The food delivery industry in China became popular these years because of the convenience it offers to the customers. They pick up the food in the restaurant and send it to consumer’s address once the customer make order online.
I believe that many of us tried such food delivery services before, but did any of us think about the food safety? Do the restaurants that company cooperates have license and always keep kitchen clean? Apparently, most of us chose to trust the delivery companies and did not check such conditions.
However, there were news keep coming out since last year which reveal the dark side of the delivery industry. Many big companies co-operate with those unlicensed restaurants that have disgusting food making process. (see the pictures below, the typical dirty restaurant)
What shocks people is that the delivery companies definitely know how these unlicensed restaurants worked illegally but they still cooperated with them. People all complain about the companies and said they are without business ethics and moral. Thus, less people choose to use the delivery services and the companies suffered from revenue decline.
This is the negative result of running business without ethics. In this case, If the food delivery companies insisted the food safety principle, there might be increasing number of consumers who are willing to choose the service, then the further profit is much more than before. Because once you take the social responsibility and pay more attention to ethics, it is easier to build up positive brand image and good reputation and the ethical activities can even be the selling point, so as to make you more competitive than others. This is the way that you can make profits sustainably and develop the business further.
What can be proved again from this case is that, even though you can get profit without moral in short-term, you still need business ethics for long-term profits and further development, not only for the food delivery companies, but for all the business activities.
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Reference：
The event lasts for several years, 2015 news is only available for Chinese version http://www.360doc.com/content/15/0427/06/22239628_466257983.shtml
Here are the news in English version in 2016
Huang Yue. 2016. Shanghai Food Watchdog Investigates Eleme. [ONLINE] Available at: http://english.cri.cn/12394/2016/03/16/4201s920733.htm. [Accessed 11 September 2016].
People’s Daily Online. 2016. Beijing Food and Drug Administration orders takeout food delivery apps to remove unlicensed restaurants. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.people.cn/n3/2016/0811/c90000-9098874.html. [Accessed 11 August 2016].