Total rating 4332 Period
Author | Restaurant Boss Insider Zhai Bin
Recently, the author discovered that Beijing Heshenghui's former queuing king was a specialist in Liaoning street snacks[Dear young man]It is closing stores on a large scale. As of the end of August, all its stores in Beijing have been closed, and only one store in Shenzhen (Yifanghui Store) is currently operating.
Another netizens left a message on Dianping: "I suspect that the merchant ran away, which made the rechargeable money unavailable"; at the same time, someone on social media revealed that [Dangdaofu] owed the supplier payment.
[Dangdao Fu] was established in 2020 and has opened 12 stores in Beijing, Shenzhen and Zhengzhou. Among them, Beijing Heshenghui Store (Shouchuang Store) has a maximum daily reception of more than 1,000 people, and the queues are more than 2 hours during peak hours.
coin-alone, located at Leshan Snack Collection Store[Huayan Street], 75% of stores have been closed in the past year, and only 3 stores are still in operation; Sichuan snack collection store【Dianbians and generals】 is also accelerating the closures. Currently, there are only 3 stores left in the Beijing market. From a national perspective, the number of stores has shrunk by two-thirds compared with the 400 at its peak. Changsha snacks collection store[Black and White TV] has completely withdrawn from the Beijing market, with the number of stores nationwide sharply dropping to 91, with a store closure rate as high as 55%.
On the same side, "run away, closed the store, and contracted", local snack stores are collectively defeated. On the other hand, the scale of China's snacks and fast food categories exceeded one trillion yuan in 2024, with a growth rate of more than 7.5%, making it one of the few categories that are still growing.
Why is the snack category so divided? What problems are there in the snack collection store? Where is the future development path of snack categories?
Snack collection store is the "upgraded version of Shaxian"?
First of all, we need to understand that snack collection stores are not a "new species". Strictly speaking, Shaxian snacks, Hangzhou snacks, and Chengdu snacks are all "first generation" snack collection stores.
The snack collection store we see now is iteratively upgraded based on traditional snack shops:
First, channel upgrade. More and more traditional snack brands are starting to enter shopping malls from the street, and 80% of the stores of brands such as Ma Xiaohuo, Si Lian, Dibing Dianjiang, Rong Li Ji are opened in shopping malls.
The once unattainable Class A business district has also entered the vision of snack brands. The young man's first store chose Chaoyang Heshenghui, the largest indicator shopping mall in Beijing; Huayan Street opened its store in Beijing Guomao CBD, where every inch of land is valuable.
Secondly, the scene is upgraded. The snack collection store has changed its past image of "small, broken, and dirty" and spent a lot of money to transform the scene and upgrade the experience.
The dignified young man designed the store as a street food stall, the seats were beer baskets, and the waiter wore a big red jacket in Northeast China, traveling back to Northeast China in one second, with a full sense of atmosphere. Huayan Street has moved "Lao Leshan" into a shopping mall. Whether it is a utensil like a teapot or a bamboo basket to make soft furnishings, you can feel the retro and nostalgic Leshan temperament. Ma Xiaohuo Western Regions Market presents food from all over Xinjiang through stalls, with a strong exotic style, making you feel like you are in Xinjiang.
Lastly, the product is upgraded. Snack collection stores have given up the traditional snack shops one by one."Single product thinking""Hundred kinds of snacks, Dawei Leshan", and the slogan of the dignified young man is"Eat all over the streets and alleys of Liaoning in one bite", the slogan of the soldiers and generals is called"No need to run around, eat all the Sichuan characteristics in one stop", Ma Xiaohuo's selling point is"Eat all the Western Regions in half an hour"...
The location is from the street to the mall, the decoration is simple to luxury, the products are from single to complex, and the snack collection store has completed a gorgeous turn.
