---
title: "Elephant Supermarket officially enters the era of rapid expansion"
description: "At 8 a.m. on April 24, the green sign of Elephant Supermarket's first store in Zhejiang, located at B1 of Longfor Tianjie in Yinzhou, Ningbo, stood out among the crowd. Half an hour before opening, a long queue of dozens of meters had already formed at the entrance, with many Ningbo residents getting up early to experience the offline presence of this online supermarket for the first time. The opening day saw high enthusiasm both on-site and on social media, with netizens joking that it felt like the supermarket was being emptied by Ningbo residents. This marks the second offline store in just four months, following the opening of the Beijing Wanliu store on December 19, 2025, signaling an accelerated expansion pace."
author: "葛畅"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-05-06"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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citation: "葛畅. “Elephant Supermarket officially enters the era of rapid expansion.” New Distribution, 2026-05-06. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/elephant-supermarket-officially-enters-the-era-of-rapid-expansion-e7c8adbf/"
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---

# Elephant Supermarket officially enters the era of rapid expansion

> At 8 a.m. on April 24, the green sign of Elephant Supermarket's first store in Zhejiang, located at B1 of Longfor Tianjie in Yinzhou, Ningbo, stood out among the crowd. Half an hour before opening, a long queue of dozens of meters had already formed at the entrance, with many Ningbo residents getting up early to experience the offline presence of this online supermarket for the first time. The opening day saw high enthusiasm both on-site and on social media, with netizens joking that it felt like the supermarket was being emptied by Ningbo residents. This marks the second offline store in just four months, following the opening of the Beijing Wanliu store on December 19, 2025, signaling an accelerated expansion pace.

