---
title: "Collective 'Backstabbing' of Sugar-Free Drinks? Master Kong and Nongfu Spring Can't Sit Idly By"
description: "After years of the sugar-free wave, sugary ready-to-drink teas are quietly regaining voice on social media. Data shows that on Xiaohongshu, new posts about 'iced tea' outnumber those about 'sugar-free tea' by more than double, and the category is seeing a resurgence of white sugar as brands like Genki Forest, Master Kong, and others launch reduced-sugar products. The key battle now is defining the next generation of sugary ready-to-drink tea, balancing health concerns with classic flavors."
author: "刀法行研"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2025-10-15"
categories: "Consumer & Categories"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Dyep-OJGk6fHDs2ii9veXw"
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citation: "刀法行研. “Collective 'Backstabbing' of Sugar-Free Drinks? Master Kong and Nongfu Spring Can't Sit Idly By.” New Distribution, 2025-10-15. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/collective-backstabbing-of-sugar-free-drinks-master-kong-and-nongfu-spri-fbc1f610/"
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---

# Collective 'Backstabbing' of Sugar-Free Drinks? Master Kong and Nongfu Spring Can't Sit Idly By

> After years of the sugar-free wave, sugary ready-to-drink teas are quietly regaining voice on social media. Data shows that on Xiaohongshu, new posts about 'iced tea' outnumber those about 'sugar-free tea' by more than double, and the category is seeing a resurgence of white sugar as brands like Genki Forest, Master Kong, and others launch reduced-sugar products. The key battle now is defining the next generation of sugary ready-to-drink tea, balancing health concerns with classic flavors.

