ALIBABA FRESHHIPPO GROCERY SWEEPS CHINA

ALIBABA conquers the Grocery world.  FreshHippo or simply HEMA takes China by storm. It is a digital supermarket with local store fulfilment. Online customers orders delivered within 30 minutes. Or, customers can visit stores and enjoy a smartphone digital experience and even relax in the store’s restaurant where the customer’s food will be prepared by Chefs and delivered by Robot Waiters as a restaurant served meal. 

FreshHippo opened 232 Stores as of December 2020 and now has over 250 stores and growing. Similar in some ways to Amazon’s Wholefoods, HEMA’s food selection is global. Alibaba is the world’s largest global logistics operation. Live fish tank bins feature rows and rows of fresh live oysters, scallops, shrimp, prawns, and more. Alibaba plans to open 2,000 stores by 2023

80% of American women think fresh seafood is ‘icky’ especially the snow crabs and soft-shelled crabs. Then again they also think cleaning a packaged Perdue chicken is icky.  Americans seem content with Crab with a “K.”

HEMA is the 5th largest Grocer in China but the fastest-growing grocer. The supermarket chain is part of Alibaba’s “New Retail” vision. When the first store opened Jack Ma explained,  “Pure e-commerce will be reduced to a traditional business and replaced by the concept of New Retail, the integration of online, offline, logistics and data across a single value chain.”

Freshhippo has a variety of stages to meet customer desires.  For example, they have a lower cost Aldi type store, a fast-food prepared meals centre, and they even compete with MEMBERSHIP ONLY STORE which includes popular Amerian Titans Sam’s Club, and Costco. All Freshhippo stores offer the Freshhippo app driving the digital experience. 

Wide selections are common in American stores.  However, few have an exceptional seafood section. Virtually none can deliver groceries in 30 minutes. Amazon’s new digital grocery store eliminates the cashier, while Walmart uses a self-checkout system. While Walmart pickup can include many store products, one must still drive to the store and wait at the Pickup Station, usually the following day. 

HEMA “NEW RETAL” Sweeps China.  Uh Oh. High Tech Joe Biden will have to invent the Government-funded version for the USA to keep up. Put it under the leadership of the US Postal Service. 

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