'Homebound' lifestyle takes off nationwide

Buying food that is easy to cook has become especially popular among single people spending more time at home.

Data from online shopping platform Taobao show that since the beginning of this month, the number of searches for "instant noodles "has risen 200-fold compared with the same time last year.

Guoquan, a small platform selling washed and cooked hotpot ingredients, saw its revenue rocket to 20 million yuan ($2.86 million) in a single day. Hotpot is considered particularly easy to cook, as it only involves all the ingredients being placed in boiling water.

A group of medium-sized and large e-commerce platforms have delivered over 160,000 daily orders in Wuhan, Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak.

In Beijing, nearly 20,000 delivery riders are handling more than 400,000 takeout orders each day, according to the capital's Municipal Market Regulation Bureau.

Wang Jun, chief finance officer at online fresh food startup Miss Fresh, said: "Before the outbreak, people only bought fresh vegetables, fruit and certain other foods online. But now they are buying everything online, including rice, flour and many other items. This will have a long-lasting effect on the country's fresh food sector."

During the epidemic, revenue at the company, which is based in Beijing, has risen by more than 300 percent and it has had to take urgent measures to ensure supplies are received.

Wang said: "During this time, we are offering higher pay for workers to handle and process vegetables. We have also increased supplies from our bases in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and in Yunnan and Shandong provinces, which are cooperating with each other on production."