---
title: "The Snack Track 'Changes the Weather': An Infinite War Begins"
description: "The snack industry seems to have 'changed the weather'. Recently, several retail giants released their first-half 2025 performance forecasts: Lai Yifen turned from profit to loss; Liangpin Shop's losses widened further, reaching a point of selling out; Qiaqia Food's net profit fell by over 70% year-on-year. Facing continued slowdowns, former snack giants cite intensified competition, channel transformation difficulties, and changing consumer demands. Meanwhile, new players are rising across the board, with Wanchen Group and Mingming Henmang achieving record revenues and surpassing 10,000 stores."
author: "伯虎团队"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-09-01"
categories: "Brand Marketing, Capital, Earnings & M&A, Consumer & Categories, Retail Formats"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fR1pupRM5vz1zLWjgimEzg"
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citation: "伯虎团队. “The Snack Track 'Changes the Weather': An Infinite War Begins.” New Distribution, 2025-09-01. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-snack-track-changes-the-weather-an-infinite-war-begins-87067966/"
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---

# The Snack Track 'Changes the Weather': An Infinite War Begins

> The snack industry seems to have 'changed the weather'. Recently, several retail giants released their first-half 2025 performance forecasts: Lai Yifen turned from profit to loss; Liangpin Shop's losses widened further, reaching a point of selling out; Qiaqia Food's net profit fell by over 70% year-on-year. Facing continued slowdowns, former snack giants cite intensified competition, channel transformation difficulties, and changing consumer demands. Meanwhile, new players are rising across the board, with Wanchen Group and Mingming Henmang achieving record revenues and surpassing 10,000 stores.

The snack industry seems to have 'changed the weather'. Recently, several retail giants released their first-half 2025 performance forecasts: Lai Yifen turned from profit to loss; Liangpin Shop's losses widened further, reaching a point of selling out; Qiaqia Food's net profit fell by over 70% year-on-year.
Facing continued slowdowns, former snack giants all cited reasons such as intensified industry competition, channel transformation difficulties, and changing consumer demands. However, while 'old players' are going through trials, 'new players' are rising comprehensively. Wanchen Group and Mingming Henmang have achieved record revenues and have surpassed the 10,000-store scale.
Additionally, supermarkets like Sam's Club and Aldi, as well as new retail players like Dingdong and Hema, are leveraging their private labels and instant fulfillment capabilities to spark a wave of transformation that reshapes the snack consumption chain.
The 'old kings' of the snack market are collectively going through trials, but the 'new kings' are also embroiled in fierce battles, and it remains uncertain who will emerge victorious. As the snack industry's rules are rewritten by consumption iteration and channel revolution, a comprehensive reshuffle has already begun.
In the snack market, the new wave pushes the old.
China's snack market has developed for decades. Consumer demand for snacks essentially resonates with the development of socioeconomic levels and lifestyles, so to speak, 'each generation has its own snacks.'
In the early days, overseas brands once dominated the market, but with the development of the internet and the upgrading of the snack industry chain, e-commerce became a boost for domestic snacks to break through. Internet snack brands represented by Three Squirrels quickly captured consumer minds with premium packaging, brand stories, and internet marketing.
However, a new wave of 'latecomers' quickly rose. Since 2023, bulk snack brands like Snack Busy, Zhao Yiming, and Haoxianglai have rapidly expanded, deepening supply chain ties through scale effects and reconstructing the traditional snack channel sales model.
In the snack market where 'the Yangtze River's waves push forward', besides internet snack brands facing transformation and performance pressures, traditional snack brands are also struggling in the era's changes.
In March this year, Nestlé announced it had completed full control of Hsu Fu Chi; Want Want's leisure snacks have seen declining revenue over the past two years; Master Kong directly moved its biscuit business into 'other' and delisted biscuit products.
However, the 'decline' of retail giants is not entirely due to strategic mistakes; it is essentially driven by consumer demand and market iteration.
On one hand, the broad consumer base and fragmented consumption scenarios of snacks push the market into a multi-category, omni-channel development stage to achieve comprehensive consumer reach.
In this process, snack categories must continuously innovate to match dynamic changes in consumer taste preferences. In the early days, overseas snack brands dominated, and products catered to overseas consumers' preference for sweetness.
