According to the requirements of epidemic prevention and control, since May 1, the city's catering business units have suspended dine-in and switched to takeaway services. In order to cope with the possible increase in demand online, various takeaway platforms and fresh e-commerce companies are urgently allocating resources from various aspects such as supply chain, storage, production capacity, and distribution performance, and taking various measures to ensure supply.
In order to cope with the surge in merchant online demand during the suspension of dine-in, Meituan and Ele.me platforms have opened a "green channel for catering merchants to go online" in Beijing to comprehensively improve the efficiency of store review. For catering merchants that urgently need to quickly launch the platform to carry out takeaway business and meet the qualifications, both platforms can complete the qualification review within 1 hour at the earliest, and the merchant can go online on the same day as the application.
Considering the needs of the public to cook at home, the two platforms have also increased the stocking of pre-made dishes. Ele.me Almighty Supermarket has recently launched an emergency pre-made dish project, cooperating with RT-Mart, Wumart and other supermarkets to sell pre-made dishes online, and plans to launch more than 100 pre-made dishes online in May. Meituan's pre-made dishes have also reached nearly 100 kinds, including cooked brine, home-cooked kuaishou dishes, restaurant dishes, Western dishes and hot pot sets, and the delivery time has been extended to 24:00 to ensure that the orders are delivered on the same day as much as possible.
According to Ele.me's estimates, the suspension of dine-in may bring more than 50% of the new orders of catering merchants on the platform that exceed the weekday order volume, and the platform has actively coordinated with catering merchants to prepare sufficient stock and packaging and delivery personnel in advance. In order to cope with the surge in supermarket orders at the same time, the platform also organized a 24-hour delivery team to pick up and deliver key supplier supermarkets such as RT-Mart, Wumart, and Jingkelong, and to increase the distribution force by 10% to 20% for some supermarket stores in Chaoyang District and Fengtai District.
In order to meet the needs of meals and material distribution, Meituan Distribution has increased the reserve of 30% of the rider's transportation capacity, and is expected to invest 6 million to 8 million yuan in rider subsidies to protect the rider's income; at the same time, it has launched real-time and flexible "cross-regional scheduling and distribution" and "stationed distribution" to allocate 1.5 times the transportation capacity to centrally guarantee supermarket orders; and has opened "shared employee" cooperation with catering and retail enterprises to coordinate idle practitioners to join the distribution link and improve the ability to guarantee supply.
In addition, Meituan Takeaway also provides merchants with a "pick-up in-store" service. After the merchant chooses to open it, the user can place an order online in advance and pick it up in the store according to the agreed time. The service not only helps merchants prepare meals in advance, but also helps to alleviate the pressure of delivery and improve operational efficiency.
While increasing the overall stock volume to 3 times that of the usual holidays, the fresh e-commerce platform Dingdong Buy Vegetables has also urgently expanded the supply chain to increase the stock and richness of some cooked food and dish products, and the stock of prepared dishes that can be used after home heating has reached 3 to 5 times that before the epidemic.
During the "May Day" holiday, on the basis of increasing the allocation of food in the city and supplementing the flexible transportation capacity, Dingdong will continue to improve the overall transportation capacity by opening large-time poly orders at some stations and upgrading distribution tools. At present, Dingdong Grocery has adopted large periods at more than 30 sites in Chaoyang, Tongzhou, Haidian, Fangshan and other areas, and the average order processing capacity of these sites has increased by 30%, fully ensuring the daily necessities of more users.
Source Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Yang Tianyue
Edited by Wang Qiong
Process Editor Yan Shengmiao