Lyra Liu This year, young people with "awakened blood" have not only embraced a "light wellness" lifestyle but also made Chinese-style health drinks popular. Under the health and wellness trend, Chinese-style health drinks represented by sour plum soup and small hanging pear soup have rapidly risen, becoming consumers' new "water substitute." Image source: Xiaohongshu @阿迷儿 @粉红芭乐、@绵绵冰小鱼干 According to the "2024 China Chinese-style Health Drink Industry Development Trend Insight Report" released by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, Chinese-style health drinks are positioned with a greater emphasis on traditional wellness and relatively higher nutritional value, making them a new choice for consumers. With more players entering the Chinese-style health drink market, sales in the first five months of 2024 increased by 94.5% compared to the same period in 2023. The author observed that whether it's the sour plum soup that was sold to the top of its category by East Buy this summer, or the small hanging pear soup listed on Hema's must-buy list, these best-selling products all share a common name: Leyuan Health. What is the charm of Chinese-style health drinks? What new changes will the rise of this niche category bring to the beverage industry? From Leyuan, which has created multiple hit health drinks, what is the "hit product formula" for Chinese-style health drinks that consumers love?
Young people's life-extending anxiety
Supporting the Chinese-style health drink market In recent years, the public's health awareness has gradually increased, leading to a "renaissance" of traditional wellness methods. From traditional Chinese medicine, massage, Baduanjin, to classic formulas, young people are embracing a daily wellness lifestyle under the name "new Chinese style." In the food sector, the wellness craze among young people has not only boosted the business of traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies but also popularized creative combinations of modern elements and traditional ingredients. Ingredients that are both food and medicine, such as dark plum, licorice, and tangerine peel, have directly been incorporated into more everyday foods like milk tea, coffee, and even bread. Why have food-and-medicine ingredients become popular ingredients among young people? According to the "Z Generation Health Talk: New Chinese Style, New Life" jointly released by Xinhua Net and Xiaohongshu, there is a group of "food therapy" enthusiasts in Generation Z who prioritize health and wellness, with food supplementation being their first choice. They prefer traditional time-honored nourishing products like sour plum soup and also like cross-border wellness drinks such as wellness milk tea and traditional Chinese medicine coffee. From topic data, the popularity of Chinese-style wellness food is only increasing, with the topic #养生茶 (wellness tea) having over 750 million views, and searches for sour plum soup in traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies increasing 167 times year-on-year. Image source: "Z Generation Health Talk: New Chinese Style, New Life" The popularity of this daily wellness lifestyle also reflects young people's "life-extending anxiety." To make the wellness concept more integrated into daily life, they have begun to seek more convenient and accessible wellness methods. Therefore, food-and-medicine ingredients have increasingly appeared in food and beverages, driving the Chinese-style health drink category. In 2023, Leyuan promptly captured this trend and co-created the "simmered series" health drinks with Hema, laying out plans in the Chinese-style wellness track ahead of time. After the products were launched, they received widespread praise from consumers. Subsequently, channels such as China Resources, Yonghui, and East Buy also began cooperating with Leyuan to lay out Chinese-style health drinks. Image source: Xiaohongshu @年年我呀@小宇宙妈咪、@珍珠芋泥乳 Leyuan, which had previously created hit juices for private labels of channels like Hema and Pangdonglai, why did it set its sights on Chinese-style health drinks? Specifically, this series of products was born out of consumer insights. On the one hand, consumers pursue a healthy life and the specific "efficacy" brought by Chinese ingredients; on the other hand, consumers prefer this ready-to-drink product form. Having been deeply involved in the beverage industry for nearly 30 years, Leyuan has always adhered to the brand philosophy of "letting more Chinese people drink better juice," continuously creating better-tasting and healthier products for consumers. Therefore, Leyuan has keen market insight into health. Leyuan stated that the popularity of these traditional wellness methods indicates that consumers pay attention to internal conditioning. At different seasons and according to different body needs, they will use corresponding ingredients for food supplementation and internal conditioning. There are also various social media posts about homemade internal conditioning drinks. Additionally, some consumers visit traditional Chinese medicine clinics to get personalized "prescriptions" through pulse diagnosis. Observing these consumer behaviors, Leyuan first focused its product development on categories that consumers are more familiar with and have consumption habits for, such as sour plum soup and small hanging pear soup, and successively launched channel cooperative products and own-brand products. Image source: East Buy, Hema, Yonghui Leyuan told the author that they began preparing the health drink series in 2022. At that time, although there were many sour plum soup beverages on the market, they contained many additives and did not meet consumers' pursuit of zero additives. Therefore, they started with sour plum soup, committed to creating purer, additive-free Chinese-style health drinks. As more brands entered the Chinese-style health drink market, more ingredients, raw