The delivery gig as a fallback? Robots may take it over—and then that road gets very narrow!

YISANYAO · Strategy & Design

Sanyao Strategy & Design

Packaging determines perceived pricing · Your product deserves to be seen well

Fellow bosses, let me start with a blunt question: Have you ever kept a fallback like this—“If all else fails, I can always go deliver food”? I’ve seen too many people think this way, including some friends who lost money in business. It sounds reassuring, but it’s actually the most dangerous way to plan for the future: you’re betting tomorrow’s livelihood with today’s understanding.

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This article is about 1,100 words, a three-minute read. Today, using a few just-released news items, let’s talk about one thing: why the “food delivery” fallback is being pulled out from under us by technology, and what that really means for your business of selling products.

Yesterday (August 20), the Ministry of Transport held a press conference, and the State Post Bureau stated on the spot: during the “15th Five-Year Plan” period, we will accelerate the promotion and application of drones, unmanned delivery vehicles, smart cloud warehouses, and embodied AI robots in the postal industry. This isn’t a pilot slogan; it’s written into action.

Shenzhen is already running in the same direction. Those delivery robots in the subway—40 units mass-produced and delivered—are being trialed on 8 lines and 61 stations, taking elevators and riding the subway themselves to deliver goods to convenience stores in the stations. JD.com’s drone routes in Kunshan are even more aggressive: they’ve been flying regularly for over half a year, delivering more than 20,000 items cumulatively. Zizhong County in Sichuan is even more exaggerated—they’ve opened 78 drone routes to villages in one go, and mountain villages can receive express deliveries in as little as seven minutes.

(As an aside, the first time I saw robots riding the subway in the news, I almost thought I was seeing things—this scene would have seemed like science fiction three years ago.)

On the food delivery side, things are changing too. The “break the vicious cycle, turn toward goodness” initiative pushed in Beijing and Shanghai means rider algorithms are starting to account for red lights and add time for bad weather; more importantly, the new food delivery regulations: platforms are strictly forbidden from forcing merchants to subsidize at a loss, fees must be transparent, and traffic is shifting from “competing on low prices” to “competing on quality.” The authorities are personally dismantling that exploitative structure where “platforms profit, merchants earn thin margins, and riders risk their lives.”

I’ve been doing packaging strategy for eight years, and the more I see, the more I believe one thing: AI is exponential and disruptive—what you see now is always just the smallest slice of it.

I talked about this judgment with a friend recently: in the future, those big platforms that “bleed you dry” will be gradually replaced by private domains. Why? Because AI programming has smashed the barrier to entry. In 2026, building a mini-program with low-code plus AI means an ordinary employee can set it up in a day or two, and cloud development means you don’t even have to manage servers. What does that mean? Every local snack shop can have its own delivery mini-program, pay no commission, and directly reach old customers in its own private domain. Wouldn’t the boss rather keep that 20-30% commission the platform takes?

And the act of delivery itself will be handed over to low-altitude robots. Drones take off from the place of origin and land at your doorstep in a dozen minutes. So where do the human delivery riders who used to run orders through wind and rain go? They won’t disappear; they’ll become dispatchers—watching screens to coordinate dozens of machines, handle exceptions, and provide service. The dirty, heavy work goes to iron wings; humans move up to the more valuable layer.

Back to you bosses here. This points very clearly to your business: stop betting your lifeline on someone else’s platform. In the future, when you sell products, it will most likely be through your own private domain, your own mini-program, with robots delivering for you. At that time, what’s the most valuable thing? Whether customers are willing to trust you.

And that’s exactly what I do. When there’s no salesperson or shopping guide to speak for you, when the goods are delivered directly to the doorstep by a robot, the only “first-glance trust” between you and your product is packaging. It has to say “I’m reliable, I’m respectable, I’m worth it” for you in the second the customer opens it. In the private domain era, packaging isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the face of your home in the customer’s heart.

So don’t plan the future with today’s understanding. The “fallback” you think is safe now may be quietly taken over by a pair of iron wings. The piece you really should place ahead of time is to make your product speak for itself—whether it’s delivered by a robot or found by customers on their own.

Let me wrap up with one sentence: The future doesn’t belong to those who can still fall back on food delivery—it belongs to those who’ve already built trust into their products.

Sanyao Strategy & Design

Years of packaging strategy · Wuhu, Anhui
Packaging determines perceived pricing—your product deserves to be seen well