Food delivery website ele.me was yesterday fined 120,000 yuan ($18,400) for violating China's food safety law.
The announcement by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration came after CCTV on Tuesday broadcast a program in which several restaurants featured on the Shanghai-based website were found to be unlicensed, dirty or have made false promotional claims.
The administration said it will conduct a "thorough investigation of the website because it failed to check the licenses of the restaurants."
Yan Zuqiang, the administration's director, said: "Online food delivery platforms' awareness of food safety does not match the speed at which they have expanded."
According to a document published online, which was allegedly written as an e-mail to the employees of ele.me, the company's chief executive Zhang Xuhao, said: "We admit that we have dereliction of duty on food safety management."
There was no mention of an apology to customers.
He added that the company will remove the unlicensed restaurants and upgrade its license review system. He also allegedly wrote that more than 300,000 restaurants are listed on the website and that 25,000 unlicensed ones have been removed since last year.
The local administration yesterday also fined Shanghai Zejie Investment Management Co 1.05 million yuan for registering one restaurant on ele.me with five different names and addresses.
