---
title: "Supermarket Industry Bids Farewell to the Ice-and-Fire 2025: What Trends to Watch in 2026?"
description: "In 2025, major supermarket brands engaged in fierce competition, presenting a stark contrast of ice and fire. While leading brands like Pangdonglai, Walmart, and Hema accelerated growth, traditional supermarkets faced a wave of closures. Looking ahead to 2026, key trends include intensified hard discount competition, community-oriented store formats, instant retail integration, a surge in private label products, and a widening gap between strong and weak players."
author: "吴文武"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2026-01-01"
categories: "Retail Formats"
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citation: "吴文武. “Supermarket Industry Bids Farewell to the Ice-and-Fire 2025: What Trends to Watch in 2026?.” New Distribution, 2026-01-01. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/supermarket-industry-bids-farewell-to-the-ice-and-fire-2025-what-trends-44665699/"
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# Supermarket Industry Bids Farewell to the Ice-and-Fire 2025: What Trends to Watch in 2026?

> In 2025, major supermarket brands engaged in fierce competition, presenting a stark contrast of ice and fire. While leading brands like Pangdonglai, Walmart, and Hema accelerated growth, traditional supermarkets faced a wave of closures. Looking ahead to 2026, key trends include intensified hard discount competition, community-oriented store formats, instant retail integration, a surge in private label products, and a widening gap between strong and weak players.

**Source** | New Product Brief Finance
In 2025, major supermarket brands engaged in fierce competition, and the industry as a whole presented a stark contrast of ice and fire.
On one hand, several leading brands pressed the accelerator, showing strong momentum, with non-stop trending topics and discussions.
Pangdonglai remained the top internet celebrity, with sales performance reaching new highs. Retail giant Walmart continued its rapid growth, opening 10 new Sam's Club stores in 2025. Hema, driven by its dual-drive strategy, maintained its Hema Fresh store opening pace while vigorously developing its community discount supermarket brand Chaohe Suan NB. Hard discount brand Aldi surged ahead, and internet giants JD.com and Meituan joined the supermarket battle, adding new forces to the market.
On the other hand, the wave of closures for traditional supermarket stores continued and intensified.
According to Yilan Business data, in the first half of 2025 alone, at least 720 supermarket stores closed nationwide. Among them, as of the end of Q3 2025, Yonghui Superstores had closed a cumulative total of 325 stores. Zhongbai Group had closed 30 warehouse hypermarkets cumulatively since 2025, and discount chain brand Haote Mai fell into a wave of closures at the end of the year.
Although the annual closure data for supermarkets in 2025 has not yet been compiled, based on known data, it is estimated that the number of traditional supermarket store closures in 2025 will significantly exceed that of 2024.
Here, we need to review the development of the supermarket industry in 2025, summarize the representative keywords of the year, and more importantly, as 2026 arrives, what key trends deserve our early attention?
**Four Keywords in the 2025 Supermarket Transformation**
In 2025, supermarket brands developed their businesses according to their own situations: some developed quietly, some loudly, some entered with high profile, some had poor operations, and some continued to experience transformation pains. Overall, the Chinese supermarket industry in 2025 had four main keywords.
Keyword 1: Adjustment and Reform. Multiple supermarket brands learned from Pangdonglai's adjustments and accelerated their own adjustments.
The representative of supermarket industry adjustment is Yonghui Superstores. As a traditional supermarket giant, Yonghui chose to fully embrace the Pangdonglai model in 2024, adjusting its stores. After Ye Guofu and the Miniso group took over Yonghui, the adjustment accelerated further. According to Yonghui's financial reports, as of the end of Q3 2025, Yonghui had completed adjustments at 222 stores, achieving some results, but losses continued.
Wumart Supermarket promoted adjustments in multiple areas of the Beijing market, which media reports called "Pang Wumart." Hunan's Bubugao also accelerated its adjustments.
Overall, Pangdonglai has set a benchmark for local Chinese supermarket brands and is one of the few models worth learning from and referencing. Everyone wants to become fat, to become the next "Pangdonglai."
Keyword 2: Hard Discount. Hard discount became a new battleground for fierce competition in the supermarket industry in 2025.
