Food next door in China. 5 simple steps to order food from a warehouse

Major convenience – it's cheap and you don't have to go far. Today I will tell you about one application in China, where you can buy groceries, to cook at home.

This article is for the same beginners, who don't dig much into Chinese applications, either for those, who are used to stomping their feet in the supermarket and have not thought about, that the process of ordering food home can be accelerated.

How to buy groceries online and get them from your nearest store

Open mini-app 美团优选 – (~~Yandex.Food~~) Meituan Food. Food delivery from restaurants – you will find by the kangaroo icon at the top. Meituan Corporation – black and yellow delivery men, capturing the streets of Chinese cities. The application icon is marked on the splash screen.

Further, you need to choose one of the addresses of nearby shops, where will you pick up your order. And the application will determine the list of the nearest places based on your location. I chose a place, which I have seen before, right next to my apartment complex.

Food next door in China. Заказ с Meituan еда — Shows how many meters to each of the selected points. You can walk to them and see in advance

Stores can do very different things. At the point, where I picked up my purchases, prepare milk tea and juices are sold. But the points take on the functions of the points of issue of goods.. Not sure, if they can make money on it, rather just expect, that customers will come and buy something from them too. I will clarify this question.

When you chose, where to get goods, it's time to go shopping. You can navigate by price, sections for 1.99, goods of the day, choose products by category. Even if you don't know Chinese well enough, pictures are enough, to make a choice.

Not worth hoping, that all peppers and lavrushka will look the same, as in the pictures. For example, the bananas were green. But they won't bring some spoiled either, such product can be photographed, dispute the purchase and do not collect

Next, we pay for the selected purchases and the system gives us the time, after which you can come for your purchase. I always got the time: the next day after ordering, later 16:00.
And for me, it's just, convenient to visit them in the evening on the way home and pick up my groceries. To pick everything up on the list, you can open the application and try to find your, or ask the store employee to help you and put all the products you have chosen in a string bag.

Bundles of goods, folded behind the tea shop

Don't forget to take your package with you, where to put purchases. Hooray, the ingredients for your dinner have arrived!

Why such a delivery system – stepping stone to our future

Xgood prices in the application add up due to, , that Meituan does not need to keep its stores. Products are stored in warehouses and it is not necessary to have halls and pay for the work of cashiers and the associated costs. Long term – this system will change the usual shopping process, just because less resources are wasted.

Not so long ago in a cafe, I tried to make a point of issue of goods in parallel, because wholesale prices from suppliers are always lower than retail and if you do not have additional costs for cashiers, who, instead of the buyer, have to pick the product on a scanner or rent giant areas for stores and their design, marketing stuff, then you can always offer your customers the best price.

Anyway, such a system requires a demonstration, and then habits. The speeds will increase and the pick-up points will move closer and closer to us, for example delivered to the storage department at the entrance, crammed with cameras. And only then, as in fantastic stories, the refrigerator himself will probably order us for dinner, something tasty.

Such applications are needed and important. May be, I can not always track it, and we have long ago implemented something like this by Yandex or another company. But as far as I remember in hypermarkets, practicing such delivery, was the minimum order value, to somehow justify delivery there. At the moment, even a bunch of onions can be ordered from Meituan for 2 yuan, you will get it anyway. If similar applications have not yet developed, it is worth working in this direction.

Additional handy features of the application

When choosing products, then in the product card, along with its characteristics, there is also a set of recipes, which greens or a piece of meat can be cooked.

And in the end, they show you how to cook this dish., plus list all other products, which you will need to prepare according to this recipe. They can be added to the cart at once..