(Yicai Global) April 8 -- As more and more Shanghai residents turn to buying daily necessities online amid a citywide lockdown imposed after a resurgence of Covid-19 early last month, retailers such as Carrefour, Wal-Mart, and RT-Mart have been busy organizing supples and coordinated transport to ensure ‘last mile’ delivery.

Many employees of Wal-Mart’s Shanghai delivery centers and warehouses have volunteered to sleep in nearby office buildings and are putting in more than 10 hours a day to guarantee supplies across the city.

Drivers in logistics and delivery teams have also been bedding down in their vehicles since the end of March to make sure they are able to deliver goods every day.

Since the end of March, hundreds of trucks filled with rice, flour, grain, edible oil, meat and vegetables have been delivered each day to the US supermarket chain’s Shanghai stores and cloud warehouses via its supply chain teams and then on to residents in need.

Some of RT-Mart’s stores in the city are functioning normally online, and 18 outlets have participated in the local government and communities’ supply guarantee plans.

The low-price supermarket chain has raised its inventory of daily necessities since April 1 by buying nearly 800 tons of vegetables, fruits, meat, rice, and flour a day. It has also opened group-buying channels for neighborhoods in lockdown, along with delivery services.

Meanwhile, Carrefour’s mini program in WeChat rolled out a buying service for communities on April 3. Residents can place orders between midnight and midday, which are then delivered to the gates of their communities by 9.00 p.m. the same day.

Last month, the supermarket giant organized more than 6,000 tons of fruits, veggies, meat and eggs as well as more than 5,000 tons of rice, flour, grain and edible oil.

Carrefour has also allocated supplies from the provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Anhui to meet the demand for more than 5,000 tons of vegetables as well as grains, edible oil, milk, and instant foods, and has delivered tens of thousands of orders a day since March 28.

Besides big name retailers, countless local community volunteers have also lent a hand in the ‘last mile’ delivery.

Editor: Peter Thomas