New regulations on food safety for takeout are introduced, Taobao Flash Sale responds immediately, and here's the confidence behind it.

On February 26, the State Administration for Market Regulation officially released the “Regulations on the Supervision and Management of Food Safety Responsibilities for Online Catering Service Operators” (hereinafter referred to as the “Regulations”), providing clear guidance and explicit requirements for the high-quality and sustainable development of online catering, sending a strong signal for strict management of online food operations.

In recent years, while the takeout and online food sales market has rapidly risen, food safety issues have increasingly become prominent. According to data from the “Annual Report on China’s Catering Industry,” the scale of China’s takeout market is expected to exceed 1.4 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate exceeding 10%, accounting for about 24% of the total revenue of the catering industry, making it an important growth driver in the industry. However, with the expansion of scale comes a myriad of industry problems that urgently need regulation. As Wang Qiuping, spokesperson for the State Administration for Market Regulation, stated at a press conference, the purpose of the new regulations is to “weave a tight net of responsibility, ensuring that ‘traffic’ and ‘quality’ go hand in hand.”

Faced with a turning point in industry development and clear guidance from regulatory policies, major takeout platforms must inevitably undergo a profound transformation from a “traffic-oriented” approach to a “quality-oriented” approach. The author noted that one of the leading platforms in the industry, Taobao Flash Purchase, responded immediately after the release of the “Regulations,” deeply integrating them into various operational aspects of the platform.

Through a series of actions by Taobao Flash Purchase, we gain insight into how takeout platforms can reshape the trust base of online catering through a digital co-governance system.

Regulatory Storm Arrives: Takeout Platforms Must Act as “Gatekeepers”

In the early logic of the industry, some takeout platforms were solely focused on expanding their market, blindly reviewing businesses, and turning a blind eye to dishonest vendors and problematic takeout, neglecting platform responsibilities and food safety. Sun Huichuan, Director of Food Safety at the State Administration for Market Regulation, bluntly stated at the press conference: “Through daily supervision, we found that some takeout merchants provided false addresses, uploaded fake photos, and even had fraudulent qualifications. How can we trust such takeout?”

Addressing these pain points, the “Regulations” tackle food safety guarantees for online catering from three dimensions: platforms, merchants, and punishment. Sun Huichuan emphasized that takeout platforms cannot just collect commissions without assuming responsibility, nor can they only manage traffic while ignoring quality; they must genuinely take on the primary responsibility of being the “gatekeepers” of food safety for takeout.

In concrete implementation, the “Regulations” set extremely stringent standards:

Merchants must have real physical operating stores, and the business scope, address, and qualifications must be consistent.

Merchants must strictly implement requirements for raw material control, facility maintenance, and operational specifications and may not process food outside designated areas or commission others for production.

For merchants that do not provide dine-in services, platforms must set up special identifiers.

Takeout platforms must conduct real-name registration of takeout merchants and substantively review their business qualifications through on-site inspections and other means to ensure that information matches reality, rather than just conducting formal reviews.

More critically, the new regulations break previous data barriers. They require takeout platforms to verify merchants’ qualifications against data held by provincial market regulatory departments, and those failing verification cannot be provided services. This measure aims to achieve a “single-source verification, mutual calibration, and real-time feedback” of qualification information, effectively blocking paths for false qualifications to “enter the network.” Additionally, platforms are required to verify and update merchants’ actual operating addresses and qualifications at least every six months.

In terms of punitive measures, the “Regulations” connect with the “E-commerce Law,” significantly increasing penalties for illegal and non-compliant activities, with fines up to 200,000 yuan. If the person in charge of the platform deliberately violates the law, with serious consequences, they may be fined an amount equivalent to one to ten times their revenue from the previous year.

In addition to food delivery, addressing issues such as false advertising and misleading consumption in online food sales, Liu Songtao, Director of the Special Food Department of the State Administration for Market Regulation, stated that starting in March this year, a six-month nationwide special action will be organized to address false advertising in online food and health food sales. It is strictly prohibited to explicitly or implicitly suggest that food has disease prevention or treatment functions, and false or misleading commercial advertising related to the food’s origin, ingredients, and functions is forbidden.

From “Human Governance” to “Data Governance”: Taobao Flash Purchase Constructs “3+1+AI” Co-Governance System

Faced with increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, if platforms continue to rely on traditional manual reviews and sampling methods, not only will costs be high, but coverage of the vast sinking market network will also be difficult. Against this backdrop, Taobao Flash Purchase proposed “open governance for food safety,” incorporating food safety into the platform’s business strategy and achieving “early detection, early warning, and early response” through digitization.

Taobao Flash Purchase stated that under the guidance of regulatory authorities, the platform collaborates with ecological partners and various sectors to continuously build a “3+1+AI” food safety co-governance system. The underlying logic of this system lies in reshaping the risk-reward structure of business operations, moving risk exposure forward.

The so-called “3+1” mechanism specifically includes the following aspects:

Three core mechanisms: a stringent platform merchant entry review process, dynamic daily operational inspections, and open and transparent “Internet + visible kitchens” public supervision.

