App delivery boom shakes up China food sector

In this photograph taken on October 16, 2017, a food deliveryman (C) waits for an order prepared by a worker (L) at a restaurant in Shanghai. China's app-based meal-delivery boom of the past two years has introduced several now-familiar phenomena: families and office workers huddling around mobile phones to place orders, delivery scooters scattering pedestrians on crowded sidewalks, and mountains of waste plastic meal containers. / AFP PHOTO / CHANDAN KHANNA / TO GO WITH China-food-lifestyle-restaurants-internet-delivery,FOCUS by Albee Zhang and Dan Martin

Guo Bonan has opened several new branches of his "8Peppers" spicy Sichuan-style restaurants across Shanghai since last year, and not one has a dining room. 

He doesn't need them – stationed outside each outlet are packs of food deliverymen on motorbikes waiting to whisk dishes from Guo's steaming kitchens to homes, office buildings and factories across the city of 24 million.