Source | Retail Business Finance ID | Retail-Finance Author | RBF Content Team
The core logic of Zhongbai's hard discount stores is to "do subtraction" in the supply chain (streamline SKUs, connect directly with sources) and "do multiplication" in operations (community penetration, private labels), thereby securing the "vegetable basket" of community residents.
Recently, 51 hard discount stores under Zhongbai Supermarket opened simultaneously, covering 12 administrative districts in Wuhan and core areas of Huangshi. Such a dense move into a new track is rare in the hard discount debut of regional retail enterprises.
Interestingly, all these newly opened stores were converted from existing Zhongbai Supermarket outlets. The storefront photos show the four characters "硬折扣店" (Hard Discount Store) added, and the promotional stickers below the sign were fixed with tape, reflecting their determination to transform and pursuit of extreme efficiency.
From an industry perspective, since 2024, the discount store format has continued to be a high-growth area in retail, attracting players across the chain to form a multi-dimensional competitive landscape. The author observes that a common trait among entrants is a relatively deep accumulation in supply chain capabilities.
Currently, the "full-domain melee" in the hard discount track is intensifying: JD.com's discount supermarket opened its sixth national store in Gu'an, Hebei, and saw strong sales again before the Mid-Autumn Festival; Meituan's "Happy Monkey" discount stores are accelerating penetration into Yangtze River Delta communities; Alibaba's Hema's "Super Box NB" continues to expand, stirring the community retail landscape; Wumart's "Wumart Value" is rooted in Beijing's core urban areas; Aldi has expanded beyond Shanghai, setting sales records in Suzhou and Wuxi... The hard discount format, once limited to regional pilots, has fully upgraded into a battlefield where head brands and regional players clash.
As a leading local retailer in Hubei, Zhongbai's concentrated opening of 51 hard discount stores at this time is a necessary move to follow industry trends, but it is also a strategic choice to actively seek differentiated competition. Its advantages are clear: decades of deep cultivation in the Hubei market, a solid supply chain foundation, and an understanding of local consumer needs that is "engraved in the bones"; however, its disadvantages cannot be ignored. Facing internet players who leverage capital and technology to build national supply chains and digital operations, Zhongbai still has a significant gap in scale effects and operational refinement.
Ultimately, whether Zhongbai can succeed in "hard discount" will come down to the logic of "price-performance ratio," testing whether its supply chain is solid enough, operations efficient enough, understanding of what Hubei locals truly need is deep enough, and whether it can ultimately deliver the product advantage of "good quality, truly low prices."
"Minimalism" in Community Scenarios Finding a Survival Niche in "Price-Performance Ratio"
When the author visited Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Store (Poly Times store) at 10 a.m. on the 26th, it was found that besides the four characters "硬折扣店" added to the store sign, the most intuitive change compared to previous Zhongbai Supermarkets was the reduction in product assortment, focusing on the core needs of community residents for "three meals a day + daily consumption," emphasizing "minimalism" in community scenarios.
Image: Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Store
Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Stores mainly cover daily necessities such as vegetables and fruits, meat, eggs, aquatic products, grains, oils, instant foods, bakery, dairy, cold drinks, household cleaning, etc. With "high-frequency repurchase + high cost-performance" as the core, the total SKU count is compressed to 800-1200, only one-third of a traditional supermarket. They mainly retain core single products from first-tier brands and distinctive personalized items, significantly reducing non-core SKUs in categories like condiments and personal care, while adding frozen seafood, chicken by-products, and private label fresh juice.
Image: Vegetable and fruit area
Among these, the fresh produce area occupies nearly 30% of the store's display space, with over 30 types of leafy and root vegetables on shelves daily. Pre-packaged fresh produce replaces traditional "bulk vegetables," eliminating the need for in-store sorting and packaging.
Image: Fresh produce area
For fruit products, the focus is on seasonal and limited-time items, with fruit guide signs and fruit knowledge cards, somewhat reminiscent of "Pangdonglai-style" adjustments.
Image: Fruit products
The bakery area follows the principle of "baked fresh daily, cleared same day," with discounts on unsold bread and cakes after 5 p.m. The "daily clear" items extend to cooked food, such as Orleans roasted chicken originally priced at 16.8 yuan, reduced to 8.4 yuan after 7 p.m. The store also sells popular items like Swiss roll cake (original + chocolate flavor) at 12.9 yuan per box (4 slices) and fresh milk toast at 6.9 yuan per pack (210g).
Image: Bakery area
Private labels are the core lever for Zhongbai to build price advantages, with over 300 SKUs, accounting for more than 30% of the overall product structure, mainly in low-temperature beverages, snacks, personal care, and household cleaning products, forming a dual-brand matrix of "Zhongbai Supermarket Select" and "Baiyusen."
