Retail is one of the most dynamic industries in socioeconomic development. In China, offline retail has evolved from supply and marketing cooperatives, state-owned department stores, and shopping malls to today's diverse formats including shopping centers, chain convenience stores, and mom-and-pop shops. More dramatic changes have occurred online. If today's comprehensive e-commerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com, along with numerous livestream e-commerce, represent the ultimate form of "pure online retail," then the rapid rise of instant retail in recent years, as online traffic dividends gradually dwindle, represents the major trend of e-commerce platforms exploring physical retail and deep integration of online and offline channels. The three-year pandemic accelerated this trend. Under pandemic prevention and control measures, when e-commerce platforms relying on traditional cross-city express delivery faced shutdowns, instant retail platforms based on local supply and same-city delivery capacity took on the crucial role of ensuring the supply of daily necessities and emergency materials. In April in Shanghai, platforms like Meituan launched emergency delivery services for people with special needs, including community group meals, supermarket shopping, medicine delivery, and errand services, forming an important part of the megacity's emergency logistics. With the recent introduction of the "20 measures" and "new 10 measures," epidemic prevention measures across the country have undergone significant adjustments. The strong demand for stockpiling medicine and supplies, coupled with the "binary paradox" of cross-city logistics hindered by the epidemic, has re-emerged, making instant retail once again a substitute choice for consumers in emergency scenarios. Since November, many netizens have reported their express deliveries stuck on the way. A blogger initiated a vote on a related topic, and the results showed that food delivery platforms have unknowingly become the preferred channel for netizens to stock up. Compared with traditional e-commerce, instant retail has increasingly significant advantages in transaction efficiency and convenience. Catalyzed by the pandemic, more and more consumers are forming the mindset of "using food delivery as express delivery." The emergence of any new business model requires not only the opportunity of the times but also the completion of core capabilities. The same applies to instant retail. It can be said that the core capability of instant retail is instant logistics capability. In many people's view, the biggest advantage of instant retail over traditional e-commerce is "speed." However, from a fundamental logic perspective, "speed" is only the surface of instant retail. Essentially, the most important value that instant retail brings to consumers is "certainty." The rapid rise of instant retail under the pandemic fully demonstrates that consumers pay for instant retail precisely because it provides "certainty" in an uncertain environment. This certainty of "buy on demand, deliver on purchase" largely comes from the certainty of instant logistics. Compared with traditional logistics, the "certainty" of instant logistics mainly comes from its more compact delivery network. Under the cross-city logistics model relied upon by traditional e-commerce platforms, a product from the merchant to the consumer typically goes through a complex chain of "shipment - large warehouse - regional warehouse - delivery outlet - last-mile delivery," involving multiple roles such as merchants, warehouse managers, drivers, station heads, and delivery personnel. If any link or role in this chain encounters a problem, it can easily lead to a sharp drop in the efficiency of the entire system. During the pandemic, some cross-city logistics companies experienced a regional logistics center being locked down, causing logistics and delivery paralysis in several provinces. Instant logistics mainly serves same-city delivery, and the logistics chain is simpler, mainly consisting of two links: "pickup" and "delivery." The vast majority of orders can be completed independently by a single rider, so it is less affected by external factors. During the pandemic, when certain areas within a city were locked down, instant logistics platforms were able to quickly dispatch capacity from other areas of the city to support. Even in the extreme case of a city-wide lockdown, because there were no intercity epidemic prevention barriers, delivery stations within the city and crowdsourced riders and errand services scattered across streets and alleys were still able to play a role in ensuring supply. In the instant logistics network, individual same-city delivery networks are independent of each other, effectively forming a "risk isolation" between cities. This is the fundamental reason for the "certainty" of its fulfillment. The "certainty" value of instant logistics is the internal driving force for its service scope to expand from food delivery to instant retail. Meituan's financial report data shows that in the third quarter of 2022, transaction volumes of convenience stores and