Ordering Food Delivery in China as a Foreigner
Meituan and Eleme without a Chinese account — the Alipay mini-programme route, how to get it to your hotel room, and why the courier will call you in Chinese.
Chinese food delivery is faster, cheaper and more comprehensive than anything most visitors are used to. Twenty minutes, a few yuan of delivery fee, and a range that includes the restaurant three streets away that has no English sign and no shopfront you would ever have walked into.
It is also built entirely around Chinese accounts, Chinese phone numbers and Chinese addresses, and the standard advice — "download Meituan" — runs into that wall immediately.
There is a route through it, and it goes via Alipay.
The short version
Open Alipay. Search 美团 (Meituan) or 饿了么 (Eleme). Order inside the mini-programme.
No separate app, no separate account, no Chinese phone number. Payment goes through the card already bound to your Alipay. This is the path of least resistance and most visitors never discover it.
If you have not set up Alipay yet, do that first — see the Alipay guide. Everything below assumes it is working.
The two platforms
Meituan (美团) is the larger, with the deepest restaurant coverage, particularly in smaller cities. It is also a general local-services platform — hotels, cinema tickets, attraction bookings, bike hire.
Eleme (饿了么) is the Alibaba-owned competitor, integrated into Alipay more natively. Slightly smaller coverage, often marginally cheaper promotions, and the easier of the two to reach from inside Alipay.
For a visitor the difference is small. Try Eleme first because the Alipay integration is tighter; fall back to Meituan if the restaurant you want is not there.
The standalone apps
Both have standalone apps, and both generally expect a Chinese mobile number for SMS verification at registration. Some travellers report registering with an international number successfully; many do not get through it.
If you have a Chinese SIM, the standalone apps are better — fuller interface, more promotions, easier address management. See the phone number guide.
If you do not, use the mini-programmes. They work.
Logging in via WeChat or Alipay is also offered on the standalone apps and sidesteps some of the registration friction.
Ordering, step by step
1. Set the address first. Everything the platform shows you depends on where it thinks you are. If the address is wrong, the restaurant list is wrong.
2. Enter your hotel address in Chinese characters. Copy it from your booking confirmation. English will either fail or produce a courier who cannot find you.
Include the room number, or something the courier can work with. Many hotels do not permit couriers above the lobby, in which case you are collecting from reception or from the courier at the door.
3. Browse. The interface is in Chinese. Photographs carry most of the meaning, and the category icons across the top are reasonably legible. If you are using a phone with system-level translation, turn it on.
4. Check the minimum order and the fees. Chinese delivery has a low minimum order value, a small delivery fee, and frequently a packaging fee per item. The total is still cheap by international standards.
5. Pay through Alipay. No extra step if you are in the mini-programme.
6. Watch the map. Chinese delivery tracking is precise and the estimate is usually accurate to a few minutes.
The part nobody warns you about
The courier will call you.
Chinese delivery riders phone rather than message, they phone from the street outside, and the conversation will be in rapid Chinese. If you cannot answer it, the order can stall.
How to handle it:
Put the room number and any access instructions in the order notes in Chinese, so the call is less likely to be necessary.
Answer and say "wǒ mǎshàng xiàlái" (我马上下来) — I'll come down right away. This resolves most calls.
Or choose a delivery point that does not require a call — hotel reception, a lobby, a locker if the building has one.
Or use the in-app messaging to send a pre-translated instruction before the rider arrives.
If you have no Chinese number, the rider may not be able to reach you at all, which is the main argument for having one on a longer trip.
Getting it to a hotel
Generally fine, with variation.
Business and chain hotels take deliveries at reception routinely and will call your room or message you.
Smaller properties and hostels are usually relaxed about it.
Some higher-end hotels discourage outside food delivery to rooms. Nobody will confiscate your noodles, but the courier may not get past the lobby.
Practical approach: put the hotel name and address in Chinese, add the room number in the notes, and be prepared to walk to the lobby. Set a timer for the delivery estimate.
What is worth ordering
Breakfast, if you are jet-lagged and awake at 05:00 before anything opens.
A late meal after a long train arrival when the kitchen at your hotel has closed.
Regional specialities from a restaurant with no English, which is the real argument — delivery gives you access to places you would never navigate in person.
Fruit, water and supplies, which both platforms sell alongside restaurant food. Convenience-store delivery in twenty minutes is genuinely useful.
Pharmacy items on Meituan, which can deliver from a chemist late at night. Worth knowing if you are ill — see the street food safety guide.
Coffee. Luckin, Cotti and the rest all deliver, usually faster than you can walk to the shop.
Reading the menu without Chinese
Photographs do most of the work. Chinese delivery listings are heavily photographed and the images are accurate about what arrives.
Learn a handful of characters and the list gets much easier:
| Character | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 辣 | spicy |
| 微辣 | mildly spicy |
| 不辣 | not spicy |
| 素 | vegetarian |
| 牛 | beef |
| 猪 | pork |
| 鸡 | chicken |
| 鱼 | fish |
| 虾 | shrimp |
| 面 | noodles |
| 饭 | rice |
| 汤 | soup |
Note that 微辣 is still spicy by most non-Chinese standards. See the regional cuisines guide.
Allergies are not reliably handled through a delivery app. A note in the order notes may or may not reach the kitchen, and there is nobody to ask. If you have a severe allergy, delivery is the wrong channel — eat somewhere you can show a card to a person. The eating guide covers how.
Costs
Delivery in China is cheap in a way that is hard to convey. A full meal delivered for the price of a coffee in most Western capitals, with a delivery fee of a few yuan and frequent promotions that reduce it further.
Where the money goes: the food, a small delivery fee, a per-item packaging fee, and no tip. Tipping is not expected — see the tipping and etiquette guide.
New-user promotions on both platforms are substantial and worth using on the first order.
What else these apps deliver
Food is the smaller half. Both platforms are general local-services businesses, and the rest of what they do is more useful to a traveller than the restaurant listings.
Groceries and convenience-store items in twenty to thirty minutes. Water, fruit, snacks, instant noodles, beer. Meituan's Xiaoxiang and the Eleme supermarket sections cover this.
Pharmacy delivery. Late-night medicine when you are ill and do not want to find a chemist in an unfamiliar city. Enormously useful. Have the item name in Chinese — see the medical care guide.
Fresh fruit, which is cheap, good and hard to carry around a city all day.
Household items — an umbrella when it starts raining, a phone charger, a power bank, slippers.
Flowers, if you are visiting someone.
Meituan also does hotels, cinema tickets, attraction bookings, bike hire and restaurant queue tickets. The restaurant queue function is genuinely worth knowing: you can take a numbered ticket for a popular restaurant remotely and arrive when your number is close, rather than standing outside for ninety minutes. See the Dianping guide, which is the same company.
Bike hire through Meituan is one of the routes into shared bikes that sometimes works for foreign accounts — see the bike sharing guide.
When not to bother
When you are somewhere worth walking into. Delivery is for convenience, not for discovery. The Dianping research method plus a walk will produce a better meal than a delivery app on a night when you have the energy.
Rural areas and small towns, where coverage thins and delivery times lengthen.
Scenic areas and hotels inside parks, where couriers often cannot reach you.
When your phone is your only lifeline and it is at 8%. Delivery depends entirely on being reachable.
Related
- Alipay in China: Setup, Fees and What Actually Breaks
- Do You Need a Chinese Phone Number?
- Eating in China: Ordering Food, Allergies and Dietary Requirements
- Using Xiaohongshu and Dianping to Research China Travel
Platform interfaces, registration requirements and mini-programme availability change. Confirm in the app.
Last reviewed: 30 July 2026.