Recently, I had discussions with several brand owner friends, and we touched on a very interesting topic: with instant retail being so hot, how are everyone's sales actually performing? From a sales volume perspective, without exception, they are all seeing double-digit, or even triple-digit, growth. But when we carefully calculated internally, we found that the overall resources invested are enormous, and the input-output ratio is completely disproportionate. Resources are tilted, expenses are poured in, policies are pushed to the extreme, and sales volume does indeed surge, but when you calculate the profit, it looks very ugly. Moreover, many brand owners treat instant retail as an e-commerce platform, following the playbook of Tmall and Douyin: burning money, subsidizing, buying traffic, and chasing rankings. This leads to a vicious cycle where business becomes a matter of trading promotional prices for sales volume. As soon as subsidies stop or full-reduction activities are withdrawn, sales immediately begin to decline. Growth is not consolidated, consumers are not retained, and the offline price system is ruined. With so many problems, why still do it? At the end of the day, today's market is too competitive, growth is too difficult, but brand sales targets increase every year. Coincidentally, instant retail is now a quick fix: invest a bit more today, and you can see order growth. For brands, this immediate effect can be addictive in the short term. Furthermore, brand owners often mention, "If you don't do it, competitors will, and they'll take away my sales." Especially in high-frequency categories like beverages, snacks, and daily chemicals, if competitors are on the platform and you're not, you can see the pressure in the short term. But such growth is only useful for reports, providing a nice number; it's more form than substance. If you continue to focus only on scale, not profit, and only on the excitement, not the detailed accounts, this business not only won't grow, but it may even derail your offline base. Many brand owners treat instant retail as an independent new channel, or even as an online advertising business. They set up a separate department, allocate a budget, and then start spending money, subsidizing, buying traffic, and competing for rankings. This approach can indeed boost volume in the short term, but it's unstable in the long run. Once subsidies stop or activities end, sales fall back. On the surface, it's a problem of advertising efficiency, but in reality, the underlying logic hasn't been thought through. First, instant retail is essentially still an offline business. Instant retail appears to be transacted online, but its underlying supply, inventory turnover, and fulfillment and delivery are all offline. When offline supply is unstable, inventory is inaccurate, and fulfillment is unreliable, the more aggressively you buy traffic, the faster problems are exposed. The final result is often that the more traffic, the faster the leaks, and the faster the losses. Second, the output structure of offline business has been completely rewritten. Let's do the math and see how the business model differs between the past and the present: In the past, it was a "single output model." The output structure of a physical store was very simple. About 80% of sales came from in-store consumption. At that time, the brand's deep distribution logic worked: send sales reps to do deep cultivation, push inventory, and set up displays. Because in-store purchasing power was sufficient and output was high enough to cover the sales reps' salaries and operating expenses. Now, with the "fragmented output model," things have changed. Offline traffic is being split. In-store consumption may have dropped to only 50%, another 30% has shifted to instant retail (Meituan, Ele.me, JD Daojia), and the remaining 20% has been taken by other channels. Please note that this 30% increment from instant retail did not appear out of thin air; a large part of it is the same people who originally shopped offline, just changing their purchasing method. The problem of resource misallocation occurs right here. Many brand owners, when facing this new "50%+30%" structure, make the decision to invest repeatedly. On one hand, they retain the original offline team and allocate the original expenses to maintain the remaining 50% in-store share. On the other hand, they separately form an O2O team and allocate additional marketing expenses to compete for the 30% online share. This leads to a situation of left hand fighting right hand: the same market, the same goods, facing the same group of consumers, but you use two systems and two sets of expenses to manage them. Offline sales reps feel that instant retail is stealing business and don't cooperate; online operations feel that store execution is poor and can't push forward. Financial accounting finds that the same goods, the same terminals, and the same consumers are being invested in and attributed separately by different systems. The result is a severely distorted input-output ratio, inflated expenses, and decreased efficiency. This is often not a problem of a single expense, but rather that the business has been split into multiple scopes, each working hard, and finally canceling each other out. Do brand executives not know about these problems? They certainly do, but promoting online-offline integration is indeed difficult. The difficulty lies in the capability gap! Most brand offline sales teams are good at expanding outlets, maintaining strong relationships, and creating displays. But if you talk to them about the logic of instant retail—"exposure, conversion rate, new product launches, making great coupons"—they won't understand, and may even instinctively resist. In the eyes of grassroots management and sales staff, this matter has nothing to do with them and only increases their workload. To solve this problem, holding meetings to brainwash or pressuring with KPIs won't work. You must address two core issues: cognitive simplification and direct benefits. First, translate online logic into offline actions. Don't try to train salespeople into operations experts; it's basically impossible. What you need to do is break down complex online operational goals into foolproof offline execution actions. For example, don't tell a sales rep, "You need to improve the online conversion rate of this store." Instead, say, "When you enter the store, open the Meituan app, search for this store, and check if these three best-selling items are shown as in stock. If the platform shows out of stock, immediately have the store owner correct the inventory." Second, use incentives to drive execution. The actions in instant retail are fragmented. To get salespeople to do more, relying on empty promises is useless; there must be immediate feedback. Recently, I communicated with the boss of Super Node. They did a great thing with a brand: using a "task assignment + instant reward" model to encourage the offline sales team to work on instant retail. Through digital tools, tasks are directly dispatched to sales reps' phones:
- Task: Check the inventory accuracy of XX store on Meituan platform
- Proof: Upload a screenshot
- Reward: Upon approval, incentive is issued immediately
- Review: Random spot checks from time to time For frontline sales reps, this kind of immediate feedback is more effective than KPIs. Final Thoughts Instant retail is indeed an opportunity for growth, but in the midst of the trend, you need more composure. If brands want to avoid being swept up by traffic and blinded by false prosperity, they must see the two essences of this business clearly. 1. Recognize that instant retail is still an offline business Don't be misled by internet thinking. Although instant retail completes purchases and transactions online, fulfillment and delivery are all offline. So, don't just focus on buying traffic and rankings on the platform. Look back at your offline base: Does your product structure suit instant demand? Is your store inventory accurate? Can your sales mix work? If the foundation is unstable, the more traffic, the faster the collapse. 2. It must form synergy with the original offline business The common mistake in the past was doing addition: adding people, money, and departments for new channels. Now, in this era of overcapacity and intense competition, you must learn to do multiplication. Accounting should be integrated: don't calculate ROI for online and offline separately; treat them as one overall plate. Only then will you not be anxious about online losses or panic about offline declines. Resources should be integrated: since consumers have already been split, the organization cannot be fragmented. The instant retail team and the original offline team should be integrated, using one big system, one set of expenses, and one set of goods to grow the entire offline business, not just a single channel. Everyone understands the principles, but when it comes to actual implementation, how do you break down organizational barriers? How do you redesign this "online-offline integrated" assessment system? How do you get the offline sales team to move willingly? These questions cannot be answered by reading articles alone; we need to dissect them face-to-face. On March 17, 2026, in Chengdu, we will hold the "CFC 2nd Instant Retail Supply Summit Forum and Instant Retail Warehouse-Store Product Matchmaking Conference." This conference focuses on one thing: selling the right goods into the right warehouses and making them move faster. Key topics and outcomes will revolve around the following:
- 100+ top warehouse-store distributors sharing their product selection logic;
- 70+ warehouse-store founders sharing their procurement logic on site;
- The latest practical cases of brand operations in instant retail;
- Warehouse-store matchmaking: on-site exchanges between brands, warehouse-stores, and service providers. Make supply more controllable and growth more certain. Friends who care about instant retail channels should not miss it. Interested friends, scan the QR code below for details.