A supplementary force for flowing governance (“1”): an innovative mechanism that allows delivery riders to take “snapshots” during their deliveries. The platform offers incentive bonuses to city riders, turning them into “mobile sentinels” of food safety who can promptly identify and report potential risks such as irregular documents, unsanitary environments, and inconsistent addresses.

Currently, this mechanism has been implemented in collaboration with regulatory departments in 24 cities, addressing thousands of valid clues.

The People’s Daily has pointed out in commentaries that the “snapshot” mechanism uses a grassroots “mass line” approach to achieve precise regulatory supplementation, breaking the traditional model of regulatory authorities acting independently and shifting supervision from “passively responding” to “actively discovering.”

Transforming the vast group of delivery riders into a force for social co-governance essentially socializes the cost of data collection, lowering the platform’s single-point auditing costs through marginal feedback from riders and users, creating a scalable sample.

Behind “3+1” is the deep integration of “AI” technology. From automatically identifying false storefront images and edited qualifications during the store setup phase to intelligently matching official qualification databases and dynamically monitoring back-of-house behaviors during operations, and quickly distributing clues, AI significantly improves risk identification accuracy and response efficiency.

For instance, starting June 2025, Taobao Flash Purchase initiated a gray test of the “one-shot verification” function for store authenticity in Qiqihar, Yangzhou, and Zhanjiang. This function mandates new merchants to upload continuous unedited videos that fully present the storefront, environment, and back-kitchen conditions. After optimization, the pilot scope has been expanded to five cities, including Beijing and Fuzhou, by January 2026. In the review process, Taobao Flash Purchase employs a dual-track mechanism of AI intelligent identification and manual review, maintaining an accuracy rate above 99%, effectively curbing information fraud at the source.

Furthermore, the platform has established a management mechanism of “daily control, weekly inspections, and monthly scheduling” through its digital capabilities. Data from different cycles are converted into intuitive dashboards, providing advance warnings for merchants whose qualifications are about to expire or be revoked, and reinforcing emergency responses to high-risk food safety incidents. This increase in compliance certainty effectively reduces the “regulatory uncertainty premium” in merchant operations while raising the threshold, making it difficult for inferior products to survive long-term in the ecosystem.

The Commercial Transformation of “Visible Kitchens”: Safety Becomes a “Growth Engine”

For a long time, food safety has often been viewed by catering merchants as a “compliance cost” that must be incurred. However, the current industry consensus is shifting. The practices of Taobao Flash Purchase have demonstrated that “safety” is transitioning from a passive baseline to an active growth engine.

“Visible kitchens” are no longer just a window into the kitchen but an important lever for the platform to promote transparent and standardized operations. During this year’s Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, Fang Yongxin, president of Taobao Flash Purchase, submitted a proposal suggesting the establishment of a unified “AI + visible kitchens” intelligent system to create a “transparent takeout” plan, forming a model of “government oversight + platform constraints + public participation.”

To break down the financial and technical barriers to digital transformation for small and micro enterprises, Taobao Flash Purchase has adopted a combination strategy of “public welfare + attraction + constraints.”

First is public welfare support and inclusivity. Taobao Flash Purchase, in collaboration with multiple parties, launched the “Visible Kitchens Entrepreneurship Support Program,” offering free packages that include hardware such as cameras and AI inspections to college student entrepreneurs, disabled individuals, and “famous, special, and new” individual businesses. On February 10, the platform also donated 1,000 sets of equipment to the Shandong Province Individual Private Enterprises Association. Fang Yongxin suggested that for small and micro enterprises, an incentive mechanism could be improved through a model where “the government covers a bit, the platform reduces a bit, and the merchants contribute a bit.” This approach lowers the transformation barriers for vulnerable and startup groups, stabilizing the ecosystem and preventing compliance from becoming an obstacle to innovation.

Second is traffic attraction and commercial monetization. The platform has implemented traffic incentives such as setting up venues, exclusive tags, and priority displays, allowing merchants who actively showcase their kitchens to receive more orders. When regulatory compliance becomes a transactional signal, visualized information becomes a factor in consumer choice, promoting the realization of “safety premiums” in both price and traffic.

Additionally, there is a baseline constraint. In the operation of high-traffic products such as popular group buys, Taobao Flash Purchase clearly requires relevant merchants to connect with the visible kitchen system; otherwise, they cannot participate in the activities, thus maintaining safety standards.

This transformation has brought tangible commercial benefits. The chain brand “Wang Chunchun Chicken Soup Rice” is a typical case. This brand has long emphasized “four hours of freshly simmered chicken soup daily,” yet struggled to eliminate consumer doubts about pre-made soup bases. After launching “Visible Kitchens 2.0,” consumers can watch the entire soup-making process in real-time, instantly breaking down trust barriers. Data shows that its takeout orders increased by 28%, repurchase rates grew by 19%, and positive reviews rose by 23%.

Hong Yong, a researcher at the E-commerce Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out that the current catering industry is at a dual turning point of structural and cognitive changes in consumption. When “visible production” replaces “price sensitivity” as the core of consumer decision-making, visible kitchens evolve from a cost center into a growth engine, effectively addressing the trust crisis surrounding pre-made dishes.

