“土” is in: How a beverage brand makes corny rural-style advertising cool again
Starting with a viral popularity of its corny theme song, MXBC (Mi Xue Bing Cheng 蜜雪冰城), a beverage brand known for its cheap drinks, became a phenomenal hit among Chinese Gen Z in 2021. MXBC infused a brainwashing jingle and catchy lyrics into their theme song, triggering a wave of parodies and short videos on […]
Harbin Beer’s secret to increasing their female consumer base: Leveraging the idol economy
At a time when China’s idol economy has an unprecedented influence on young consumers, Harbin Beer has successfully attracted the attention of the fan circle and set itself apart from other brands that use celebrities as their endorsers. Harbin Beer is one of the oldest beer-brewing companies in China. Zhang Yixing is a Chinese idol […]
The premium bakery market in China begins to trickle into lower-tier cities
China’s bakery sector has been expanding rapidly in recent years, underpinned by the country’s rising middle class, the ongoing Westernization of lifestyles and diets, and the increasing demand for convenient food. The baked goods market in China began to gain momentum in 1980 and boomed between 2000 and 2010. During this period, all kinds of foreign brands […]
Foodtech in China: Is this the answer to national food self-sufficiency?
China’s most popular C2M platform Pinduoduo has recently overtaken Chinese E-commerce giant Alibaba as China’s top shopping site. Although Pinduoduo is now king among Chinese E-commerce platforms in active users, it has yet to achieve profitability. So in order to become profitable, Pinduoduo is now focusing on Foodtech. As executive director Xinyi Lim puts it: […]
Manner Coffee: From one roadside store to nation-wide, how this boutique coffee shop has expanded throughout China
The coffee market in China continues to grow at a tremendous pace, with a variety of shops testing out different business models in this industry. But after the rise and fall of Luckin, the sudden rise of instant coffee like Coffee Pls, and a myriad of foreign players like Starbucks, a simple and humble Manner […]
A guide to product packaging sizes in China
China’s retail industry looked promising in the first quarter; the retail sales of consumer goods excluding automobiles was 3,155.4 billion yuan (USD 492.2 billion) in March, a 34.2% increase from last year. This gives a positive outlook for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) companies as consumption rebounds in China. However, the rising competition intensity and changing consumer […]
Successful co-founders on how to scale a restaurant business in China by creating unique and adaptable restaurant brands: China Paradigm transcript #112 with Gennadii Bochkar and Chen Feng
Gennadii Bochkar and Chen Feng are co-founders of a chain of restaurant bars in China. Shanghai residents will be very familiar with some of their brands such as Bites & Brews, Blue Frog, Barbarian, and Nomad among others. Here, they offer insights into how to successfully scale a restaurant business in China. They don’t concentrate […]
How Chinese people lose weight: Social listening exposes market demand
In 2019, one in five Chinese people were overweight. In combination with this statistic, the beauty standards in China are relatively unforgiving towards extra weight. As a result, China’s demand for weight loss is rising quickly. But to penetrate China’s weight loss market, the question is how do Chinese people lose weight? Chinese people are […]
How TsingTao Brewery is sponsoring the 2022 Winter Olympics with a goal to boost China’s image internationally
TsingTao Brewery Co. Ltd. 青岛啤酒 was founded in 1903 by Bavarian settlers in Qingdao, Shandong province. In 2020, the company generated approximately 27.8 billion yuan in revenue, a slight decrease from around 28 billion yuan in the previous year. (To learn more about the beer market in China.) Emerging trend Guochao has not bypassed the TsingTao brand In […]
Ramen Talk: The Chinese ramen brand filling the gap between ‘instant’ and ‘gourmet’
Ramen Talk, founded in Shanghai in September 2016, is an instant noodle company that aims to make restaurant quality comparable noodles. In April 2017, the Chinese instant noodle brand completed a 4 million RMB angel financing. Its GMV reached 250 million RMB in 2019, ranking first on Tmall list of instant food category. Download our […]
NEIWAI X MANNER: Two Shanghai brands set the summer mood together
On April 18, two Shanghai brands NEIWAI (内外), the lingerie brand, together with MANNER, a coffee shop chain, announced the joint collaboration “NEIWAI x MANNER Special Tunning Series.” First, they launched a new series of matcha drinks. This series includes three products: Ice Matcha Latte (冰抹茶拿铁), Hot Matcha Latte (热抹茶拿铁) and Wizard of Oz (绿野仙踪) […]
Perrier x Murakami’s flowery designed sparkling water takes the world by storm
For the first time in history, Takashi Murakami has partnered with a French brand from the F&B industry – “Perrier” (巴黎水). Perrier is a carbonated soft drink with zero sugar and vitamin C (explore our articles about the soft drinks market in China and China’s beverage industry.) At the end of 2020, the Perrier brand […]