Category upgrades have brought customers a new experience. Coupled with the retaliatory consumption and catering entrepreneurship after the epidemic, snack collection stores began to grow explosively around 2021. Rong Li Ji and Xiangxia LaoBlack and white TVBlack and white TVOnce more than 200 companies, the number of companies that were close to 350. In terms of traffic, the snack collection store has become the C position of the shopping center. The young man and Huayan Street have always been at the top of the hot list of snacks, fast food and Sichuan cuisine, and are well-deserved top stars.
Snack collection store is actually a false proposition?
Since last year, the momentum of snack stores has taken a sharp turn for the worse. The reasons are roughly as follows:
First, there is a bug in positioning. More than 70% of snack brands in the country have per capita consumption below 20 yuan, but most snack stores have customer orders higher than this standard. The average customer order for Dianbing Dianjiang is 35 yuan, the dignified young man is 50 yuan, and Huayan Street has reached 70 yuan. Using a fast food or even a regular meal to eat snacks is obviously contrary to the general environment of downgrading consumption.
Second, the customer base is not clear. The young man wants to sell the vegetables to the old iron in Liaoning. So the question is, are there enough Liaoning villagers in Beijing? Can you support the business in the store? What if you want to expand your customer base? The problem is coming again, there is no problem to try it out, how to solve the repurchase? Once quality control drops, even fellow villagers will not support you.
So, is the snack restaurant">"In other places, do business for local people; or do business for external people"? Should I sell products or sell homesickness?
In the past few years, as the most well-known snack restaurant,Wen HeyouWen Heyou's situation has been given the answer: Wenheyou Guangzhou invested 200 million yuan, covering an area of 5,000 square meters, and has reached a maximum of 3,000 tables in a single day, and has now ended in a sad way; Shenzhen Wenheyou Highlights are no longer and are still struggling to support it. Beijing Peace Bureau, Wuhan Liyoucheng, Fuzhou M17 and other "literary and friends" across the country have also been mediocre, and the traffic has declined severely.
Third, the product "three sins".
No focus.
"Collecting classic snacks from hometown" sounds good, but the problem is that if everything is a hit, it means there is no hit; everything is a sign, which is equivalent to no sign. The product is mediocre, I forget it after eating it, and I have no memory.
Homogeneity.
Snacks are one of the categories with the highest penetration rate in the supply chain. Some of the celebrity products we often eat are very mature supply chain products, such as stinky tofu, sugar-oiled cakes, and big sausages in Hunan cuisine; grilled chicken racks, pot-breaded meat, cold noodles in Northeastern cuisine; hot and sour noodles in Sichuan cuisine, pot-baked potatoes, roasted potato skin, patten tofu, ice powder, brown sugar glutinous rice cakes, small crispy meat, etc.
High supply chain level, resulting in similar products, similar tastes and serious homogeneity. The tastes of food in the store are no different from those of street stalls. It is difficult for consumers to pay for such high premium and low-quality products.
Positioning swing.
If the proportion of snacks in the store is too large, the urgent needs will not be enough, and customers will consume less and less frequently in the store; if they blindly increase staple foods and improve urgent needs, it is inconsistent with the positioning of the category. What's even more serious is that in order to cater to the market and recover traffic, some brands sell whatever products are popular. For example, the "Sichuan Snack Ceiling" that claims to be "Sichuan Snack Ceiling" has actually sold the same style as Chef Fei. #121212;">"Steamed meat with peppers".
Fourth, there are big problems with the financial model.
Where do you eat snacks, you don’t choose the place. Street stalls are OK, street shops are OK, and night markets are fine. However, once you enter the shopping mall, the cost structure changes tremendously. Small stores become large stores, and rent costs rise; husband-and-wife stores become chain stores, and labor increases; single products become multiple products, and equipment and inventory rise again.
The most important thing is how to balance the relationship between traffic and cost. Snacks are typical non-first-needed categories. If you want to cover housing costs, you must open them in places with high traffic. High traffic means high rent. To balance rent, customer orders must rise. When customer orders increase, traffic will fall... The problem has formed a closed loop and there is no solution.
