---
title: "Flash Warehouses Are Becoming a Consensus for Retailers to Do Flash Sales"
description: "Fu Haihong, store manager of Sinopec's Yijie Express at a gas station in Tianjin's Jizhou District, says evening hours (5-10 PM) are the busiest, with many orders for alcohol, drinks, snacks, and daily necessities placed via Meituan Instashopping, often with notes like 'urgent for kids/elderly at home' or 'for gatherings.' The small store achieves up to 12,000 monthly orders, exemplifying Sinopec Yijie's flash warehouse project, which has over 2,500 standard stores on Meituan Instashopping nationwide."
author: "Asher"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-07-15"
categories: "E-commerce & Instant Retail"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/WMl7Xat-q5mIbVYXhi3fzQ"
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citation: "Asher. “Flash Warehouses Are Becoming a Consensus for Retailers to Do Flash Sales.” New Distribution, 2025-07-15. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/flash-warehouses-are-becoming-a-consensus-for-retailers-to-do-flash-sale-579878df/"
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---

# Flash Warehouses Are Becoming a Consensus for Retailers to Do Flash Sales

> Fu Haihong, store manager of Sinopec's Yijie Express at a gas station in Tianjin's Jizhou District, says evening hours (5-10 PM) are the busiest, with many orders for alcohol, drinks, snacks, and daily necessities placed via Meituan Instashopping, often with notes like 'urgent for kids/elderly at home' or 'for gatherings.' The small store achieves up to 12,000 monthly orders, exemplifying Sinopec Yijie's flash warehouse project, which has over 2,500 standard stores on Meituan Instashopping nationwide.