materials, and ancient formulas were discovered, enriching the variety of Chinese-style health drink products on the market. From reducing swelling and detoxifying to clearing heat, replenishing qi, and moistening the lungs, consumers can always find a Chinese-style health drink that meets their needs. As a newly emerging niche track, the Chinese-style health drink market is still in its infancy, with a relatively small overall market size. However, as many beverage companies begin to lay out plans, the market size of Chinese-style health drinks has begun to grow rapidly. In 2023, the market size of Chinese-style health drinks in China reached 450 million yuan, with a growth rate of over 350%, and it is expected that the compound annual growth rate will exceed 88% in the next five years. The outbreak of Chinese-style health drinks as a niche category is not only due to consumer demand but also inseparable from the overall trend of health and the support of national and local government policies for the big health industry. Guiding policies such as the "Healthy China 2030" Planning Outline and the "14th Five-Year Plan" National Health Plan provide support for the healthy development of the food industry. Driven by both consumer demand and policies, public health awareness and modern scientific concepts are also being cultivated simultaneously. As traditional Chinese medicine wellness enters more people's视野, this health awareness has gradually spread to daily food and beverages, giving rise to the outbreak of Chinese-style health drinks. Under this trend, Leyuan believes that for the niche track of Chinese-style health drinks to rise, product quality must first be ensured. But having good products alone is not enough; leveraging channels to promote the entire category will be more conducive to product user growth and breaking out of the circle. Therefore, Leyuan cooperated with channels such as Hema, Yonghui, and East Buy to create Chinese-style health drinks, shortening the link between products and consumers, bringing healthier products to consumers at lower prices, and thereby expanding the influence of Chinese-style health drinks among consumers. Image source: Leyuan Beverage From ingredients, process, to industry chain How to create Chinese-style health drinks that consumers love? Although Chinese-style health drinks are popular, it is not easy to meet consumers' requirements for taste and texture. According to research data from Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, ingredient selection, efficacy, process, and independent production are several main factors that consumers pay attention to when choosing Chinese-style health drink brands. Facing "strict" consumers, how does Leyuan create hit health drinks? Image source: Leyuan Beverage1. Create ingredient value to meet diverse wellness functional needs Nielsen data shows that consumers pay more attention to the tangible benefits that products bring to themselves. Among them, 55% of consumers prefer healthier beverages. Chinese-style health drinks are healthier than traditional sugary drinks and taste better than plain water, solving the pain point of some consumers who don't like drinking water while making drinking beverages healthier. But consumers are no longer satisfied with just health. According to Qianzhan Industry Research Institute data, more than 80% of consumers pay attention to "product efficacy" when purchasing Chinese-style health drinks, so ingredients are the primary focus for consumers. Ingredient combinations not only bring changes in taste but also bring different efficacy values. Consumers pay attention to seasonal wellness, drinking according to the season, and have different wellness needs in different seasons, such as clearing heat and relieving heat in summer, moistening the lungs and strengthening the spleen in autumn, and nourishing and dispelling cold in winter... Therefore, it is very important to create "efficacy" for wellness tea with ingredients. Image source: Qianzhan Industry Research Institute China has had the concept of "food and medicine homology" since ancient times. From the "Huangdi Neijing" to the "Compendium of Materia Medica," experts of all dynasties have conducted in-depth research on the medicinal value of food, forming a unique theoretical system and practical methods. With this cultural foundation, when creating Chinese-style health drink products, Leyuan draws inspiration from traditional Chinese medicine formulas and selects raw materials based on multiple dimensions such as efficacy, scenario, and taste, creating wellness drinks that better suit contemporary tastes. In terms of taste selection, Leyuan prioritized sour plum soup and small hanging pear soup, which consumers are more familiar with, as the first batch of products in the simmered series, and subsequently launched Guangdong home-style wellness drink sugarcane and cogongrass root water, bringing wellness drinks into consumers' daily lives. 2. Create raw material value, focus on "clean ingredient labels" In recent years, consumers have become increasingly concerned about product formulas, and keywords such as "zero additives" and "clean ingredient labels" have become the focus of consumer attention. From the overall industry trend, the "2024 China Chinese-style Health Drink Industry Development Trend Insight Report" released by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute mentions that Chinese-style health drinks and sugar-free beverages are basically sugar-free or low-sugar products, but Chinese-style health drinks are positioned with a greater emphasis on traditional wellness and relatively higher nutritional value, so Chinese-style health drinks have a high substitutability for sugar-free beverages, making them a new choice for consumers. From social media, consumers also regard this "Chinese-style little sweet water" as a healthy substitute for daily milk tea. We noticed that the health drinks created by Leyuan are all formulated according to ancient formulas, with ingredient lists containing only ancient formula ingredients, water, and rock sugar, without additives, which is also one of the reasons consumers choose them. Image source: Xiaohongshu @年年我呀 In addition to clean ingredient labels, Leyuan is also very particular about the selection of raw materials. The author learned that the ancient formula ingredients used by Leyuan all come from selected origins, such as Huangshan dark plum, Shandong hawthorn, Xinjiang licorice, Zhaoxian snow pear, Ningxia Zhongning wolfberry, Guangdong dried sugarcane, Anhui fresh cogongrass root, etc... Using higher-quality raw materials to create a more natural and pure flavor. 