The battle for Beijing's snack market is heating up. Bottles of water for a little over 1 yuan, cola for under 2 yuan, juice and coffee by the entrance, and shelves packed with everything from chips and biscuits to marinated meats, dairy drinks, and private-label items. Such stores were once a common sight on main streets in county towns or at community entrances in lower-tier cities. Recently, however, they have begun appearing frequently around Beijing's subway stations, neighborhood entrances, and schools. The bulk snack retail sector is accelerating its push into the capital.
Compared to earlier cautious testing, expansion by brands like Zhao Yiming and Haoxianglai in first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai has significantly sped up this year. Their store networks are extending from outer suburban districts along subway lines into the core urban areas, also appearing near community entrances in districts like Haidian, Chaoyang, and Xicheng. This drive stems from the industry's continued need to find new growth avenues. Over the past few years, this format thrived in lower-tier markets by leveraging large stores, wide facades, high-density displays, and bulk purchasing, turning "cheap prices" and "browsability" into key advantages.
The Core Business Model
Its underlying logic is low gross margins, high inventory turnover, and high sales per square meter. It uses fast turnover and short payment terms to secure supplier support, then uses bulk purchasing to further drive down prices. However, Beijing is not simply a scaled-up version of a lower-tier city. It features high population density and community supply needs, but also higher rents, more fragmented locations, more dispersed customer traffic, and stronger competition from instant retail alternatives. Operating in such a market means bulk snack brands face fiercer retail competition, increasing the urgency for adaptation. Whether this model, proven in下沉 markets, can adapt to Beijing and evolve under pressure remains to be seen.
The Beijing Challenge
In the Beijing market, Haoxianglai, under Wanchen Group, is moving faster. According to its official mini-program and incomplete data from Amap, Haoxianglai currently has over 200 stores in Beijing, more than double the number of Zhao Yiming outlets. On its website, Haoxianglai uses a standard store size of about 120 square meters for investment calculations. However, upon entering Beijing's central urban areas and subway-adjacent locations, the brand has become noticeably more cautious about store area and display space, with some new stores adopting a smaller, lighter community-focused format.
The reason is straightforward. In space-constrained Beijing, every extra square meter means higher fixed costs. The front-end gross margin for bulk snack stores is roughly 18% to 20%, far lower than that of bubble tea or coffee shops. They rely on fast turnover and short payment cycles to maintain supplier relationships and bulk purchasing to keep wholesale costs low. Under this low-margin model, the calculation for sales per square meter is highly sensitive to location costs. Once rent exceeds a certain threshold, the high-turnover, unpackaged snack business struggles to cover fixed costs.
Long Zhen, founder of Jiameng Data, noted that bulk snack stores in Beijing prioritize locations at residential area entrances or commercial streets—spots where brands like Mixue Ice City or burger and fried chicken shops would open. Proximity to schools or community supermarkets is even better. In his view, bulk snacks are essentially diverting business from supermarket snack sections and, in quasi-first-tier and second-tier cities, also competing with convenience stores.
Long Zhen stated that rental levels outside Beijing's Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads are not significantly different from those in cities like Hangzhou or Wuhan. "The business model and store formats tested by bulk snack retailers in quasi-first-tier cities could theoretically be directly replicated in Beijing." However, replicating the format and model parameters does not guarantee the same consumption场景 will迁移. Long Zhen pointed out there's a saying in the industry: "Don't open stores north of the Huai River." This is because peak consumption for bulk snacks is in the evening, and northern regions get dark earlier, making客流 more susceptible to seasonal fluctuations.
Beijing also presents a more complex community structure. A large number of residential areas are gated communities with fixed resident routes, and street-level commerce is not as continuous or绵延 as in cities like Shanghai or Guangzhou. The long-standing pattern of Beijing's convenience store sector focusing on commercial districts over communities further illustrates how difficult this spatial and traffic structure is for conventional chain retail to penetrate.
A source close to Haoxianglai revealed that supplementing individual stores with instant retail has been a key factor in its rapid expansion in Beijing. In 2025, as food delivery platforms intensified their focus on instant retail, Haoxianglai also began significantly betting on the home delivery场景. Wanchen Group disclosed that by the end of July 2025, approximately 5,000 Haoxianglai stores had integrated with instant retail platforms, extending their service radius from 1-2 kilometers to 3-5 kilometers. In August of that year, Haoxianglai's monthly instant retail orders on platforms like Meituan and Taobao Quick Purchase exceeded 3.3 million, with new customers via Taobao Quick Purchase accounting for over 90%. This provided a new source of incremental revenue for individual stores.