"The busiest period in the store is the evening (17:00-22:00). Many consumers order alcohol, beverages, snacks, and various daily necessities through Meituan Instashopping. Many orders have notes like 'urgent for kids/elderly at home' or 'for gatherings and parties.' I'm glad that 'Yijie Express' meets the daily needs of nearby residents," said Fu Haihong, store manager of "Yijie Express" next to the Beihuan gas station in Jizhou District, Tianjin.
This small store achieves up to 12,000 monthly orders, and Fu's busy daily scene is a microcosm of Sinopec Yijie's flash warehouse project.
Yijie's cooperation with Meituan Instashopping began in 2022, and now more than 2,500 "Yijie Express" standard stores have joined Meituan Instashopping nationwide. Since 2024, Yijie has elevated instant retail to a key strategic project, establishing a headquarters task force and an instant retail department.
On July 8 this year, this central state-owned retail giant and Meituan Instashopping announced a deepened strategic cooperation to accelerate the expansion of "Yijie Express" flash warehouses.
Yijie is not an isolated case. Over the past few years, New Distribution has observed that more and more physical retail enterprises, such as Yonghui, Miniso, and Walmart, are joining forces with Meituan Instashopping to increase their focus on instant retail and flash warehouses.
Why do these physical retail enterprises choose to join hands with Meituan Instashopping and make instant retail and flash warehouses part of their core strategy? Through the case of "Yijie Express," we may see some answers.
**From Listing on a Platform to Co-building a System: Why Did Yijie Choose Meituan Instashopping?**
Physical retail extending online is not new. Since the earliest O2O era, many retail enterprises have begun to try instant retail. But in that period, it was mostly about putting offline products online, with no substantial difference in supply-demand matching compared to offline.
But this time, Yijie is not simply "listing to take orders"; it is reconstructing instant retail as a strategic project at the organizational level.
Why does Yijie attach such importance to instant retail?
**First, Yijie's resource endowment matches the instant retail model.** According to the 2024 China Convenience Store Top 100 list released by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, Yijie has more than 28,000 stores nationwide.
These stores, relying on Sinopec gas station network, are widely distributed along urban main roads, urban-rural fringes, and transportation hubs, naturally possessing a fulfillment radius "close to users."
**Second, the scenario structure determines that there is still huge consumption potential.** The repurchase period of gas station convenience stores is highly concentrated in morning and evening peaks and holiday commuting periods, coupled with unplanned consumption characteristics. Users have a strong demand for "convenience and speed," and instant retail can fully meet this demand.
**Third, competition in the existing market requires model innovation.** In the current market, simply relying on expanding store numbers and scale is hard to bring sustained quality growth. Instant retail creates new increments for physical stores by introducing online orders.
In this strategic transformation, why did Yijie choose to cooperate with Meituan Instashopping?
From a scale perspective, Meituan Instashopping has a significant leading market share in instant retail. More importantly, Meituan Instashopping provides Yijie not only orders but also a complete, sustainable, and refined full-chain empowerment system.
In warehouse management, Meituan Instashopping can use massive data to help Yijie plan warehouse networks and select precise locations. On the supply chain side, data analysis can help Yijie dynamically adjust product structures, co-build regional customized pallets, and fill gaps in personalized and diverse product coverage. On the operations side, Meituan Instashopping provides comprehensive support from brand training, operational subsidies, traffic support, operational strategy formulation, and basic issue maintenance.
For Yijie, as the direct-operated convenience store chain with the most stores in China, deep co-creation with the platform with the largest instant retail share can help it build its own moat in this field faster. From the results, this is indeed the case: Yijie has more than 2,500 "Yijie Express" standard stores on Meituan Instashopping, building the largest gas station instant retail network in the country.
**Industry Trends Have Changed: Flash Warehouses Are Becoming a New Increment for Physical Retail**
Sinopec Yijie is not an isolated case. From convenience stores to large supermarkets to regional retail chains, more and more physical retailers are increasing their focus on instant retail and deploying new models represented by flash warehouses, elevating their importance to a strategic level.
For example, Yonghui Superstores is accelerating its front-warehouse business, fully integrating with instant delivery platforms to expand home delivery to more cities; Walmart is integrating "home delivery" and "in-store" services; and regional retail representatives like Century Lianhua and Jiajiayue are also actively exploring localized instant retail.
Ouyang Rihui, deputy director of the China Internet Economy Research Institute at Central University of Finance and Economics, believes that the current physical retail industry and new business formats like instant retail have formed a virtuous cycle of mutual complementarity and promotion.
On one hand, with digital advantages, instant retail brings online increments to the physical stores of chain retailers; on the other hand, as large chain retailers with stronger professional capabilities and quality product supply chains accelerate their layout, the originally fragmented and single supply system of the instant retail industry is expected to become more "professional," thereby playing a more active role in facilitating people's livelihood, promoting consumption, and empowering the industry.
Why can Meituan Instashopping's flash warehouses bring such a large increment to physical retail?
From the consumption side, as the pace of life accelerates, consumers are increasingly inclined to meet immediate needs through online channels. The frequency of "small quantity, multiple times" shopping behavior has significantly increased.
Whether it's urgent household needs, temporary party replenishment, or daily life supplies, the service of ordering online and delivering within 30 minutes has become a high-frequency rigid demand.
The "Instant Retail Industry Development Report (2024)" released by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce also mentions that instant retail has become an important business format in county-level commerce, modern circulation, and smart business districts, and will long-term change people's lives and consumption habits.
From the supply side, although the density of traditional offline sales points is already sufficient, with the emergence of personalized and diversified consumer demands, traditional retail supply is hard to match. Traditional convenience stores typically have 1,300-1,500 SKUs, while Meituan flash warehouses generally have more than 5,000 SKUs, better meeting consumers' daily needs.
From the platform side, the role of instant retail platforms represented by Meituan Instashopping is also undergoing fundamental changes. In the past, platforms played more of a traffic entry role; today, platforms are more of a full-chain empowerment role for instant retail.
Platforms are no longer simple traffic channels for matching orders, but through digital tools, data insights, and operational methods, they deeply participate in the entire process of retailer warehouse network construction, pallet optimization, organizational design, and refined operations.
From these three dimensions, it is an inevitable result for physical retail to increase its focus on instant retail. Whoever first completes the reconstruction of local supply networks and instant fulfillment capabilities will have a better chance to break the ceiling of traditional retail and grasp new increments in the local market.
**From "Opening a Warehouse" to "Weaving a Network": How Flash Warehouses Improve Efficiency for Physical Retail**
Today, when talking about instant retail, the "flash warehouse" business format is unavoidable. As one of the carriers of instant retail, since Meituan Instashopping created the flash warehouse model in 2020, this format has seen explosive growth.
At the 2024 Meituan Instant Retail Conference, a set of data was mentioned: the number of Meituan flash warehouses has exceeded 30,000, and it is expected to exceed 100,000 by 2027.
As flash warehouses penetrate deeper, more and more physical retailers are gradually realizing that the value of flash warehouses is by no means just opening a warehouse and assembling a pallet of goods. Without a systematic operation, a warehouse is just a warehouse, not a new increment for business.
For physical retail stores, what truly brings sustainable growth is the networked layout formed around flash warehouses, achieving precise matching of products and needs, and forming a replicable core competitiveness.
In this process, three points are important:
**First, from "point-based warehouse opening" to "networked layout."** The coverage radius and service capability of a single warehouse are always limited. Only by forming a hierarchical, balanced-density, and clearly prioritized warehouse network system can we minimize fulfillment radius and maximize supply efficiency.
**Second, dynamic matching of pallets and scenarios.** In the past, when physical retail stores did instant retail, most simply put offline store pallets online, which did not solve the problem of supply-demand mismatch. But the core logic of flash warehouses is to match products based on consumer demand, making supply matching more efficient.
For example, Yijie Express's multi-level flexible layout of "flagship stores (pure warehouse model + main store model)" and "standard stores (convenience store online model)" is based on different consumer needs, adapting to local conditions and matching differentiated product supply.
**Third, from extensive operation to dedicated team management.** As the coverage density of flash warehouses expands, extensive management methods are hard to support large-scale expansion. Retailers need professional management to improve operational efficiency.
Today's competition in instant retail is no longer about "whether there is a warehouse," but "whether there is the ability to operate the warehouse as an increment field." From warehouse to network, from goods to demand, from extensive to professional, flash warehouses are comprehensively improving the operational efficiency of physical retail and becoming a key fulcrum for capturing increments.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: Asher
- Published: 2025-07-15
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/flash-warehouses-are-becoming-a-consensus-for-retailers-to-do-flash-sale-579878df/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/WMl7Xat-q5mIbVYXhi3fzQ

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