Temu is selling steaks.
Wagyu beef skirt steaks. Jumbo chicken wings. Filet mignon. From the same app that built its brand on $3 phone cases and $5 dresses shipped from Chinese factories.
The jokes online write themselves - and they have. A creator with 1.7 million views reviewed Temu ribeyes on TikTok in February. Commenters were unconvinced. "Do y'all know ur healthcare ain't free?" one user wrote.
But behind the jokes is a serious strategic shift that every independent retailer, food business, and small merchant should understand.
Temu is not shipping steaks from China. They are sourcing from U.S. sellers, fulfilling from U.S. inventory, through a new domestic marketplace program the company has been quietly building since 2024.
That sentence is the whole story.
What Actually Changed at Temu
When Temu launched in the U.S. in late 2022, its model was simple and aggressive: source ultra-cheap products from Chinese factories, ship them directly to U.S. consumers under the de minimis exemption (which allowed packages under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free), and flood the zone with marketing.
It worked. Temu became one of the most downloaded apps in the country. It ran two Super Bowl ads. It grew a user base that alarmed Amazon, Shein, and traditional retailers simultaneously.
Then things changed.
The Trump administration moved to close the de minimis loophole in 2025. Packages from Chinese sellers no longer entered duty-free. Temu's cost structure - built on cheap air freight and de minimis - broke.
Temu's response was to rebuild. The company invested in U.S. warehousing and began recruiting domestic sellers to stock inventory locally. Today, Temu says it offers more than 700 product categories through this domestic seller program - including, as of recently, food.
"With the addition of local sellers, Temu's marketplace now offers more than 700 categories, from footwear to furniture to food," a Temu spokesperson told Modern Retail. "Food sellers on the program are U.S.-based businesses fulfilling from U.S. inventory."
The Numbers That Matter
De minimis shipments from China to the U.S. peaked at roughly 1.36 billion packages per year before the exemption was suspended. That is an astronomical volume built entirely on a tax policy, not a competitive advantage.
When the policy closed, the business model required a rebuild. Temu is not the only one - Shein has also pivoted toward U.S. warehousing and domestic sellers.
The result is a new kind of marketplace player: a platform with a massive existing consumer base (tens of millions of U.S. users) actively recruiting local sellers to fill the inventory gap left by the tariff change.
That is a different environment than 2022. Back then, Temu was the threat. Now Temu is, in some ways, a potential channel.
What This Means for Small Sellers
A few things to think through:
If you are a U.S. food or specialty product business, Temu is now recruiting you. The platform has an existing buyer base that skews price-sensitive and high-volume. Whether that fits your product depends on margin math - but it is worth understanding what the program requires before dismissing it.
If you sell anything that Temu also sells, the competitive landscape is shifting. The cheap import competition is not going away; it is restructuring. Temu sellers are increasingly domestic, which means they face the same labor costs and overhead you do. That narrows the price gap.
If you rely on Amazon as your only marketplace, this is a reminder of why that is a risk. Temu, Walmart Marketplace, and others are actively recruiting sellers. You do not need to be on all of them. But knowing what they offer gives you leverage when platforms like Amazon change policies.
The marketplace era has not ended - it has complicated. In 2021, the simple version was: big platforms with cheap imports undercut independent retailers. The 2026 version is messier. Tariffs reshaped which platforms survive and how. The independent retailer who was losing to Temu two years ago is now being courted by Temu as a seller.
That does not mean everything is fine. It means the map has changed, and the old mental model of marketplace dynamics is out of date.
One More Number
Temu's parent company, PDD Holdings, reported revenue of approximately $14 billion in Q4 2025 - down from its peak but still representing one of the fastest-growing e-commerce businesses of the past five years. The company has the capital to sustain the domestic pivot, even if it costs more per package than the air-freight model did.
They are not going away. They are adapting. The question is whether small business owners are adapting at the same pace.
Priya Kapoor covers e-commerce economics and small business data for The Useful Daily. Sources: Modern Retail - Temu wants to sell you a steak now (May 7, 2026); PDD Holdings Q4 2025 earnings.