According to the “2026 Online Catering Industry Watch” report recently released by the China Hotel Association and other organizations, China's online restaurant market as a whole shows a development pattern of “first-tier quality improvement and decline in volume expansion”, and the scale of online catering in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties has grown rapidly. The report shows that at present, the growth of online restaurants in first-tier cities in China is stabilizing, and the growth momentum is gradually shifting from being driven by scale to being driven by quality; second-tier cities have maintained steady growth, and have the dual attributes of scale expansion and efficiency improvement. At the same time, the rapid expansion of the market in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties has become an important force in the growth of the online restaurant market. Take Taobao flash sales as an example. In the past year, the platform's order growth rate in Tier 4, 5 and below cities reached more than 2 times that of first-tier cities. More than 250,000 new stores have entered the county market, and the consumption potential of the county market has been unleashed at an accelerated pace.

According to the “2026 Online Catering Industry Watch” report recently released by the China Hotel Association and other organizations, China's online restaurant market as a whole shows a development pattern of “first-tier quality improvement and decline in volume expansion”, and the scale of online catering in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties has grown rapidly. The report shows that at present, the growth of online restaurants in first-tier cities in China is stabilizing, and the growth momentum is gradually shifting from being driven by scale to being driven by quality; second-tier cities have maintained steady growth, and have the dual attributes of scale expansion and efficiency improvement. At the same time, the rapid expansion of the market in third- and fourth-tier cities and counties has become an important force in the growth of the online restaurant market. Take Taobao flash sales as an example. In the past year, the platform's order growth rate in Tier 4, 5 and below cities reached more than 2 times that of first-tier cities. More than 250,000 new stores have entered the county market, and the consumption potential of the county market has been unleashed at an accelerated pace.