supermarkets on the Meituan platform increased by 27.9% and 62% year-on-year, respectively. Orders from mom-and-pop shops increased by as much as 125% year-on-year, and the total number of instant delivery orders grew to 5 billion. As the core capability of instant retail, instant logistics has made many companies realize the significant business opportunities it contains. In recent years, traditional e-commerce giants such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have laid out instant logistics platforms including Fengniao, Cainiao Direct Delivery, Dada, and Pinduoduo Same-City Delivery. Traditional logistics giant SF Group launched a new instant logistics brand, SF City. There are also instant logistics platforms like Flash EX, which focuses on the "same-city dedicated person direct delivery" model. Among them, SF City completed an independent listing on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the end of 2021, marking the recognition of instant logistics by investors in the capital market. When the assertion that "instant logistics is the core capability of instant retail" gradually becomes a consensus, and as competition in instant retail intensifies, the competitive focus naturally falls on instant logistics, the most valuable link. Around the key proposition of strengthening the "certainty" value of instant logistics, the current instant logistics market is showing three development directions: First, strengthen capacity stability. In the past, the delivery time of express delivery was calculated in days. Today, the delivery time of instant retail is calculated in hours or even minutes. In addition, food delivery orders are concentrated during lunch and dinner peaks, and the huge fulfillment pressure brought by high-concurrency retail orders in emergency scenarios tests the resilience of instant logistics platforms. Ensuring capacity stability requires, from a "hardware" perspective, strong capacity reserves, and from a "software" perspective, improving technical capabilities that support high timeliness requirements and high-concurrency order scheduling. Taking Meituan Delivery as an example, after being tested by tens of millions of food delivery orders daily, it has established a capacity system covering 2,800 cities and counties with over one million daily active riders. At the same time, relying on high-tech technologies such as big data, AI, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, it has also built a large-scale, highly complex multi-person, multi-point real-time intelligent delivery scheduling system. While ensuring the safety of riders, it achieves global optimization and real-time decision-making for matching tens of thousands of people and orders, effectively ensuring the stable operation of the delivery system in emergency scenarios such as severe weather, traffic control, and epidemic lockdowns. Second, improve fulfillment efficiency from the overall perspective of instant logistics. In the past, efficiency optimization in instant logistics platforms was mostly concentrated on the delivery link. However, delivery is only one part of logistics. To provide users with the best experience, in addition to continuing to optimize the existing delivery link, it is also necessary to work hard on warehousing, sorting, and other links to enhance the instant logistics capability of the entire chain. At the same time, as instant retail further expands to non-catering categories, such as fresh produce, flowers, and other perishable categories, high-value categories like 3C phones, and special categories like medicine, the number of orders is increasing. The efficiency optimization model originally built around the food delivery category and focused on the delivery link has become inadequate. Instead, customized logistics solutions that adapt to multiple categories and focus on the overall logistics landscape represent the future evolution direction of instant logistics. Taking the warehousing link in the supermarket industry as an example, the large number of SKUs is a characteristic of this business format. A single mom-and-pop shop has thousands of SKUs. As a necessary stage for connecting to instant retail, digitizing the offline inventory of supermarket stores has always been an industry challenge. To address the problems of "difficulty in selecting goods, managing goods, picking goods, and delivering goods" for instant retail merchants, Meituan launched the digital middle-platform SaaS system "Morning Glory" (Qianniuhua), focusing on providing full-process instant retail digital solutions for local retail merchants. The average inventory accuracy rate can be improved to 99%, picking efficiency increased by 52%, omnichannel operating costs reduced by 60%, and efficiency improved by 18 times, helping physical retail merchants solve pain points in the digitalization process and achieve digital transformation. As of November 2022, the services provided by the Morning Glory system are compatible with more than ten same-city retail platforms, and the merchants served cover more than 20,000 stores in over 200 cities from first-tier to fifth-tier. For the sorting link