---
title: "HotMaxx, Three Squirrels and Others Eye Fresh Food Supermarket Business"
description: "Fresh food supermarkets are attracting a wave of new cross-industry players. Recently, HotMaxx opened a new 'HotMaxx OK' fresh food store in Shanghai, which mainly sells fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, aquatic products, and bakery items, unlike its previous discount stores. Beyond HotMaxx, snack food companies like Zhao Yiming Snacks under Mingming Henmang, Haoxianglai under Wanchen Group, and traditional snack giants such as Three Squirrels and Bestore are all entering the fresh food supermarket sector through different paths. For example, Three Squirrels has opened 37 lifestyle stores in cities around Anhui, focusing on high-density communities."
author: "林京"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2026-06-11"
categories: "Retail Formats"
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citation: "林京. “HotMaxx, Three Squirrels and Others Eye Fresh Food Supermarket Business.” New Distribution, 2026-06-11. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/hotmaxx-three-squirrels-and-others-eye-fresh-food-supermarket-business-806c56b2/"
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# HotMaxx, Three Squirrels and Others Eye Fresh Food Supermarket Business

> Fresh food supermarkets are attracting a wave of new cross-industry players. Recently, HotMaxx opened a new 'HotMaxx OK' fresh food store in Shanghai, which mainly sells fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, aquatic products, and bakery items, unlike its previous discount stores. Beyond HotMaxx, snack food companies like Zhao Yiming Snacks under Mingming Henmang, Haoxianglai under Wanchen Group, and traditional snack giants such as Three Squirrels and Bestore are all entering the fresh food supermarket sector through different paths. For example, Three Squirrels has opened 37 lifestyle stores in cities around Anhui, focusing on high-density communities.

Fresh food supermarkets are welcoming a new wave of cross-industry players. Recently, HotMaxx opened a new 'HotMaxx OK' fresh food store in Shanghai. Unlike its previous stores that sold clearance and near-expiry products at low prices, this store mainly sells fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, aquatic products, and bakery items.
Beyond HotMaxx, snack food companies such as Zhao Yiming Snacks under Mingming Henmang, Haoxianglai under Wanchen Group, and traditional snack giants like Three Squirrels and Bestore are all entering the fresh food supermarket sector through different paths. For example, Three Squirrels has opened 37 Three Squirrels Lifestyle Stores in cities around Anhui, all located near communities with high population density.
In the hard discount fresh food supermarket track, German retail giant Aldi, as well as internet giants like Hema (with its 'Hema Super NB' format) and Meituan (with 'Happy Monkey'), are rapidly expanding stores nationwide, competing for market share.
Compared to snacks, which have low spoilage and longer shelf life, fresh food categories have high spoilage rates. Hard discount supermarkets also require higher supply chain and product innovation capabilities. This is a typical business of 'bending down to pick up coins.' How much opportunity remains for these cross-industry players?
'HotMaxx' and others are collectively eyeing the fresh food supermarket business.
Shanghai resident Xiaoyu told the author that the HotMaxx OK store is about 2,000 square meters, with a vegetable market nearby and a fruit store across the street. The Pengpu New Village area where she lives is a well-known old district in Shanghai with high residential density, but also many choices; it is not short of places to buy groceries. One kilometer from HotMaxx, there is an Aldi store.
Image source: Provided by interviewee
From her experience, the prices at the HotMaxx OK fresh food store are not 'brought down,' and the product selection is not rich enough. The same fresh product is more expensive than at Hema or Aldi. Bakery items are limited to basics like toast and two or three types of pretzel bread, totaling about seven or eight varieties. In contrast, Aldi China stores offer more than 20 types of bread.
The price tags at the HotMaxx OK fresh food store continue the style of previous HotMaxx stores. A 35g pistachio coffee bun is priced at 4.9 yuan, originally 6.9 yuan. A 120g HotMaxx fresh-cut beef slices is sold at 13.5 yuan, originally 18 yuan.
Image source: Provided by interviewee
A HotMaxx employee revealed that the company plans to open 20 to 30 fresh food stores this year, all in direct-operated mode. Currently, this store is still in the testing phase, and the business model has not yet been proven, so franchising is not yet open, but some locations for new stores have already been selected.
