Dingdong serves households with speedy produce delivery

Dingdong Fresh, a fast-growing on-demand e-commerce company in China, is trying to satisfy the needs of households for fresh produce, meat and seafood, and other daily necessities with speedy deliveries supported by its self-operated frontline fulfillment stations, Dingdong Fresh app and miniprogram services.

During a recent media tour to the Shenzhen office of Dingdong Fresh’s South China Business Division, reporters learned about the company’s strategies to ensure daily necessity supplies, operation of its frontline fulfillment grid and implementation of quality control measures.

Dingdong Fresh entered the Shenzhen market in 2019 with its first batch of 15 frontline fulfillment stations put into operation, covering Longjing, Shekou, Meilin and Bagualing areas. In under a year, its fulfillment stations reached 100.

Its gross merchandise volume in Shenzhen hit 100 million yuan (US$13.8 million) in February 2020 and then doubled to 200 million yuan three months later, according to Qi Huimin, supervisor of Dingdong’s Customer Service Center for Guangdong and Fujian region.

Through the company’s frontline fulfillment grid covering various communities and digitalized fulfillment capabilities, the company provides speedy delivery services of their users’ orders within 30 minutes.

With focus on a user-centric philosophy, the company implements stringent quality control measures with a 500-member team supervising the products across its supply chain, according to Chen Xiaoyi, vice supervisor of the division’s quality control department.

Dingdong Fresh has cooperated with 540 upstream farms and cooperatives for direct procurement and ensured the quality and variety of products for its customers. The company’s annual procurement of vegetables, meat, poultry and eggs has reached 110,000 tons. By the end of September, the direct procurement volume of the division had reached 900 million yuan this year, data showed.

Dingdong Fresh provides set meals to residents living in Shangsha and Xiasha in Futian District’s Shatou Subdistrict in this photo taken in March this year. Shenzhen reported COVID flareups this March and the company helped deliver essential goods to residents in locked-down communities in the city. Courtesy of Dingdong Fresh

This March, when the city was much affected by a new round of COVID-19 flareups, Dingdong was chosen as one of the service providers to deliver daily essentials to Shenzhen households.

“We established a more flexible and faster supply chain system like direct delivery from sellers and group buying among neighbors to solve the problems like supply chain and traffic disruptions, and lockdown of warehouses,” Yang Haixia, senior supervisor of the division, said during an interview.

With fresh groceries as its core product categories, the company is expanding its business to grow into a food enterprise with research and innovation capabilities.