Another supermarket giant has become a disciple of Pangdonglai. Wumart Supermarket on Xueqing Road in Haidian District, Beijing, recently closed for renovation, with the store undergoing intensive remodeling. A Wumart employee told Tech Planet that the new renovated store will have over 200 employees, with an age requirement of under 35. Some older employees who do not meet the criteria have been reassigned to nearby Wumart stores. To recruit quickly, Wumart's HR departments in other Beijing districts are also supporting the hiring efforts.

Before Wumart joined the ranks of disciples, Pangdonglai had already renovated over ten regional supermarkets, but it wasn't until last year that well-known listed companies including Yonghui, Bubugao, and Zhongbai Group flocked to learn from Pangdonglai, drawing industry attention. Yonghui, with a thousand stores, completed renovations at 41 stores last year and announced the first batch of 20 stores for renovation this year. Yonghui also disclosed that in January, employee profit sharing at its Pangdonglai-renovated stores exceeded 10 million yuan, with some frontline employees earning over 8,000 yuan per month. This massive "apprenticeship" in the retail industry has once again elevated Pangdonglai, the viral supermarket in Xuchang, Henan, to a pedestal.

Investing Tens of Millions to Learn from the Viral Supermarket

Zhang Wenzhong, the head of Wumart, is known in the industry as the "Father of Chinese Supermarkets," while Yonghui once reached a market value of 100 billion yuan at its peak. Their stores are spread across the country, and they were once the industry leaders. Now, they are bending down to become apprentices of Pangdonglai. At Xilongduo in Shijingshan District, Beijing, the slogan "Building the Happiest Supermarket in Beijing" scrolls continuously on screens outside the mall. This is Yonghui's first Pangdonglai-style renovated store in Beijing, but customers hoping to buy Pangdonglai's viral private-label products may be disappointed, as only three shelves contain "DL" private-label products, including juice, cooking oil, and towels. There is also a large area dedicated to "Pangdonglai's Philosophy of Life," featuring books with daily essays by Pangdonglai's founder, Yu Donglai.

After September last year, the model for Pangdonglai's supermarket renovations changed. Previously, renovations at stores of Bubugao, Yonghui, and Zhongbai Group were supported by Pangdonglai staff from procurement, operations, and store departments. Now, these supermarkets send their own teams to learn from Pangdonglai and then carry out renovations independently. Yonghui already has two Pangdonglai-renovated stores in Beijing, and in early February, two more stores in Fangshan and Daxing districts closed for renovation. With Wumart's first renovated store, there will soon be five "Pangdonglai-style" supermarkets in Beijing.

The independent renovation strategies are largely consistent, including improved employee benefits such as higher salaries and shorter working hours, as well as adjustments to product assortment and wider aisles. For example, at Yonghui's first renovated store, 11,430 items were removed, accounting for 79% of the original assortment. A total of 12,765 items were newly planned, with new items accounting for 76.2% of the new assortment. After the overhaul, the product structure similarity to Pangdonglai's reached over 90%.

A Yonghui employee told Tech Planet that the renovated stores learn from Pangdonglai's management methods but still sell Yonghui products. For instance, the popular bakery and deli sections only sell products made that day, including viral items like beef jerky and small red sausages, which are produced by local Beijing manufacturers. The bakery section's walnut cream cheese buns and taro milk buns, similar to Pangdonglai's, are made by Yonghui's pastry chefs after learning recipes at Pangdonglai's central kitchen.

A Yonghui employee revealed to Tech Planet that a single renovated store involves store renovation, salary increases, and product restructuring, with costs reaching tens of millions of yuan. Previously, when Pangdonglai's team helped renovate Jiabai Supermarket in Hubei, it was disclosed that founder Yu Donglai lent 30 million yuan from Pangdonglai to cover the renovation costs.

The age limit for employees at renovated stores is uniformly set at 35, not only to build a younger team but also because the workload is heavy, and younger people are better suited to meet the demands, according to a Yonghui renovated store employee.

The Other Side of Learning from Pangdonglai

At Yonghui's first renovated store in Beijing, the Pangdonglai-style corporate belief of "Love and Freedom" is visible everywhere. Red banners with slogans like "Happy Supermarket," "Make Employees Happy," and "Make Customers Happy" hang in various areas. At the entrance, a letter to customers apologizes for past immature management and lack of quality products. In the deli, fruit, and bakery sections, signs read, "Most of us are new employees, our skills are not yet mature, please forgive any shortcomings in service."

According to a Yonghui employee, the biggest change at the renovated store is customer-facing service. For example, the fruit cutting area has a transparent glass window, allowing customers to see the preparation process. After packaging, fruit is discounted at different rates at 1, 4, and 6 hours due to freshness degradation.

