Fans' late-night beer and crawfish orders keep delivery riders busy

While China failed to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in Russia, the country's soccer fans know how to party their way through the quadrennial tournament－by devouring crustaceans and quaffing beer as they cheer on their favorite teams.

With most matches kicking off in late evening or early morning in China, people are staying up, and food delivery firms have cashed in on a dramatic rise in late-night orders for summertime favorites.

Even ahead of the matches, restaurants, supermarkets and e-commerce sites were stocking up in anticipation of rising demand for crawfish and beer.

Orders on Meituan, one of China's largest on-demand service apps, soared by more than 40 percent a quarter of an hour before the World Cup's first game kicked off on June 14. It delivered 280,000 bottles of beer and 1.53 million crawfish between 9 pm and midnight on the first night of the tournament.

The platform also reported a 55 percent rise in orders for stew and soup in the same period, while orders for barbecued meat surged by 68.8 percent. Those watching the games are also embracing healthier choices, with fish soup orders up by 67.4 percent and sales for fruit and yogurt also on the rise.

On Meituan's major rival, Ele.me, some 3.25 million takeout crawfish have been bought every day since the tournament began. The company said orders placed between 9 pm and 2 am are triple those for the same time last year.

Services platform Koubei said beer consumption alone has risen by 50 percent year-on-year since the first day of the tournament.

Major business-to-customer site Tmall Supermarket has seen its one-hour-delivery orders more than double during the World Cup, with sales of beer and crawfish jumping threefold from a month ago.

To meet the increased demand for one-hour delivery services, Tmall has vowed to offer them round-the-clock for food and beverages in Beijing and Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, from July 1 to 15, when the tournment ends.

The widespread craving for crawfish washed down with cold beer has meant long working hours for delivery riders, with Ele.me saying its delivery fleet is handling an average of 1.5 million takeout orders per match across China.

Wu Yingbing, a 26-year-old Ele.me courier in Shanghai, is among the tens of thousands of riders darting about on China's roads to help quench the thirsts and appetites of late-night soccer fans.

Just an hour before the game between Costa Rica and Serbia on June 17, Wu was tasked with delivering 300 bottles of beer to a gathering of some 20 thirsty fans.

"Upon receiving this single-largest beer order, me and my colleagues rushed to the nearby RT-Mart, picked up the goods, and got them delivered in 30 minutes," he said.

Wu and his colleagues are reaping decent financial returns as they clock up overtime during the monthlong bonanza. He is delivering at least twice as many takeout orders as usual and his salary has topped 10,000 yuan ($1,510) after tax. Shanghai's average pretax salary last year was 7,132 yuan a month, according to the city government.

Experts say the booming food delivery business is bolstered by data-backed technologies that are revamping old-school retailing and merging online and offline grocery consumption.

Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and JD have mined a massive trove of data in order to pinpoint customer preferences, predict sales and calculate the most economic routes for pickups and deliveries.

"They have developed logistics systems based on centralized networks of warehouses … and provide the means to distribute fresh food,... which is only possible with a logistics operation that is complex, sophisticated and large-scale," said Richard McKenzie, a partner at consultancy Oliver Wyman.