Recently, at the 2026 Instant Retail Industry Conference, Wang Puzhong, CEO of Meituan (HKEX: 3690) Core Local Commerce, stated that the industry has passed its most difficult stage of demand cultivation and network deployment, and that the next step is to move from the "store-warehouse-delivery era" into the "product era." At the same conference, the "Brand Official Flagship Lightning Warehouse" was brought to the forefront as Meituan's core supply solution for brand merchants under Meituan Flash Purchase.

From a data perspective, this model has already preliminarily validated its commercial viability: after Mercury Home Textiles joined in November 2025, its sales grew by 530% by August 2026; after Zhenjiu's first pilot of 30 warehouses, it replicated to 100 warehouses across 18 cities within three months, with sales increasing 310% quarter-on-quarter. As of now, official flagship lightning warehouses have reached 155 operating brands, 12,910 stores, and a 5,100% year-on-year increase in orders, covering 158 forward warehouses across 23 cities.

The logic behind official flagship lightning warehouses is not complicated: brands "move in with just a bag," Meituan handles warehousing, delivery, and digital systems, brands retain operational autonomy, and goods are moved from central warehouses forward to urban lightning warehouses, with delivery to users within 30 minutes of placing an order. In essence, this is a "light-asset warehousing entry" solution in which Meituan productizes its own warehousing and delivery infrastructure capabilities and opens them to brands.

For brands that have long relied on offline distribution or traditional e-commerce, the appeal of this model lies in two points: first, there is no need to build a warehousing and delivery system independently, greatly lowering the threshold for distributing goods; second, it directly reaches consumers, bypassing the problems of layer-by-layer markups and information decay in traditional distribution chains.

Yibang Power noted that brands currently entering official flagship lightning warehouses already cover multiple categories such as 3C, beauty, alcoholic beverages, home textiles, and maternal and infant products, among which the performance of the alcoholic beverage category is particularly noteworthy. Data from Zhenjiu shows that the number of products on sale in its official flagship lightning warehouses reached 3.5 times that of liquor stores carrying the same brand, and per-store output reached 2.5 times that of liquor stores carrying the same brand. It can be seen that the product richness of instant retail channels is surpassing traditional offline outlets, and consumers' acceptance of paying a premium for "immediate availability" gives brands certain advantages in average order value and conversion efficiency in the lightning warehouse channel.

In the past few years, the main suppliers of lightning warehouses were primarily white-label products and distributor sources, and brand owners were more often "passively distributing goods." But when brands enter warehouses directly in the form of official flagship stores, supply quality, pricing systems, and after-sales standards will all be changed. For instant retail categories that have previously suffered from uneven quality of white-label goods, such as travel supplies and maternal and infant emergency products, this is an opportunity for supply-side upgrading.

For brand owners, official flagship lightning warehouses provide an incremental channel worth seriously evaluating, but they are not a universal solution. Category characteristics, average order value structure, and the degree of fit with instant consumption scenarios will determine the actual returns different brands achieve under this model. The "product era" of instant retail has just begun, and whoever can distribute more good products to users faster will be able to seize the next round of growth.