Dingdong (Cayman) Ltd, one of the most popular Chinese online grocers, apologised for its food safety issue after being accused of selling expired products. The company was summoned by the market regulator after relabelling expired food with new dates, selling frozen fish as fresh and other unspecified misconducts were found. The share of Dingdong shrank nearly 11% on Thursday following the reporting of the scandal.
In a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, Dingdong said they sincerely apologise to those consumers who have supported them from the very start of the business. They have suspended operations at the site and made a promise that similar issues will never happen again. The market supervision bureau of Beijing’s Haidian District said it had launched an investigation into Dingdong after the media reported its misconducts and carried out inspections at other online grocers, including Meituan Grocery and Missfresh.
Founded in 2017 and backed by Sequoia Capital China, Dingdong operates a close-to-store warehouse business model which makes it faster to deliver groceries to every customer and household in less than half an hour. The Company’s frontline fulfilment grid consists of more than 950 frontline fulfilment stations across 29 cities in China. This grid is also supported by approximately 40 regional processing centres that sort, package, label, and store raw products prior to shipment.
