Industry insiders told Lao Zhang that Pupu Kitchen will open its first Xiamen store this month, with plans to densely deploy multiple stores in Fuzhou and Xiamen this year, while investing heavily in market promotion. After testing the 'front-warehouse + dining' model in Fuzhou for so long, a cross-city expansion to Xiamen would not only be Pupu's own business expansion but also a new challenge for the entire front-warehouse industry's innovation exploration. Behind this challenge lies the transformation of front-warehouse from 'online vegetable basket' to 'life service station', and a close contest among players in Fujian, a key battleground for instant retail.
From Grocery Shopping to 'Feeding You'
First, let me explain for those unfamiliar. Pupu Kitchen is not a new species; it's simply Pupu Supermarket's own food delivery service. When you open the app, you see the four characters 'Pupu Waimai' on the homepage. Clicking in, there are eight categories: value meals, rice/noodles/porridge/dumplings, stir-fries/stews, roast meats/marinated foods, pizza/pasta, burgers/fried chicken, coffee/milk tea, and milk tea/snacks. With hundreds of SKUs and prices in the 10-20 yuan range, it's clearly targeting white-collar lunch money. This seems simple, but there's a lot of know-how behind it. Front-warehouses have been around for years, and the core logic has never changed: rent a warehouse near a community, you order on your phone, and groceries arrive in 30 minutes. This model serves people who 'cook at home'—buying vegetables on the way home from work, then cooking rice at home, maintaining a steady lifestyle. But what about those who don't cook? Young people who eat out every day and never step into a kitchen—front-warehouses couldn't reach them before. They belong to Meituan and Ele.me, and they had nothing to do with Pupu and its ilk. Now Pupu Kitchen is here, essentially saying: I want a piece of this pie too. And there's a clever synergy: if you order a boxed meal and grab a box of fruit, a bottle of yogurt, or a bag of chips, the average order value goes up. More importantly, dining orders and fresh food orders naturally peak at different times: fresh food peaks at 11 AM, while food delivery peaks at noon. When these two demands come together, riders' schedules fill up, idle time decreases, and the cost per order can be pushed down. JD.com has launched 'Qixian Xiaochu', Meituan has done 'Huanshi Canteen'—everyone is experimenting. But Qixian Xiaochu isn't as tightly integrated with front-warehouses; Pupu Kitchen is directly built on its own front-warehouse network, sharing the same procurement, the same riders, and the same app traffic. The 'front-warehouse + dining' angle might be a new direction for industry innovation.
Why Xiamen?
Honestly, it's no surprise that Pupu chose Xiamen as its second stop. Xiamen is one of the earliest markets where Pupu made money. By 2025, they had woven a dense network across four cities in Fujian—Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou—with market penetration exceeding 70% in Fuzhou and Xiamen. What does that mean? If you grab a random person on the street, seven out of ten have used Pupu. This density is Pupu's most valuable moat. But since 2025, people have started trying to cross this moat. Meituan's Xiaoxiang Supermarket is preparing to enter Fuzhou. This news has been circulating in the industry since the second half of last year, and Meituan has even started local recruitment in Fuzhou. How fast is Xiaoxiang expanding? As of the end of 2025, it had nearly a thousand front-warehouses in over 20 cities nationwide, with GMV approaching 30 billion yuan in 2024, surpassing Dingdong Maicai and comparable to Pupu's scale. So you see, Pupu Kitchen's rush into Xiamen inevitably invites speculation: this is a counterattack in Meituan's backyard. You have delivery; I'll do kitchen. You want to grab my fresh food; I'll poach your dining users. Both sides are probing each other's core territories, trying to build walls with more formats, denser networks, and stickier users.
Going Deeper: Pupu's New Strategy
Pupu's strategy has clearly changed. Previously, it wanted to bloom nationwide; now it's retrenched to Fujian, digging deep. Besides opening new stores in Quanzhou, it's more about sinking into surrounding districts and counties of Fuzhou and Xiamen—Fuqing, Changle, Lianjiang—each county town getting front-warehouses. At the same time, it launched two new business lines: one is Pupu Kitchen, the food delivery service; the other is the offline physical store 'Pupu Life', with its first 5,000-6,000 square meter flagship store in Fuzhou's Yuanyang Decheng Leti Harbor, expected to debut in 2026. This 'warehouse-store integration' model aims to push front-warehouses from 'behind the scenes' to 'front stage'. Previously, front-warehouses were hidden in communities, and users only perceived the speed of '30-minute delivery', with no emotional connection to the brand. The large offline store provides a place to browse, touch, and take photos, while also serving as a new traffic entry point. There's also a practical calculation: dining has higher gross margins than fresh food. Fresh food e-commerce typically has margins of 20%-30%, while dining can be higher. Pupu achieved annual profitability in 2024 (revenue around 30 billion yuan, gross margin 22.5%, fulfillment cost ratio 17.5%), but the growth ceiling is visible, so it must find new profit sources.
