A customer mix noodle with seasonings at a noodle shop in Chongqing, southwest China, April 12, 2017. Chongqing small noodle, the most common food in Chongqing, is well-known for its strong spicy and savoury flavour as it is mixed with more than 10 types of seasonings.Photo:Xinhua

Hot dry noodles, one of Wuhan's signature local dishes, are seeing exploding orders from both domestic and international customers, shortly after operations resumed, local producers told the Global Times. 

Liu Xiaoting, general manager of Dahankou, a prominent local brand of instant hot dry noodles, said that the company's orders have grown at least three times in the Chinese market, and two to three times from overseas. 

"We're running at our maximum capacity but the products are still out of stock," Liu said, adding that "orders through e-commerce platforms have to wait for around eight days for shipment."

The company was asked to shut down in late January when the city went into lockdown, and resumed operation one month later. Although Liu's business is rebounding with full force, she said for now it has only "made up for a fraction of the losses."

"We need time to catch up," Liu said. "We've been running for almost two months now and our staff have only taken two days off."

According to Liu, domestic orders saw their most drastic jump after a livestreaming shopping campaign on Taobao.com on April 6, featuring Li Jiaqi, one of the hottest internet influencers at the moment. 

The campaign was for promoting the sales of products from Hubei companies such as fizzy drinks and potato noodles, which, like Dahankou, were among the hardest hit businesses in China. The first livestream campaign received a total of 660,000 orders, reaching a sales volume of 23 million yuan ($3.26 million). 

"The orders just exploded after the livestream campaign," Liu said. "I've never seen anything work as well as this."

The overseas orders, on the other hand, might come from the stockpiling of convenience food, including canned food and instant noodles during the lockdown. In the US, the sales of canned meat rose over 31 percent in the week ending February 29, according to a report by consumer research company Nielsen. 

"According to my knowledge, other instant noodle companies like Kangshifu and Unif, are also seeing increasing orders from overseas," Liu said.