"Don't come, there are too many people," a tourist visiting Changsha posted a short video on Douyin, saying that during the May Day holiday, the queue outside "Super Snack Busy" (hereinafter referred to as "Super Busy") stretched for a kilometer. Image source / Douyin user "Fatty Can't Eat" At the beginning of this year, the snack chain brand "Snack Busy" opened a "Super Busy" store in Changsha, specializing in oversized snacks. Because business was booming, in March, Snack Busy opened another store called "Snack Huge" not far from this one, also selling large-packaged snacks. For a time, young people in Changsha were walking in groups carrying large snacks on the streets, and some netizens joked that Changsha's snacks had already "leveled up" to the next level. Before these two stores opened, most people had two impressions of Snack Busy: first, "snack discounts," with prices cheaper than supermarkets and high repurchase rates; second, "rapid expansion," having achieved nearly 10,000 stores in less than seven years through a franchise model, with strong brand appeal among franchisees. Now, the self-operated "big snack stores" have added a label of "emotional value." Young people are willing to spend time queuing up to check in, not just to save money. However, the "big snack stores" differ from the previous "standard stores" in area, design, and strategy. Will these two business models conflict? Does this represent a strategic shift or self-denial by Snack Busy? What other moves does Snack Busy have up its sleeve? With these questions, we talked to industry insiders to try to answer what kind of company Snack Busy really is. Big Snack Stores Capturing the Emotional Business of Young People In recent years, Snack Busy, which has been aggressively expanding across the national market, has played an unexpected "card." At the end of January this year, unlike its standard stores of 120-150 square meters, Snack Busy opened a large store called "Super Snack Busy" on a main road in Changsha's urban area. This store has two floors, covering an area of over 1,300 square meters, with a sign exceeding 170 square meters, becoming the brand's "three-dimensional billboard" and attracting young people to queue up. What sparked billions of views on social platforms were the XXXL-sized snacks sold in the store—Lay's potato chips as tall as a person, 1-meter-long Double Boy spicy strips, 1.5-meter-long Wanglaoji... In addition, the store features giant receipts, snack brand IP sculptures, and other photo-worthy decorations, creating a one-stop "browse, play, buy" consumption experience. Combined with the peak tourism season, brand momentum, and Changsha's local consumption environment, the "big snack store" has been popular from the Qingming holiday all the way to May Day. From products to storefront to signage, all designs of "Super Busy" hit the "emotional" chord of young people. According to Huanhuan, who lives in Changsha, big snacks have become a social currency among students in Changsha. "People aren't buying snacks; they're buying fun." At the end of March this year, Snack Busy quickly opened a "Snack Huge" store on Jiefang West Road in Changsha's Wuyi business district. Unlike "Super Busy," "Snack Huge" only sells extra-large packaged snacks. With the arrival of the May Day holiday, the customer base attracted by big snacks expanded from local Changsha residents to young tourists nationwide. Aoao traveled to Changsha during May Day this year, and he and his girlfriend queued for over an hour before entering the "Snack Huge" store. He observed that many young tourists like them were shopping, browsing, and taking photos to post on social media. Queue situation at the Snack Huge store When communicating with several industry insiders, they all mentioned the term "emotional value." This term is already familiar to young people who love browsing social platforms. Every once in a while, there's a consumption trend related to the "emotional economy," such as special forces tourism, dopamine dressing, City Walk, crazy literature, and a sense of relaxation. If we trace its roots, this is not a new term, nor did it suddenly become popular. It originally comes from the economic concept of "customer perceived value," used to measure the emotional benefits and costs in consumer spending. In the current consumption environment, "emotional value" has more room to play. Many companies have benefited from hitting the "emotional value" trend, such as Pop Mart's blind boxes and Luckin Coffee's sauce-flavored latte. According to a report by Guotai Junan Securities, China has gradually shifted from a production-oriented society to a consumption-oriented society, where the "emotional value," "emotional connection," and "self-identity" of consumption are more important. Similarly, the "2023 Youth Consumption Survey" shows that nearly half of young people are willing to spend on emotional value, shifting from simple "purchasing and using" to "active participation and immersive experience." In this economic cycle, almost all consumer brands are competing on the dimensions of "cost-effectiveness" and "practicality," leaving "emotional value" as the remaining area to leverage. This also explains why, with so many low-priced, high-volume snack options available, it's the big snacks that have become popular. While satisfying young people's needs for "taste satisfaction" and "high cost-effectiveness," big snacks use a complete system of large packaging, large stores, and large decorations, along with bright and vibrant colors, to meet young people's emotional needs. Some users feel that entering a "big snack store" is like stepping into Hayao Miyazaki's "The Secret World of Arrietty," where everything is huge, shiny, and abundant, bringing joy and satisfaction. Big snack stores also cater to the social need of young people to take photos and check in. Many users say that posting photos of big snacks