The sight of shoppers pushing supermarket trolleys among a crowd of Shanghainese chowing down seafood at a communal table is somewhat jarring. But this is a branch of Hema — one of 20 stores opened by Chinese ecommerce pioneer Alibaba in an effort to reimagine food shopping as more than a weekly chore carried out under the glare of fluorescent lights in a retailing shed.
“Is it a store? Is it a restaurant?” asks Bruno Monteyne, a former executive at Tesco, the international grocery retailer, who now follows the retail industry for Wall Street brokerage Bernstein. “I’m not sure, but it’s food experience at its best.”
Hema is a hybrid of ecommerce and physical shopping, calculated to appeal to a generation of Chinese consumers who live life through their smartphones. Visitors can pull live crabs out of a large tank before browsing the aisles for packaged goods. They scan items as they go and pay for them via the Alipay app that has become a popular alternative to cash in China.