The encyclopedia · Sales & Retail · Operational decision · 2019–2025
Meituan Select shut down after next-day groceries lost to instant retail
Meituan built warehouses for community group buying, then closed the service as shoppers moved to 30-minute delivery.
Meituan · 2025-12-15
What happened
Meituan Select chased China's community-group-buying boom with a next-day pickup model backed by self-built warehouses and fulfillment. By June 2025 it had withdrawn from 19 provincial-level markets including Beijing, Sichuan and Hubei, leaving Guangdong and Zhejiang as the last operating regions.
On December 15, 2025, reports said Meituan Select stopped operations in its final markets and its app and mini-program showed sales suspended. The same article said Meituan's new-business segment, which included Meituan Select, lost a cumulative RMB 55B from 2022 to 2024, with quarterly losses above RMB 2B in 2024.
The retreat was a shift from next-day community pickup toward immediate-demand retail. Employees were reportedly moved to instant-retail units including Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Happy Monkey, while Meituan Instashopping became the growth engine the old model had failed to become.
Why it happened
- Self-built warehousing made each region expensive to keep open before order density was secure
- The next-day pickup promise lost appeal as 30-minute delivery reset customer expectations
- Losses sat inside a broader new-business segment, making patience depend on other growth bets
The lesson
A retail network has to match the customer's clock. If demand moves from tomorrow to now, fixed fulfillment assets become a drag before scale can save them.
Sources
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