E- commerce firms increase food stocks to meet demand

Chinese e- commerce and logistics platforms, including JD. com, Meituan and Cainiao, have taken measures such as increasing inventories of essential products by three to five times in Beijing to ensure sufficient supplies and stable prices in the face of surging demand amid an abrupt COVID- 19 resurgence.

JD. com said on Tuesday that its supermarket has increased stocks of food such as bread, premade meals and meat by more than five times the usual amount, while inventories of daily necessities like home cleansers and baby products have grown by three times.

More COVID- 19 cases have been detected across some districts in Beijing, and residents in the capital, particularly in Chaoyang district where most cases have been detected in the latest outbreak, have flooded supermarkets to stock up on food, drinks and other necessities over the past two days.

According to food delivery platform Meituan, the number of orders in Chaoyang district jumped 117 percent over the past two days compared with last week.

Meituan said in a press release sent to the Global Times that it would ramp up support for epidemic- hit restaurants by increasing online supplies for Beijing residents. The number of delivery staff has increased by 60 percent to cope with rising orders on the platforms.

Alibaba- backed logistics platform Cainiao told the Global Times on Tuesday that it has launched an emergency response plan by ensuring deliveries to Beijing residents via two large logistics parks in Shunyi district and Wuqing in North China’s Tianjin Municipality.

Fresh Hema said that all of its 40 membership stores in Beijing are well supplied and have allocated more than 200 tons of daily foods at direct sourcing bases in East China’s Shandong Province and North China’s Hebei to increase supplies.