Click 'Read Original' for details "Summer hides all gifts in cans," American author Anna Zeide once remarked in her book Canned: A History of Food Safety in America. Peas are no longer limited to a brief spring season. Yellow peaches from Dangshan, Anhui, can now grace tables in the Northeast. In the past, most people's eating habits shifted with seasons and geography, but cans have opened up a vast world where we can enjoy fresh food and new flavors. This modern industrial product, which arose from war, then moved to shelves, onto dining tables, and eventually into culture, is also popular in China—though it was more so in the past. In the Northeast, "there's a kind of cold medicine called yellow peach canned fruit." Glass jars hung in red mesh bags from bicycle handlebars, ringing like a stretched bicycle bell. After the new century, canned food has struggled to regain its former glory. While White Rabbit candy and Weilong easily capitalize on childhood nostalgia, the canned food industry has yet to see a revival. According to statistics, Europeans consume an average of 54 kilograms of canned food per person annually, Americans 90 kilograms, but the Chinese average is only 3 kilograms. Meanwhile, China is currently the world's largest exporter of canned food, with annual exports between 2.5 and 3 million tons. Why hasn't a canned food exporter become a major consumer? The reason for this paradox is simple: Why should I eat canned when I can eat fresh? To some extent, this statement reflects pride and confidence in China's near-complete infrastructure, rapid logistics development, and widespread internet use over the past two decades. With fruits available year-round and food delivery at our doorstep, how can canned food find new value? To explore this, we interviewed Cao Binbo, founder of the new consumer brand Weightlessness Project, to discuss the canned food track from an entrepreneur's perspective. 1 Functional Needs Drive Innovation in the Canned Food Category Scientifically, after vacuum sealing and strict sterilization, most canned foods do not require preservatives. In terms of freshness, canning is designed to preserve food; meat and fish spoil quickly if not processed in time, and vegetables and fruits lose nutrients if not processed promptly after harvest. In a sense, a canned product with a 12-month shelf life might be fresher than the produce sitting in your fridge for three days. So why is canned food perceived as unhealthy in the public mind? This perception stems from oily broths and overly sweet fruit syrups. Traditional canned goods like dace in black bean sauce, which are heavy in oil and salt, and high-calorie fruit syrups do conflict with consumers' current pursuit of health. Consumers' functional needs for health will drive quality upgrades in canned food. According to a report by COFCO Nutrition and Health Research Institute, 80% of respondents believe healthy eating can improve quality of life, and 70% regularly consume foods that boost immunity. In the past, health was a matter of responsibility—if you were sick, you saw a doctor, passively addressing problems. Now, there's a health sovereignty mindset: consumers are more mature, choosing products based on health standards. Their health awareness is quietly shifting. From having more to deserving better, from functional satisfaction to emotional drive, from material price to psychological value. These behavioral changes are driven not only by individual awakening but also, beyond internal factors, by the pandemic—an external driver that has made us in the post-pandemic era keenly feel the unbearable weight of life. "Our idea is to enter from the angle of light and healthy eating to leverage the entire young consumer market," Cao Binbo was inspired by two points. First, demand. According to his research, comparing Taobao Double 11 and 618 data from 2020 and 2021, canned food sales have grown several-fold, with the largest consumer group being young women born between 1990 and 1997. Surprisingly, these purchases are not mainly for stockpiling. For example, most female consumers buy tuna cans to pair with vegetables like tomatoes and broccoli for weight-loss meals. Second, industry gap. "The youngest factory director I met was born in 1967, so he finds it hard to understand new consumption and the idea of innovating canned food. They basically focus on OEM work," Cao said, after surveying 41 canned food factories. With huge consumer demand meeting an industry gap, healthy canned food becomes an unexplored middle ground. 2 Starting from User Needs From a small-scale launch on e-commerce platforms in mid-to-late May to nearly 1,000 orders per day in early June, online GMV reached about 400,000 yuan. "We didn't use paid traffic or data maintenance; it's purely organic sales," Cao said. Strong product strength comes from Weightlessness Project's technical barriers. In supply chain, Weightlessness Project's own factory covers 60 acres, has 6 production lines, and a daily capacity of 25,000 cans. Technically, Dr. Pan Weichun, a former professor at MIT's Food Science Department and now a professor at Zhejiang Gongshang University's School of Food and Biotechnology, leads his team in cooperation with Weightlessness Project, empowering products with technology. "We made nearly 100 samples of the beef can, then sent out nearly 4,000 samples to fitness and weight-loss KOLs and KOCs for testing," said Cao. The own factory gives Weightlessness Project the confidence to do large-scale DTC. Cao said: "If we used OEM, from product feedback to final shaping would take at least three months to six months, but with my own factory, we can complete product iteration and improvement within a week." Based on early user feedback, Weightlessness Project's products have changed significantly from the initial version. "Users discover usage scenarios that manufacturers or brands never thought of. For example, on Xiaohongshu, we found many users like to