---
title: "Why Are Snack Busy and Its Peers So Eager to Dump Bestore?"
description: "Snack Busy has been very busy this year. In February, Bestore announced a joint investment in Zhao Yiming Snacks with Black Ant Capital, with Bestore investing 45 million yuan for a 3% stake. By October, Bestore sold that 3% stake for 105 million yuan, citing operational needs. Shortly after, Zhao Yiming merged with Snack Busy, making Snack Busy the largest player in the bulk snack industry. In December, Snack Busy accepted investments from Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu, valuing it at 10.5 billion yuan, but Bestore, feeling sidelined, filed a lawsuit against Zhao Yiming for concealing major matters. This article analyzes why Snack Busy Group is so eager to replace Bestore with Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu, citing business model conflicts, supply chain advantages, and the need for capital in a fiercely competitive market."
author: "薛向"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2024-01-17"
language: "en"
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# Why Are Snack Busy and Its Peers So Eager to Dump Bestore?

> Snack Busy has been very busy this year. In February, Bestore announced a joint investment in Zhao Yiming Snacks with Black Ant Capital, with Bestore investing 45 million yuan for a 3% stake. By October, Bestore sold that 3% stake for 105 million yuan, citing operational needs. Shortly after, Zhao Yiming merged with Snack Busy, making Snack Busy the largest player in the bulk snack industry. In December, Snack Busy accepted investments from Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu, valuing it at 10.5 billion yuan, but Bestore, feeling sidelined, filed a lawsuit against Zhao Yiming for concealing major matters. This article analyzes why Snack Busy Group is so eager to replace Bestore with Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu, citing business model conflicts, supply chain advantages, and the need for capital in a fiercely competitive market.

Snack Busy has been very busy this year.
In February, Bestore announced a joint investment in Zhao Yiming Snacks with well-known investment firm Black Ant Capital, with Bestore investing 45 million yuan for a 3% stake. But by October, Bestore announced it would sell its 3% stake in Zhao Yiming Snacks to two institutions for 105 million yuan. The reason for the sale was based on the company's own operational development needs, and after friendly negotiations among all parties, this transaction was beneficial for the company to improve asset operational efficiency. Less than a month after Bestore exited, Zhao Yiming quickly "got married." On November 10, Zhao Yiming and Snack Busy issued a merger announcement. Snack Busy became a shareholder of Zhao Yiming with an 87.76% stake. The merged Zhao Yiming and Snack Busy instantly became the largest enterprise in the bulk snack industry. As of November 2023, the two companies had a combined total of over 6,500 stores nationwide, becoming the leading brand in the snack industry. On December 18, Snack Busy held a strategic cooperation investment agreement signing ceremony in Changsha, Hunan. At the ceremony, Snack Busy not only accepted a 700 million yuan investment from Haoxiangni but also a 350 million yuan investment from Yanjin Puzhu Holdings, totaling 1.05 billion yuan. After these investments, Snack Busy's valuation reached 10.5 billion yuan. However, this series of moves greatly dissatisfied former shareholder Bestore. On December 6, leading snack brand Bestore publicly stated that it had filed a lawsuit against Zhao Yiming, the leading bulk snack enterprise. Bestore believed that Zhao Yiming deliberately concealed major company matters during the cooperation period, infringing on minority shareholders' right to know. On December 19, the day after Snack Busy announced accepting strategic investments from Yanjin Puzhu and Haoxiangni, Bestore responded again, saying that the investment amount of over 1.05 billion yuan was "unbelievable" given the normal procedures for such matters, and that it would persist in litigation to protect its rights. **Clearly, this is a planned action to expel Bestore. So why is Snack Busy Group so eager to dump Bestore and turn to Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu?** In the view of Yilan Business, this is likely related to Bestore's existing business model, financial capacity, and limited help to Snack Busy's supply side. First, from a model perspective, Bestore started with offline stores, and offline business still accounts for half of Bestore's revenue. Snack Busy Group also started with stores, and its main business is also opening stores. **Although the two brands have different positioning, peers are competitors.** Having a competitor as a shareholder is not a good thing for either the newly formed Snack Busy Group or the former Zhao Yiming Snacks. How can future competition be avoided? **Second, from a supply chain resource perspective, Yanjin Puzhu and Haoxiangni can provide more support to the new Snack Busy Group.** Haoxiangni, founded in 1992, is a national key leading enterprise in agricultural industrialization, mainly engaged in the R&D, procurement, production, and sales of healthy foods such as red dates, freeze-dried products, nuts, and dried fruits. Yanjin Puzhu is also a veteran player in the leisure snack industry, with a product matrix including spicy braised snacks, leisure baked goods, deep-sea snacks, potato snacks, konjac jelly, dried fruit nuts, and egg snacks, with main sales channels in supermarkets and online. One is a national agricultural leading enterprise with obvious raw material advantages. The other is a ready-made, pure leisure snack brand. **More importantly, they do not directly open stores, so they do not directly compete with Snack Busy, but can complement each other in the supply chain.** Finally, since this year, the expansion of snack store scale has become white-hot. In July, Snack Busy's store count exceeded 2,000; in October, Snack Busy announced that its store count exceeded 4,000, becoming the first bulk snack brand in the industry to break 4,000 stores, while Ai Snacks' store count has reached over 3,900, about to break 4,000. The national bulk snack store scale has approached 20,000, compared to just over 10,000 last year. Financial commentator Xie Xiaowen told Yilan Business: As consumer demands continue to change, requirements for brands and products are also increasing. In addition, the overall downward pressure on the retail industry and rising operating costs have made it impossible for some brands to bear the pressure, leading them to close or be acquired. If large-scale store expansion is to be maintained, substantial capital support is needed; otherwise, the fate is to be integrated or exit the market. **From a capital perspective, Haoxiangni's 700 million yuan investment plus Yanjin Puzhu Holdings' 350 million yuan investment totals 1.05 billion yuan. For Snack Busy Group, which is in the fiercely competitive bulk snack track, this is like rain in a drought. With this money, they can continue to maintain a leading advantage in the industry and seize opportunities to integrate competing brands.** Moreover, Bestore originally held only 3% in Zhao Yiming, so its voice was not very strong, and after the merger, its stake became even smaller. But if Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu are to be introduced, it is necessary to kick Bestore out; otherwise, Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu would not agree. **From Zhao Yiming's perspective, it was just a share resale with no cost incurred. After all, Bestore made money—doubling in half a year. What a good deal, why not?** It's just that Zhao Yiming didn't expect Bestore to be so tough. It is worth noting that Haoxiangni and Yanjin Puzhu also attach great importance to this investment. According to financial reports, as of September 30, Haoxiangni's ending cash and cash equivalents balance was 535 million yuan, while Yanjin Puzhu's was 272.2 million yuan. **These amounts are far less than the 700 million and 350 million they plan to invest in Snack Busy Group, meaning they are betting their future cash or even borrowing to invest in Snack Busy, showing how much they value it.** All this also illustrates two points: on one hand, the importance of channels in the snack track—if you have the largest channel, brands are willing to bet on your future; on the other hand, the snack track has reached a turning point, and if you don't become a leader, you may face integration or elimination.
After all, to invest in the leader and obtain development funds, several well-known big companies in the industry are willing to offend minority shareholders to make this happen—that is strong evidence.


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