Recently, I came across the "2026 China Community Fresh Food Industry Report" by Qince Consumer Research, which contains a set of data worth pondering repeatedly. From 2019 to 2024, among Chinese consumers' fresh food purchases by channel, the share of customer traffic in free markets rose from 40.9% to 42.2%, large retailers fell from 35.1% to 21.8%, small formats increased from 17.0% to 21.7%, and online shopping peaked at 14.84% in 2021 before falling back to 12.7%. The report also offers another broader judgment: in 2024, nearly 60% of fresh food retail occurred in community settings, and the competitive focus has shifted to immediacy, experience, and value within community living circles. In other words, what has truly been rewritten is not the demand for groceries, but the radius of grocery shopping. The most interesting aspect of this data is not the growth of community fresh food or the rise of instant retail, but a somewhat counterintuitive result: despite the ferocity of instant retail, traditional wet markets have not been crushed; instead, hypermarkets have declined first. The report's interpretation is also straightforward: large supermarkets are squeezed by the convenience of community stores and the price advantages of online platforms, while farmers' markets, after fluctuations, have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, relying on the return of sensory selection, flexible bargaining, and social attributes. On the surface, this is a channel shift; looking deeper, it's a change in retail logic. Over the past few decades, modern Chinese retail has been doing one thing: transforming wet markets into supermarkets, converting fragmentation into standardization, and replacing the hustle and bustle with a sense of order. So during that period, retail sold brightness, cleanliness, uniformity, and replicability. Later, e-commerce and instant retail rose, selling speed, cheapness, and delivery to home. Now, in the third stage, offline retail suddenly realizes that speed can be provided online, and cheapness may not be its forte; what truly remains in offline's hands is the sense of life itself. So today, many supermarkets appear to be selling groceries, but in reality, they are selling the aroma of cooking, the buzz of crowds, the certainty of hand-picking and eye-checking, and the life interface of a family kitchen pre-assembled. Why Wet Markets Haven't Died Fresh food has never been an industry that can be conquered by efficiency alone. The reason wet markets remain vital is not just because they are cheap, but because they continuously create a "freshness" through smells, sounds, appearance, vendor interaction, and the immediate relationship between people and ingredients. This advantage can be summarized in three words: sensory, atmosphere, and trust. In other words, the "freshness" consumers feel is not just about cold chains and parameters, but a result co-confirmed on the spot. A 2026 research article goes further, directly defining wet markets as a social infrastructure. They are not just food transaction points, but also part of community life, social interaction, cultural continuity, and fair access. They are not simply substitutes for supermarkets and e-commerce, but coexist long-term in Chinese cities. This explains why wet markets' share hasn't plummeted. Because when consumers buy fresh food, they are often not just completing a purchase task, but confirming something: whether today's meal is reliable, and whether today's life is settled. What wet markets provide is not just goods, but a certainty of life. China News Service, when discussing the transformation of farmers' markets, also mentioned that compared to online, the core advantage of farmers' markets lies in being tangible, having unique social attributes and experiential value, and providing a sense of satisfaction. Why It's Not the Wet Market That Falls First, But the Hypermarket Wet markets have the hustle and bustle, instant retail has speed, and community stores have proximity. Hypermarkets are stuck in the middle. The original advantages of hypermarkets were scale and modernity, but today both have been dismantled. The scale advantage is eroded by more flexible small formats and stronger supply chain systems, and modernity is no longer scarce. Consumers are no longer short of neat shelves, cold white lighting, standard displays, or wide aisles. They are starting to care again about whether a place feels like real life. So today's offline retail upgrade is no longer about making wet markets more like shopping malls, but the reverse: making malls more like wet markets. Note, this is not a regression, not a return to dirt and disorder, nor an aesthetic downgrade. Rather, hypermarkets are learning the most powerful thing about wet markets: making customers feel that life is happening here. This is why more and more retail spaces are no longer emphasizing cold sophistication, but warmth, familiarity, and liveliness. Research on retail design also finds that visually "warmer" store designs are more likely to evoke intimacy and increase consumers' approach intention. Offline commercial spaces are not neutral; they speak for themselves. The Hottest New Retail Examples Today Are Essentially Doing the Same Thing On the surface, formats like Nongfu Mr. Liu, Huayu Baijia, Happy Farm, and Tao Xiaopang are all different. But at the core, they are converging in the same direction: re-choreographing real life and selling it to customers.

