“Drone delivery” suggests a small aircraft leaving a restaurant and descending to any customer’s balcony. Meituan’s operating model is more constrained and more instructive. The drone is one link in a managed logistics chain that includes merchants, couriers, dispatch software, automated airports, approved routes and ground pickup points.
The company’s 2025 annual report describes an integrated system of smart scheduling and automated airports. By the end of 2025, Meituan reported 70 routes in cities including Shenzhen and Shanghai and more than 780,000 completed orders. Those figures are company-reported and time-stamped; they describe scale at that date, not universal availability across either city.
A route is a piece of infrastructure
Urban drones cannot sensibly improvise a new low-altitude path for every lunch. Buildings, restricted areas, weather, communications, emergency procedures and landing safety all limit where they can fly. Academic work on urban drone networks therefore models structured routes and nodes rather than free movement over a city.
A fixed or managed corridor can be surveyed, monitored and connected to known take-off and receiving facilities. Repetition also makes scheduling possible. The network begins to resemble a very small aerial transit system for packages: route design and station placement matter as much as the vehicle.
This explains why a user may be physically close to a visible drone operation yet unable to order to a home address. Service depends on whether the merchant, origin facility, route and destination point belong to the same active network.
The first and last metres stay on the ground
Food begins in a kitchen. Someone must package it, move it to the departure node and load it according to weight and safety rules. At the destination, the order must be secured, made available to the correct customer and collected.
Different operating sites can divide that work differently. A courier or staff member may handle the origin; an automated cabinet or pickup kiosk may handle the destination. The customer usually completes a final walk. A drone reduces a middle segment rather than abolishing ground logistics.
That is what Meituan means by ground-air coordination. The ground system absorbs the messy variation of doors, kitchens and people. The air segment gains efficiency by operating between controlled points.
Automated does not mean unattended
The aircraft uses sensors, navigation and flight-control systems. The wider operation still needs monitoring, maintenance, battery handling, weather decisions and response plans. An automated airport can manage launch, landing or charging tasks, but automation shifts human work; it does not remove responsibility.
Regulatory permission is another operating layer. Meituan states that its fourth-generation drone received a nationwide low-altitude logistics operation certificate in 2025. A certificate does not make every route legal by default. Specific operations remain shaped by airspace, local implementation and safety conditions.
The same caution applies to weather performance. A manufacturer’s stated tolerance under defined conditions is not a promise that service will continue through any storm. Operators can suspend flights when risk or visibility exceeds an operating rule.
What the network can improve
An aerial segment can cross a river, large park, road barrier or difficult ground route more directly than a courier vehicle. In a dense district, straight-line distance may cut travel time for selected pairs of nodes. The value is strongest where the route avoids a specific source of ground friction.
That does not mean drones automatically reduce traffic or emissions. Energy use per order depends on aircraft, payload, route, failed trips and the ground work still required. Network facilities also consume space and energy. A fair comparison needs the whole delivery chain and a defined alternative, not a photograph of one electric drone against a petrol scooter.
Capacity is limited too. Small delivery drones carry modest payloads. Peak meal demand can arrive in waves, while air routes and landing points have throughput constraints. Ground couriers remain more flexible for many-to-many addresses and unusual orders.
How to interpret a live service
When encountering a drone pickup point, ask four questions:
- Which merchants can send to this node?
- Is the flight route active now, or only at certain times and conditions?
- Where does a courier or staff member enter the chain?
- What happens when the aerial segment is unavailable?
Those questions reveal whether the service is a demonstration, a narrow convenience or a repeatable part of local logistics.
Meituan’s system matters not because it proves every parcel will soon fly. It shows how a new vehicle becomes useful by accepting constraints. The drone can be highly automated in the air because the network makes origin and destination more predictable. Its apparent freedom depends on a great deal of structure below.
Sources and scope
- Meituan 2025 Annual Report — company-reported routes, orders, aircraft systems and ground-air coordination.
- Drones: urban drone delivery network optimisation — independent research on structured routes, nodes and network constraints.
This article does not identify a currently bookable route or promise availability. Operating areas, pickup points, weather rules and regulatory permissions can change; company figures are labelled as such.