Meituan Launches Xiaomei AI Agent for Food Delivery

Meituan, China’s leading food delivery and local services platform, has launched Xiaomei, an AI agent app designed to streamline food ordering and restaurant bookings through voice commands.

Built on Meituan’s proprietary LongCat AI model, Xiaomei provides personalized meal recommendations, aiming to enhance user experience and improve conversion rates. The launch comes at a time when competition in China’s local services market is intensifying, with Alibaba’s Ele.me and JD.com aggressively expanding their offerings.

Alibaba this week announced an additional 1 billion yuan (US$140 million) incentive plan to boost its local services business, signaling a renewed battle for market share. All three companies recently pledged to avoid price wars following regulatory guidance, shifting focus toward service quality and innovation.

Key Highlights

• Meituan launches Xiaomei AI agent for food ordering and booking
• Built on LongCat AI, Xiaomei uses voice commands and gives meal recommendations
• Launch comes amid fierce competition with Alibaba’s Ele.me and JD.com

AI-driven voice ordering has already proven effective in other markets. Chipotle successfully rolled out AI voice systems across 1,800 U.S. stores by 2019, while Domino’s and Say2eat pioneered chatbot and text-based ordering as early as 2015. Industry research indicates that AI voice systems can reduce order-taking labor costs by up to 25 percent, providing significant operational efficiency for food delivery platforms.

Also Read: Meituan Margins Collapse as China's Food Delivery Wars Return

Meituan’s Xiaomei represents a strategic step toward AI-powered automation, aiming to improve user engagement, reduce operational overhead, and strengthen Meituan’s competitive position in China’s fast-evolving local services market.