---
title: "Closing Nearly 800 Stores in a Year! After Coconut Water, Zhou Hei Ya Ventures into Seasoning Business"
description: "Recently, braised food giant Zhou Hei Ya announced its entry into the compound seasoning market. The company's 2024 financial report shows a 10.7% decline in total revenue and a 15% drop in net profit, with store numbers shrinking for the first time since listing. Partnering with Sichuan Shentang Industry Group, Zhou Hei Ya aims to leverage its braising expertise and Shentang's seasoning technology to create a new growth engine."
author: "百万食饮人都在看"
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published: "2025-04-19"
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# Closing Nearly 800 Stores in a Year! After Coconut Water, Zhou Hei Ya Ventures into Seasoning Business

> Recently, braised food giant Zhou Hei Ya announced its entry into the compound seasoning market. The company's 2024 financial report shows a 10.7% decline in total revenue and a 15% drop in net profit, with store numbers shrinking for the first time since listing. Partnering with Sichuan Shentang Industry Group, Zhou Hei Ya aims to leverage its braising expertise and Shentang's seasoning technology to create a new growth engine.

**Source** | All Food Online
Recently, the news that braised food giant Zhou Hei Ya has entered the compound seasoning market caught our attention.
Is the giant's duck neck no longer selling well? Can a cross-industry move into compound seasonings work?
**Glory Fading, Growth Stalling**
We reviewed Zhou Hei Ya's recently released 2024 financial report. According to the report, Zhou Hei Ya's total revenue in 2024 decreased from RMB 2.744 billion in 2023 to RMB 2.451 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 10.7%. Net profit in 2024 decreased from RMB 116 million in 2023 to RMB 98 million, a year-on-year decrease of 15%.
Zhou Hei Ya attributed the performance decline mainly to insufficient effective demand in the macro economy, putting overall pressure on leisure braised food consumption. At the same time, consumer preferences shifted toward value-for-money, and the reverse consumption trend weakened the appeal of mid-to-high-priced braised foods. Facing consumption downgrading, Zhou Hei Ya also launched a price reduction strategy. According to the financial report, Zhou Hei Ya's average order value dropped from RMB 56.9 in 2023 to RMB 54.39, a decrease of about 4.4%. In 2018, the average order value was still RMB 63.66, showing that past glory is gone.
In addition to price cuts, Zhou Hei Ya also actively contracted its footprint, adjusting and optimizing its offline store operating strategy. As of December 31, 2024, Zhou Hei Ya had a total of 3,031 offline stores, a net decrease of 785 stores compared to 3,816 at the end of 2023. Among them, 129 self-operated stores were closed, and 656 franchised stores were closed. From 2020 to 2023, Zhou Hei Ya's annual net store increases were 454, 1,026, 648, and 387, respectively. This is also the first time since Zhou Hei Ya's listing that store numbers have seen negative growth. In terms of actions, Zhou Hei Ya exited low-efficiency areas offline, focusing on retaining stores in core business districts and transportation hubs in high-tier cities. Closing long-term loss-making stores improves long-term profitability but also incurs one-time closure costs, leading to a contraction of the terminal sales network in the short term.
Zhou Hei Ya's current situation is not optimistic, and it urgently needs to find new growth points.
**Is the Partner Promising?**
Recently, the "Zhou Hei Ya Investor Relations" official account posted that Zhou Hei Ya International Holdings and Sichuan Shentang Industry Group officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Wuhan, announcing the establishment of a joint venture, "Sichuan Zhou Hei Ya Food Technology Co., Ltd.," to jointly develop Zhou Hei Ya's "Gaga Xiang" series of compound seasonings and convenient ready-to-eat products.
What is Shentang, the partner of Zhou Hei Ya?
According to its official website, Shentang Industry was founded in 2002 and is a food company integrating R&D, production, and sales of compound seasonings, prepared dishes, and leisure foods. The company has three major production bases (Meishan, Wenjiang, and Dayi) and has established 16 sales branches nationwide. It owns many quality brands such as Jiuyanqiao, Shaxuan Chicken Essence, and Dashi Weimofang, with over 8,000 restaurant flavor formulas and more than 20 national intellectual property patents. Its products reach 283 cities and are exported to 26 countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Serbia.
The company also provides product R&D, production, and sales services to 6,863 restaurant brands, over 160 factories, and 288,293 stores, including leading catering chains such as Haidilao, Micun Banzao, and Kuafu Fried Skewers.
