---
title: "Six Consecutive Quarters of Profit: Fresh Food E-commerce Giant Quietly Making Money"
description: "Dingdong Maicai has achieved six consecutive quarters of Non-GAAP profitability, with Q1 2024 GMV reaching 5.53 billion yuan and net profit of 41.48 million yuan, dispelling doubts about its business viability. The company's focus on the East China market, supply chain optimization, and product quality has driven this success."
author: "廖一帆"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-05-30"
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# Six Consecutive Quarters of Profit: Fresh Food E-commerce Giant Quietly Making Money

> Dingdong Maicai has achieved six consecutive quarters of Non-GAAP profitability, with Q1 2024 GMV reaching 5.53 billion yuan and net profit of 41.48 million yuan, dispelling doubts about its business viability. The company's focus on the East China market, supply chain optimization, and product quality has driven this success.

******First to Achieve Six Consecutive Quarters of Profit**
Community group buying is considered by the industry to be a market with high repurchase rates and massive scale, but also high investment, low margins, and difficulty in making a profit. In August 2022, Miss Fresh (每日优鲜) exposed its capital chain rupture, tearing off the fig leaf of seemingly large-scale community group buying e-commerce and serving as a wake-up call to peers using the same front-warehouse model. Watching Miss Fresh fade away, no one wants to be the next to collapse. On May 13, Dingdong Maicai released its Q1 performance report, becoming the fresh food e-commerce company with six consecutive quarters of growth! (Image source: Dingdong Maicai official website)
In this quarter, Dingdong Maicai's Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) reached 5.53 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 1.4%; revenue was 5.02 billion yuan, up 0.5% year-on-year. Meanwhile, gross margin was 30.6% during the reporting period; on a Non-GAAP basis, net profit margin was 0.8%, with net profit of 41.482 million yuan, 6.8 times that of the same period last year. Dingdong Maicai has achieved Non-GAAP profitability for six consecutive quarters, and even under GAAP standards, it has been profitable for multiple quarters, successfully dispelling external doubts about its operational capabilities. This quarter's simultaneous growth in GMV and profit brings new hope for its future development.

**Fuel, Rice, Oil, Salt, Meat, Eggs, Fruits, and Vegetables**
**Can Also Be a Big Business**
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Shanghai, Dingdong Maicai quickly became one of China's leading fresh food e-commerce platforms within a few years. Some say that founder Liang Changlin's military career honed his tenacity and perseverance, enabling this young entrepreneur from Anhui to ride the waves and resolve to make selling vegetables a success. (Image source: Weibo)
Since the inception of the fresh food e-commerce + front-warehouse model, traditional wet markets have been greatly impacted, bringing consumers a revolutionary grocery shopping experience. Capital has also shown anticipation and interest in this emerging fresh food e-commerce platform. By building its own front warehouses and self-operated logistics system (self-built delivery teams), Dingdong Maicai achieved fast and efficient delivery services, with users receiving fresh ingredients within 30 minutes of ordering. As Shanghai is Dingdong Maicai's birthplace and stronghold, it achieved profitability in Shanghai as early as December 2021. Thus, East China not only provides a stable revenue source for Dingdong Maicai but also serves as a demonstration effect for its nationwide expansion.
According to the financial report, in Q1 2024, GMV in Jiangsu and Zhejiang grew by 16.6% and 14.8% respectively, while maintaining overall profitability. Shanghai's GMV also grew 2.7% year-on-year. Dingdong Maicai further improved supply chain efficiency by optimizing sorting centers and warehouse network layout. The 15 new front warehouses added this quarter quickly reached average operational levels, with daily order volume per front warehouse increasing 16% year-on-year, and GMV from existing stores growing 4.4% year-on-year. These measures effectively enhanced operational efficiency and reduced costs, thereby strengthening profitability.
Dingdong Maicai has also continuously improved product diversity and quality. Sales in categories such as fruits, dairy and beverages, snacks and general merchandise, and bakery each exceeded 100 million yuan, with fruit category growing over 14% year-on-year. Additionally, Dingdong Maicai's private brands, such as Cai Changqing (蔡长青) and Dingdong Haoshihui (叮咚好食汇), performed well, with private brand GMV penetration exceeding 20% for the first time in Q4 2023, reaching 21.2%, up 3.1 percentage points from the same period last year.
At the same time, Dingdong Maicai launched the "Clean Label" plan and "Nutrition Choice" grading labels, advocating minimal or no additives to meet consumer demand for healthy food. These initiatives not only enhanced product competitiveness but also increased consumer trust and loyalty to the brand.
Thus, behind six consecutive quarters of profitability are Dingdong Maicai's efforts in market strategy, operational efficiency, product competitiveness, and capital security. By deeply cultivating the East China market, optimizing supply chains, improving product quality, and focusing on health and nutrition, Dingdong Maicai has not only dispelled external doubts but also laid a solid foundation for future development.

**Cutting Losses to Survive: Better Books, But What About Reputation?**
Almost every community group buying e-commerce company goes through a phase of spending heavily to expand, engaging in price wars, which leads to dissatisfaction among investors seeking returns, who then withdraw funds, pushing the company into strategic contraction. (Image source: Dingdong Maicai official website)
Dingdong Maicai is currently in a phase of increasing revenue and reducing costs, improving efficiency. It has reduced sites, cut its own delivery riders (shifting to outsourcing), and slashed marketing budgets (burning money on promotions) to survive. Undeniably, this slimming down has indeed brought consecutive and stable profits, making the books look better and giving investors more confidence. For the entire industry, achieving six quarters of stable profitability in a community group buying track with such huge upfront investment and fierce competition is quite remarkable.
However, from a consumer perspective, the "reducing" in "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" refers to quality and reputation, which may not signal long-term profitability for Dingdong Maicai. It is reported that to further this, Dingdong Maicai has adopted strategies such as abandoning non-core regions, balancing operating costs and user experience to a certain extent, and deepening its focus on core businesses.
Finally, many fresh food e-commerce companies have undoubtedly fallen into the expansion trap where more sites lead to higher losses, in stark contrast to the huge benefits brought by the expansion trend in the tea beverage market. Behind this expansion trap is the fact that the huge investment in front warehouses and delivery teams is not proportional to the low-margin returns from selling vegetables. It should be noted that pursuing full category coverage and product iteration is what major fresh food platforms aim for to enhance user experience, but they must also recognize how to balance rapid expansion steps.
The difficulty in making a profit is not because selling vegetables is not profitable, but because of excessive upfront investment, including early customer acquisition and marketing strategies for exposure, and the large number of self-built front warehouses in each city. Recouping these investments requires not only time but also stable cash flow support. This is another new battlefield for e-commerce giants alongside their e-commerce platform games, equally bloody and equally revealing of true strength.

**Recommended Reading**


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