“This year, our system's procurement almost stopped sourcing white-label beverages,” said Mr. Wu, a purchasing manager at a central China snack bulk retail chain, to Pinyinhui. “In a generally cold market, white-label products sell even worse.” The “white-label” beverages Mr. Wu refers to are small and medium brands that sit between well-known big brands and “three-no” products (no production license, no factory name, no address). White-label foods typically fall into popular categories but are usually cheaper than big brands, embodying what is popularly called “extreme cost-performance.” In fact, when we walk into any snack bulk store, we often see a leisure food section composed of hundreds of brands, with bread, snacks, candies, and other leisure foods in dazzling array. In contrast, the beverage section often presents a completely different scene: neatly arranged bottled drinks are dominated by best-selling products from well-known brands like Coca-Cola, Nongfu Spring, and Uni-President, while white-label beverages are increasingly scarce. Image source: Xiaohongshu user @小红薯6748BC66 Meanwhile, in traditional channels (circulation, supermarkets), white-label products have never been the main battlefield; in the retail era of “hard discount,” the fate of most white-label products is often to become one of the channel brands... So, do white-label beverages still have a future? Different ecosystems: white-label beverages struggle to harvest channel dividends In recent years, the rise of snack bulk channels has been regarded as a “gospel” for white-label products, a high-potential channel with traffic. Snack bulk stores are mostly characterized by cash direct procurement and cutting out intermediate links, theoretically helping white-label products break through. For example, Snack Busy (零食很忙) sees 50% of its “shoulder-waist products” (mostly white-label) contributing 30%-35% of core gross profit, and white-label products account for 73% of sales at Snack Youming (零食有鸣). But now, why has the same logic failed in the beverage track? First, although beverages and snacks are both FMCG, their industry ecosystems are completely different, leading to different “treatment” in snack bulk stores. In terms of market concentration, the beverage market is highly fortified. A report from Industrial Securities Economic and Financial Research Institute shows that the two giants in the carbonated beverage industry (Coca-Cola and Pepsi) hold a combined market share of over 90%, while the CR3 for tea beverages and energy drinks is 57% and 46.5%, respectively. Image source: Xiaohongshu user @云南太古可口可乐 According to data from Guanyan Tianxia, the CR3 of China's bakery food industry is only about 10% in recent years; in the nuts and roasted seeds industry, in 2022, Qiaqia, Three Squirrels, Wolong, and Bestore held market shares of 9.9%, 8.7%, 7.3%, and 6.0%, respectively... Clearly, in the leisure food market, which is large enough and fragmented enough, there are more opportunities for white-label products to rise. But in categories long dominated by giants like Coca-Cola, Nongfu Spring, and Master Kong, so-called “affordable alternatives” find it hard to gain a foothold. Second, lower-tier markets were once seen as a haven for white-label beverages. But when the battlefield shifts to national snack bulk channels, the shortcomings of white-label beverages are fully exposed. A 2023 McKinsey report points out that consumers' functional needs for beverages (thirst-quenching, refreshing) outweigh price sensitivity, and brand becomes a symbol of quality assurance. Classic tastes like Coke, the refreshing taste of Master Kong Iced Black Tea, and the tea aroma of Eastern Leaf are hard-to-replicate taste memories. The “affordable alternative” logic in snacks fails here—consumers find it easy to find the same twist on social platforms from Three Squirrels' OEM factory, but hard to find a cola imitation with the same taste. Third, beverages, as very mature standardized products, are not naturally well-suited to snack bulk channels. As is well known, a major selling point of many snack bulk stores is the “bulk mode”—consumers bag and weigh mixed items themselves, and brand identity is contextually downplayed. When colorful candies and snacks pile up on shelves with price tags only showing “28.8 yuan/jin,” white-label products can leverage low prices and category richness to turn the tables. However, beverages require individual packaging and immediate consumption, naturally fitting the standardized product logic and unable to integrate into the bulk system. Image source: Xiaohongshu user @小胡学陈列 Additionally, differences in consumer psychology are equally critical. The moment a consumer twists open a bottle cap, sensitivity to safety peaks. “When thirsty, I'm more daring to drink a brand I know,” is the simple logic of most consumers. “When Nongfu Spring is only 0.5 yuan more expensive, most people choose the familiar brand,” admitted a store manager of a snack bulk store in Chengdu. After all, when consumers raise a beverage bottle, they are buying not just thirst-quenching liquid but a combination of safety, identity, and taste memory. Therefore, as channel scale effects strengthen, snack stores have gradually increased procurement of well-known brands to cater to consumption habits. The author learned that starting in 2023, branded snack stores have deliberately removed some small supplier enterprises and replaced them with manufacturers with a certain level of fame, because even consumers in lower-tier markets are “increasingly concerned about brand awareness.” At the same time, snack brands including Three Squirrels have begun cross-industry moves to launch beverage products emphasizing cost-performance, squeezing the living space of some white-label