Shentang has deep experience in compound seasonings and is strong and experienced. The joint venture will leverage Zhou Hei Ya's mature braising techniques and Shentang Group's technical accumulation in the compound seasoning field to create Zhou Hei Ya's "Gaga Xiang" series of compound seasonings. This move aims to open up both "ready-to-eat" and "cooking" scenarios through a dual-engine model of "braised food + compound seasoning." In the future, consumers will be able to purchase fresh-locked braised products in offline stores or on e-commerce platforms, and also use compound seasoning products to recreate Zhou Hei Ya's signature flavors at home, or even develop personalized dishes. This initiative aims to enhance user stickiness and open up potential markets.
**A Serial Cross-Industry Player**
Moving from braised products to compound seasonings may seem like a big leap, but this is not Zhou Hei Ya's first cross-industry venture.
Previously, Zhou Hei Ya collaborated with Yanjin Shop to launch a "31° Fresh" tiger-skin cod tofu. It is understood that this product uses authentic Zhou Hei Ya-flavored marinade, with a sweet, spicy, and numbing taste. The brand hopes to create a product experience comparable to freshly braised food, with a lingering aftertaste.
In the leisure candy field, Zhou Hei Ya also partnered with Mars to launch sweet and spicy Skittles. The packaging design combines Zhou Hei Ya's classic black and gold elements with Skittles' colorful rainbow. According to the brand, the product has a crispy spicy shell and a soft core, with a colorful fruity sweet and spicy overlay that creates a surprising chewing experience.
In January of this year, Zhou Hei Ya and Thailand's IMCOCO Group jointly launched a natural coconut water brand, "Yaya Ye," and introduced fresh-extracted pink coconut water. The brand claims that the new product uses premium fragrant coconuts from Danen Saduak in Thailand's core production area, and uses low-temperature fresh pressing technology to retain the natural nutrition and taste of coconut water, featuring 0 fat, 0 coloring, 0 flavoring, and 0 preservatives. According to Zhou Hei Ya's vision, consumers can pick up two bottles of coconut water while buying braised food, to relieve spiciness and greasiness when eating.
It seems that cross-industry genes have long been rooted in Zhou Hei Ya.
**Is the Road to Compound Seasonings Smooth?**
Zhou Hei Ya's entry into the compound seasoning field has a certain synergy with its main braised food business.
According to a Frost & Sullivan research report, China's compound seasoning market has maintained double-digit growth over the past five years, and is expected to maintain an annual growth rate of 13.5% in the next five years. According to iiMedia Research data, in 2024, the market size of China's compound seasonings reached RMB 687.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16%, and is expected to reach RMB 336.7 billion by 2027.
According to data from the Hongcan Industry Research Institute, the market size of China's braised food category increased from RMB 233 billion in 2018 to RMB 318 billion in 2023, with a compound growth rate of about 6.42%. The braised food industry has slowed down and entered a mature stage. Finding new growth points and laying out in the high-speed compound seasoning and ready-to-eat track may not be a bad idea.
Currently, China's compound seasoning market shows a competitive landscape of overall fragmentation with rising leaders. Tianwei Food (Haorenjia, Dahongpao brands) and Yihai International (a Haidilao affiliate) form a duopoly, with 2024 revenues of RMB 3.476 billion and RMB 6.54 billion respectively, dominating the Chinese-style compound seasoning and hot pot base markets. The CR3 (market share of the top three companies) in the compound seasoning industry is only 32%, far lower than traditional seasoning tracks such as MSG (CR3≈91%) and oyster sauce (CR3≈97%), making it a typical "small product, big market."
The Sichuan-Chongqing duo, Tianwei Food and Yihai International, focus on hot pot bases and Chinese dish seasonings (such as Mapo Tofu and pickled fish), binding to catering chains and home scenarios. Traditional giants like Haitian Flavoring and Lee Kum Kee extend from their soy sauce main business to compound seasonings, leveraging channel and capacity advantages. Regional brands such as Hong 99 and Qianhe Flavoring deeply cultivate regional markets (such as Sichuan-Chongqing hot pot bases), breaking through with cost-effectiveness and regional characteristics.
Based on the image attached to the post from "Zhou Hei Ya Investor Relations," crayfish seasoning may be one of the new compound seasoning products.
In 2017, Zhou Hei Ya invested RMB 1 billion to create the "Ju Yi Xia" project, building a Zhou Hei Ya braised crayfish production base and seasoning production line. However, the project did not seem to go smoothly, with no further developments three months after launch. In 2022, it launched the big single product "crayfish balls," which the financial report mentioned had sales exceeding RMB 230 million.
Whether Zhou Hei Ya can succeed in cross-industry compound seasonings will depend on extending its brand image and building consumer trust. Although the compound seasoning industry has not yet become a red ocean, competition is still fierce. Zhou Hei Ya needs to establish differentiated advantages in product innovation and cost-effectiveness to secure its own place.


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