We all know that a good business model is short cycles, low investment, and high returns. On the contrary, snacks store is the opposite, and it is a low-frequency, low-gross profit and low repurchase business in a place with high rent and high traffic. Once the category bonus period passes, the brand will be doomed.
Fifth, cross-category competition.
In recent years, as the industry's inversion intensifies, almost all catering categories have begun to do addition, especially fast food. According to relevant statistics, in the first half of 2025, fast food brands mainly based on noodles launched a total of 242 new non-staple food products, with the proportion of snacks as high as 30%, ranking first. For fast food, snacks can match packages, increase customer unit price, enrich scenarios, and broaden customer base. So we see that in the menus of a large number of fast food brands, fried skewers, small crispy meat, etc. have become standard, and braised food has become a "universal match".
In the stock market, the market share of snacks is severely diverted. In addition to being intercepted by fast food, he was also beaten by various internet celebrity snacks, and even Haidilao went to the night market to set up snacks. What’s worse is that after the epidemic, policies were relaxed, and a large number of street snacks sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. There were too many snacks to eat, and the products were not scarce, which squeezed the living space of shopping malls and stores. The final result was that the mall could not beat the streets, and the streets could not beat the street stalls.
The slogan of Shaxian snacks is"Enter one yuan into the store, two yuan to eat full, five yuan to eat good", in contrast, the current snack collection store has no advantage in cost performance, and the price of eating a snack is more expensive than a fast food. In addition, the advantages of traditional snack shops"Buy and go, eat while walking" have completely disappeared. Under the pressure of the market, snack shops have become Fast food restaurant.
Stores have been small to large, and the model has gone from light to heavy. The market has entered a red ocean from a blue ocean. Judging from the results, this wave of "forced upgrades" of snack stores have been declared to be a failure.
Snack category, isn't it a good deal?
Let's talk about the conclusion first: the snacks will not disappear, they will only exist in different forms.
The first type is anti-supply chain model.
Snacks are typical"Small store + large chain + full supply"'s business model, especially highly supply chain categories such as spicy hot pot, fried skewers, and braised food, can reach thousands of stores in a very short time. But coins usually have two sides, "homogeneous taste and lack of fireworks", and the resistance to pre-made dishes has made consumers disenchanted with chain snack brands.
On the other hand, we found that snack brands that can finally settle down and are accepted and recognized by consumers have strong product genes and can follow regional preferences. The most important thing is to "persist in handmade".
Little BeansLittle BeansThe brand insists that 90% of the handmade ones are handmade; Hangzhou'sGrandma ChunhuaTenhua GrandmaTenhua'sTenhua'sLiuhuan Snack's selling point is "four generations of inheritance, sticking to the old taste"; Guiyang's strange Lufen position itself as intangible cultural heritage and "snack craftsman who inherits skills"; Du Yousu of Wuzhong, Ningxia promotes Wuzhong's morning tea culture through the upgrading and reconstruction of landmark food...
The braised food is "fried", the sugar water is "fried", the rice noodles are "fried", and the toppings are "fried"... The model is heavy, the pot is made full, and the sense of ritual is stronger. The "anti-supply chain" does increase labor and energy consumption, but it also establishes barriers and differentiation. Xiaodou BegoniaWalking from Leshan to Chengdu, six stores dominated the list and became a phenomenal brand;Strange LufanStrange LufanStill on the must-eat list, becoming the only snack brand on Guiyang;Du YousuStill on the must-eat list, becoming a banner of Ningxia snacks...
The second type is "snack staple food".
We found a problem. With so many snack categories in the country, why are only the snack collection stores in the northwest doing well?
The answer is that most snacks in the northwest are staple foods.
Cold skin, mixed noodles, and roujiamo... The Northwest snacks we often eat are basically carbohydrate, with a strong sense of fullness, which can satisfy both cravings and control fullness, so Northwest snacks have longer vitality. On the contrary, snacks in the southwest and south China are more at a disadvantage.
