At a time when the alcohol industry needs confidence, this speech on new alcoholic beverages deserves attention. On March 17, the 10th China FMCG Innovation Conference was held in Chengdu, where Tao Shiquan, Chairman of Bottle Planet Group, who has appeared on the conference stage for four consecutive years, delivered a speech titled "New Alcoholic Beverages, New World: Meijian's Strategy for Mainstream Success." Over the past four years, Meijian has shared insights such as "Creating a Second Growth Curve with New Alcoholic Beverages" and "Embracing the 'Three News' to Create Tomorrow's Stars." As the proposer and trendsetter of China's "new alcoholic beverage" segment, these speeches also record the company's strategic advancement in this field. During this year's Spring Festival, Meijian's New Year wine performed remarkably well, which the industry sees as a signal that new alcoholic beverages are entering a mainstream development cycle. Amid the current adjustment period in the alcohol industry, new alcoholic beverages show strong growth resilience. How did Meijian achieve this? What are its next steps? Compared to previous shares, this year's speech reflects deeper thinking, more profound practice, and more specific cases. A methodology full of practical insights thoroughly explained the mainstreaming strategy for new alcoholic beverages.

The Power of the Mainstream Market Accelerating the Mainstreaming of New Alcoholic Beverages In the early stages of new alcoholic beverages, products like Meijian mainly appeared in niche, non-mainstream scenarios such as young people's tipsy solo drinking, and rarely in formal dining or large-scale catering. However, in the past year, Meijian has shown a positive trend toward mainstreaming, marking a clear turning point. This shift is driven by mainstream products, mainstream users, mainstream scenarios, and mainstream channels.

First, the "breakthrough" in mainstream cities. Since 2024, thanks to breakthroughs in the Chengdu consumption scenario as a model market, Meijian achieved sales exceeding 100 million yuan in a single city, and driven by the Chengdu market, sales across Sichuan Province exceeded 200 million yuan. Beyond Chengdu, nationwide, Meijian's core cities grew by an average of 34%, with cities like Guangzhou, Guiyang, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Xiamen, and Shenyang growing at rates between 50% and 180%.

Second, growth in mainstream new channels. The speech mentioned that Meijian has become a new choice for many mainstream supply chains. For example, in the Yonghui system, Meijian has achieved high growth for two consecutive years, representing a typical example of a high-quality product in supermarket adjustments and upgrades. It has widely won the favor of large new retailers and distributors, becoming the annual hit product for new supply chains. Since January 2025, Meijian's New Year wine has achieved multiple 10,000-yuan stores in new retail channels like Hema and Yonghui, with growth of up to 300% in KKV, and multiple new retail channels have seen doubled growth.

Finally, the addition of mainstream major distributors. Meijian has established cooperation with major distributors such as Zhejiang Shangyuan, Sichuan Jiumao, Guizhou Xingyi, Fujian Tangchao, and Hangzhou Dida. These major distributors voting with real money represents recognition of the consumer value of the new alcoholic beverage category, and also means Meijian's brand visibility will further increase, entering the视野 of more drinking consumers. The market says nothing, but it says everything. Especially when traditional alcoholic beverages are slowing down overall, new alcoholic beverages have become a rare high-growth sector in the alcohol industry. The continuous addition of mainstream cities, mainstream new retail channels, and mainstream distributors, combined with Meijian's team's "organizational sinking" and "urban combat units moving upward," has given strong momentum to the mainstreaming of new alcoholic beverages.

Scenario Explosion Unblocking the Biggest "Bottleneck" for Volume Growth of New Alcoholic Beverages What exactly do those market-savvy major distributors and new retail channels see in Meijian? The answer is obvious: In recent years, Meijian has appeared more and more frequently in mainstream scenarios of alcohol consumption, and in the dinner parties where these major distributors personally participate, giving them a strong sense that "the market is undergoing huge changes." In the speech, there was a metaphor: "The old world is already formed; any category or product in old scenarios has a choice in consumers' minds. Therefore, for new categories and new brands to break through, they must create new scenarios or grow new niche scenarios within old ones."

