---
title: "Fruit Stores: A New Frontier for Snack Sales"
description: "Fruit stores are emerging as a new sales channel for snacks, beverages, and ice cream, attracting brand attention. One fruit store owner reported that raw chocolate ice cream was his best-selling product last month, while another noted that adding beverages and water increased foot traffic and fruit purchase frequency. Snacks have entered fruit stores in three stages: bulk roasted goods, pre-packaged nuts, and full-category snacks."
author: "全食在线"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2023-08-15"
language: "en"
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---

# Fruit Stores: A New Frontier for Snack Sales

> Fruit stores are emerging as a new sales channel for snacks, beverages, and ice cream, attracting brand attention. One fruit store owner reported that raw chocolate ice cream was his best-selling product last month, while another noted that adding beverages and water increased foot traffic and fruit purchase frequency. Snacks have entered fruit stores in three stages: bulk roasted goods, pre-packaged nuts, and full-category snacks.

Fruit stores are becoming a new sales channel for categories such as snacks, beverages, and ice cream, and are gaining attention from brands.
Recently, a fruit store owner said that the best-selling product in his store over the past month was raw chocolate ice cream, while another fruit store owner told Whole Foods Online that after adding beverages and water, foot traffic increased significantly, which also boosted the number of fruit purchases per customer.
At the same time, snacks have become a hot commodity in fruit stores. In fact, snacks entering fruit stores has gone through three stages.
**The first stage was bulk roasted goods**, such as sunflower seeds, peanuts, and sugar-roasted chestnuts, which served as supplementary products during the off-season and as complements to the fruit category.
**The second stage was pre-packaged nut products**, such as branded items from Three Squirrels and Qiaqia. These products could be given as gifts along with fruit or consumed personally.
**The third stage is full-category snacks**. Because of the weight of fruit, most fruit in stores is displayed close to the ground, leaving the upper half of the space underutilized. Lightweight snacks are the most suitable for this space. Additionally, since some fruits require low-temperature storage, purchasing refrigerated cabinets or even building cold storage is standard for branded chain fruit stores, so low-temperature foods fit in perfectly.
In fact, as China's largest fruit chain brand, Pagoda, expanded its categories to include snacks, fresh produce, frozen foods, and even private-label products in its stores years ago.
So, do fruit stores actually have an advantage in selling non-fruit products?
Despite the triple siege of hypermarkets, morning markets, and wholesale markets, and in today's environment of numerous stores, high homogenization, and intense price competition, fruit stores still show strong vitality, which must be due to their unique characteristics.
Generally, most fruit stores are located in high-traffic areas, often around residential communities. This means **fruit stores can be closer to consumers**, so consumers inevitably pass by fruit stores on their way home from work. Therefore, fruit stores have a natural locational advantage.
At the same time, fruit itself is a high-frequency, essential product, **and it has a perfect match with snacks**. High frequency and essential nature, along with broad consumer reach, mean that fruit stores generate repeat purchases. Most residents in a community will choose to buy fruit at nearby fruit stores, so snacks placed there are easily purchased.
Some might ask: with so many discount snack stores, why buy snacks at a fruit store?
Different channels serve different consumer groups, and **fruit store consumer groups are more precise.**
**Think about it: who frequently visits fruit stores?**
Most likely mothers and female consumers, who are themselves high-frequency snack consumers. Moreover, the average transaction value of fruit already determines the purchasing power of the precise consumer group. Especially in higher-priced branded fruit stores, premium snacks sell well because consumers have the ability and the need, and fruit stores help them filter out the most suitable products.
Of course, **supply chain advantages are also key to fruit stores selling snacks**. Many surviving fruit stores are chain stores, either regional or national chains. This means these chains have mature supply chain systems. For categories with high spoilage like fruit, supply chain requirements are even higher, so brands can obtain a richer variety of snack categories through centralized procurement.
**Another advantage of fruit stores is customer relationships**. Currently, most fruit stores enhance customer stickiness through membership and private domain traffic, such as membership top-ups, WeChat groups, online community group buying, and even serving as community package collection points.
As a result, consumers have a very high level of dependence and trust in fruit stores.
For example, a store specializing in high-end fruit launched tea leaves and surprisingly saw good sales, even though the store had never sold tea before. Essentially, they are not the same category. Why could this fruit store sell tea? It relied on customer relationships and trust. It is understood that the tea buyers were all regular customers and members of the store's private domain group.
Let's summarize the advantages of fruit stores selling snacks.
**1. Locational advantage close to consumers**
**2. Similar consumer demand**
**3. Highly overlapping consumer groups**
**4. Strong supply chain**
**5. Overlay of service and trust relationships**
Based on the above advantages, fruit stores have become another channel valued by brands, following community convenience stores.
In the view of Whole Foods Online, besides snacks, ice cream, beverages, alcoholic drinks, and frozen products can also be sold.
In fact, as early as 2019, some ice cream distributors began developing fruit store channels. Today, some fruit chain store owners actively seek ice cream supply channels to maximize their store advantages.
Today, fruit stores have also become a battleground for snack food, beverage, and frozen product brands.
**So, in fruit stores, which is the traffic driver: fruit or non-fruit categories?**
In summer, ice cream and beverages are definitely traffic drivers for fruit stores. Not long ago, an ice cream wholesale store owner said that a nearby fruit store promoted best-selling ice cream as a traffic driver on Douyin, selling at 9.9 yuan instead of the normal 15 yuan.
Beverages, on the other hand, likely don't need to be sold at low prices because they are essential items. As long as the store location is good and product display is adequate, there will be no shortage of consumers. However, consumers buying beverages are far less likely to buy fruit than those buying ice cream.
**The reason brands value fruit stores is that fruit stores have a large number of locations, invisibly adding new channel coverage points.**
Secondly, fruit stores are willing to accept these products and incorporate them as part of their category expansion.
Another important reason is that the process of entering fruit stores is relatively simpler than entering convenience stores, community supermarkets, or hypermarkets. On one hand, most fruit stores are owner-operated, so as long as you convince the owner, it's done. On the other hand, fruit stores themselves need non-fruit categories, so the process is streamlined.
Of course, fruit stores are also evolving and upgrading. **Some fruit stores, through their store count advantage and brand momentum, have laid the foundation for selling snack categories and possess keen marketing instincts.**
Once multiple categories enter, they will inevitably use various promotional activities to attract customers, especially since fruit provides a safety net. This may affect traffic in other channels; for example, ice cream wholesale stores are greatly influenced by fruit stores.
**Other fruit stores, seeing the considerable sales of non-fruit categories, will leverage their brand and supply chain advantages to create private-label products through ODM cooperation with factories.**
In summary, our seemingly unremarkable fruit stores actually have stronger channel advantages. Compared to mom-and-pop shops, community supermarkets, and chain convenience stores, fruit store owners have sharper market insight because fruit itself is a category with strong demand and seasonality. To acquire and retain customers, they will try various methods, such as community group buying, delivery services, private domain traffic, and membership systems.
These are exactly what snack, beverage, and ice cream distributors or end customers lack.
From this perspective, fruit stores can indeed sell everything.


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