Government-Enterprise Collaboration and Layered Governance: “Food Safety Ding” Opens New Pathways for Non-Site Supervision

Implementing food safety responsibilities requires government-enterprise collaboration as a key catalyst for enhancing intelligent management efficiency.

In this regard, Taobao Flash Purchase, under the guidance of the Zhejiang Provincial Market Regulatory Bureau and other departments, jointly developed the “Food Safety Ding” digital governance tool with DingTalk, exploring the “AI + non-site supervision” model.

The innovation of “Food Safety Ding” lies in its interconnected governance measures.

Merchants installing this tool can receive results from AI video analyses of visible kitchens and feedback on social supervision from riders’ “snapshots,” allowing for quick awareness of issues such as cleanliness and operational irregularities, leading to proactive rectification and information reporting.

When regulatory personnel detect risks, they can issue rectification notices with one click via DingTalk and review the evidence uploaded by merchants online, forming a closed loop.

The entire process does not require changes to existing regulatory procedures; it can be achieved efficiently with just a mobile phone. This essentially embeds governance into the operating system of businesses, allowing “compliance” and “efficiency” to resonate together.

Hu Jun, Deputy Director of the Market Supervision Bureau of Hangzhou’s Shangcheng District, commented that “Food Safety Ding” promotes a shift in mindset—from “passively responding to inspections” to “actively self-managing.” When merchants realize that every rectification protects their brand, compliance ceases to be a burden and becomes a part of their competitiveness.

At the same time, this data-driven governance exhibits significant “differentiation” characteristics, categorizing people and behaviors: favoring integrity, swiftly blocking malicious actions, and training those with unintentional mistakes.

For “good merchants,” unnecessary auditing friction is reduced, and access to traffic and tools is expedited.

For “malicious behaviors,” models are used to accurately intercept based on behavioral sequences, avoiding superficial formalism.

For “unintentional offenders,” a training-in-lieu-of-penalty strategy is adopted. Taobao Flash Purchase has already launched over 130 targeted special support courses, using SOPs and online courses to turn a mistake into an opportunity for capacity building. Additionally, the platform has opened a channel for merchants to insure consumers against food safety issues. For significant medical complaints arising from food quality problems, the system will proactively alert and have customer service contact consumers within two hours. According to Fang Yongxin, in the practice of “Visible Kitchens 2.0,” 90% of merchants had no recurrence of similar issues within three months after being reminded of problems discovered during inspections.

The Boundaries and Future of Governance: A “Long-term Project” on Trust

Although digital co-governance shows great potential, industry analysts also point out that any strong governance system may face side effects, and some deep-seated issues urgently need resolution.

First is the balance between data authenticity and privacy protection. How to prevent “performative visible kitchens” while ensuring privacy compliance when revealing the visuals of kitchen operations is a long-term consideration for the platform.

Second is the issue of misjudgment by AI models and the appeal mechanism. High recall rates and low false positive rates are often difficult to achieve simultaneously, and the timeliness of appeal reviews will directly impact merchants’ trust in the platform.

Additionally, regarding the rider supervision mechanism, it is important to avoid noise from “quantity-based rewards” by introducing quality weighting and credibility scoring. When facing the “digital literacy gap” of numerous small stores in sinking markets, the platform’s support cannot rely solely on one-time hardware assistance; sustainable training and offline guidance are equally important.

Industry calls for platforms to publicly disclose quantifiable “governance KPIs,” such as the correlation between complaint rates and repurchase rates, recidivism rates, closed-loop cycles, etc., using transparent metrics to compel the system to evolve.

Looking ahead, food safety governance is not a one-time compliance “check,” but a continuous compounding “trust project.” As American philosopher James P. Carse stated in “Finite and Infinite Games,” finite games are about winning and losing, while infinite games are about continuing life. When food safety governance interacts with supply chains, performance, and traffic distribution, the platform will gain a “systemic moat.”

In the future, we may see more cross-platform collaborative mechanisms, such as industry-wide shared blacklists, to reduce the “arbitrage space” for inferior products across domains.

Simultaneously, the deep integration of AI and IoT will give rise to more advanced quality control methods, such as visual identification of foreign objects and temperature control sensing, under the “machine priori + human verification” framework.

Moreover, governance tools like visible kitchens and Food Safety Ding are expected to be standardized as SaaS services, empowering a broader range of small and medium-sized businesses and local regulatory departments.

The implementation of the “Regulations” is not only a milestone in the standardization of the online catering industry but also a new starting point for takeout platforms to reassess their business logic. When food safety shifts from “I have to do it” to merchants actively embracing “I will do it, I want to do it,” the platform’s growth will no longer rely solely on traffic subsidies but will be built on a verifiable and compounding trust system.

As Taobao Flash Purchase has promised, listening to users and empowering merchants, it aims to be a solid participant in the new landscape of co-governance and sharing, ultimately safeguarding consumers’ peace of mind with every meal and ensuring the long-term healthy development of the industry.