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This article covers Meituan’s latest move: launching a dual-brand offline supermarket strategy to formally enter the trillion-yuan instant retail market, competing head-to-head with Hema. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Differentiated positioning for the two brands:小象超市 (Elephant Supermarket) targets mid-tier quality consumers, while 快乐猴 (Happy Monkey) targets price-sensitive, daily needs customers in community and下沉 markets. This one-up-one-down strategy creates synergy between the two brands.

2. Current scale and expansion plans: Elephant Supermarket, previously known as Meituan Maicai, currently operates over 2,000 front warehouses covering 39 Chinese cities, and is projected to hit 40 billion yuan in GMV by 2025. It plans to open 20 large offline stores in 2026. Happy Monkey, a hard-discount community supermarket chain, has expanded to 40 stores nationwide across East, North, and South China in less than one year since launch, with an initial target of 1,000 total stores.

3. Industry context: Instant retail is a fast-growing track projected to exceed 1 trillion yuan in market size by 2026 and reach 2 trillion yuan by 2030. Competition in offline retail will continue to intensify going forward.

This article provides trend insights and partnership opportunities for brands in the offline retail sector. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Consumer trend insights: Instant retail is a trillion-yuan growing track with a 12.6% compound annual growth rate. The market has split into two core demand segments: mid-tier quality consumption, and affordable daily-needs consumption in communities. The latter’s demand for high-value-essential goods has been significantly undervalued by the industry to date.

2. Shifts in channel strategy: Against the backdrop of plateauing online traffic, physical offline stores have become a critical channel for brands to reach new users and strengthen tangible consumer perception. Integrated store-warehouse networks are a clear growth trend for China’s retail industry.

3. New partnership opportunities: Leveraging its 780 million monthly active users and delivery network of 8 million riders, Meituan’s fulfillment cost is only 60% of the industry average. Its dual-brand strategy covers consumers across different tiers, and the chain will expand rapidly over the next two years, offering new growth channels for brands of all types.

This article outlines the latest market changes, opportunities, and risks for sellers looking to expand into instant and offline retail. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Market opportunities: The instant retail track grew 20.15% year-over-year to 781 billion yuan in 2024, and still offers structural growth opportunities. Both the mid-market demand for full-category quality retail and the community demand for high-value daily essentials have untapped growth potential.

2. A tested new business model to reference: Happy Monkey’s hard discount model has proven viable for early expansion. Its core logic: use big-name branded products to drive foot traffic, earn profits on private-label goods, and turn offline visits into online traffic. Big-name products also highlight the value of private-label offerings, creating a positive cycle that works well for community supermarkets.

3. Risk warnings: Competition in the track is already extremely intense—there are more than 500 similar stores in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region alone. The core of competition has shifted from early-stage expansion to in-depth operations. Sellers need to build competitive advantages through differentiation, refined operations, and下沉 market penetration, while addressing challenges of rising costs and product homogenization. Offline competition requires both resources and long-term patience.

This article outlines new business opportunities and product design directions for manufacturing factories brought by the new retail layout. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Product design and manufacturing requirements: Retail demand is clearly segmented today, requiring corresponding adjustments to production and design. Elephant Supermarket caters to mid-tier consumers, requiring full-category quality goods across 13 categories including fresh produce, daily necessities, and personal care, with more than 10,000 SKUs needed. Happy Monkey targets community daily-needs consumers with a focus on extreme value, and has far stricter cost control requirements than standard retail products.

2. Business partnership opportunities: Meituan’s dual-brand offline supermarket business is in a period of rapid expansion. Elephant Supermarket plans to open 800 new front warehouses and 20 large offline stores in 2026, while Happy Monkey targets 1,000 total stores. This wave of new store openings will generate sustained new demand for supply partnerships, creating strong channel expansion opportunities for factories of all positioning.

3. Insights for digital transformation: Retailers have shifted to digitalized integrated store-warehouse network operations. Factories can connect to platform digital systems to adapt to the dynamic restocking and inventory adjustment needs of instant retail, improving delivery efficiency and reducing inventory costs.

This article outlines industry trends, client pain points, and opportunity directions for retail-related service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: Instant retail has shifted from pure online competition to online-offline integrated competition, with integrated store-warehouse networks as the clear industry direction. The overall track will grow to 2 trillion yuan in market size by 2030, creating sustained expansion. As a growing number of online players open offline locations and offline players integrate online services, demand for retail-related services will grow rapidly.

2. Core client pain points: Multiple common pain points exist across the industry. Online players face plateauing traffic, cannot offer in-person consumer experiences, struggle to reach new user groups, and fail to build strong brand recognition. Offline players lack low-cost fulfillment capabilities and access to large traffic sources, and the industry as a whole faces high operating costs and severe homogenization.

3. Solution directions: Service providers can develop targeted solutions around tiered user operations, store-warehouse collaborative management, and refined supply chain cost reduction to serve retail players of different positioning, and capture growth dividends from the expanding track.

This article outlines the latest best practices and risk mitigation strategies for retail platform operators entering the offline retail track. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Merchant and market demand: After online traffic plateaued, retail merchants across the board have demand for offline expansion. Offline stores help brands reach new users, deliver tangible consumer experiences, strengthen brand recognition, and still offer substantial room for growth.

2. A new platform strategy to reference: Meituan adopted a dual-brand tiered positioning strategy: the large-format Elephant Supermarket covers mid-tier quality consumers, while the small-to-medium format hard-discount Happy Monkey chain serves price-sensitive下沉 community users. The two formats create synergy, and by leveraging Meituan’s existing user base and delivery network, fulfillment costs are cut to 60% of the industry average. This online-offline integrated store-warehouse model is a valuable reference.

3. Risks to avoid: The track has entered a new phase of competition, where the core battleground has shifted from scale expansion to in-depth operations. Relying solely on capital-fueled expansion cannot deliver a competitive edge. Platforms need to build differentiated, refined operation capabilities in advance to address cost and homogenization challenges. Offline operations require long-term investment, and operators need to avoid rushing for results and maintain sufficient patience.

This article shares the latest industry developments, business models, and open research questions for retail industry researchers studying online-offline integration in instant retail. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Latest industry developments: Instant retail has completed its online accumulation phase and officially entered a period of offline expansion. The overall track is a trillion-yuan incremental market. Meituan, originally an online instant retail player, is now expanding into offline physical retail to compete head-to-head with offline-originated Hema, reshaping the industry’s competitive landscape. Dual-brand tiered user coverage has emerged as a new expansion strategy for leading platforms.

2. An innovative new business model: A new model has emerged where online platforms leverage their existing user base and delivery network to expand offline with a dual-brand strategy, creating online-offline synergy through integrated store-warehouse operations. The Happy Monkey project is a typical case of internal resource reallocation for pivoting: the original Meituan Youxuan team was repurposed to launch the hard-discount chain. Its business model is modeled after Aldi, following the logic of using big brands to drive traffic and earning profits via private labels, tailored for the community daily-needs market.

3. New open research questions: Which path—online players expanding offline or offline players integrating online—is better suited for the new integrated store-warehouse model? How can hard-discount supermarkets balance affordability and operational efficiency? Can a dual-brand strategy help platforms gain a competitive edge in the trillion-yuan track? All these questions remain unproven by the market, and represent valuable new directions for in-depth research.