The craze for food delivery in Nanjing is experiencing its latest revolution well into the city’s late evening, with places such as Confucius Temple Night Market becoming well-known centres for night-market business.
Recently, the “Nanjing Night Economy Big Data” report, released by food delivery behemoth, Eleme (饿了么), has revealed that the order volume of Nanjing night-time takeout has increased by 87 percent compared with last year. Driven by such a new form of consumption, the districts of Gaochun, Lishui and Yuhuatai that used to be weak in evening economic vitality, are now growing fastest in terms of late-night food consumption.
According to Chen Yu, owner of the Lincong Roast Fish Rice restaurant, their evening business is becoming more and more popular. “We are really busy. Customers who do not want to go out now will place orders through an app. This month, the average daily order is more than 90 [deliveries], up 200 percent from last month”, Chen revealed.
The kinds of people actively ordering deliveries at night are a largely identifiable bunch; white-collars working late in offices, night shift employees in internet bars, gamers, hotel managers on duty in a development zone. This new type of socio-economic group now tends to order delivery almost every night.
Furthermore, Nanjing’s late-night orders are mainly concentrated in scenic spots, universities and residential areas. Among them, Nanjing Confucius Temple’s Qinhuai Scenic Belt comes top, followed by Nanguang College, according to the Eleme report.
Summer’s traditional crayfish feasts and barbecue spreads are adored by Nanjing people, especially in Qinhuai and Yuhuatai districts, where late-night barbecue orders have doubled this year. Meanwhile, in Jiangning and Liuhe districts, the order volume of crayfish has increased six fold over the same period in 2018.
In addition to late night deliveries of people’s dinner, the Eleme data shows that more and more Nanjing people are ordering from supermarkets and buying fruits and emergency medicines at night. This year, order numbers for these increased 1.1 times, 1.8 times and 6.4 times, respectively, compared with the same period last year.
Whether they be sick or just plain hungry, and just as elsewhere in almost all of urban China, Nanjingers have taken night-time delivery to their hearts, just as with their day-time equivalents before them, and the parcel deliveries that spawned this revolution of convenience.