on WeChat Moments, Douyin, or Xiaohongshu showcases their personal style, and "everyone asks where they bought them." "The snack track has inherent advantages in tapping into the emotional economy, and the big snack format amplifies those advantages," explains Song Yu, a senior practitioner in the retail industry. The sweet, oily, and spicy flavors of snacks inherently satisfy sticky consumption and attract repurchases; the visual appeal and new experiences provided by big snacks meet users' social consumption needs, becoming a new form of social currency. As offline consumption formats are innovating fiercely, the popularity of big snacks can be seen as a response that has drawn attention. Data also proves this: from May 1 to May 5, the total revenue of "Super Snack Busy" and "Snack Huge" exceeded 7.15 million yuan, with "Super Busy" achieving a single-day revenue of over 910,000 yuan. Snack Busy Why Open Big Snack Stores? During the process of Snack Busy's big snacks going viral, more and more industry insiders are curious: in the midst of its rapid expansion toward 10,000 stores, why did Snack Busy suddenly open self-operated stores? Why open two big snack stores that differ from the national standard store format? Aren't these contradictory? In fact, from Snack Busy's current layout, on one hand, it hasn't slowed down its expansion pace and is still opening standard stores as quickly as possible. According to Snack Busy's official website, it now has over 5,000 stores nationwide. On the other hand, the big snack stores have achieved some obvious results. "Users, Snack Busy, and brand owners can all benefit from the big snack model," explains Na Mingyuan, co-founder of Dolphin Society. Users love to buy and browse because it's fun; posting photos of big snacks online is like a short video creative material that can gain traffic. Snack Busy can enhance brand influence, further expand franchise scale, and scale can affect sales and bargaining power, as well as help filter out new users with bulk purchase needs. Brand owners can sell multiple items at once, increasing sales and average order value. In other words, standard stores run fast, and innovative large stores can go viral. These two formats are not contradictory but are assigned their own positions—the former is the foundation, and the latter is brand innovation. On a deeper level, the underlying logic of Snack Busy's standard stores and innovative large stores is the same—both are based on the team's accurate insight into market and consumer needs, and rely on the brand's innovative genes and supply chain management fundamentals for rapid implementation. This logic also applies to the entire snack industry. Through the repeated cycle of "insight-implementation," brands can maintain a constant drive for innovation and ultimately achieve long-term success. Insight into user needs tests the team's understanding of the industry and grasp of the consumption environment. This is not the first time Snack Busy has made such judgments. After the pandemic, consumer preferences have shifted back to offline channels. The snack discount format represented by Snack Busy, entering through a lightweight offline franchise model, better meets consumers' convenience needs for buying snacks compared to online channels like e-commerce, live streaming, and community group buying, with advantages of being fun to browse, good prices, and immediate availability. During the standardized operation of stores, Snack Busy continuously innovates its offline retail stores, creating community stores that are closer to community scenarios. In January 2023, Snack Busy opened its first "Community Park" themed concept store on Jiefang West Road in Changsha, incorporating representative elements of community parks such as fitness equipment, stone benches, mahjong, and newsstands, which also sparked a wave of check-ins. The big snack stores provide consumers with a highly impactful shopping experience, marking another model innovation by Snack Busy after accurately capturing user emotions. Beyond insight, whether it can be implemented tests execution capability and supply chain resources. "Judging from the brand owners' response speed and continuous capacity expansion, the rapid opening of Snack Busy's two large stores and the collaboration with brands of different sizes to create big snacks are thanks to previously accumulated supply chain resources," says Na Mingyuan. Some users reported that the big spicy strips were out of stock the day after they launched. According to Red Net, Wang Feixiong, sales director of Double Boy spicy strips, said that Double Boy added a semi-automatic large spicy strip production line to ensure capacity. After "Super Busy" became a hit, many companies in the snack industry also launched similar models. In early April this year, Zhao Yiming, which merged with Snack Busy, also introduced large-packaged snacks including Qiaqia melon seeds and Youlemei milk tea in one of its new stores. In the same month, the "Snack Youming MAX" store opened in Chengdu, selling large-packaged snacks, many of which were local snack brands such as Xiaolaoban, Jule, and Tianle. Earlier, Sam's Club also launched large-packaged snack products. The first batch of brands willing to customize big snacks with Snack Busy included Lay's, White Rabbit, and Master Kong. These brands are more willing to use this new snack channel to re-popularize single products and optimize production capacity. Song Yu predicts that as the entire industry begins to adopt the big snack model, brands with richer SKUs and small and medium-sized high-quality manufacturers will also participate. Different eras, different groups, and specific needs may change, but universal value needs never go out of style. This requires companies to focus on both insight and implementation to adapt to changes with constancy. Uniqlo was born during Japan's "lost two decades" and