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How Meituan’s Drone Delivery Reaches a Mountain Village in Zhejiang
Meituan’s route to Dongshan Village covers about 5.3 km by air in roughly 10 minutes, compared with a winding road of about 12 km. Meituan supplies the drone system and merchant connection; local partners coordinate the project, provide sites and infrastructure, and handle on the ground operations.
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Key takeaways
- Meituan’s route to Dongshan Village covers about 5.3 km by air in roughly 10 minutes, compared with a winding road of about 12 km.
- Meituan supplies the drone system and merchant connection; local partners coordinate the project, provide sites and infrastructure, and handle on the ground operations.
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: What does Meituan’s first Zhejiang drone delivery route, reported on October 27, 2026, and its first mountain-village service on the Chinese. Article summary: The route shows how drone delivery can connect a mountain village to town-centre merchants while dividing technical, infrastructure and local operating responsibilities among several partners. It is reported as Meituan’s. Topic tags: general, general web, user generated. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fa
Meituan’s route from Wuling commercial plaza to Dongshan Village shows how drone delivery can serve a mountain community that is difficult to reach by road. Residents and visitors order on their phones, then collect food from a smart locker after the drone arrives. The service depends not on the aircraft alone, but on a partnership that combines Meituan’s delivery system with local coordination, infrastructure and operations. 17
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How the Dongshan Village delivery works
The route connects Wuling commercial plaza in Xikou town, Ningbo’s Fenghua district, with Dongshan Village in the Xuedou Mountain scenic area. Customers order through a phone app or mini-program, and the drone carries food to a smart delivery locker in the village for pickup. 17
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The geography explains the appeal: local coverage describes a roughly 12 km winding mountain road between the village and the town-side plaza, compared with a 5.3 km straight-line drone route. The flight takes about 10 minutes. 32
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Reports do not give one consistent end-to-end delivery time. Chao News describes the total falling from nearly an hour to about 20 minutes, while other coverage puts the full drone delivery at around 28 minutes. Some reports also describe previous merchant deliveries taking one to two hours. These figures may use different starting and stopping points; the reports do not explain the discrepancy. 32
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The partners behind the service
The project divides the work among four parties:
- Meituan provides the drone, airport equipment and supporting operating system, and connects the service to merchants on its food-delivery platform.
- Ningbo Mingshan Construction and Development Group coordinates the project and identifies scenic-area demand.
- The scenic area provides takeoff and landing locations and supporting infrastructure.
- Ningbo Tai’an Hongye Transport Technology handles on-site maintenance and local operating support.
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That structure could offer a route into drone delivery for scenic areas that do not have their own technical teams: use an established delivery system, provide suitable sites and infrastructure, and rely on a local operator. Coverage presents the partnership as a model, but one route does not establish that the approach will work everywhere or be commercially viable in other locations. 17
A mountain-village route within a wider network
Dongshan is a new kind of setting for Meituan’s drone service, not its first delivery operation. Reports say that by the end of September 2026, Meituan had completed more than 1.1 million drone orders across Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Dubai, serving locations including offices, communities, scenic areas and municipal parks. 17
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Fenghua’s local planning also points to possible uses beyond food delivery. Local reporting says the district completed planning for air routes and ground infrastructure in the first half of 2026, and describes mountain inspection and agricultural and forestry spraying as areas for future trials. That planning is not evidence that those services are already operating at Dongshan. 34
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What the route demonstrates—and what remains uncertain
The clearest takeaway is operational: a drone can shorten the physical route, but reliable service still requires merchant access, pickup infrastructure and local maintenance. Dongshan’s 5.3 km flight and smart-locker handoff illustrate that model in a place where the road route is much longer. 17
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The exact time savings are less settled. Local reporting and other coverage give different estimates for both total drone delivery time and previous road delivery times, so comparisons should be read as reported ranges rather than a single definitive measure. 32
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Meituan’s route to Dongshan Village covers about 5.3 km by air in roughly 10 minutes, compared with a winding road of about 12 km.
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Meituan’s route to Dongshan Village covers about 5.3 km by air in roughly 10 minutes, compared with a winding road of about 12 km. Meituan supplies the drone system and merchant connection; local partners coordinate the project, provide sites and infrastructure, and handle on the ground operations.