HotMaxx, along with Mingming Henmang, Haoxianglai, and other companies, have collectively crossed over into fresh food supermarkets. Starting from early 2025, the pace has accelerated significantly by 2026, gradually forming two paths.
The first path is opening independent fresh food supermarkets. In May this year, 'HotMaxx OK' and 'Bestore Fresh Life' stores opened one after another, both using the main brand name to enter the fresh food track. The latter's store slogan has also changed to 'Eat Well,' a departure from its previous consumer perception of selling high-end snacks and nuts.
Compared to single-store trials, Three Squirrels is more aggressive, having opened 37 lifestyle stores in just one year, concentrated in cities within Anhui Province such as Wuhu and Nanling. Currently, all are direct-operated, making it the snack giant with the most stores in the cross-industry fresh food supermarket track.
Image source: Screenshot from mini-program
The second path comes from bulk snack food companies. These brands, with over 50,000 stores nationwide, are also testing fresh food supermarkets. In cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, Haoxianglai and Zhao Yiming Snacks stores have added categories such as 9.9 yuan boxes of blueberries, 4.9 yuan toast, and daily necessities like rice, flour, and cooking oil.
A Haoxianglai employee revealed that Haoxianglai currently has two main store formats: 'Haoxianglai Snack Paradise' and 'Haoxianglai Save Supermarket.' The latter is a community life supermarket explored since 2025, adding high-frequency, essential items like grain, oil, seasonings, and daily necessities. Due to supply chain constraints, the 'Save Supermarket' in northern cities has not yet listed fresh categories like fruits and vegetables.
Additionally, Haoxianglai's parent company, Wanchen Group, has quietly opened several 'Huishengjia Save Supermarket' stores in Shenzhen and Dongguan, starting from the South China market, directly benchmarking against hard discount supermarkets like Aldi.
According to Jiemian News, Huishengjia stores have private-label products everywhere, accounting for over 70% of the assortment, usually placed next to similar competing products to highlight low prices.
This display strategy is almost identical to hard discount supermarkets like Meituan's Happy Monkey, using popular national brands to drive consumer awareness of private labels.
Recruiting from Aldi, but the single-store model is not yet proven.
The development of snack food companies can be roughly divided into two stages. In the early stage, companies like Three Squirrels and Bestore followed a high-end snack route, with sales channels mainly online. Subsequently, bulk snack brands rose, adopting a factory-direct value-for-money model, expanding from lower-tier markets to first-tier cities in recent years.
Behind the transformation of various snack companies are two main reasons. First, fresh food categories have high purchase frequency and strong essential attributes, while snacks are relatively low-frequency and impulse purchases. By introducing high-frequency categories like fresh food, grain, oil, and frozen products into stores, they aim to increase customer visit frequency, thereby driving snack sales.
Second, they are undergoing comprehensive business transformation. In June 2025, Three Squirrels opened its first lifestyle store in Wuhu, Anhui. Founder Zhang Liaoyuan defined this step as: 'Transforming from a private-label retailer in the snack vertical to a full-category private-label retailer.'
Three Squirrels disclosed to investors that the lifestyle stores add freshly baked goods, fresh food, daily chemicals, and other high-frequency essential categories on top of nuts and snacks, with private labels accounting for over 90%, providing one-stop, full-category quality life services for community families.
Cai Jingzhong, founder of Wujie Innovation Capital, which has long focused on discount supermarkets, told the author that cross-industry fresh food supermarkets by companies like HotMaxx and Three Squirrels mainly rely on their own corporate genes or supply chains. From stores to teams, one can see the continuation of the parent company's style.
Wanchen Group, on the other hand, is more about creating a completely new team to operate hard discount supermarkets, such as recruiting Aldi executives in Shenzhen and other regions.
Previously, Lianshang.com also reported that the Huishengjia project is led by Wanchen Group headquarters, which has specially formed a team with dual retail genes from Walmart and ALDI to operate and test the model.
In addition, Wanchen Group is also testing the 'Wanshi Daji' project in Nanchang, Fuzhou, and other places in Jiangxi, with about 1,000 square meters of community supermarkets featuring Chinese-style themes and scenario-based experiences.
Of course, it is not easy for snack giants to cross over into fresh food supermarkets. Snacks are a business with longer shelf life, while fresh food has high spoilage characteristics. Moreover, internet companies like Hema and Meituan's Happy Monkey can use online data to reverse-innovate products, leaving limited market space for snack stores.