  1. Nongfu Mr. Liu sells not scenery, but a "lively" grocery shopping experience A report by Zhengzhou Zhengguan News is typical. Nongfu Mr. Liu is called a "wet market hidden in a supermarket." Instead of the neat but cold shelves of traditional supermarkets, it combines landscape scenery, small bridges and flowing water, greenery, and shopping paths. It entered Zhengzhou in 2023 and had opened 15 branches by the time of the report. What's more critical is not the scenery, but the operational actions. Public reports show it does transparent visible processing: live seafood slaughter, on-site meat cutting, and freshly made pastries; on the sales floor, it reduces packaging constraints on fresh produce, strengthens free selection and real-time restocking, keeping displays full and fresh. Putting this together makes it clear. It's not just decoration, nor just service, but constructing a feeling: When customers walk in, they are not entering a store, but a scene where "tonight's dinner is already in sight."
  2. Happy Farm is not imitating Sam's Club; it's turning the hypermarket back into a "Northeast morning market" Happy Farm is even more typical. It started as a community fresh food store, attracting customers with low-priced vegetables, with a strong Northeast agricultural market style. Later, it took over a former Carrefour large store space and began operating a localized membership store. Related reports mention that after studying Sam's Club, its founding team felt Sam's standard products were too "foreign," so they focused on bakery and deli items, localizing the membership store. The on-site feeling is bustling crowds, strong rustic charm, lots of samples, and special product combinations. It is not imitating a modern store template, but using the hypermarket space to accommodate the liveliness of a wet market, the aroma of dining, the needs of a family kitchen, and local tastes. Essentially, it is transforming the hypermarket from a "purchasing space" into a "life stage."
  3. Huayu Baijia appears to be doing rustic charm on the surface, but at its core, it's doing industrial capability Huayu Baijia is another important example. According to its official website, in 2023 it built a modern warehousing and distribution center and central kitchen, relying on its own supply chain to achieve full-process control from source procurement, processing, to cold-chain distribution; it currently has 23 directly-operated stores. Its central kitchen page also clearly states that it has its own refrigerated fleet for full cold-chain transport, and emphasizes same-day sell-out of food, prohibiting overnight sales. This shows that the "rustic charm" that truly succeeds is never purely emotional or an empty atmosphere word. Behind it are warehousing and distribution, cold chains, central kitchens, same-day sell-out, and a recombination of standardized production and end-experience. A report reposted by the Ministry of Commerce also mentioned that Huayu Baijia's IP flagship store in Zhengzhou, which focuses on a "shopping + social" composite scene, attracted 17,100 visitors on its opening day, with sales exceeding 1.98 million yuan. This outlines the most important line in today's Chinese retail: selling rustic charm on the surface, but competing on supply chain at the core. So, the so-called "authenticity" is actually a designed capability Many people, seeing the popularity of these stores, say consumers like rustic charm, authenticity, and being down-to-earth. That's not wrong, but it's not enough. A more accurate statement is that consumers like not raw chaos, but designed authenticity. This "authenticity" is not fake, but it is definitely not naturally occurring. It is choreographed. Fresh cuts, bulk displays, on-site tastings, deli counters, open kitchens, local snacks, handwritten price tags, lively traffic flows, local accents, frequent restocking, same-day sell-out, see-and-pick, family kitchen scenes, a mix of familiar brands and local products... These elements together create a sense of authenticity that makes customers feel there are real people, daily life, and smoke and fire here. It is not accidental; it is a complete retail script. In other words, today's offline retail is doing something very interesting: turning real life into a product. Previously, they sold goods; later, efficiency; now, the sense of life. What This Means for Brand Owners and Distributors This is not just a store renovation issue, but a shift in channel power. Whoever gets closer to the family kitchen gets closer to the user. This also means that in the future, brands entering channels cannot just think about shelf placement, display fees, and promotional events. Many products will no longer compete solely on brand fame, but on whether they can enter the family kitchen scene, integrate into the fresh-made sales chain, and become part of life interfaces like deli, bakery, hotpot, breakfast, bento, and late-night snacks. Hema, Yonghui, Pangdonglai, Qixian, and others are all laying out dine-in and hotpot scenarios, reflecting the trend of supermarket dining and community kitchenization. The same applies to distributors. In the future, what is truly valuable is not simply moving goods, but participating in short-chain supply, instant replenishment, scenario-based combinations, localized product selection, deli processing collaboration, and community fulfillment services. If you stay at the stage of just delivering goods to the store, you will become increasingly marginalized. Because new channels don't want movers; they want people who jointly complete the life interface. Final Thoughts So, what this article really wants to say is not that consumers have suddenly fallen in love with wet markets. But that when speed was taken away by instant retail, offline retail began to re-contest for life itself. What wet markets have preserved is not just an old format, but a capability that is hardest to replace: making people feel that food is alive, today is warm, and life has a place to land. The new retail examples that are succeeding today are essentially learning this lesson. Not going back to the past. But using stronger supply chains, finer operations, and more precise scenario design to repackage, re-display, and re-sell "real life." This is the most interesting change in Chinese retail today: hypermarkets are no longer just selling goods; they are beginning to commodify "real life" again.