"Zhongbai Supermarket Select" focuses on high-frequency necessities like grains, oils, rice, noodles, and snacks. For example, a 5kg bag of "Zhongbai Select Soft Aromatic Rice" is priced at 21.8 yuan, lower than competitors of the same quality.
Image: Zhongbai Select Soft Aromatic Rice
"Baiyusen" emphasizes health and regional characteristics. In collaboration with local Hubei farmers, it offers "Baiyusen Antibiotic-Free Fresh Eggs" at 15.9 yuan for 30 eggs. By partnering with local time-honored workshops, it also lists non-heritage craft tofu and dried tofu products, creating differentiation through quality traceability.
The author observed that some "Baiyusen" products use a large-brand OEM model. For instance, two types of toilet paper rolls priced at 19.9 yuan and 24.9 yuan per pack are actually produced by C&S (Hubei) Paper Co., Ltd. The packaging also notes: The "Baiyusen" trademark is authorized by the applicant company "Wuhan Zhongbai Convenience Store Co., Ltd."
Image: "Baiyusen" toilet paper
Qichacha shows that Wuhan Zhongbai Convenience Store Co., Ltd. began registering the "Baiyusen" trademark in June 2023, with intensive applications this July.
Image source: Qichacha
It is worth noting that Zhongbai Lawson is affiliated with Wuhan Zhongbai Convenience Store Co., Ltd.
Image source: Tianyancha
Therefore, we can see multiple "Zhongbai Lawson" products in Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Stores, such as Zhongbai Lawson coconut water beverage 350ml at 16.9 yuan for 4 bottles, and Zhongbai Lawson wide-width cotton soft toothbrush at 5.9 yuan each.
Image: Zhongbai Lawson products
The implementation of product strategy relies on operational efficiency. Zhongbai's store scene creation and product display fully reflect the "hard discount" orientation.
For example, stores use black plastic baskets combined with open shelves (such as cut-case displays) to reduce decorative investment and pass cost savings to prices. They also reinforce price perception through hanging slogans like "Province-priced low prices, nearly 500 products up to 9.9 yuan," "First-tier brands, great value low prices," and "Spend less, buy more."
In display techniques, private labels are placed adjacent to first-tier brands. For instance, a 5L bottle of "Baiyusen" rapeseed oil at 59.9 yuan sits next to a similar product from Lu Hua at 89.9 yuan, creating a direct price comparison.
Image: Rapeseed oil comparison
Another example: "Baiyusen" braised beef noodles (OEM by Jinmailang) at 10.8 yuan for a 7-pack is displayed next to Haidilao's spicy beef self-cooking hot pot at 27.9 yuan per box, directly targeting price-sensitive consumers.
Image: "Baiyusen" braised beef noodles
To address instant consumption trends, the store builds an integrated "offline experience + online delivery" system. Offline, it sets up a "free ice for customers" area and a "dedicated takeout order storage area" to enhance the in-store experience; online, it relies on the "Baobao Life" mini-program to provide 30-minute instant delivery within a 3-kilometer radius.
Image: Store promotion and takeout order storage area
Unlike JD.com's discount supermarket model of "one-stop full categories" (over 5,000 SKUs), Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Stores focus more on community "essential immediacy," with a higher proportion of fresh produce and denser localization of products, thereby occupying the "community livelihood base" position in the "quality-price" quadrant. This strategy sacrifices some full-category coverage but strengthens user stickiness through high-frequency repurchase.
Supply Chain Strength and Operational Efficiency The Transformation Card of Traditional Retail
"There is a kind of hard discount store where products are scattered and messy, which is the chaos after being snapped up by consumers; but there is also a kind of hard discount store where products are neatly arranged, yet no one visits." This observation from industry insiders points directly to the core challenge of the hard discount format: after streamlining SKUs, the store's "browsability" decreases. Whether it can rely on precise product matching to meet neighborhood needs directly tests the enterprise's product selection ability and supply chain strength.
Image: Beverage area
From details, it is not difficult to see that Zhongbai's simultaneous opening of 51 discount stores appears somewhat rushed. For example, some storefront promotional banners are still temporarily affixed with tape.
Despite the eagerness to change, Zhongbai maintains a relatively pragmatic business style. In-store staff are noticeably more enthusiastic, proactively recommending "low-price" products to consumers and actively promoting the store's mini-program and opening gifts, attempting to compensate for the hasty details through service and narrow the distance with customers.
The confidence supporting Zhongbai's bold layout in the hard discount track stems from its decades of supply chain accumulation in the Hubei market.
