May 10 (NBD) -- China's food delivery market reached 204.6 billion yuan (32.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, up 23 percent year on year, and the number of online-order users hit 300 million, representing an increase of 18 percent compared with the previous year, said a report released by a research body of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan Dianping.

In addition to the market size growth, the takeaway food sector sees rapid development of quality food vendors, with over one quarter of orders in 2017 made from well-known merchants, according to the same report.

Chen Min, vice president of China's fast-food firm Guangzhou Real Kungfu Catering Management Co., Ltd. (Kungfu), shared the same observation, saying that consumers were becoming increasingly rational towards takeaways. They quitted following the rule of "the cheapest, the best" only, and started to take quality and nutritional value into consideration, Chen added.

One of the major consumer groups of take-out food, white-collar workers, were paying increasing attention to healthy diet, according to the report on dietary health of white collars in China's first-tier cities released by the Chinese Nutrition Society on Wednesday.

NBD noticed that domestic and foreign investors were competing to grab market shares of the Chinese fast-food sector targeting urban write collars. Amid fierce race, fast-food chain brands including Kungfu and Street 72 and Haidilao Hot Pot chose to launch their products on online food delivery platforms like Meituan Dianping and Ele.me in order to seize more market shares.

Zhu Danpeng, an analyst of China's food industry, said to NBD that with professional marketing and management, chain brands boast an edge over individual merchants on the food delivery platforms.

In addition to leveraging customer base of well-established platforms like Meituan Dianping and Ele.me, some food chain restaurants blazed a trail to new traffic via acquiring other takeaway food networks.

For instance, the New York-listed Yum China Holdings (Yum China) acquired a controlling stake in the online meal ordering and delivery firm DAOJIA.com.cn (Daojia) in May last year. Yum China has exclusive rights to KFC, China’s leading quick-service restaurant concept, Pizza Hut, which started pizza delivery in China in 2001, as well as Taco Bell, global expanding casual dining brand.

By the time when Daojia inked the acquisition deal with Yum China, it had launched meal delivery service in nine Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. Daojia's delivery network, combined with Yum China's over 7,000 restaurants across China, would possibly change the landscape of the takeaway food market in China which had been dominated by Meituan Dianping and Ele.me, commented some industry insiders.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn