Meituan Waimai, Meituan's food delivery business, will offer restaurant merchants across China a free AI store manager. Xue Bing, general manager of Meituan Waimai, announced the plan on October 22 at Meituan's 2026 food delivery industry conference, where the company launched a delivery edition of its Miaoshou AI business assistant, according to Leiphone.
Meituan describes the product as an AI tool built for running a delivery restaurant. It covers four core jobs: diagnosing how a store is performing, carrying out routine store inspections, managing menu items and helping newly opened outlets get started. Rather than only producing reports, the assistant combines Meituan's platform data with the merchant's own data to suggest actions, helps the merchant carry them out and then follows up on the results.
Meituan says tens of thousands of small and mid-sized merchants have already used the tool in daily operations before the national rollout, and that it is working with more than 200 chain brands. It gave one example: a small chicken hotpot shop in Yuanshi County, Hebei province, used the tool to diagnose its store, then adjusted its menu and promotions, and saw weekly orders rise more than 30% from the previous week. Meituan also said one chain partner's new stores performed better in their first month. These are Meituan's own figures from selected trial merchants, not averages across users, and have not been independently verified.
Xue framed the AI tool as one part of what he called a delivery efficiency triangle, alongside product innovation and new store formats. On formats, Meituan is promoting Super Kitchen, a larger delivery-focused kitchen design, and offers help with site selection, product choice, kitchen layout and workflow. A production scheduling system links food prep, cooking and sorting. In one partner store, Meituan said order preparation time fell from about 18 minutes to about 8.
"We hope AI can bring professional delivery operations skills into every store, so that each one gets more detailed support that fits it," Xue said.
The move puts an agent-style assistant in front of a very large base of small restaurant owners, many of whom cannot afford dedicated operations staff. How well it works across very different kitchens, menus and neighborhoods will be the real test as it moves beyond the early trial group.
SEE ALSO: Meituan Open-Sources LongCat-Next · Meituan Launches Ask Xiaotuan AI Search