MissFresh, a leading player in China’s cutthroat online grocery market, has launched full live seafood delivery for five Chinese cities.
Having trialed the service in several cities this spring, MissFresh is now delivering 70 types of live seafood – including fish, prawns, crustaceans, and shellfish – to users of its delivery app in Beijing and nearby Tianjin, as well as Shanghai and its neighboring cities of Hangzhou and Ningbo.
MissFresh is telling customers that all of its live seafood is “put through stringent checks” and customers can access test reports for each product in the product details section of the MissFresh app. Customers can also have their fresh seafood cleaned and gutted just before delivery.
MissFresh claims an average delivery time of 39 minutes, credited to a system of smaller-scaled localized warehouses. The company’s distributed mini-warehouses are all equipped with fish tanks of different salinity and temperatures, customized for various types of seafood. The firm further said it “has also taken an extra step in quality control by storing live seafood in special water bags injected with oxygen – this keeps seafood fresh by minimizing external exposure.”
Differentiation will be key to MissFresh’s efforts to compete with giant competitors like JD.com and Tmall.com, it said.
“MissFresh’s approach to the live seafood supply and distribution chain stands out from some other retailers, who purchase and transport live seafood every few days, resulting in longer storage periods,” it said. “With an efficient logistics system and AI-enabled supply chain that goes through city sorting-centers and community distribution centers, live seafood is delivered to MissFresh’s city sorting-centers every day, further ensuring maximum freshness.”
MissFresh underwhelmed in its initial public offering on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange earlier this year, as investors grow more wary of Chinese online retailers that continue to burn through cash without turning a profit. It recently announced a partnership with Tencent Holdings to improve the marketing and delivery of seafood and other perishables to China’s doorsteps.
The firm’s founder, chairman and CEO Zheng Xu, previously worked in the Joyvio unit of the Legend conglomerate, which distributes salmon from its Chilean subsidiary.
Photo courtesy of MissFresh
