Pao Tui 跑腿 in China

[ouyangjun]

I am so impressed with this service that I decided to do a brief write up here in CF's.  In short, I've known this service existed but had not used it until recently.  I was at my home in Shenzhen during Chinese New Year and was out of vegetables.  The vegetable shop I normally go to next to my apartment complex was closed.  So I decided to give the Pao Tui 跑腿 service a try.

 

What is Pao Tui?  It is a service on the very popular 美团外卖 (mei tuan wai mai) food delivery service.  美团外卖 specializes in being a delivery service platform to order food from restaurants and then 美团 sends their drivers on a motor bike to pick up and deliver food.  Is it really an excellent service and probably the best I've seen globally.  

 

The Pao Tui service on 美团 is a mix of this food delivery, uber, and personal assistant.  The service is called 跑腿代购 (pao tui dai gou).  This service is to pick up things that are not integrated into the 美团 platform.  It works like this:  random person registers as a Pao Tui 跑腿 on 美团.  Me, the buyer, goes to the app and specifically writes what I want delivered to my home.  I wanted broccoli, blue berries, carrots, spinach, cauliflower, garlic, avocados, and bananas.  I also specified that I wanted them bought from the grocery store Ole, and for the spinach to be organic.  This request then goes out the Pao Tui's in my area and just like an uber, one of them will receive my request.  30 minutes later my veggies and berries were delivered.  The Pao Tui comes to my home with the receipt from the store and I pay him direct for what he bought.  I then pay a 20 RMB service fee through 美团 跑腿代购.  I was so excited about this service during the holiday that I used it two more times to pick up toothpaste and Starbucks coffee.  Each time it worked flawlessly, each time only the price of what I bought plus the 20 RMB service fee.

 

Now to use this service you better have good Chinese.  First of all, the app itself is all in Chinese.  Second, your request needs to go out in Chinese.  Third, if the Pao Tui has questions about what you want at the grocery store he/she may call you and you'll need to be able to explain.  

 

Hope that for those of you in China, if you haven't used this service, this short write up gives you an idea of the service and how it can make your life easier.

 

PS:  this thread likely could've been categorized in daily life as well, but I put it in general study, because you need to improve your Chinese chops to use this service... if the mods think it should be relocated, then please do.

[abcdefg]

Personal shopper on call, and available to the average family at low cost. Sounds pretty slick. Especially in a pinch. 

 

I would probably be more tempted to use it for buying dry goods instead of fresh fruit and vegetables. In Kunming these 外卖 guys really get busy when the weather is foul. They are intrepid: like the Pony Express. 

 

I'v recently been reading about the Mongolian Yam, an amazing messenger system developed under Genghis Khan. Riders could cover 200 or even 300 kilometers a day, delivering intelligence or small items, perhaps documents. A network of relay stations allowed a rider to gallop all out for 20 or 30 kilometers and then hand off the the information or item to another rested rider on another rested horse. The rider also passed over an engraved metal pendant which identified him as being on an important mission from the Khan. The Pax Mongolica ensured these were honored and that the rider was given assistance as needed.  

 

These 美团外卖 guys could be seen as a modern version of that. (Maybe.) 

[imron]

21 minutes ago, abcdefg said:

Riders could cover 200 or even 300 kilometers a day, delivering intelligence or small items, perhaps documents.

The Inca trail could apparently be used to deliver a message at approximately the same speed as the modern postal system.