In 2025, the average monthly sales per Haoxianglai store were 382,000 yuan, with 371,000 yuan in the first half and 392,000 yuan in the second half. This figure further rose to 406,000 yuan for January-February 2026. In the Beijing market, some Haoxianglai stores have already integrated with外卖 platforms like Meituan and Taobao Quick Purchase, carrying a "brand"标识; currently, Zhao Yiming has not yet joined外卖 platforms.
Adapting the Established Model
From the industry's perspective, moving into first-tier cities does not constitute a strategic shift but rather a continuation of existing expansion momentum. Yan Zhou, Chairman of BUSYMING, once suggested that based on a principle of "one store per 10,000 people," the Chinese market could accommodate 100,000 bulk snack stores, indicating it is far from saturated. In 2025, BUSYMING added a net超过 7,500 stores for the year, representing a growth rate of approximately 52.5%. Store growth in first-tier,新一线, and second-tier cities reached 65% and 75% respectively, already outpacing growth in下沉 markets.
Higher-tier cities bring not just增量, but also amplify pressures inherent to the original model. As store counts increase, management costs rise. Intensifying competition for prime locations squeezes franchisee profit margins. Furthermore, snack consumption itself lacks support from高频, essential categories, making store客流 inherently unstable. Under a low-margin model, these issues already leave little room for error. High-cost markets like Beijing and Shanghai simply集中 place the pressures of rent,复购, and坪效 front and center, making the search for new solutions more urgent.
One industry consensus is to broaden product categories to reach a larger customer base, shifting from targeting primarily young people and students to encompassing the family消费 behind them. Currently in Beijing, "Haoxianglai Savings Supermarket" coexists with "Haoxianglai Snack Paradise," and similarly, "Zhao Yiming Snacks" exists alongside "Zhao Yiming Savings Supermarket." These supermarket-style formats introduce民生 products like grains, oils, and general merchandise, add fresh food and frozen product sections, and correspondingly increase store面积.
However, differences in the pace and path of self-iteration have already emerged among leading companies. Wanchen Group's Haoxianglai has launched two private-label product lines: "Super Value" and "Premium Selection." The former focuses on quality-price ratio, while the latter emphasizes differentiation and优选, serving the dual goals of improving gross margins and creating product tiering. In its Beijing store layouts, Haoxianglai intentionally highlights selections with better毛利 performance. Shelves near the entrance display numerous IP toy products, and the most prominent spot upon entry is reserved for自有 large单品 like juice teas.
Financially, while Wanchen Group's overall scale may not match that of BUSYMING, its profitability already leads significantly. In 2025, the gross margin for Wanchen's bulk snack business was 12.32%, and its net profit margin after adding back share-based payment expenses was 4.98%, both higher than BUSYMING's 9.8% and 4.1% respectively. In terms of per-store sales, Wanchen's average monthly sales in 2025 were 382,000 yuan, also higher than BUSYMING's average monthly revenue per store of approximately 300,000 yuan in the first half of 2025.
In contrast, BUSYMING's transformation approach is more restrained, emphasizing adherence to its role as a "channel." Although BUSYMING has also categorized its own brands into "Red Label" and "Gold Label" series, management has explicitly stated that own-brand development is "暂时非战略优先事项." The reasoning is that currently 80% of the goods in its stores do not overlap with traditional retail channels, which already constitutes sufficient differentiation. If stores were filled entirely with their own packaged products, "the琳琅满目的 sense of惊喜 would disappear."
A deeper consideration is the supply chain relationship. Bulk零食 retail is essentially a channel helping regional brands, factory brands, and白牌 products reach consumers. Pushing own brands too early or too aggressively could create competition with manufacturing partners, dampening supplier积极性. Therefore, in terms of category expansion, BUSYMING focuses more on incremental categories that naturally fit the snack场景, such as hot foods like grilled sausages and egg tarts, as well as frozen/refrigerated categories like freeze-dried durian and chestnuts, gradually exploring延伸 possibilities.
BUSYMING is also conducting independent explorations beyond its original format: "Snack Kingdom" targets immersive snack experience场景, while "Youdian Fresh" tests the现制鲜食赛道. Wanchen and BUSYMING have placed different bets. Whose path comes closer to the ultimate form of community retail may take several more years to become clear.