At 8 a.m. on April 24, the green sign of Elephant Supermarket's first store in Zhejiang, located at B1 of Longfor Tianjie in Yinzhou, Ningbo, stood out among the crowd.
Half an hour before opening, a long queue of dozens of meters had already formed at the entrance, with many Ningbo residents getting up early to experience the offline presence of this online supermarket for the first time.
"It's as crowded as New Year," and "It feels like Elephant Supermarket is being emptied by Ningbo people," were common remarks on the opening day, with high enthusiasm both on-site and on social media. Some netizens joked that previously they only ordered from Elephant via their phones, and now it felt like "finally meeting online friends in person."
This is the second offline store for Elephant Supermarket in just four months, following the opening of the Beijing Wanliu store on December 19, 2025. From the front-warehouse model to the dual-engine approach of "warehouse-store integration," and from single-point testing to multi-city expansion, Elephant Supermarket's offline expansion pace has clearly accelerated.
Many are puzzled: Why is Elephant, which previously focused on front-warehouse home delivery, suddenly ramping up offline efforts? What moves can we expect from Elephant Supermarket in 2026? Let's take a look.
**Elephant Supermarket**
**Starting to Build a True Experience-Oriented Supermarket**
In 2026, Elephant Supermarket's offline store layout is gradually becoming clear.
In terms of overall planning, Elephant Supermarket will focus on first-tier cities and key second-tier cities, planning to open 20 new stores throughout the year, each with an area of approximately 5,000 square meters, continuing the "offline experience + online instant delivery" warehouse-store integration model.
Specifically, following the Beijing Wanliu store and the Ningbo Yinzhou Tianjie store, clear news has recently emerged about the third and fourth offline stores: the first Hangzhou store will be located in Longfor Hangzhou Zijing Tianjie, replacing the previously withdrawn Yonghui Supermarket Sandun Longhu store; the first South China store will be in Shenzhen Lingzhan Center City. Both are expected to officially open this year.
From the store locations, Elephant Supermarket's site selection strategy is basically clear: targeting mid-to-high-end consumers, prioritizing high-density residential areas and mature commercial complexes. This aligns with its positioning as a mid-to-high-end store: serving younger and middle-class customers, focusing on quality experience and instant consumption.
From the stores already opened, Elephant Supermarket has formed a relatively stable standard model: featuring a fresh fruit-green color scheme, with the overall layout centered around "eating," including bakery, deli, and Elephant Coffee, which are open-kitchen formats that run through the main aisles, enhancing atmosphere and experience.
In terms of product structure, fresh and processed products account for over 70%, higher than most traditional supermarkets. For private brands, it covers four major brand matrices: Elephant, Elephant Chef, Elephant Home, and Elephant Bakery, achieving full-category coverage. Additionally, stores introduce local products, such as regional aquatic products and time-honored brands, to quickly adapt to local consumption habits.
With the successive opening of offline stores, Elephant Supermarket is becoming a retail brand that more consumers actively follow and discuss.
In April this year, Retail Business Finance released a survey on retail consumption willingness covering 17 cities. The results showed that over half of non-provincial capital city respondents listed Elephant Supermarket as the top "most anticipated retail brand to enter their locality," followed by leading retailers like Sam's Club and ALDI.
This collective expectation from consumers has, to some extent, laid a natural foundation of user awareness for Elephant Supermarket's national expansion, giving every step it takes an existing consumer base.
**Returning Offline After Seven Years**
**Elephant's Ambitions Are No Longer Hidden**
Opening offline stores is not Meituan's first attempt.
In 2018, Meituan started with Zhangyu Fresh, later upgraded to Elephant Fresh, benchmarking Hema Fresh, using a "supermarket + dining + instant delivery" model. At that time, the new retail wave was in full swing, and Meituan quickly expanded to Wuxi, Changzhou, and other cities, with store areas often exceeding a thousand square meters, even setting an aggressive goal of opening 50 stores in 2019.
But the gap between ideals and reality was far greater than expected. High operating costs, vague positioning, and rough management quickly spiraled out of control. In 2020, the last Elephant Fresh store was closed, marking the end of Meituan's first offline retail exploration.
For the following five years, Meituan focused on exploring the front-warehouse model. Starting with Meituan Maicai (later renamed Elephant Supermarket) for instant retail, it transitioned to a full-category online supermarket. After long-term cultivation, it gradually achieved a profitable model in 2024: that year, Elephant Supermarket's GMV reached nearly 30 billion yuan, successfully entering the top tier.
With this confidence, the exploration of large offline stores was put back on the agenda. But after seven years, the industry landscape has changed. Why is Meituan restarting offline stores at this point? In my view, there are at least three driving forces:
First, to fill the "trust gap" and build brand awareness.
One pain point of instant retail is that consumers always have a "can't see" trust barrier for products, and different consumers have varying perceptions of quality for fresh and deli items. Offline stores, as a display window for the brand, can not only fill this gap but also build brand awareness and increase user stickiness, thereby driving traffic to online business, forming a closed loop of "offline seeding, online repurchase."
Second, competition is entering deep waters; if you don't advance, you retreat.
Since this year, new retail brands like Sam's Club, Hema Fresh, and JD Seven Fresh have been continuously increasing their offline presence. On the very day Elephant Supermarket's Ningbo store opened, two Hema Fresh self-operated stores also opened in Ningbo, creating direct competition. In a context where players in the same format are generally accelerating expansion, if Elephant Supermarket remains online-only, it would be equivalent to voluntarily giving up part of the market and gradually losing competitiveness.
Third, to form complementary advantages with Happy Monkey.
With Happy Monkey on one hand to seize territory and Elephant Supermarket on the other to set a benchmark, Meituan's dual-brand strategy is gradually coming to the forefront.
Elephant Supermarket (offline stores): Located mainly in core business districts and mature commercial complexes, carrying a more complete product structure and consumption experience, targeting young white-collar and middle-class customers, enhancing average order value and brand perception.
Happy Monkey: Positioned as a hard-discount community store, focusing on community scenarios, with selected SKUs and extreme cost-effectiveness, serving price-sensitive customers, and taking on mass high-frequency consumption and scale coverage.
This combination is already taking effect in the Ningbo market: at the end of March, two Happy Monkey stores opened simultaneously, and at the end of April, Elephant Supermarket made its debut. One covers daily essential needs in communities, the other covers quality consumption in business districts. On the other hand, Hangzhou, as a core city for Happy Monkey, has already opened five stores, and it is expected to form synergy with the upcoming Elephant Supermarket in Hangzhou, further improving Meituan's regional retail network.
**Front-Warehouse Explosion**
**Continuous Openings in Multiple Cities**
Offline stores are a strategic extension for Elephant Supermarket, but front-warehouses are its true "foundation."
According to the latest industry data, leveraging the resource integration from Meituan's acquisition of Dingdong Maicai, Elephant Supermarket's total number of front-warehouses has exceeded 2,000, covering 39 core cities nationwide. In 2026, it plans to add 700 new front-warehouses, with a focus on the southwest (Sichuan and Chongqing), north China (Shandong and Shanxi), east China, and the Pearl River Delta region, with Sichuan and Chongqing identified as the annual main direction.
From January to April alone, Elephant Supermarket completed rapid deployment in multiple cities. Unlike players like Pupu Supermarket, which focus on regional deep cultivation, Elephant has aimed at the national market from the start, seizing the time window. This speed is supported by two pillars of the Meituan ecosystem:
1. **Traffic. Meituan's massive user base provides a stable traffic source for Elephant Supermarket.** The latest data shows that Meituan's monthly active users have exceeded 500 million. In the first month of a new warehouse's launch, about 50% of new users come from the main app's traffic diversion, with customer acquisition costs over 40% lower than traditional supermarkets.
2. **Data. The consumption data accumulated from Meituan's over 50,000 flash warehouses provides core support for Elephant's warehouse expansion.** Based on regional instant retail consumers' preferences, average order value, ordering times, and hot-selling categories, Elephant Supermarket can more accurately judge regional demand, further optimizing product structure and pricing strategies.
But at the same time, **cost challenges cannot be ignored.**
Since April 20, Elephant Supermarket stations in multiple cities have suddenly pressed the "pause button" on in-store pickup services, and a few stations that have not yet stopped pickup have added a 20-yuan consumption threshold, meaning small orders can no longer choose pickup. The industry generally believes that this change is essentially Elephant rebalancing the relationship between fulfillment efficiency and cost.
According to calculations by Modern Logistics News, the construction cost of a single front-warehouse for Elephant Supermarket exceeds 2 million yuan, and the cost of building a supply chain system for a single city is over 50 million yuan. Amid continued heavy investment, can Elephant truly achieve efficiency in single warehouses and stores while compressing the cost structure to a controllable range? This will become a watershed for Elephant Supermarket as it moves to the next stage.
**Final Thoughts**
Whether online or offline, Elephant Supermarket's accelerated expansion represents a clearer trend: competition in the instant retail track is entering a new phase.
In the past few years, the industry competed on fulfillment capability: who can deliver products to consumers faster and more stably. But as speed gradually becomes standard, competition is shifting to something harder: who can build a more complete consumer experience beyond efficiency.
This is why more and more platforms are returning offline.
Stores are no longer just the front end of fulfillment, but the starting point of experience. How the layout is designed, how products are presented, and how freshly prepared formats participate in consumption scenarios are no longer bonus points but fundamental capabilities that determine whether users are willing to stay and repurchase.
In contrast, front-warehouses can be quickly replicated, but a truly viable offline store system often takes longer to refine.
For Elephant Supermarket, the real test may have just begun.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 葛畅
- Published: 2026-05-06
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/elephant-supermarket-officially-enters-the-era-of-rapid-expansion-e7c8adbf/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/iGY8uuAAcsaUAYf-dzlRgA

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