How Alibaba’s Freshippo adapted to keep delivering in virus-hit China

As people in China retreated indoors in late January to avoid the coronavirus, Alibaba’s supermarket chain Freshippo faced a dilemma: online orders for fruit were soaring but supplies were low.
To ease the crunch, Freshippo asked staff to rip up bulk fruit boxes, originally prepared as Lunar New Year gift sets, break them up and sell them individually to serve more locked-down customers.
Freshippo, which has about 200 stores across the country and is known as Hema in Chinese, also launched a group-buying scheme for locked-down Wuhan – the epicentre of the outbreak.
The company then delivered goods via commissioned buses instead of its usual bike-riding couriers, who deliver individual bags of groceries.