**Source** | Dao Fa Research Institute
**The Return of White Sugar**
**Reshuffling the Next Generation of Sugary Ready-to-Drink Tea**
After the "sugar-free" wave of recent years, "sugary" tea drinks are quietly regaining voice on social media in today's beverage market.
According to Qiangua data, over the past 90 days on Xiaohongshu, the number of new related posts for the single topic "iced tea" has reached more than double that of "sugar-free tea," with topic exposure and engagement also far exceeding the latter.
Looking at the ingredient lists on the back of newly launched beverage bottles, white sugar, once avoided by consumers, has recently shown a "concubine's return" momentum.
Both leading brands and some emerging players that focused on sugar-free are unanimously launching a slew of new products containing sugar (or low sugar).
Iced tea has become a new star product for the "0 sugar" giant Genki Forest. After achieving monthly sales exceeding 100 million yuan last year, according to #MaShangYing data, from July 2024 to June 2025, its market share growth in sugary ready-to-drink tea reached 150%.
Master Kong, Wahaha, and a host of leading brands and new forces have recently followed suit, upgrading and innovating in formulas, sugar content, and processes, launching a series of sugary "lemon tea" new products; in the milk tea track, Otter Dondon launched a low-sugar formula Oriental Jasmine Light Milk Tea, and Uni-President Assam Milk Tea introduced low-sugar Jasmine Green Milk Tea.
Milk tea, pastries, nuts... Chinese consumers' stomachs are already full; they don't lack this drink. After the thousand-tea war in the sugar-free camp, consumers who want to drink healthily haven't completely abandoned Oriental Leaf and Suntory. So why is the sugary ready-to-drink tea track sparking a new round of melee?
**Let's first state the conclusion: this round of white sugar return hinges on who will define the mindshare of the next generation of sugary ready-to-drink tea.**
Why do we say this? Let's look at the market landscape and changes in ready-to-drink tea.
**Although sugar-free tea has seen significant growth in recent years and taken the C-position on supermarket and convenience store shelves, it has never shaken the dominant position of sugary tea.** In the nearly 100-billion-yuan ready-to-drink tea market, as of June 2025, sugary tea still holds a 65% share in offline channels.
Behind this number lies the vast lower-tier market. In third- and fourth-tier cities, towns, and rural mom-and-pop stores and kiosks that are "invisible" on the internet, Master Kong and Uni-President's Iced Black Tea, Iced Green Tea, and Nongfu Spring's Tea π are the best-selling tea drink items.
Relying on their control of lower-tier channels, the three major beverage giants have divided up about three-quarters of the sugary ready-to-drink tea market. Master Kong, in particular, has dominated the market for over 20 years with its single blockbuster product, Iced Black Tea, and has also defined consumer mindshare for this category.
Until Genki Forest, which "betrayed" sugar-free, became a catfish stirring up the market.
At the end of 2022, Genki Forest launched two iced teas based on traditional Iced Black Tea: a reduced-sugar version with 25% less sugar and a "0 sugar" version with only sugar substitutes. Based on market feedback, Genki Forest subsequently focused its marketing efforts on the reduced-sugar version, turning sugar reduction into a calculation game with different packaging and flavors.
With a product strategy of "reducing sugar without reducing taste," the "old product, new approach" iced tea quickly achieved explosive growth, becoming one of Genki Forest's four pillar products and the only "sugary" beverage at the billion-yuan scale under the brand. As of August 2025, Genki Forest's iced tea has climbed to fifth place in sugary ready-to-drink tea share, closing in on fourth-place Vita Lemon Tea.
Although it has not yet shaken the dominance of the three giants, Genki Forest's iced tea has risen in the lower-tier market, indicating that the sugary tea mindshare established by Iced Black Tea is loosening. Over the past two years, Master Kong's market share in sugary ready-to-drink tea has also been slowly declining.
So, **what kind of people buy iced tea, and for what reasons?**
Through product insights and e-commerce sales data, we can sketch a consumer profile:
Office workers and laborers aged 24-40, predominantly male, who like iced tea's "cost-effective" price, "refreshing and tasty" flavor, "similar to Iced Black Tea" taste, and the health concept of "reduced sugar."
Note: Social listening keyword cloud from Xiaohongshu and Douyin, data period 2024/10/8-2025/10/8
It must be admitted that the taste of Iced Black Tea is hard to easily replace. On social media, Iced Black Tea, dubbed "iced national liquor," is a collective memory for a generation.
But what cannot be ignored is **the health needs of sugary ready-to-drink tea consumers**. According to the "2025 China Bottled Iced Black Tea Beverage Industry White Paper" by EO Intelligence, 71.4% of consumers prioritize "sugar-free/reduced-sugar" labels when purchasing Iced Black Tea, and 82.9% prefer reduced-sugar formulas.
The success of Genki Forest's iced tea has validated this demand, and the follow-up by giants and new forces is **accelerating the sugary ready-to-drink tea market into a new competitive stage**.
**Using a More Familiar Rather Than More Rational Approach**
**to Reduce People's Concerns About Sugar**
From the emergence of Genki Forest's "0 sugar" sparkling water in 2016 to the return of white sugar today, it all illustrates one thing:
Beverage consumers don't dislike sweetness; they have complex emotions about "sugar"—from "sweetness first" in the past, through "sugar-free is justice," to now "reduced sugar upgrade."
On one hand, as people pay more attention to ingredient lists, a consensus that eating too much sugar is unhealthy is gradually forming.
On the other hand, the taste of sugary drinks, especially the "rich tea flavor, not sour or astringent" sweetness of Iced Black Tea, is indeed irresistible, and currently, sugar substitutes alone cannot fully mimic it.
The EO Intelligence white paper shows that taste and flavor are the primary consideration for consumers when buying Iced Black Tea. This is also why the 0-sugar versions of Iced (Black) Tea launched by Master Kong, Uni-President, and Genki Forest have all performed poorly in the market.
It is this complex emotion that has opened a new window for "sugar reduction" and "value upgrade" in sugary ready-to-drink tea.
From a product development perspective, the current "sugar reduction" upgrades by major brands can be roughly divided into two routes:
1. Completely abandoning sugar substitutes and using real sugar (white sugar, high-fructose corn syrup) in reduced amounts.
2. A combination of real sugar + sugar substitutes/polysaccharides, adding steviol glycosides, polydextrose, etc., on top of reduced real sugar.
The divergence in technical routes actually points to one goal: finding the best balance between "good taste" and "health."
Health is important, but classic flavors cannot be lost, especially in subcategories like milk tea where happiness outweighs health; sugar reduction requires deeper insight into consumers' underlying needs.
Compared to using sugar substitutes to control calories, milk tea lovers actually want clean and healthy ingredients, so Otter Dondon's new milk tea uses milk powder, tea powder, and sugar, controlling sugar at a "three-tenths slightly sweet" level.
In addition to consumer needs, sugar reduction upgrades are also closely related to policy changes.
The new national food safety standard released in 2025 requires that pre-packaged foods cannot use labels like "no added" or "zero added" to emphasize ingredients, and must indicate the true sugar content, meaning brands can no longer rely on word games like "0 sugar" or "sugar-free" for marketing.
In the future, the key to competition in sugary ready-to-drink tea will not only be about whether the product "has sugar" or "how much sugar is reduced," but also whether the brand truly understands the people who drink sugar, their lifestyle habits, concerns, and preferences, and what communication methods the brand uses to hit their current consumption emotions.
For brands, when "sugar" is no longer a label consumers avoid, recommending their "sugar reduction solution" can become an expression of values—**I admit to using sugar, but in a way that cares more about you**.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 刀法行研
- Published: 2025-10-15
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/collective-backstabbing-of-sugar-free-drinks-master-kong-and-nongfu-spri-fbc1f610/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Dyep-OJGk6fHDs2ii9veXw

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