During the high-growth years of retail, the mainstream internet narrative prioritized scale, profit, and extreme efficiency. Yonghui and Bubugao were top players born from this industry context. But now, with price competition from e-commerce and the emergence of various new formats like discount stores, fresh food stores, and snack collection stores, the survival space for offline supermarkets is shrinking. Pangdonglai has become popular online for its service, product quality, and employee benefits, and is now regarded as an industry benchmark in this development cycle.

However, frontline employees are most aware of the other side of this renovation. At the end of last year, Wang Yao was encouraged by his department supervisor to transfer from his original Yonghui store to a nearby renovated store. In his words, "Before, I didn't know what overtime was. Now, as soon as I open my eyes, there's endless work." His renovated store opened during the Spring Festival, with daily sales reaching 1.8 million yuan at its peak. "We restock until the end, and we're left with just the shelves," he said. Compared to cashier and customer service positions, store floor staff work the hardest. Wang Yao said that during the holiday, he worked from 8:30 a.m. to 2-3 a.m., averaging 15 hours a day, because the store required it to be in opening condition even after closing, with constant restocking, meetings, and reviews.

Since Pangdonglai stores are only in Xuchang and Xinxiang, Henan, these renovated stores attract nearby residents to check in and buy Pangdonglai private-label products during the initial opening period, making employees busiest. But when customer traffic stabilizes, the more draining aspect is the "five-color card" assessment, which includes yellow, red, green, white, and blue cards, each covering complex categories like corporate culture, employee appearance, product labels, and product tastings. Employees are randomly assessed on-site or in meetings, and points are deducted for failures. According to Wang Yao, salaries consist of a base salary plus bonuses, and if 10 points are deducted, the bonus is halved. When something is not up to standard, the store manager often says, "Look at how Pangdonglai does it."

But in the view of Wang Yao and other Yonghui renovated store employees, this comparison is unfair. For example, in Beijing, salaries at renovated stores increased from 4,000 yuan per month to over 6,000 yuan, which is not outstanding for a first-tier city. In contrast, at Pangdonglai in Xuchang, average employee salaries have reached 9,000 yuan per month.

Essentially, behind Pangdonglai's "Love and Freedom" corporate culture is the ability, in third- and fourth-tier cities with lower costs like rent, to offer salaries and vacation benefits far above local levels, driving employees to execute strict service standards. It is rumored that Pangdonglai's employee handbook is 85,000 pages long. In the past, Pangdonglai either released dozens of pages of investigation reports or compensated customers up to 9 million yuan for product quality issues, which also helped the company gain widespread attention.

Is It Easy to Be Pangdonglai's Apprentice?

For these supermarket giants, is it easy to be Pangdonglai's apprentice under the current independent renovation model? Employees can most directly feel the increase in sales and the influx of younger customers. A Yonghui employee told Tech Planet that at her store in a new first-tier city, daily sales were around 100,000 yuan before, but after three months of renovation, daily sales now remain around 340,000 yuan.

However, in the initial phase, when Pangdonglai assisted with renovations, private-label products were a stable factor driving sales. For example, Bubugao's Meixihu store disclosed that Pangdonglai's private-label products accounted for nearly one-third of its daily sales. But in September last year, Yu Donglai stated that to ensure Pangdonglai employees' normal work and life, for future renovations, all techniques and methods could be shared, but no teams would be sent to provide on-site assistance. This means these stores now have to rely on their own experience to replicate the model. Reducing the supply of private-label products is also to lessen the dependence of renovated stores on Pangdonglai. After all, private-label products are a key traffic driver for these stores. For example, at Yonghui's first renovated store in Beijing, customers must register as "Yonghui Life" members to purchase them.

Even more, because Yonghui launched similar private-label products, some customers have expressed dissatisfaction. They said on social media that Yonghui's private-label products, from laundry detergent and oatmeal to juice, are similar to Pangdonglai's, with almost identical packaging and prices, and are placed on the same shelves, causing confusion. "I traveled a long way, only to feel like I bought a counterfeit," one customer said.

But for these apprentices, Pangdonglai is still a lifeline. Before "learning from the master," their performance was on the brink of a cliff. After consecutive losses, Bubugao underwent bankruptcy review in October last year, and Yonghui Supermarket has accumulated losses of nearly 10 billion yuan over the past four years. Rather than "changing fate" through renovation, Yu Donglai once said about the results, "Don't think about making money right after renovation. As long as you don't lose money and can sell 400,000 to 500,000 yuan a day, that's very happy." A Pangdonglai employee told Tech Planet that this is consistent with Yu Donglai's personal style—he only talks about philosophy. In many public livestreams, he rarely discusses specific business strategies, scale, or profit, spending 90% of the time sharing his thoughts on "Love and Freedom."

But for supermarkets mired in losses, it's hard not to worry about how long the renovation boom will last. In the view of a Yonghui employee, Pangdonglai has only 13 offline stores, while these supermarkets renovate dozens of stores a year. The biggest challenge is whether service and product quality can keep up. After all, if it were easy to replicate, Pangdonglai would have already opened stores densely across the country.

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