3. Create process value, "simmer" out emotional selling points Many consumers choose to directly buy bottled Chinese-style health drinks because traditional simmering and brewing methods are not only cumbersome but also time-consuming, making it difficult to persist. In contrast, ready-to-drink bottled health drinks have become a more convenient choice for consumers, and the rich flavors also allow consumers to choose according to their own needs. However, to turn traditional wellness tea into bottled tea, the process is very important, as it affects whether the product's taste and texture are close to freshly simmered ones. Therefore, Leyuan's simmering process is also an important factor that makes consumers pay. According to Leyuan, each product is made following ancient methods and integrating modern processes, simmered for more than 90 minutes. The large "熬" (simmer) character on the packaging not only intuitively displays the production process, making the product's production more vivid, but also easily reminds consumers of the "traditional Chinese medicine simmering" process, bringing the emotional satisfaction of "handmade," thereby enhancing product value. At the same time, compared with processes such as extraction and powder brewing, although the simmering process takes a long time, the taste is closest to the freshly cooked taste at home, and the nutritional components are better preserved. Image source: Xiaohongshu @苏州木渎天虹、@四月你还好吗、@睡不醒的陈二猫 Zheng Tongjian, Senior Vice President and Partner of Leyuan Health, mentioned that choosing to put the character "熬" on the packaging is also related to the lives and emotions of contemporary young people. They hope to use the healthy and delicious simmered series to soothe the "hard-to-endure" emotions in work and life, adding a touch of comfort to life. 4. Consolidate the value of independent production, let consumers buy with peace of mind According to research data from the "2024 China Chinese-style Health Drink Industry Development Trend Insight Report," when choosing Chinese-style health drinks, 59.6% of consumers pay more attention to whether the brand has independent production. They believe that products produced by brands with independent production capabilities have more controllable quality and are more trustworthy. Image source: Qianzhan Industry Research Institute And solid independent production capability is one of the reasons why Leyuan can be trusted by partners and consumers. Leyuan has been deeply involved in the juice beverage industry for nearly 30 years, establishing a full industry chain model from consumer research to proposal design, as well as subsequent R&D, logistics, and distribution. It can not only provide customers with full-category, full-system, full-chain service solutions in OEM business, including customization and co-creation needs, but also provide quality assurance for products in the construction of its own brands, making it easier to win consumer trust. In terms of formula R&D, Leyuan has an independent product development team that can promptly洞察 consumer needs and, based on consumers' constantly changing consumption needs, continuously carry out taste strategy innovation, product content development, and marketing operations, thereby opening up new market space and enhancing competitiveness. As consumer demand for beverages becomes increasingly diversified, the trend of emphasizing both taste, nutritional value, and health factors has become new. Therefore, quickly responding to and leading these changes, driven by innovation, is the key to opening up new markets and enhancing competitiveness. Leyuan, which has an independent product development team, is a practitioner of this concept. When assisting in the development of products for own brands, Leyuan is not just a supplier but can promptly洞察 consumer needs and forward-looking market trends, continuously carry out taste strategy innovation, product content development, and marketing operations, and create products that are more popular among consumers. Summary In the past two years, the popularity of Chinese-style health drinks has risen, but they are still in the early stages of development. From the perspective of the entire beverage industry, the category share is relatively small, the final brand landscape has not yet stabilized, and there is still much room for development. As a pioneer in the category, Zheng Tongjian, Senior Vice President and Partner of Leyuan Health, believes that the Chinese-style health drink category is an important part of Leyuan's overall big health product layout. Founded nearly 30 years ago, Leyuan has always been on a mission of "health," continuously letting more Chinese people drink better juice. It not only adds health elements to consumers' daily diets with fruit and vegetable juice products but also insists on promoting the purification of beverages. From NFC (not from concentrate) and 100% juice to the simmered series health drinks, Leyuan regards the simmered series as the next potential ace single product and is committed to promoting the category to a broader market, advancing the health and purification upgrade of fruit and vegetable juices.