As we all know, snacks solve "greed", fast food solves "hungry", and regular meals solves "gathering".
In the current needs of consumers, we are working hard to restrain "greed", reduce the frequency of "gathering", and focus on solving "hunger".
In fact,"Snack staple food"has become a trend.
We have found that more and more brands are changing snacks into a complete meal suitable for regular meals by adding staple foods, thereby broadening consumption scenarios and improving brand survival capabilities.
For example, in Gan Food RecordGan Food RecordThe menu includes a series of staple foods, including hot and sour noodles, sweet water noodles and brown sugar rice cakes;Kuafu fried skewersA series of staple foods have been added in 2024, including hot and sour noodles, spicy hot and sour soup, cloth bag buns and Chongqing noodles;Xie Jie Fried Skewers8 staple foods including tenderloin, squid burrito, beef burrito have been added to the store.
The current market requirements for snacks are to have the attributes of snacks, meet the needs of multiple scenarios, and solve the basic needs of food and clothing. Therefore,"Snack fast food, snack staple food" has become the future trend.
The third type is "an inconspicuous big business-street stall snacks".
The night economy has spawned a large number of snacks and drinks, and the economic downturn has led a large number of people to enter catering businesses. The combination of these two has spawned a huge industry - snack training.
On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 1 million notes about "snack training" and 7.65 billion topics on Douyin.
There is a saying on the Internet that is called"It is better to sell food than to sell classes", this sentence also applies to snacks.
Now, street stall snack training has been scaled and industrialized. Some short video bloggers earn tens of millions of yuan a year through the form of "online selling courses + offline training", and more snack shop owners use self-media to record the process of opening their stores every day, and then benefit through the form of "accepting apprentices + training". The marginal cost is extremely low, and the benefits even exceed the main business.
Snacks are not necessarily a good deal, but snack training must be.
At the same time, as the economy of street stalls becomes larger and larger,"Street stall chain""Street stall chain"Gradually rising. Its model is no different from traditional franchise chains, that is, the same brand sets up stalls in different night markets, and the company will deliver products uniformly every day, and the company only provides back-end supply chain support.
For example, the four major kings of traditional street stall snacks, iron plate squid, baked gluten, baked cold noodles, and baked oysters are behind them. Compared with physical stores, street stall chains have no rent or decoration, and manual compression is reduced to the extreme, and management costs are almost zero, so street stall owners have maximized their profits.
Summary
Four years ago was definitely the highlight of the snack track:
In 2021, Kuafu fried skewers received two rounds of financing of nearly 100 million yuan; then, Xijie fried skewers received 295 million yuan in round A financing; in the same year, the hot braised brand Shengxiangting announced that it had completed nearly 100 million yuan in financing, and the air-dried spicy braised chain brand "Chrysanthemum Blossom" received 100 million yuan in investment, and Henan braised food brand Jiuduosu received hundreds of millions of round A financing...
Strong consumption and optimistic capital, snacks ushered in their own "golden age".
But in the past four years, snacks have been riding on a roller coaster. Against the background of drastic changes in the overall environment, the snack track is also iterating rapidly:
1.0——Big single product: mainly local specialty snacks, small shops, small investments, easy to copy, thousands of stores;
2.0——Internet celebrity snacks: a track that seriously tests freshness, with very fast update frequency and short life cycle;
3.0——Snack Collection Store: One-stop meeting customer needs, providing dine-in services, and upgrading products, environment and experiences across the board;
4.0——Snack fast food: delicious, satisfying cravings and feeling full, such as roasted potatoes and fries that became popular last year.
The representative of the super large single product Zhengxin chicken chops has been rumored to have closed 10,000 stores in two years; Internet celebrity snacks that have been ripe by traffic are still alive; snack collection stores are facing great defeat. Behind the ultimate inclination of the snack track is the cruel choice of the times and consumers.
So, there is no"Everything""Everything"The business is a good model only if the model is constantly adapting to environmental changes and quickly adjusting.
