Meituan vs Yelp

ByteDance Raises Local Services Fees, Pressuring Meituan Margins

ByteDance has implemented two pricing moves in four weeks that reshape China's in-store services market. In July 2026, its standalone group-buying app Dou Sheng Sheng raised commission rates by 2-5 percentage points over Douyin's main app, and Douyin ended strong promotional referrals to the standalone product. On August 10, Doubao, ByteDance's AI assistant, began charging an all-in fee of about 12% for hotel bookings (11.4% software service fee and 0.6% payment processing), exceeding Douyin's public 8% hotel rate. Meituan reported Q2 2026 revenue of Rmb 104.6bn, up 14.4%, with core local commerce operating margin of 7.9%, but in-store margin reached roughly 30%, above Nomura's 25% forecast. Meituan expects margin to decline in Q3 due to increased investment, indicating competitive normalization.

• ByteDance raised commission rates on Dou Sheng Sheng by 2-5 percentage points above Douyin's main app in July 2026.
• Doubao began charging an all-in fee of about 12% for hotel bookings on August 10, 2026, with 11.4% software service fee and 0.6% payment processing.
• Meituan reported Q2 2026 revenue of Rmb 104.6bn, up 14.4% year-over-year.

TikTok Launches 'Must Eat' Restaurant Guide Feature

TikTok introduced a new feature called 'Must Eat' on Wednesday, a community-driven restaurant guide that aggregates recommendations from over 40 million posts and comments. The feature allows users to browse restaurants by city, filter by cuisine, price, rating, and location, and is divided into 'Everyday Eats' and 'Elevated Dining' categories. Select restaurants can be booked directly through OpenTable. The launch is initially in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, accessible via the search bar, Local feed, restaurant pages, and location links on videos. This move intensifies competition with Yelp and Google Maps by leveraging TikTok's strength in user-generated content and social recommendations.

• TikTok launched 'Must Eat' on October 28, 2026.
• The feature aggregates recommendations from over 40 million posts and comments.
• It includes categories 'Everyday Eats' and 'Elevated Dining'.

Yelp launches AI voice agent 'Check for Me' for restaurant wait times

Yelp is introducing 'Check for Me', a new feature that uses an AI voice agent to call restaurants on behalf of users to check wait times. The feature is available on restaurant pages in the Yelp app, where users can enter their party size and phone number. The agent then calls the restaurant and sends the results via text message. This follows the trend of personal assistants like Instinct, Fo, and Muse enabling users to call businesses for customer support. In addition, Yelp is updating its AI assistant with an OpenTable integration for booking, better personalization, chat history, custom reminders, and a new lists feature with 'Been Here' and 'Want to Go' lists. The company is also launching 'Smart Lead Reply', a paid product for business owners at $30 per month, which uses AI to reply to customers and qualify leads.

• Yelp launches 'Check for Me' feature that uses an AI voice agent to call restaurants and check wait times.
• Users enter party size and phone number; the agent texts them the results.
• Yelp updates its AI assistant with OpenTable integration for booking restaurants without leaving the app.

Yelp and Hatch advance voice AI for restaurants and service pros with OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1

We’ve integrated OpenAI’s GPT-Live-1 into Yelp Host, our voice AI solution for restaurants and Hatch, an AI communication platform for service businesses. Yelp Host and Hatch are among the first solutions to deploy GPT-Live-1, OpenAI’s latest voice model that can listen and respond simultaneously, allowing overlapping speech for more natural conversations.