According to the news reports by Southern Daily and the WeChat public accounts of media including Chengdu Release, in response to the current pandemic, Futian District, Luohu District, Nanshan District, Bao’an District, Longgang District and Longhua District in Shenzhen issued a notification on the evening of September 2nd regarding carrying out two rounds of nucleic acid testing on Saturday and Sunday. In Chengdu, in order to contain the spread of the pandemic, starting from 18:00pm on September 1st, all residents were required to stay home, and residential compounds do not allow entry for non-residents.

During the sudden pandemic surges, Walmart hypermarkets have worked to ensure the supply of goods for residents in Shenzhen and Chengdu by coordinating with suppliers in advance and replenishing goods and expediting delivery overnight.

In Shenzhen, some stores replenished foods from the perishable warehouse four times a day.

In Shenzhen, Walmart hypermarkets have stocked up three to five times the regular amount of major essential supplies to meet the shopping needs during this period.

Anny Wan, District Manager of Walmart Hypermarket Operations, said that on September 1st, the number of online orders was three to four times the regular number, and the delivery service for online orders was available until 12 AM midnight. Some associates were still picking goods at 1 or 2 AM. Anny Wan said, in response to the surge in online orders, most stores were able to fulfill all orders on the same day. "Because we are experienced in responding to unexpected situations, we can urgently start an emergency response plan to allocate more manpower within a short period of time". Once the demand spikes, the replenishment team can immediately activate the direct delivery of goods to the stores from multiple suppliers on standby. "In the past two days, when the shelves of fresh foods were cleared by customers, we (could) replenish the shelves within half an hour, and some stores replenished foods from the perishable warehouse four times a day."

While meeting the needs of customers online and in-store, Walmart hypermarkets in Shenzhen, including the Hongling Store, Shekou Store, Yannan Road Store and Honey Lake Store, have also provided several sub-districts with a large quantity of essential supplies, mainly consisting of meat, eggs and vegetables.

In Chengdu, associates were so tired from picking goods that they sat down on the floor to rest.

(VIDEO)

(Jinjiang Convergence Media                            Likes 459)

In Chengdu, several neighborhoods around Walmart's Chenglong Avenue Store became medium/high-risk areas with huge demand for essential supplies. At the same time, the store's attendance rate was only about 30% at one point due to pandemic lockdowns.

In order to ensure the safe delivery of orders to the locked down neighborhoods, Nengliang Yu, Supervisor of the Chenglong Avenue Store and two other associates temporarily formed a "construction team" to build special shelves for contactless pick-up at the entrances of the six medium/high-risk neighborhoods within three kilometers of the store. On August 25th, the three of them worked non-stop for six hours to complete the installation of the shelves. 

Recently, with heightened epidemic prevention and control measures, the online order volume has risen to about six times the usual level, and the associates of the Chenglong Avenue Store prepared orders until 11:00 PM every night. They represent the many retail workers on the front line delivering essential supplies to local communities.

After learning about the manpower shortage in the e-commerce department, numerous associates on leave or off shift rushed to the store to support the team without hesitation. Stella Liang, General Manager of SM Plaza Store in Chengdu, said that to ensure customers could receive products quickly, the associates worked up to more than ten hours a day, and they were so tired that they sat down on the floor to rest. At night, many associates chose to stay overnight in the store, and the next day they quickly started working on providing essential supplies to customers.