One unusually warm evening in April, Richard Liu revved his scooter through Beijing’s traffic-snarled streets alongside other delivery workers, and then personally handed food orders to surprised customers. Later that night, over spicy hotpot and ice-cold beer, the JD.com Inc. founder welcomed a pair of riders from two rival delivery firms to his company.
The publicity stunt, broadcast on viral online videos, reignited a fight for China’s $80 billion-plus food delivery market. In just a few months, JD, China’s largest online retailer by revenue, amassed 25 million daily takeout orders across 350 cities, capturing more than half the volume of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Ele.me, the runner-up to market leader Meituan. Neither saw Liu coming.
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