Use high-precision map

technology to improve positioning accuracy. At the

same time, after consumers enter the address, the

system automatically associates and prompts similar

addresses for easy selection of the correct address. On

the order-ubmission page, clearly display the address

information and provide an address -error-correction

entry for consumers to modify in a timely manner.

4.3 Optimize Feedback Channels

Set a "One - Click Feedback" button in a prominent

position on the home page of the Meituan Takeout

APP. After clicking, a list of common problem types

such as "Merchant Issues", "Rider Issues", "Order

Issues", and -Food-Safety Issues will pop up directly.

After consumers select the problem type, they will

automatically jump to the corresponding detailed

feedback page to fill in the specific situation and

demands, simplifying the feedback process.

Use artificial-intelligence voice - recognition

technology to add a voice - feedback function to the

APP. Consumers can describe problems through

voice, and the system automatically recognizes and

generates feedback content, which is then submitted

to the platform's customer service, improving the

feedback efficiency. This is especially convenient for

use in scenarios where typing is inconvenient.

At the same time, the feedback-response speed

should also be improved.

Increase investment in building the customer -

service team and introduce an AI evaluation

mechanism. Artificial intelligence has been used to

predict the judgment results of certain cases, model

and design cases to produce specific results

(Kufakwababa, 2021). Especially during peak-order

hours, ensure there is sufficient computing power to

handle consumer feedback in a timely manner. Use

chatbots for customer service. By taking advantage of

chatbots, encourage positive interaction with

customers. Researchers agree that from the

perspectives of both companies and consumers, the

use of chatbot technology brings both benefits and

challenges. For companies, the main benefits include

cost reduction, time savings in customer-service tasks,

and the ability to serve multiple customers

simultaneously. At the same time, for consumers, the

benefits include being able to obtain customer service

around the clock, allowing them to ask questions at

any time, thus improving customer satisfaction

(Nicolescu and Tudorache, 2022).

Finally, the Meituan platform should improve the

compensation mechanism.

Introduce a consumer-loss assessment mechanism.

When handling consumer feedback, customer-service

staff assess the actual losses of consumers based on

their descriptions and provide evidence, including but

not limited to impaired dining experiences, wasted

time, and additional expenses. Based on the

assessment results, on the basis of the standard

compensation plan, flexibly adjust the compensation

method and amount to better compensate for

consumers' losses and enhance consumer satisfaction.

For example, if a consumer seeks medical treatment

due to eating spoiled food provided by a merchant, in

addition to refunding the meal fee, the platform will

provide corresponding economic compensation based

on medical-expense vouchers and seriously punish

the merchant (China Research Network,2024).

5 CONCLUSION

Problems at the merchant, user, rider, and

competition levels of Meituan Takeout are

intertwined, severely restricting its development.

Solving these problems can not only improve user

satisfaction, merchant loyalty, and rider sense of

belonging but also enhance the platform's ability to

resist competition risks and stabilize its market

position. Since the rise of the takeout industry, every

key stage of its development has been closely

associated with strict supervision and management

measures. Whenever new policies and regulations for

the takeout industry are introduced by regulatory

authorities, on social platforms with a large user base

like Weibo, they will quickly trigger enthusiastic

discussions among netizens. These positive

regulatory actions have greatly improved the

transparency of the takeout industry's operations and

effectively enhanced the public's confidence in the

safety of takeout food. This paper uses the methods

of literature research and case analysis to analyze the

Meituan Takeout platform, summarizes the problems

existing in Meituan Takeout in terms of merchant

qualifications, information about pre-made dishes,

the takeout kitchen environment, user orders, and

liability disputes between users and riders. It further

elaborates on the specific manifestations of these

problems, such as low transparency of merchant

qualifications, insufficient publicity of review

information and lagging update of changes, unclear

The Control of Merchants and the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests: Taking Meituan Takeout as an Example

541

sources of raw materials and opaque processing

processes for pre-made dishes, poor hygiene

conditions and sub-tandard facilities in takeout

kitchens with loopholes in platform supervision, user

operation errors and system-nteraction problems, and

the impact of peak hours, severe weather, riders' skills,

and platform management on deliveries. In response

to these problems, this paper proposes improvement

strategies such as optimizing the review process and

establishing a dynamic qualification-information

update mechanism, optimizing the user order -

placing process and information-confirmation

mechanism, and optimizing feedback channels,

aiming to ensure food safety and consumers' rights

and interests and promote the prosperous

development of the takeout industry. In terms of

future prospects, it is expected that the takeout

industry can achieve more healthy and sustainable

development under the background of continuous

improvement of supervision and continuous

optimization of platforms, providing consumers with

higher-quality and safer services. Follow-up should

continuously pay attention to the problem-solving

effects and dynamically adjust strategies according to

market changes.

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