It is reported that Zhongbai's hard discount stores separate operational rights from purchasing rights, meaning all product selection and procurement are uniformly handled by the company's headquarters, and stores receive standard goods uniformly distributed by the central logistics and cold chain systems.
Image: Frozen food
On the procurement side, Zhongbai Group continuously strengthens fresh produce source procurement, promotes the "company + base + farmer" win-win model, and continuously enhances the scope and capability of fresh produce source procurement through direct sourcing from origins, listed base direct procurement, and targeted order planting, actively promoting the integrated development and upgrading of the agricultural industry.
Taking "Baiyusen Antibiotic-Free Fresh Eggs" as an example, Zhongbai deeply binds with local large-scale egg enterprises to achieve efficient full-chain reach from "breeding to sorting to distribution," ensuring maximum freshness and compressing procurement costs to the minimum.
Image: Baiyusen Antibiotic-Free Fresh Eggs
From an industry perspective, the core competitive barriers in the hard discount track always focus on "supply chain efficiency," "operational efficiency," and "price advantage."
Therefore, Zhongbai's strategy is "optimized layout + localized products":
On one hand, it concentrates hard discount stores in communities in core Hubei cities, shortening distribution radius and reducing logistics costs;
On the other hand, by exploring local specialty products (such as Honghu lotus root and Wuhan hot dry noodle pre-made packages), it forms differentiated supply that other competitors find hard to replicate.
This "down-to-earth" localization capability is precisely the survival code for the hard discount format in China.
Image: Checkout area
In fact, Zhongbai's concentrated launch of hard discount stores this time is not an isolated format experiment but a continuous deepening of its retail transformation in recent years.
As early as May 2024, Zhongbai Group announced it would officially benchmark against "Pangdonglai" to promote "Pangdonglai-style reform": for large formats like Zhongbai Warehouse and hypermarkets, it focuses on systematic learning in corporate culture, business philosophy, product display, layout, and marketing strategies; for small formats like community supermarkets, it draws on convenience store operational experience to optimize services around the "15-minute community convenience life circle"; and for main community stores like Zhongbai Community Supermarkets, it promotes upgrades to a "hybrid" format, adding fresh food categories and convenience services to better meet community needs.
Image: First store of Zhongbai Warehouse reform
In a recent media interview, Zhongbai Group Chairman Wang Meifang further clarified the mid-to-long-term transformation plan: in the next 2-3 years, the company will focus on closing loss-making stores to "reduce burden," promote small format expansion, advance the "thousand stores, thousand faces" transformation, and use digital empowerment to tackle the 2027 profit target, while deepening community convenience services to become a professional neighborhood life service provider.
When discussing format innovation, he also revealed that both core formats, Zhongbai Warehouse and Zhongbai Supermarket, are currently developing discount store tracks. The group deliberately adopts a "horse race mechanism," allowing both formats to pilot based on their respective supply chains without preset fixed models, letting the market test to select the optimal path.
From this inference, the concentrated appearance of Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Stores and the "Xiaobaihui Discount Store" launched by Zhongbai Warehouse are innovative results under this mechanism.
If Zhongbai's previous transformation was still in the "multi-format trial and error" stage (having tried membership stores, premium supermarkets, etc.), then the concentrated landing of hard discount stores marks its official shift to a new strategic stage of "focusing on efficient formats."
Image: Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Store
For traditional retail enterprises, the essence of transformation is to re-find the optimal solution for "people, goods, and scenes" under the impact of e-commerce and emerging formats. The path Zhongbai has chosen is to use the "extreme efficiency" of hard discount combined with the "differentiated supply" of local supply chains to reconstruct competitiveness in community retail scenarios.
The final effectiveness of this transformation still needs time to verify, but the industry trend is gradually becoming clear: in the hard discount track, the national expansion of giants and the localized deep cultivation of regional players will coexist for a long time.
For Zhongbai, if it can continuously strengthen the cost advantage of its supply chain and the uniqueness of localized products, it may build a solid moat for a "local hard discount supermarket" in Hubei and even Central China; conversely, if it falls behind giants in operational efficiency or product innovation, its existing regional advantages could be quickly diluted.
Image: Zhongbai Supermarket Hard Discount Store
The effectiveness of this transformation still needs time to verify. But it can be predicted that in the hard discount track, the national expansion of giants and the localized deep cultivation of regional players will coexist for a long time.
If Zhongbai can continuously strengthen the cost advantage of its supply chain and the uniqueness of localized products, it may build a moat for a "local hard discount supermarket" in Hubei and even Central China; conversely, if it falls behind giants in operational efficiency or product innovation, its regional advantages will also be quickly diluted.
From this perspective, Zhongbai's attempt is not only a proactive response to industry changes but also a key test for traditional retail enterprises in terms of "supply chain resilience" and "transformation determination."