Consumers have a taste for food sites

Zhang Xiaoying, a Beijing housewife, was amazed when a courier knocked on her door and delivered a package of prime Australian beef just 10 hours after she had ordered it online.

"It was still frozen when it arrived," Zhang, 34, said, adding that the beef was shipped from a warehouse in a Beijing suburb. "The whole process only took a simple click."

Her daughter loves nothing better than eating beef and usually Zhang gets up at 6:30 am to buy the freshest cuts at a supermarket near her neighborhood in Haidian district.