But in recent years, consumers have become more concerned about product quality and health attributes, leading to a series of new categories, such as low-sugar snacks and nut snacks with health concepts, and new Chinese-style snacks and spicy snacks with local characteristics.
New consumer demands have also reshaped snack sales channels. Internet snack brands promoted the development of online channels, including flagship stores, live streams, and short videos; bulk snack brands bypassed traditional distribution channels and broke the online monopoly on the snack market by building their own terminals.
Returning to the present, the rise of new snack brands like Hema, Sam's Club, and Dingdong has brought new insights to snack players: relying on channels to build moats is no longer invincible; the current competition is about who can cover more consumption scenarios in an omni-channel ecosystem battle.
On the other hand, capital intervention has accelerated industry transformation, promoting branding and scaling. Since 2020, investment and financing events in the snack industry have continued to increase, with bulk snack stores always being a key focus for capital.
The logic behind capital betting on bulk snack stores is simple: when store scale is large enough, the brand's bargaining power in supply strengthens, and there are more consumer touchpoints, potentially creating a new business model with strong replicability and high profitability through a 'small profits, high turnover' asset-light model.
With capital intervention, Zhao Yiming Snacks and Mingming Henmang completed a merger, and emerging brands like Lingzuifu achieved exponential growth to 800 stores in just two years. 'Old forces' are under unprecedented pressure.
Giant transformation: not just selling snacks
According to CIC data, China's snack industry market size in 2024 was nearly 1.4 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.3%. According to Everest Brand Marketing estimates, the snack market is expected to exceed 1.8 trillion yuan by 2030.
The snack market pie is still large, and the industry is continuously consolidating. The snack industry is undergoing an obvious 'melee'. However, the more intense the battle, the more prominent the contradictions in the snack industry.
First, bulk snack brands, despite rapid popularity, are stuck in a dilemma of 'gaining fame but struggling to make money'. Due to high fragmentation and intense competition, with low average order values and high marketing expenses, for example, Mingming Henmang's net profit margin last year was only 2.1%.
Moreover, the price war has spread to other snack brands. For instance, Liangpin Shop launched a comprehensive price reduction strategy at the end of 2023, and its performance turned from profit to loss in 2024. Its financial report explicitly mentioned that price reductions on some products and product structure adjustments impacted gross margins.
Second, when price wars become the norm, snack brands must continuously compress supply chain costs, but there is a risk of 'losing control'. For example, Three Squirrels, Liangpin Shop, and Mingming Henmang have all experienced food safety issues caused by OEM factories.
Therefore, in recent years, more snack brands have tried to compress intermediate costs and ensure stable product quality through self-built factories and direct sourcing. However, the snack supply chain is relatively transparent, and even if most brands focus on supply chain efforts, it is difficult to form unique barriers. As market participants increase, product homogenization becomes increasingly prominent.
In this context, both 'old forces' and 'new forces' in the snack market are stuck in the awkward position of 'lowering prices to survive but not making money, and not lowering prices to do business'.
The 'old forces' represented by Three Squirrels and Liangpin Shop entered the snack market with a premium positioning. Adhering to a low-price strategy would weaken brand value recognition, leading to loss of loyal customers. But if they fully implement a low-price strategy, the bulk snack players have already taken the lead, and the 'old forces' do not have a price advantage.
The 'new forces' represented by bulk snack brands have a first-mover advantage in store scale, but the ongoing price war is also shaking the foundation of franchisees.
A franchisee said, 'Low-price snacks can attract users, but profits are low, and after deducting various operating costs, you simply can't make money.' As franchisees continue to collapse and exit, the expansion speed of bulk snack brands has also slowed. According to GeoQ Data, in the first quarter of 2025, more than 60% of chain retail brand stores shrank.
Facing their respective transformation pressures, snack players are actively seeking new growth curves. Some players have started 'cross-border models', such as Three Squirrels launching the sanitary napkin brand 'Ta Zhimei' and the prepared dishes sub-brand 'Weiqun Ayi'; Lai Yifen launched the coffee brand 'Laicup coffee' and the baijiu product 'Zui Ai'.
