On Kangding road, Jing'an district of Shanghai, street barriers are placed to manage traffic outside the neighborhood communities. Some residents were jogging, while sanitation workers were busy collecting garbage.Photo: Hu Gong

An increasing number for foreign and domestic food and grocery chains, including McDonald's, Carrefour and Alibaba's Hema Fresh, are pulling all strings to resume and expand operations in Shanghai, after they were allowed by local officials to resume work in a bid to increase supply of necessities to residents, volunteers and medical workers amid a shortage.  

Based on the three-level control measures, Shanghai has established a white list of companies in "locked-down" and "controlled" areas, allowing essential supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies and other outlets that are not hit by the epidemic to apply to operate.

In "precautionary" areas, malls, supermarkets, pharmacies and other places that supply the basic necessities of life will gradually resume business, said Liu Min, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce.

As one of the enterprises on the white list, McDonald's told the Global Times on Thursday that it plans to open 20 restaurants in 12 districts across the city this week.

These restaurants will mainly fill the government's bulk orders to guarantee the needs of the massive number of volunteers and medical workers in the city, as well as individual orders from residents in nearby sealed-off areas, according to a statement from the company.

The meal delivery process and logistics for raw materials are relatively smooth, a representative from McDonald's Shanghai said. "Individual orders placed in the morning can be delivered as soon as noon," the person said.

However, due to limits on supplies and staff, the needs of quarantined residents can't yet be fully met, and orders are first-come, first-served.

More than 200 employees and delivery staffers are working for McDonald's outlets in Shanghai, and more than other 1,000 employees and 160 deliverymen have signed up to join in.

All the staff will follow a closed-loop management, meaning that they will eat and live in the restaurant and take nucleic acid or antigen tests on a daily basis.

Since mid-March, McDonald's restaurants in Shanghai have delivered more than 20,000 meals to sealed-off compounds.

Carrefour is also among the companies on the white list, and it's implementing a tiered operation of its stores in response to the three-level control measures of the city.

The firm's supermarkets offer online business for "locked-down" and "controlled" areas. For "precautionary" areas, limited on-site business is expected to resume using reservations and limits on customer flows, Carrefour said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Thursday.

The number of stores offering online business in Shanghai has doubled from last week, and 80 percent of all stores in Shanghai will restore online business by the end of the week. In addition to locals, workers from all across the country are rushing to Shanghai to expand the firm's capacity. 

The first batch of 30 Carrefour employees from Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, has arrived in Shanghai and will get to work under closed-off management to ensure supplies for communities and enterprises. 

As of Thursday, the number of Carrefour employees working in Shanghai stores had more than doubled from two weeks ago.

Hema Fresh, a relatively new retail arm under Alibaba Group, is also adding helpers from other cities.

As of Wednesday, more than 400 employees from 20 cities across the country had rushed to Shanghai and the number is expected to reach 1,000 on Friday.

A total of 47 stores under Hema Fresh had opened for self-pickup services as of Wednesday.