A Haoxianglai franchise recruiter told Tech Planet that compared to Haoxianglai Snack Paradise, the Haoxianglai Save Supermarket requires at least 190 square meters of store area, which means higher rent pressure in first-tier cities. Currently, expansion is progressing slowly, and the single-store model has not been proven.
A fresh food industry practitioner told Tech Planet that HotMaxx's OK fresh food store is more like a 'low-configuration' version of Hema's 'Hema Super NB,' with a higher proportion of elderly customers.
The practitioner pointed out that 4 PM is a key time for secondary restocking in fresh food supermarkets. Vegetables, as the category with the highest turnover requirements, their display status directly reflects the store's customer flow and profitability pressure.
But when he visited the HotMaxx OK fresh food store at this time, he found that vegetable displays were low, out of stock, and no one was restocking.
Similar issues exist in the daily supply area (such as low-temperature milk), with overall small scale, narrow refrigerated product displays, and limited SKUs. The logic behind this is consistent with vegetables: due to concerns about spoilage, investment in daily supply products is more cautious.
In contrast, the store's non-fresh food products have certain price advantages and are still competitive compared to industry levels.
But the core issue lies in the misalignment of business logic.
HotMaxx started with soft discounts, accustomed to finding low-priced and near-expiry clearance goods from the supply side. Its product structure depends on what the market can obtain, rather than organizing products around the actual fresh food needs of community customers.
The core competitiveness of the fresh food discount format lies in 'good quality at good prices,' highly dependent on refined operations across the entire chain from procurement, cold chain, inventory to sell-through.
Forced by survival: a gamble from snacks to fresh food.
Snack companies crossing into fresh food is superficially category expansion, but in reality, it is a gamble driven by survival pressure to find a second growth curve.
Financial reports show that Bestore's 2025 annual revenue was 5.486 billion yuan, a sharp decline of 23.38% year-on-year, with a net loss attributable to the parent company of 148 million yuan, marking two consecutive years of losses. Among the influencing factors were the proactive closure of 1,186 stores over two years to optimize structure, and the pressure on average transaction value due to price reduction strategies.
Three Squirrels achieved revenue of 10.189 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year decrease of 4.08%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 155 million yuan, down 61.90%; non-GAAP net profit shrank to 49.4015 million yuan, a decrease of 84.53%.
In the snack industry, under the impact of bulk snacks, rising nut raw material prices, and increasing online traffic costs, both companies face performance challenges.
The bulk snack track, which has boomed in recent years, is also seeing market dividends peak as store density increases. From 2023 to 2025, Wanchen Group's revenue growth rates were 1592%, 248%, and 59%, respectively.
At the end of 2022, Wanchen Group had only 232 stores, but by the end of 2025, it had reached 18,314 stores.
A research report from Zhongtai Securities also pointed out that in the bulk snack track, the combined stores of mainstream brands, both head and waist, exceed 50,000, with Mingming Henmang at about 22,000 and Wanchen Group at about 18,000, followed by waist brands like Snacks Youming.
The snack track is undergoing new changes. Cai Jingzhong, founder of Wujie Innovation Capital, told Tech Planet that investors' focus has shifted from bulk snacks to fresh snack tracks. The entire bulk snack track is considered to have hit its ceiling, with dividends peaking.
Fresh snack stores represented by Jinlimen cater to the current demand for freshness and health. Bakery products are an important part of the store, and one of its key strategies is to directly replicate the best-selling bakery items from Sam's Club.
As another snack brand from Changsha, Hunan, Jinlimen also has geographical advantages in talent acquisition, able to directly recruit employees with extensive experience from bakery brands like Hutouju and Momo Pastry.
In addition, a Bain & Company report points out that China's hard discount market penetration is only 8%, far lower than Germany's 42% and Japan's 31%. However, internet giants including Hema and Meituan have already turned this into a red ocean.
Snack companies crossing over to open independent fresh food stores require more investment than ordinary stores, with more categories, testing long-term accumulated product strength and supply chain capabilities. This is undoubtedly a gamble.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 林京
- Published: 2026-06-11
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/hotmaxx-three-squirrels-and-others-eye-fresh-food-supermarket-business-806c56b2/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qPEzlh7Bdu6nPuqf_bqy-Q

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