Hard discount has become one of the few incremental markets in the current supermarket industry, with traditional supermarkets, new retail forces, and internet giants all rushing in.
In the hard discount track, the representative brand pressing the accelerator is Hema's Chaohe Suan NB. As of October 2025, Chaohe Suan NB had over 350 stores. In November of this year, Chaohe Suan NB officially opened franchising, already pressing the accelerator.
JD.com and Meituan, two internet giants, entered the hard discount track, becoming new market forces. Data shows that in 2025, JD Discount Supermarket opened 9 stores, and Meituan Happy Monkey opened 5 stores.
In the hard discount industry, Aldi, a dark horse, opened about 30 new stores in 2025, and it is expected that by Q1 2026, its store count will exceed 100.
The hard discount model mainly relies on low prices, parity, and a high proportion of private label products to meet consumer needs. In the current consumption environment, hard discount indeed has strong consumer demand.
Keyword 3: Membership Stores. Sam's Club stands out, continuing to lead the market, and the membership supermarket track remains lively.
Sam's Club, which has been pressing the accelerator in the Chinese market in recent years, continued to lead the market in 2025, opening 10 new stores within the year, setting a historical high for annual new store openings in China. As of December 2025, Sam's Club had a total of 63 stores in China. According to media reports and Walmart's financial reports, Sam's Club China's sales performance in 2025 grew significantly year-on-year.
Costco's store count is far fewer than Sam's Club, but its business performance remains good. Gaoxin Retail has not given up on membership stores. Fudi has been operating 5 stores in the Beijing market. However, some market players have given up on membership store business; Hema focused on Hema Fresh and Chaohe Suan NB, choosing to close its X Membership Store business.
Keyword 4: Private Label Products. Developing private label products has become a required course for supermarkets.
The wave of Chinese supermarket brands developing private label products is rising year by year. This is a major industry trend, and multiple leading supermarket brands continue to strengthen their private label efforts.
For example, in November, Walmart announced the upgrade of its private label brand Wo Ji Xian, which became a focus of industry attention. Walmart aims to enhance consumer appeal and market competitiveness through Wo Ji Xian private label products. Yonghui Superstores plans to create 500 private label products within five years. Hema's private label development is also continuously updating and iterating.
Of course, there were many other noteworthy highlights and keywords in the supermarket industry in 2025.
**What Trends Should Supermarkets Watch in 2026?**
As 2026 arrives, the Chinese supermarket industry will continue to develop forward, with the ice-and-fire scenario continuing to play out, and the industry will continue to evolve and accelerate updates.
In the view of New Product Brief Finance, there are five key trends in China's supermarket industry in 2026 worth watching, and there will be new highlights and bright spots.
Trend 1: Competition in the hard discount supermarket track will become more intense in 2026, with new regional focus markets.
Overall, in 2025, hard discount supermarket competition was mainly concentrated in East China and the Yangtze River Delta, with Hema Chaohe Suan NB and Aldi as representatives, engaging in fierce competition. Competition will be even more intense in 2026.
It is expected that North China and the Greater Bay Area will become new focus markets for hard discount competition. According to media reports, Chaohe Suan NB has been laying out the South China market. In January 2026, two Dongguan stores and the first Shenzhen store of Chaohe Suan NB will open.
JD Discount Supermarket's current stores are mainly concentrated in North China. After successful piloting in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Meituan Happy Monkey has also opened stores in the Beijing market. North China will become another major new market for hard discount supermarket competition in 2026.
Trend 2: Supermarket store community orientation will become more pronounced, becoming smaller and more refined.
Community orientation is an industry standard for supermarket stores. In the past, traditional hypermarkets and current membership stores covered a wide surrounding market. In recent years, community-oriented and smaller supermarket stores have become a trend, and it is expected to become more pronounced in 2026.
Walmart has successfully piloted community stores in Shenzhen, with a main store format of about 500 square meters, focusing on the concept of a 10-minute walking life circle, offering about 2,000 products. Walmart began promoting the community store model on a larger scale in Shenzhen in 2025, and it is expected to further increase in 2026.
Many of Hema's new stores are now located in areas with dense residential communities, such as the Shenzhen Meilin store opened in 2025.
Trend 3: The supermarket industry will further embrace instant retail.
