Early in the morning on December 5th, Taobao Flash Purchase officially announced that starting immediately, the “Are You Hungry” app will be renamed as “Taobao Flash Purchase” after updating to the latest version. At the same time, various scenarios originally associated with the “Are You Hungry” brand will gradually be updated to “Taobao Flash Purchase,” sparking market attention.
The latest version of the “Are You Hungry” app has already changed its name and logo (brand identifier) to Taobao Flash Purchase. The icon color has also transitioned from blue to the same orange as Taobao, although the lower part of the icon temporarily retains the “Are You Hungry” logo and text.
Taobao Flash Purchase is an instant retail business brand launched by Taobao on April 30, 2025, upgrading from Taobao’s “Hour Delivery.” Are You Hungry provides supply, capacity, and technical support and is showcased as a primary traffic entry point on the Taobao app homepage.
The rebranding of Are You Hungry has drawn high market attention.
The “Hangzhou Daily” reported that this renaming is part of Alibaba Group’s instant retail strategy integration, aimed at strengthening Taobao Flash Purchase as a unified brand positioning.
According to Daily Economic News, Li Jie, an e-commerce operations manager on a certain platform, stated that Are You Hungry’s transformation this time mainly targets the flash purchase market, benchmarking against JD.com and Meituan. Meituan has entered the digital 3C field and even the hinterland of the instant retail market due to the effect of its front warehouse. As market competition intensifies further, in the future, e-commerce will no longer compete based on product prices but on services, so Taobao’s advance in this aspect should be considered.
“YULI Macro-Economic and Financial” posted on Zhihu, stating, “This is not a simple renaming; its core goal is to transition from ‘delivering takeout’ to ‘delivering everything.’ It is a strategic reorganization crucial to Alibaba’s competitive edge in the next decade, a battle that must be fought in the era of existing resources.
“From a business perspective, Are You Hungry’s independent struggle in the takeout race against Meituan has long been a costly and difficult war to widen the gap. The landscape of the takeout market tends to stabilize, user growth is peaking, and every inch of market share acquisition implies very high marginal costs.
“Instead of continuing to battle in this red ocean, it’s better to step out of the battlefield and find a more imaginative container for Are You Hungry’s capabilities. And this container is Taobao… This is likely to become a key differentiating advantage for Taobao against other platforms in the future, shortening the conversion path for impulse consumption to its extreme.”
It is worth noting that this summer, the Chinese takeout industry saw an unprecedented scale of subsidy war. JD.com entered the takeout market and carried out massive subsidies to seize market share, with Alibaba (Are You Hungry) and Meituan quickly following suit.
From November 13 to November 28, JD.com (09618.HK), Alibaba (09988.HK), and Meituan (03690.HK) successively released their third-quarter reports, presenting the second “report card” under the backdrop of the takeout battle. Meituan saw its largest loss since going public, Alibaba’s operating profit declined by 85% year-on-year, and JD.com’s net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders dropped by 55% year-on-year.
According to calculations by Red Star News under the Chengdu Media Group, the three industry giants earned nearly 80 billion RMB less in the first half of the year.
Public information shows that Are You Hungry was founded in 2008 by Zhang Xuhao at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and gradually expanded to universities and urban business districts nationwide starting in 2010. In 2014, daily orders broke a million, surpassing Taodian and Baidu Waimai. In 2016, Alibaba invested 1.25 billion dollars, and in 2017, Are You Hungry acquired Baidu Waimai, achieving a market share of 49.8%, ranking first in the industry.
In April 2018, Alibaba and Ant Financial jointly acquired Are You Hungry for 9.5 billion dollars; the same year, they merged with “Koubei” to establish the Alibaba Local Life company. Subsequently, Fengniao Delivery opened instant services, and Are You Hungry became a key element of Alibaba’s “new retail.” In 2021, it merged with Gaode and Feizhu to form the “Feigao” system, and in 2023, it merged with Alibaba’s China e-commerce business group.