in pharmacies, Meituan Medicine targeted the pain point of consumers having difficulty buying medicine at night. In May this year, it launched its first 24-hour smart pharmacy in Beijing. After consumers place an order on the Meituan delivery platform, the intelligent robotic arm in the pharmacy responds simultaneously, accurately identifying and sorting the items in the order. After verification, it automatically packages the items and waits for the rider to deliver, with the entire process taking no more than 3 minutes. The smart pharmacy breaks the traditional manual timed medicine sales model of pharmacies, achieving 24-hour intelligent self-service medicine sales, solving the problems of queuing for medicine and nighttime medicine purchases. Similarly, Dada Now has also launched a "warehouse-picking-delivery" full-chain instant fulfillment solution for the supermarket industry in recent years, further improving the digitalization level of each logistics link and helping large supermarkets and small and medium-sized sellers improve fulfillment efficiency from the source. As various instant logistics solutions continue to bring digital momentum to each logistics link, the decisive role of "logistics promoting commerce" will become more significant in the future, and the capability boundary of instant retail will continue to expand. Third, accelerate the application of intelligent delivery equipment. On September 16, on the day iPhone 14 was officially available, Meituan's first iPhone order was delivered by drone, taking only 5 minutes and 56 seconds. This delivery refreshed people's perception of "buying a phone online." In the past, buying a phone online meant waiting longer than buying offline. Now, it has become the fastest way to experience a new phone first. With the extremely high delivery efficiency of the new generation of delivery equipment, instant retail exerts a siphon effect on consumer mindsets, and this will become an important competitive barrier for instant logistics platforms in the future. Public data shows that Meituan's drone delivery has been implemented in 5 business districts, with routes covering 18 communities and office buildings, serving nearly 20,000 residents, and completing over 100,000 cumulative orders for real users. In terms of ground delivery, Meituan's autonomous delivery vehicles have been operating routinely in Shunyi, Beijing for more than 2 years. As of August 2022, they have completed over 2.4 million outdoor full-scenario delivery orders. Behind the accelerated application of intelligent delivery equipment is Meituan's persistent R&D investment. Meituan's financial report for the first three quarters of 2022 shows that Meituan's total technology R&D investment reached 14.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53.1%. The investment in just three quarters is close to the total for the entire previous year. Capacity must be stable, the system must be comprehensive, and technology must be innovative. As the scale of instant logistics further expands, the industry is also showing a trend of professionalization and systematization. Therefore, future competition in the instant logistics market will no longer be just a competition of "speed," but will inevitably be a competition across all dimensions. The COVID-19 pandemic over the past three years has had a serious impact on China's economy. In the post-pandemic era, where China's economy will go is a question many people care about deeply. In this regard, the author believes that the retail consumption market for social goods plays a leading role in the systematic process of China's economic recovery. The National Bureau of Statistics has always regarded total retail sales of consumer goods as an important indicator that better reflects the true state of the national economy. The recovery of the retail sector requires not only the recovery of offline supermarkets, shopping centers, and traditional e-commerce, but also the increment brought by new retail models. Instant retail, based on instant logistics capabilities, is precisely the innovative model that can bring increment to China's economy at present. On the one hand, instant retail brings a more "certain" shopping experience, stimulating more consumer behavior, which will bring new growth points for many companies. For example, well-known companies in various industries such as Xiaomi, MUJI, Sephora, and Suning have all joined Meituan's instant retail platform and gained business increment in new scenarios on the platform. On the other hand, instant logistics also provides millions of workers with a stable income employment option, which is of great significance to low-income groups. Millions of instant logistics practitioners with considerable income will also converge into a huge social consumption force. During the three-year pandemic, instant retail platforms demonstrated the resilience of China's economic development with practical actions. In the post-pandemic era, as instant logistics capabilities continue to expand, instant retail will once again become a key force in helping China's economic recovery and creating new economic increment.