Although the supermarket industry focuses on offline shopping scenarios, under the wave of instant retail development, consumers place orders online, and supermarket brands deliver quickly within a set time. Such demand will continue to grow.
Therefore, many supermarket brands are adopting a combination of stores and front warehouses to quickly respond to and meet consumer needs.
In 2025, the instant retail war was mainly concentrated in the food delivery track. It is expected that in 2026, internet food delivery giants will vigorously develop supermarket instant retail business.
Supermarket companies either develop their own instant retail and near-scene e-commerce businesses or embrace internet giants.
Trend 4: The private label wave will become even more intense in 2026.
The supermarket industry has entered the era of private label products. Pangdonglai's internet-famous private label products, Sam's Club private label products, Walmart's Wo Ji Xian, Hema's series, Aldi, as well as JD Discount Supermarket and Meituan Happy Monkey, are all focusing on private label products.
Consumer goods are inherently homogeneous, and supermarket private label products have also shown homogeneity. Supermarket brands developing private label products should segment categories, strengthen quality control, continuously tell new private label and brand stories, and create differentiated features as the key.
Ultimately, the key to developing private label products for supermarket brands is brand influence and brand trust.
As consumers become more picky, focusing on cost-performance ratio, quality-price ratio, and health consumption, and also needing emotional value and psychological satisfaction, it will increasingly test a supermarket brand's underlying capabilities in private label products, including deep source capabilities and supply chain system capabilities.
Trend 5: Competition in the supermarket industry is fierce, and the head effect will become more prominent: the strong get stronger, the weak get weaker.
Supermarkets are an industry that pursues scale and efficient supply chain operations. In the traditional supermarket era, supermarket companies needed sufficient store numbers to support scale.
Pangdonglai continues to be an internet celebrity, with sales performance continuously increasing. Retail giants like Walmart and Hema, as leading retail brands, will see their scale effects further highlighted as store numbers increase.
As leading supermarket brands become stronger, the competitiveness of lagging old supermarket brands will naturally weaken. Especially for some regional old chain supermarket brands, operational pressure will increase.
**Conclusion**
Overall, 2025 was a year of rapid change for the supermarket industry and all market players. The supermarket industry is still in a critical period of deep transformation and exploration, and it is also in a period of major industry changes.
Despite fierce market competition, numerous market players, and new entrants, China is a consumer market with a huge population, and people's demand for supermarket shopping will always exist.
According to the "2025 China Shopper Report, Series II" released by global management consulting firm Bain & Company and Worldpanel Consumer Index on December 9, after a stable performance in 2024, China's FMCG consumer market showed signs of stabilization in 2025, with sales in the first three quarters growing 1.3% year-on-year, driven mainly by a 3.8% volume increase, while average selling price fell 2.4%, narrowing from the 3.4% decline in 2024.
China's supermarket consumption is a huge existing market with a large base. Business opportunities still exist, and incremental opportunities within the existing market also exist. Consumers pursue "quality-price ratio," overall driving the rapid expansion of warehouse membership stores, snack collection stores, and discount stores.
The report shows that in offline channels, warehouse membership stores, snack collection stores, and discount stores expanded rapidly, with growth rates of 40%, 51%, and 92%, respectively, indicating that consumers increasingly favor retail formats with higher cost-performance, greater convenience, and better experience.
Supermarket brands are vigorously developing private label products, further accelerating the trend of retailer branding. The era of strong supermarket branding has arrived.
In 2026, Yonghui Superstores will continue adjustments, Sam's Club store numbers will continue to increase, Hema Fresh will maintain its opening pace, Chaohe Suan NB stores are expected to surge, internet giants will increase efforts in supermarket business, and new players will enter. The supermarket industry will continue to be lively.
In 2026 and beyond, with strong and sustained policy support for expanding domestic demand and stimulating consumption, the supermarket industry will benefit, and the development of the supermarket industry in 2026 is still worth looking forward to.
**[Moving Toward the C-End] The 11th China FMCG Conference**
**Time: March 16-18, 2026**
**Location: Chengdu, China**


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 吴文武
- Published: 2026-01-01
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/supermarket-industry-bids-farewell-to-the-ice-and-fire-2025-what-trends-44665699/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JIZcV2jl1yYXKhfBLPecMw

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