Dimensional Reduction Attack? Retail Costs for Dining
Pupu's move into kitchen has a potential advantage that the industry loves to discuss: extremely low fulfillment costs. The pain point of front-warehouses has always been high fulfillment costs—warehouse rent, labor, delivery—each order burns money. But Pupu's network density in Fuzhou is extremely high, with large order volumes per warehouse, and many warehouses have already achieved fulfillment costs (in-warehouse + delivery) below 7 yuan. Using such low costs for food delivery could be a 'dimensional reduction attack' on traditional delivery platforms. Traditional delivery platforms' riders operate in a 'run everywhere' mode, with system-assigned orders and flexible but hard-to-control routes. Pupu's riders are stationed at specific points, and the routes from warehouse to community are already well-trodden. If the central kitchen is placed right next to the front-warehouse, riders can take both dining and retail orders simultaneously, further increasing order density, reducing idle time, and making the cost advantage even more pronounced. But there are pitfalls here. The fulfillment logic for dining and retail differs: a freshly cooked meal must be delivered within 30 minutes; a bag of chips can be 30 minutes late without issue. How to fit these two types of orders into the same delivery system requires algorithm calculations down to the millisecond, considering traffic, meal prep speed, rider location, and order priority.
Instant Retail Shopping Complex: A Possible Future Picture
If we zoom out, Pupu Kitchen might just be a piece of a larger puzzle. 'The future direction might be to develop front-warehouses like Pupu and Xiaoxiang into instant retail shopping centers, or instant retail complexes,' a researcher described to me. Inside, there would not only be fresh supermarket items but also dining, pharmaceuticals, and various daily necessities from lightning warehouses, becoming a comprehensive complex where you can buy anything. This 'everything to home' instant retail complex is blurring the boundaries of traditional retail. Meituan's lightning warehouses have already exceeded 50,000, and JD.com's seconds-level delivery and Taobao's flash purchase are also ramping up. Platform giants with traffic and capital are reshaping the entire industry. For regional players like Pupu, whether they can find their place in this ecosystem war depends on whether they can truly achieve online-offline chemical reactions and find a sustainable profit model under new cost structures and competitive environments.
Hema Returns: A New Variable in the Fujian Market
Just as Pupu accelerates its layout, another piece of news has been confirmed: Hema Fresh is returning to Fujian after six years, with its first Xiamen store signed at Panji Center, expected to open in August 2026; its first Fuzhou store has also signed at Wanxiang Jiuyi City, with plans to open by the end of the year. Hema has a history of 'breakup' with Fujian. In 2017, it entered with local retailer New Huadu, but in 2018-2019, New Huadu faced operational difficulties, and after Hema switched to self-operation, its supply chain couldn't keep up, leading to a full withdrawal from Fuzhou in 2020. Six years later, Hema's business model has matured. Its supply chain has strengthened direct sourcing from origins, and its national logistics network has expanded. Fujian's rich seafood resources are highly attractive to Hema as a supply chain supplement. Hema's return means a more complex competitive landscape in the Fujian market. Pupu, Yonghui, Xiaoxiang, and Hema—four forces will intertwine on this land. It's good for consumers, but a real test for practitioners.
Conclusion:
What Will Instant Retail Look Like in the Future?
An industry insider once shared a vision with me: future instant retail might evolve into 'warehouse-based instant retail shopping centers', or 'instant retail complexes'. Inside, there would not only be fresh supermarket items but also dining, pharmaceuticals, daily necessities, groceries, and even various goods from lightning warehouses. Whatever you want, it can be delivered within 30 minutes. If this vision comes true, then current players like Pupu and Xiaoxiang would no longer be mere fresh food e-commerce but a 'buy anything' local life entry point. Pupu Kitchen is the first step, and more formats may be added later. Of course, this is just imagination. The most immediate question is: Can Pupu Kitchen launch smoothly in Xiamen by the end of this month? Can it replicate Fuzhou's experience? Can it tear a gap in the encirclement of Meituan, Ele.me, and JD.com? In March, the sea breeze in Xiamen is already warming. Pupu's riders may soon start delivering boxed meals. For workers in Xiamen, this might mean: when ordering delivery, besides Meituan and Ele.me, there's also an option called Pupu. And that store might be in the tin-roofed building downstairs that you always thought only sold groceries.