Objective To investigate the prevalence, antimicrobial susceptibility, and genetic characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus from ready-to-eat meats in Hefei. Methods Five hundred and fifty ready-to-eat meats samples were collected from supermarkets and open vegetable markets in Hefei. All samples were subjected to qualitative and most probable number (MPN) analysis for S.aureus according to the National Food Safety Standard Food Microbiological Examination:Staphylococcus aureus (GB 4789.10-2016). Antimicrobial susceptibility of all isolates was evaluated using the Kirbye-Bauer disk diffusion. The sequence types (ST) of S.aureus were performed via multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and phylogenetic tree was constructed by MEGA 7.0 software. Results In total 744 samples, 4.2% (31/744) were positive for S.aureus, of which the most contaminated foods were stewed meat(8.1%, 15/185)followed by roast (6.3%, 11/174). Most probable number (MPN) analysis showed that 90% of the samples were ranged in 0.3-＜10 MPN/g. The result of antimicrobial susceptibility analysis showed that 80.6% (25/31) of the isolates were resistant to penicillin G, more than 40% of the isolates were resistant to streptomycin, erythromycin and kanamycin, and 61.3% (19/31) isolates were multidrug resistant. In addition, 8 sequence types (ST6, ST7, ST15, ST59, ST72, ST188, ST398 and ST2196) were obtained by multilocus sequence typing, and ST188 and ST72 were the main genotypes. Conclusion S.aureus contamination exists in stewed meat and roast meat in Hefei, and the ratio of multi-drug resistant strains was high, which had potential threat to the health of consumers.It was necessary to continuously monitor the contamination rate, bacterial resistance and genotype epidemic trend, and improve the risk assessment of foodborne S.aureus infection in the region.