beverages. In April this year, Three Squirrels entered the market with 60 beverage new products covering juice, tea beer, functional milk drinks, etc., and adopted hard discount price strategies like “9.9 yuan/L” for tea beer and “6.9 yuan/4 bottles” for AD calcium milk, attempting to replicate its “high-end cost-performance” strategy from the snack market to the beverage market, restructuring the beverage industry's value chain. It is understood that this strategy has already shown initial results. Three Squirrels' calcium-iron-zinc AD calcium milk sold 2 million bottles in the first month, and the first-day orders for nut eight-treasure porridge exceeded one million, with distributor profit per item 3-5 yuan higher than traditional brands. For traditional white-label products, the snack giant Three Squirrels' downward strategy with “high-end cost-performance” is a “dimensional reduction strike.” Image source: Xiaohongshu user @三只松鼠国民零食【高密中骏世界店】 More critically, the profit model of white-label beverages conflicts with snack bulk stores. A research report from Huachuang Securities shows: snack bulk stores use 25% of big-brand standard products for traffic attraction, with common beverage areas featuring 9.9 yuan Nescafe coffee and 2 yuan cola, with gross margins of only about 5%; the profit engine is white-label snacks, whose 30%-35% gross margin supports half of the store's profits. White-label beverages fall into an awkward position—they lack the traffic-attracting ability of big brands and, due to cost constraints, find it hard to offer concessions. “In snack bulk channels, beverages mostly belong to low-price standard products, seen as price anchors to attract consumers,” Mr. Wu believes. “White-label beverages lack the traffic-attracting ability of branded products; once sales are poor, they need subsidies to clear inventory.” Ultimately, when channels find that white-label beverages can neither attract traffic nor generate profit, the motivation to promote them weakens, and gradually eliminating them is not surprising. Seeking possibilities for breakthrough But in the view of Wen Zhibing, co-founder of Pinyinhui, the “ebb” of white-label beverages is superficially a market adjustment due to channel changes, but in essence, it reflects the pain of category evolution. Analyst Ma Zheng from Cinda Securities analyzed: “The 'white-label dividend' comes from the regionalization of brands, long-term consumer rationality, and the rise of channel efficiency.” Therefore, the horn for white-label beverage transformation has long sounded. On Douyin live streams, local fruit and vegetable juice and plant beverage companies like Guangxi's sugarcane juice build trust with C-end consumers through live orchard scenes; on Snack Busy's regional exclusive supply shelves, Jiangxi kudzu root juice uses customized packaging to break regional limits; some OEM factories have transformed into channel service providers, developing private-label beverages for chain systems... The “change” in white-label beverage trends reflects the competitive logic of FMCG in the new consumption cycle: the era of relying solely on low prices and channel dividends has ended. When channel dividends fade, products without brand premium or core competitiveness will eventually be squeezed off the shelves. But branding is a game for a few winners. In the red ocean, low-threshold competition may be the norm for white-label products. As commercial profits shift from brand owners to channels, white-label products become highly dependent on platforms and supply chains. Any supply chain issue or platform policy change directly affects sales, competitiveness, and sustainable development. On the other hand, the white-label beverages we currently see are mostly active in regions with relatively low market concentration, such as “little green lime juice, corn juice,” but these products are not enough to support their transformation from white-label to brand. Meanwhile, beverages have certain barriers in aseptic filling, logistics, and distribution channels, so the cost of transforming white-label beverages into brands increases significantly, and many white-label products lack such capability. Image source: Xiaohongshu user @汪汪队团宠 Therefore, in Mr. Wu's view, the sustainable development of white-label beverages requires finding new growth paths. “For example, some high-quality white-label manufacturers can attempt branding; platforms like Douyin, Kuaishou, and Pinduoduo also provide low-cost brand exposure opportunities for white-label products. Manufacturers can leverage e-commerce and social e-commerce to build new consumer awareness.” The future of white-label products still holds much imagination. Sister Xi, co-founder of Pinyinhui, believes, “In the future, with supply chain optimization and improved consumer awareness, the white-label economy will continue to grow. For entrepreneurs and investors, seizing the white-label opportunity also means seizing part of the future of lower-tier markets.” For enterprises, “abandoning the mindset of quick money and doing difficult but correct things” will be key to breaking through the volume war. In an era of stock competition, only brands that deeply integrate product innovation, supply chain efficiency, and channel penetration can survive cycles and continue to run fast. After all, when terminal stores closest to consumers increasingly resemble brand arenas, white-label beverages must either survive in the low-price vortex or tear off the “white-label” label to reconstruct value—only by penetrating scenarios with product strength, building trust through exclusive channels, creating irreplaceability with regional characteristics, and dispelling safety anxiety through transparent supply chains is the inevitable path for white-label evolution.