---
title: "Yonghui exits, Hema enters, setting up shop at Pangdonglai's doorstep in Xinxiang"
description: "In early April, the Yonghui supermarket on the first floor of Xinxiang Baolong Plaza officially closed, and Hema Fresh announced it would open its first Xinxiang store in the same location, expected to launch in June or July. This transition marks a shift in China's supermarket industry, with Hema entering a market where Pangdonglai has a strong presence, highlighting different strategies for competing in a mature market."
author: "汪海"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-04-11"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/28RrFNtbEkrImIz9huVedQ"
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citation: "汪海. “Yonghui exits, Hema enters, setting up shop at Pangdonglai's doorstep in Xinxiang.” New Distribution, 2026-04-11. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/yonghui-exits-hema-enters-setting-up-shop-at-pangdonglai-s-doorstep-in-x-2f791c44/"
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---

# Yonghui exits, Hema enters, setting up shop at Pangdonglai's doorstep in Xinxiang

> In early April, the Yonghui supermarket on the first floor of Xinxiang Baolong Plaza officially closed, and Hema Fresh announced it would open its first Xinxiang store in the same location, expected to launch in June or July. This transition marks a shift in China's supermarket industry, with Hema entering a market where Pangdonglai has a strong presence, highlighting different strategies for competing in a mature market.

