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JD.com expands into offline catering industry

JD Catering

JD.com and Juqi, a popular dining chain in China with 21 restaurants in Beijing, announced innovative cooperation on supply chain in Beijing on 9th April, making JD the first platform in China that is capable of providing a one-stop supply chain solution covering both the full category of food and materials supply, and integrated warehousing and distribution services.

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Through the cooperation, JD will also provide intelligent inventory management, and bring Juqi’s semi-prepared food to consumers through JD’s platform.

“JD Catering has been committed to helping catering enterprises achieve standardization and scale development through providing them with a set of one-stop supply chain solutions in line with their own development,” said Carol Fung, President of FMCG and Omnichannel.

“The cooperation with Juqi is just the beginning, and in the future, JD Catering will join hands with more partners to create benchmark samples in the catering industry,” continued Fung.

“Food safety, food quality and good service are the core competitiveness of Chinese large and medium-sized catering brands, such as Juqi,” said Jun Ma, General Manager of JD Catering Business.

“Because of this, large and medium-sized catering enterprises need to rely on strong supply chains, warehousing and distribution capabilities to reduce the cost and increase efficiency. This is what JD.com is best at,” continued Ma.

In terms of a full category of supply offering, JD will become the only supplier to Juqi by taking advantage of JD’s vast SKU network and a self-operation business model which will ensure product safety and quality thanks to strict quality control. Previously, it was a pain point for Juqi that it has to deal with several suppliers at the same time, which was not only inefficient but also lacked transparency in pricing.

As for warehousing and distribution services, offline restaurants are eager to have their own warehouses and delivery services that will help them reduce costs while also improving efficiency. However, constructing their own logistics network is time-consuming and costly. Through the cooperation with JD, Juqi will make full use of JD’s nationwide logistics network to further reduce cost on both labor and fulfillment, and promote the standardization of catering.

“Relying on JD’s supply chain advantages such as full category of supply, high efficiency and stable logistics services, Juqi will have the ability and opportunities to provide consumers with safe, reliable, and creative dishes with good quality at low prices,” said Tong Han, Juqi’s founder.

“The cooperation between Juqi and JD Catering will be of great significance to the overall efficiency improvement of the catering industry in supply chain,” continued Han.

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For intelligent inventory management, JD is working on an intelligent system that can help offline restaurants do intelligent replenishment and reduce the possibility of manual miscalculation. In addition, the cooperation can also provide added value to the brand by bringing its semi-prepared food online and increase exposure of the brand image to consumers across China.