Some players are trying new business formats. For example, Lai Yifen also attempted to imitate the Sam's Club membership model and launched a paid warehouse membership store; Three Squirrels is focusing on the hard discount track through all-category lifestyle stores; Mingming Henmang launched a '3.0 Money-Saving Supermarket' model, breaking its original business boundaries.
But at present, the cross-border transformation of snack giants is still in the exploration stage. On one hand, most categories in the daily consumer goods field have formed relatively fixed competitive patterns. If snack brands lack unique innovation advantages, it will be difficult to break through.
For example, the sub-brands launched by Three Squirrels in 2024 have almost all sold fewer than 10,000 units on Tmall flagship stores. They are more about broadening categories and increasing revenue, and it is still difficult for them to become the company's second growth curve.
On the other hand, simply copying competitors' business formats can easily result in a 'neither fish nor fowl'. Many domestic retail players have been followers of Sam's Club, but imitation is easy, while replicating core capabilities is difficult, testing not only upstream supply capabilities but also logistics, warehousing, and front-end and marketing management capabilities.
Therefore, although snack giants are devising various strategies for a second growth curve, it is not as simple as imagined to use their own weaknesses to attack opponents' strengths.
Seeking their own paths: the industry enters a 'new match point'
However, different players' cross-border expansions, while not necessarily successful, may create new consumption scenarios and traffic entrances. As a result, the snack business model has changed, and seemingly small innovations may go all the way.
Now, old and new players in the snack track have reached a 'new match point'. In this life-and-death game, quality, price, and channels remain the core dimensions of competition. The key lies in how to develop 'new momentum' from past 'old capabilities' to adapt to new competition.
First, supply chain management based on category innovation. At present, most snack players have realized the importance of supply chain control, but how to innovate products on this basis and build a moat is more critical.
According to the '2025 China Leisure Snacks White Paper', consumers prefer snacks that are low-sugar, low-salt, low-fat, and high in dietary fiber. New Chinese style, health-oriented, and meal replacement have become new trends in snack consumption.
For example, Weilong began laying out konjac snacks in 2014 and preemptively arranged Indonesian konjac raw material processing. Now, it has become Weilong's second product with annual sales of 1 billion yuan; for the European and American markets, it developed honey mustard flavored spicy strips, and overseas revenue now accounts for 5% of total revenue.
Second, omni-channel integration and scenario innovation have become inevitable choices, and alliances and collaborations among snack brands will also become a new trend. For example, Three Squirrels has already entered bulk snack stores like Snack Busy and Zhao Yiming Snacks, and now its penetration rate in supermarkets, convenience stores, bulk stores, community stores, and other scenarios has exceeded 35%.
In addition, besides online-offline integration, snack brands are currently opening more stores in lower-tier cities than in higher-tier cities. Achieving dual-track progress in both lower-tier and high-end markets will also be a key direction for companies to tap into new growth. The channel transformation of snack brands is still ongoing.
Finally, the younger generation has become the core consumer force in the snack market. They seek emotional resonance, identity recognition, and spiritual satisfaction through consumption. Snack brands need to use scenario innovation and marketing innovation as handles, and build deep emotional connections with young people through brand stories to precisely meet their emotional value needs.
For example, traditional snack brands like Want Want and Hsu Fu Chi have tried to revitalize their brands by creating brand IPs and inviting spokespersons; in capturing hot trends, snack brands are even more diligent, including Weilong's 'Spicy Strip Festival' and Qiaqia's 'Sunflower Seed Cracking Contest'.
Over the past decades, competition in the snack industry has never ceased, but the current battle is completely different. Snack players need to engage in more dimensional competition, extending from product comparison to upstream and downstream efficiency, channels, and operations.
Whether it is the 'old kings' who have been deeply involved in the industry for years or the 'new kings' who broke through with innovative tracks, they all need to re-anchor their value positioning in the waves of the new era. Otherwise, as the wheels of industry iteration roll forward, they may inadvertently become the next to be eliminated in the reshuffle.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 伯虎团队
- Published: 2025-09-01
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-snack-track-changes-the-weather-an-infinite-war-begins-87067966/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fR1pupRM5vz1zLWjgimEzg

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