Spring spending heats up, Dingdong Maicai's spring wild vegetables and medicinal food categories grow beyond expectations

Beijing News Network (Zhaoxinjing) reported by (Reporter Zhang Jie): With the Qingming Festival holiday just around the corner, trying spring seasonal foods and going outdoors for picnics and spring outings have become popular, and a springtime consumption boom is also getting underway. On April 3, a Beijing News Network reporter learned from Dingdong Maicai that before the Qingming holiday, qingtuan remained in high demand, and categories such as seasonal spring vegetables, aquatic products, fresh flowers, and spring beverages also saw a consumption surge. Among them, spring wild vegetables and categories related to medicinal and edible herbs have been especially hot. In addition, outdoor picnic and camping scenarios continued to heat up, further driving growth in sales of barbecue items.

This year, Dingdong Maicai has cumulatively added 260 seasonal products to its shelves. The richness of its categories has increased significantly compared with previous years: including 125 types of spring vegetables and more than 130 types of aquatic products. The platform has also exclusively launched specialty items such as sea vegetable flower heads, pumpkin flowers, and fresh catches from the Luoma Lake. As the platform’s “Spring Fresh Season” campaign rolls out across the board, sales of seasonal categories such as aquatic products and spring vegetables are growing steadily. Overall sales revenue for spring vegetables has increased by 20% year over year. Growth for the two subcategories—wild vegetables and medicinal and edible herbs—also far exceeded expectations, with an overall increase of 80%. Among them, the medicinal and edible herbs category has been particularly standout. The platform has currently stocked 7 spring vegetable items, including mugwort leaves, fresh mulberry leaves, tianqi leaves, motherwort, and hyssop shoots, aligning with consumers’ current demand for “health-preserving, light nutritional supplementation.”

In addition, to meet consumers’ needs for outdoor meals, Dingdong Maicai has launched a “National Barbecue Map” series of products, featuring region-specific flavors such as Inner Mongolia milk skin meat skewers, Xinjiang cumin meat skewers, Yunnan Dai-style grilled fish, and Cantonese-style roasted squab. The platform has also, together with spring seasonal ingredients, introduced new products such as Dingdong V5 tea made with cassia seed, mulberry leaf, chrysanthemum, and finger citron; 100% NFC (not-from-concentrate) hawthorn juice; and honey burst juice lemon beverages.

In the fresh flowers category, sales of traditional spring flower materials such as butterfly sweet peas and tulips have been steadily climbing. On this basis, this year Dingdong Maicai has added rare varieties such as fresh-cut grape hyacinth flowers, filling the market gap for blue spring floral materials.

Editor: Wang Lin

Proofreader: Fu Chunying