Order Food Delivery in Chinese: 外卖, 美团, and What to Say
My first Chinese delivery order went wrong in the most delicious way: I ignored the note field, and the noodles arrived wearing a salad’s worth of cilantro. 香菜 (xiāng cài, cilantro) is the ingredient Chinese food assumes you want, and the 备注 — the note field — is the fourth most important field in your life from that day on. Delivery is also the most forgiving Chinese conversation there is: nobody sees your face, the rider is in a hurry, and the whole exchange lasts about ten seconds.
Why Delivery Is the Easiest Script in Chinese
- No face-to-face pressure. Ordering at a restaurant (our sit-down ordering guide covers that) means a waiter watching you fumble. Delivery means an app, a screen, and a rider on the other side of a door.
- The call is two lines. Everything you need to say aloud fits in one sentence: 放门口就行 or 我下去拿 (wǒ xià qù ná, “I’ll come down to get it”).
- The menu is bilingual-by-design. 美团 (Měi tuán) and 饿了么 (È le me) — both third-party apps — show photos, prices, and character names, so you learn dish vocabulary from a screen you can stare at as long as you like.
The App Vocabulary
| Word | Pinyin | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 外卖 | wài mài | Takeout / delivery — say 点外卖 (diǎn wài mài) for “order delivery” |
| 美团 / 饿了么 | měi tuán / è le me | The two big delivery platforms (third-party apps) — you’ll hear both names constantly |
| 下单 | xià dān | “Place the order” — the button you press at the end |
| 备注 | bèi zhù | The note field — where 不要香菜 lives |
| 配送费 | pèi sòng fèi | Delivery fee |
| 打包费 | dǎ bāo fèi | Packaging fee — a few mao per item, normal |
| 骑手 | qí shǒu | The rider — the person who calls you |
| 好评 | hǎo píng | “Good review” — what they’ll ask you to give them |
The 备注 Codes That Save Your Meal
Typing these into the note field is the single cheapest way to improve your food in China. Say them aloud once each — they double as a tone drill:
| Note | Pinyin | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| 不要香菜 | bú yào xiāng cài | “No cilantro” — the nation’s most-used note; 不要 means “don’t want” (不 turns bú before a 4th tone) |
| 微辣 | wēi là | “Mild spice” — China’s default is a lot bolder than most Western palates expect |
| 中辣 | zhōng là | Medium spice — for the brave |
| 少油 | shǎo yóu | “Less oil” — the health-conscious favorite |
| 分开装 | fēn kāi zhuāng | “Pack separately” — for noodles that would drown in their own soup |
The Delivery Call
骑手: 喂，您好，外卖到了。
qí shǒu: wèi, nín hǎo, wài mài dào le.
你: 放门口就行，谢谢。
nǐ: fàng mén kǒu jiù xíng, xiè xie.
骑手: 好嘞，给您放门口了。麻烦给个好评！
qí shǒu: hǎo lei, gěi nín fàng mén kǒu le. má fan gěi gè hǎo píng!
你: 好的，谢谢！
nǐ: hǎo de, xiè xie!
That’s the whole conversation. 放门口就行 (fàng mén kǒu jiù xíng, “just leaving it at the door is fine”) covers ninety percent of deliveries; 我下去拿 (wǒ xià qù ná) covers the rest. And when something’s missing, the sentence that matters is 少了一个东西 (shǎo le yí gè dōng xi, “one item is missing”) — worth screenshotting before you need it at 9pm.
The Tone Pair That Decides Dinner: 到了 vs 倒了
到了 (dào le) is “it arrived” — 到 falls hard in the 4th tone. 倒了 (dǎo le) is “it tipped over” — 倒 dips in the 3rd tone. One contour apart, and it’s the difference between dinner and disaster: 外卖到了 (wài mài dào le, “your food has arrived”) vs 外卖倒了 (wài mài dǎo le, “your food has spilled”). A student of mine once texted the class 我的外卖倒了 after a smooth delivery, and the group chat spent a full minute mourning his soup before he explained: 是到了，不是倒了. The class now rehearses both lines before every delivery, which is exactly the kind of paranoid tone practice this site recommends.
The 2026 Delivery Reality Check
- The coupon economy. Delivery prices are games: 优惠券 (yōu huì quàn, coupons) and 红包 (hóng bāo, red-envelope discounts) routinely cut a 30 RMB meal to 18–22 RMB. My students’ average delivery lunch in 2026 lands near 20–25 RMB in mid-size cities — under half of what the same dish costs at a sit-down table.
- Speed is the product. Riders run on tight windows; 准时达 (zhǔn shí dá, on-time arrival) guarantees are standard. If it’s late, the 红包 the app credits you costs the rider money — one of several reasons they’re always hurrying.
- No tipping — the 好评 is the tip. There’s no tip field on most delivery flows. Instead the rider asks for a 好评 (hǎo píng, good review), which protects their rating. Give it: it’s one tap, and it costs you nothing but a moment of Mandarin you already know.
- 点外卖 is a language class. In my classes, students who ordered delivery three times a week learned dish names at roughly triple the rate of the menu-photo group — because the app shows you characters, pinyin if you want it, and photos of exactly what will arrive (for the wider food-shopping scene, our grocery guide covers markets and supermarkets).
Summary
The delivery script is the shortest in Chinese: app → 备注 → pay → 放门口就行. Learn 不要香菜 before you learn anything else, keep 到 (dào) falling and 倒 (dǎo) dipping, and remember the rider doesn’t want a tip — they want your 好评, which is one more chance to practice your tones without a single person watching. For the sit-down version with waiters and menus, the restaurant guide has the full table script, and the softeners in our polite requests guide make every exchange easier.