became popular by following new consumption trends and offering high cost-effectiveness, while refined supply chain management and strong channel capabilities were their winning weapons to survive cycles and become a clothing retail giant. Image source / Unsplash Don Quijote was founded in 1989, just before the burst of Japan's economic bubble. It is a discount store that started with clearance and leftover products, selling various items at discounted prices. Don Quijote also rose by seizing the needs of Japanese consumers seeking low-price happiness and psychological comfort during economic downturns, but its transformation of the supply chain and management of store operations have now become a benchmark in the retail industry. In China's leisure snack industry, similar opportunities exist. Song Yu points out that the prerequisite for a brand's long-term success is to clearly understand what new value it creates for users and the industry, and whether its own capacity to support it has been polished, which determines whether it can replicate its success in the future. 10,000 Stores + Innovation The Next High Ground in the Industry Snack brands put innovation at the forefront of development, behind which is the grasp of the fast-iterating rhythm of the leisure snack industry. The snack industry has developed in China for nearly 35 years, and channels have changed three times, from large domestic and foreign supermarkets to e-commerce and live streaming channels, and now back to offline, with the bulk snack channel becoming popular. Brands' rise is highly dependent on channels. At each stage, brands that seize channel dividends first occupy most of the market share. From Daliyuan, Want Want, and Qiaqia in the supermarket era, to Laiyifen and Baicaowei in the brand specialty store period, to Three Squirrels and Bestore in the e-commerce era. But no brand or channel dares to claim it has captured the entire market, because looking at the national market, there are countless regional small chain brands, and the landscape is fragmented. In FMCG, leisure snacks have always been an unavoidable category. According to iiMedia Research data, in 2022, China's snack market size reached 1.2 trillion yuan, and it will maintain stable growth in the coming years. In this trillion-yuan market, Snack Busy was established in 2017 and then began to leverage capital to start from Hunan and gradually expand into blank markets nationwide. Compared to heavier snack brand owners, Snack Busy initially entered the leisure snack market as a lightweight channel-based retailer, not involved in production but only selecting quality products, standing between consumers and upstream suppliers, quickly adapting to market demand changes and expanding scale. By 2023, the north-south pattern of the bulk snack industry had initially formed. The northern faction is mainly Wanchen Group, with the brand "Haoxianglai"; the southern faction is mainly Snack Busy Group. In April 2024, Haoxianglai had over 5,200 stores nationwide, and Snack Busy Group had over 9,000 stores, with both brands simultaneously shouting the slogan of 10,000 stores. But Snack Busy doesn't just want to be a channel. Judging from its various moves this year, it also wants to be a brand, such as opening big snack stores and developing private-label snacks. "Just like Laiyifen and Baicaowei wanted to do brand specialty stores, Snack Busy's stores are also its advantage," Song Yu analyzes. Through stores, it creates a window for close communication with consumers, better sensing changes in consumer needs. At the same time, the upcoming scale of 10,000 stores, with denser coverage and closer proximity to communities, lays the groundwork for the next step of building a brand. This time, Snack Busy has used a more eye-catching way to build its brand, and some players have started to follow. Some industry analysts suggest that this may mean that competition among such snack chain brands needs to move to the next stage—from previous price wars, product development, and store expansion to competing in differentiated experiences, supply chain resource integration, and brand innovation this year. The industry's curiosity about this emerging company has also turned into: What kind of brand does Snack Busy want to build? After the big snack store model, how will it develop in the next stage? Image source / Pexels According to industry insiders, Snack Busy may propose more innovative ideas in business models in the future, such as creating a "Snack Busy X" series of stores and innovations in a series of snack categories. Snack Busy's scale is still expanding. In a fiercely competitive track, running toward 10,000 stores while doing self-operated innovative business tests its internal organizational strength even more. Song Yu says that on one hand, Snack Busy needs to continue strong operational control over its franchise system, with sustained investment in warehousing, logistics, and information technology; on the other hand, Snack Busy needs to penetrate private labels, continue innovating, and maintain its ability to insight into the market and meet changing consumer needs. "These measures can all raise the moat." "Snack Busy currently faces more intense competition than its rivals," points out a retail industry analyst. Channel players in the snack track all started from regional markets, and this year's focus is on developing and competing for the northern market. On this basis, Snack Busy also has to face competition from brand players. The big snack store model is just the beginning of this competition. Innovation is both a source of pressure for snack companies' development and an antidote to fear of cycle changes. Next time, can Snack Busy succeed with even more innovative consumption models? Answering this question will take time, but it has already shown its ambition to "not just be a snack discount store." ****Recommended Reading