use our products as sandwich fillings or toppings," which the team hadn't anticipated—a pleasant surprise from consumers. Changes are reflected in two aspects. First, the formula: from the initial pure beef can to adding nutritional ingredients like probiotics. Second, the contents: there are few pure vegetable cans on the market because of process constraints—cans need to be sterilized at 120°C for 45 minutes, which turns most vegetables into mush. But with Professor Pan's technical support, the carrots, lettuce, bamboo shoots, and chickpeas in Weightlessness Project's cans maintain their shape and texture. This is also the difference between Weightlessness Project and other low-fat meat cans on the market. Rich contents mean consumers don't need to buy extra vegetables to pair. For fitness enthusiasts, a major pain point in preparing fitness meals is low ingredient utilization—fresh produce becomes stale after one use. If they order light meals via delivery, gym sessions usually end around 9:30 to 10 PM, when light meal shops have stopped delivering. Centered on user needs, consumers like using cans as toppings, so make the contents richer, and develop 15-20 SKUs over a year to offer a variety of flavors. This is the current 1.0 product form that Weightlessness Project described to us. 3 Thinking in Terms of Scenarios How should future 2.0 and 3.0 products be developed? Cao's answer is scenarios. Scenarios refer to the environment based on specific time, space, behavior, and psychology. They are a new dimension for understanding user needs and a new component of products. Weightlessness Project will target any scenario where cooking is inconvenient and cans are suitable, such as partnering with camping clubs to offer customized camping packages. Cans can be heated directly on alcohol stoves, making fishing, picnicking, and camping ideal scenarios. Starting from needs and thinking along scenarios, Cao's ultimate goal is to build consumer awareness through light canned food. He wants to associate healthy, scientifically formulated cans with the Weightlessness Project brand. "I think the biggest barrier in the food industry is the brand, so my judgment is to quickly build a brand barrier to steer the project in a positive direction." In his vision, future 3.0 products could be customizable. Currently, consumers use Weightlessness Project products as toppings. But as SKUs expand to include brown rice, whole wheat bread, and even afternoon snack items, "these products may not necessarily come in cans, but we will make them," Cao said. From a weight-loss selling point, meal replacement shakes, powders, and protein bars have more obvious fat-reducing attributes. But health doesn't mean asceticism. In Cao's view, health is simple; there's no need to torture yourself. Starting from first principles, don't go against human nature. After eating too much protein powder, bars, and shakes, what comes up in burps isn't just an indescribable taste but also a belly full of "resentment"—a silent protest from a "Chinese stomach." Such categories are doomed not to scale because being unpalatable goes against human nature. Consumers are busy, but they still have taste buds. Healthy but unpalatable food is inhumane. Why do meal replacement products have low repurchase rates? In Cao's view, the health concept is fine, "but the key is not to do things against human nature; things against human nature rarely see repurchases. " Currently, more new brands are choosing to return to tradition, going deep into offline channels and shoring up supply chains. In basic areas like channels, R&D, and production, Weightlessness Project's early 0-to-1 choices are a microcosm. With its own factory, improving supply chain and product R&D capabilities; sampling over 100 times, sending out 4,000+ trial cans, and improving based on feedback; planning product iteration routes with scenario-based thinking; partnering with multiple fitness chains offline and launching online fitness check-in activities to bring users into the brand's private domain—these series of actions by Weightlessness Project are polishing on a healthy foundation, becoming clearer with each refinement. In recent years, the hot new consumption track has shifted from capital-driven expansion to fundamentals. The past consensus was that with new media, new playstyles, and increasingly complete supply chains, phenomenal brands could emerge in vertical fields. But as competitors emerge endlessly, traffic becomes expensive, and methodologies become common, new consumer brands have to "make up lessons," studying distribution systems, value chain elements, terminals... Although online sales share continues to grow, offline channels like hypermarkets, supermarkets, and mom-and-pop stores, with their incomparable breadth, penetration, and accessibility, collectively form the foundation of retail. This is a field for long-termists. Just to do well in one regional market takes at least three years, often five or more. Although products are FMCG, market education and promotion require longer cultivation. Meanwhile, new ideas and tactics emerge continuously; new consumption has many lessons to learn. From July 20 to 22, the 2022 (7th) China FMCG Channel Innovation Conference will kick off in Chengdu, themed "Seize Opportunities, Stabilize the Market." It will invite the most influential entrepreneurs and executives in China's FMCG industry, along with thousands of distributor bosses and marketing experts, to discuss new ideas, models, tactics, and opportunities under industry challenges. For the new consumption sector, on July 22, at the conference's [New Consumption and Offline Breakthrough] forum, we've invited Sun Zhiguo, Vice President of Chali Group; Shu Yi, founder of Rangcha; Cheng Xiao, Head of New Retail at Qianweiyangchu and General Manager of Qianwei Youxuan, among other new consumer brand executives, to share insights at the conference. Interested friends, don't miss it!