The first is the dining scenario. The habit of drinking beer and baijiu in restaurants is well-established, with beer dominating. It is understood that over the past few years, Meijian has been penetrating this largest alcohol consumption scenario, and in fact, the product characteristics of plum wine naturally suit food pairing. Especially in scenarios with heavy flavors like hotpot, barbecue, and chuanchuan, plum wine with ice tastes sweet and sour, cutting through grease, and once consumers experience it, they often form a pleasant taste memory. However, since many Chinese restaurants do not provide ice, it is not easy to achieve Meijian with ice in many offline restaurants. To this end, Meijian has spent a great deal of effort to bring ice into restaurants, promoting "iced Meijian" extensively across the country.

The second is the banquet scenario. Today, the largest stock is no longer business banquets but casual dining and lively restaurants. Meijian has firmly grasped the mainstream scenario of "eating fragrant and spicy food with iced Meijian," which has become a driver of its strong growth. In addition, the best expression of Eastern people's emotions and social relationships is the family banquet, an Eastern scenario and emotional expression that perfectly aligns with Meijian's vision: "Eastern Meijian wine, elegant to the world." Through "Mid-Autumn Reunion Meijian Family Banquet" and "Meijian New Year Wine," Meijian is seen by the market as a family reunion wine that all ages can enjoy together. During the 2025 New Year period, Meijian's New Year wine sold well, generating many 10,000-yuan stores.

Returning to First Principles Quality Throughout the Entire Cycle of New Alcoholic Beverages At this conference, the company clearly presented its group vision: to become China's largest low-alcohol new alcoholic beverage group through fifteen years of effort. This fifteen-year period is divided into three stages: the budding stage (2020-2024), the scaling stage (2025-2029), and the premiumization stage (2030-2034). As the earliest proponent of the new alcoholic beverage concept, the company also experienced the fiercely competitive budding period of the new alcoholic beverage track. At that time, various new alcoholic beverage brands were as numerous as crucian carp crossing the river, especially on e-commerce platforms, where brand changes were so rapid that it was dizzying, a scene of intense competition. In the speech, the company joked, "We stirred up a storm ourselves, and then learned to survive difficultly in the storm." "Fortunately, we survived and smoothly entered the second stage." Looking back, 95% of new alcoholic beverage startups have disappeared. What did Meijian do right? Quality is the ultimate answer. China's low-alcohol new alcoholic beverages are in a fragmented state. To expand the entire category, the primary issue is product quality, which requires new alcoholic beverage brands to truly settle down to pursue ultimate raw materials, ultimate supply chains, ultimate process improvements, and then cultivate high-end products. In 2024, Meijian became more restrained in branding and marketing, but more aggressive in investment and spending on supply chain, raw materials, and production. Meijian pioneered the "original fruit original brewing method" core technique and upgraded its core strategic product line—the Original Fruit Original Brew series. It also built the world's largest vintage plum wine cellar and established the "Plum Wine Vintage System" and "Green Plum Wine" group standards, filling industry gaps. "First-class enterprises set standards." By setting standards, increasing production capacity and storage, and maintaining R&D capabilities and technical talent reserves at the industry's highest level, Meijian has solidified its position.

Exploring a Set of Market Growth Methods for the New Alcoholic Beverage Track In 2024, Bottle Planet Group achieved a 16% growth in performance against the trend, with low-alcohol new alcoholic beverages achieving scaled growth; the Meijian + Guolifang low-alcohol new alcoholic beverage business grew by 30%, exceeding the overall 16% growth. Due to its leading advantages in quality and scenarios, Meijian achieved rapid growth. Now, Meijian's mainstream growth marks the beginning of scaling for new alcoholic beverages. The company mentioned in the speech that in 2025, it will maintain a healthy, high-quality growth rate of 10% to 20%. This means Meijian will not demand excessively high growth, but rather emphasize growth driven by continuous improvement in internal fundamentals such as extreme product polishing, organizational building, and operational management. Reviewing Meijian's years of sharing on new alcoholic beverages, we can summarize the fundamental logic for achieving mainstream success: First, user-centric innovation across the entire industry chain and supply chain to create extreme product quality; second, based on long-termism, complete the breakthrough to mainstream, achieving mainstream occupation of product, scenario, and brand mindshare. Quality, scenario, mainstream, and scale—amid the current industry adjustment period, Meijian has used its "Four Modernizations Methodology" to unblock the new growth path for alcoholic beverages, and has also explored a complete set of market growth methods for the new alcoholic beverage track.