# **Same location, three stories**
In early April, the Yonghui supermarket on the first floor of Xinxiang Baolong Plaza officially closed. Before the online buzz had faded, the official account of Baolong Plaza announced that Hema Fresh's first Xinxiang store would be located in the original Yonghui spot, on the same floor, in the same mall. It is expected to open in June or July.
Yonghui exits, Hema enters. After the news broke, many reacted by saying that this location had finally found a suitable successor.
But few noticed that this Yonghui store had an unfinished story. In May 2024, Pangdonglai founder Yu Donglai announced that they would assist and reform Yonghui supermarkets, with the Xinxiang Baolong Plaza store and the Zhengzhou Hanhai Beijin store selected as the first batch of pilot stores. At that time, this was seen as an important exploration for the transformation of traditional supermarkets—whether the Pangdonglai model could be replicated and whether it could save a batch of struggling traditional supermarkets. This Xinxiang Yonghui store carried a lot of industry expectations.
Original Yonghui supermarket at Baolong Plaza
Nearly two years later, the reform of the Baolong Plaza store was never completed as scheduled, and it ultimately closed.
**One reform unfinished, another takes over; at the same location, two generations of supermarkets completed a handover in quick succession.** And 2.5 kilometers away, Pangdonglai's Xinxiang Sanpang store began trial operations on December 23, 2025. Xinxiang now has three Pangdonglai stores: Dapang, Erpang, and Sanpang.
In just one year, Xinxiang has become a place where several major narratives of China's supermarket industry converge.
# **Why Hema chose Xinxiang**
To understand this move, one must first understand Hema's current expansion logic.
Over the past two years, Hema has undergone a deep strategic contraction. The era of multi-format operations ended; all Hema X membership stores were closed, and resources were concentrated on two core formats: Hema Fresh large stores and the NB hard discount community stores under Super Hema. The results of this focus quickly became apparent—by fiscal year 2025 (April 2024 to March 2025), Hema's GMV exceeded 75 billion yuan, achieving its first full-year adjusted EBITA profitability.
After becoming profitable, Hema immediately resumed expansion. Hema CEO Yan Xiaolei announced that within the fiscal year, nearly 100 new Hema Fresh stores would be opened, covering more than 50 new cities. The direction is clear: in 2025, 70% of new Hema Fresh stores will be in third- and fourth-tier cities and county-level markets. Xinxiang is a node in this expansion direction.
Xinxiang is the second-largest city in Henan, with a population that is not small for the central region. More importantly, over the past few years, Pangdonglai has deeply cultivated Xinxiang, objectively completing a round of quality consumption education for consumers—more people are willing to spend more for good products than before.
Judging from the cities Hema has entered, the consumption power in lower-tier markets is not weak: on the opening day of the first store in Dongying, Shandong, the bakery category set a single-day sales record, and the Puyang store's first-day sales exceeded one million yuan. The consumption potential of such cities has been repeatedly confirmed by Hema's expansion data.
Choosing Baolong Plaza has a more direct logic. The vacant space left by Yonghui's exit, the existing foot traffic and infrastructure of the commercial area, means Hema's cost of taking over is much lower than negotiating from scratch. Moreover, Baolong Plaza is a mid-to-high-end shopping center in Xinxiang, highly compatible with Hema Fresh's target customer base.
So, Hema's entry into Xinxiang is both a result of the overall down-market strategy and a window of opportunity at a specific location—Yonghui's retreat happened to free up a suitable spot.
# **How far is 2.5 kilometers?**
After Hema confirmed its entry into Xinxiang, the most discussed question was: 2.5 kilometers from Pangdonglai's Sanpang store, can Hema compete?
This question needs to be unpacked first: are Hema and Pangdonglai really competing for the same group of consumers?
On the surface, both are supermarkets, both sell fresh produce and food, and their customer bases in Xinxiang inevitably overlap significantly. But looking deeper, the core value each store provides to consumers is actually quite different.
At the product level, Hema's differentiation lies in "things you can't buy locally"—imported seafood, globally sourced products, and distinctive private-label items. Hema regards product strength as the core competitiveness of retail. On one hand, it focuses on quality upgrades to create differentiated products; on the other, it relies on a global supply chain, with 35% of global suppliers contributing 60% of sales.
Pangdonglai's product logic is different: carefully selected SKUs, strict quality control, and strong private labels, but it emphasizes local understanding of consumer needs and extreme integrity rather than the breadth of global products.
At the fulfillment level, the two are almost different species. Hema's core capability is online-offline integration: the store serves as a warehouse, with 30-minute delivery to home, and online orders account for a high proportion. Pangdonglai is purely offline, experience-heavy, and slow-service oriented. For consumers, going to Pangdonglai is itself the purpose, not just to buy things. These two models serve different consumption scenarios—"I want to eat king crab at home" versus "I take my family out for a stroll on the weekend"—with different triggers.
At the pricing level, this is a real challenge for Hema in lower-tier markets. Past cases show that Hema's high-end positioning has encountered difficulties in some second- and third-tier cities: the proportion of imported seafood is high, but local consumers' daily preferences may not match. Although Xinxiang's quality consumption awareness has improved due to Pangdonglai's years of cultivation, price sensitivity still exists. How Hema finds a balance between "high quality" and "down-to-earth" suitable for Xinxiang is a key variable for whether this store can stand firm.
Overall, the competition between Hema and Pangdonglai is more like "coexistence with differentiation" than a head-on clash. The physical distance of 2.5 kilometers may be much farther in consumption logic than it appears. The real pressure may not be about directly competing for customers, but rather: is Xinxiang's incremental consumption space large enough to support the survival of both retail logics simultaneously?
Final Thoughts
Yonghui exits, Hema enters. The change at this location is, to some extent, a microcosm of the structural changes in China's supermarket industry over the past few years: the era of extensive expansion has ended, and only players who can truly provide differentiated value are qualified to stay at the table.
It is worth noting that the Baolong Plaza Yonghui store, which was once included in Pangdonglai's first batch of reform list, ultimately failed to complete its transformation and exited. The successor, Hema, took a different path—not relying on reform support, but entering directly with its own model. The two approaches to dealing with stock competition completed a handover at the same place, which is somewhat meaningful.
Hema's decision to set up shop in Pangdonglai's home turf is itself a signal—in Hema's judgment, the Xinxiang market is worth entering, and Pangdonglai's presence is not an obstacle but rather proof of the city's consumption upgrade potential.
After the opening, the traffic trends, repurchase performance, online order ratio of Hema's first Xinxiang store, and the changes in Pangdonglai's customer flow in the surrounding business district are the data truly worth tracking.
What will happen within these 2.5 kilometers? There is no answer yet.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 汪海
- Published: 2026-04-11
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/yonghui-exits-hema-enters-setting-up-shop-at-pangdonglai-s-doorstep-in-x-2f791c44/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/28RrFNtbEkrImIz9huVedQ

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