Fresh snacks are running wild, and consumers are paying for them blindfolded?

Author|Bai Lu

Statement | The title picture comes from the Internet. Original article from Jingzhe Research Institute. If you need to reprint, please leave a message to apply for permission.

In the past year, as fresh snack brands such as Jinlimen and Jiduoquan have become popular, long queues in front of stores have begun to appear on the first floor of shopping malls in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In July this year, Jinlimen’s first store in South China opened in Wanxianghui, Buji, Shenzhen. Although the opening day was a working day, the passenger flow has not been interrupted since 8 a.m., and some media reported that the queue on site took three hours. On the second-hand platform, Jinlimen’s 2 yuan shopping bags with white background and red and blue fonts were sold for up to 30 yuan by purchasing agents.

The popularity of fresh snacks is not just on the scene. According to a report by Time Weekly in May this year, the number of Jiduoquan stores increased sharply from 94 on April 30 to 109 on May 20, and it proposed a goal of adding 600 to 1,000 stores that year. At the same time, companies such as Juewei Duck Neck and Cha Yan Yuese have also laid out their plans for fresh snacks.

It’s also a snack, but why does it become delicious after adding the word “fresh”? Behind the fresh snacks that make consumers and capital line up to “spend money” may be a story that is not new.

Short-term guarantee to attract traffic, long-term guarantee to make profit

To analyze the reasons why fresh snacks are popular, “fresh” is the answer hidden in the mystery. Transparent packaging, freshly baked bread, spicy braised food… When you walk into any fresh snack store, these standard categories will easily give consumers the impression that these snacks are not displayed openly like traditional weighed snack stores, the packaging is simple, and they taste more reassuring.

Not only does it look “fresh”, its unique positioning as a short-term guarantee product is also the main reason why fresh snacks attract consumers to offline stores. Previously, research data from Huachuang Securities showed that in Jinlimen stores, short-term warranty products with a shelf life of 1 to 5 days accounted for 46.1% of the SKUs, contributing more than 60% of sales. This set of data is often interpreted as the difference and importance of short-term guarantee products to fresh snacks, but the “real main force” of fresh snacks may not be just short-term guarantee products.

During an on-site visit to several Jiduo stores in Wuchang Vientiane City, Jingzhe Research Institute found that in addition to baked and freshly marinated products, there are also many puffed foods such as French fries, crispy rice, popcorn, Chinese snacks, and dried fruit and preserved meat. Among them, the “Salted Egg Yolk Peach Crisp” has a shelf life of about 2 months, the “Low Sugar High Protein Nut Crisp” has a shelf life of about 3 months, and the “Popcorn Double Crisp Hug Bucket” has a shelf life of about 9 months. At the Jinlimen Wuhan Qingshan Impression City store, the Jingzhe Research Institute picked up a box of “Extracted Cocoa Wafers” with a shelf life of about 10 months.

*”Popcorn Double Crisp Hug Bucket” with a shelf life of 9 months (photo taken by Jingzhe Research Institute)

The existence of these products objectively proves that the actual business of fresh snack stores is not just short-term preservation of fresh food, but a comprehensive retail format that mixes ready-made food, short-term preservation of food and long-term preservation of pre-packaged food. So a series of questions began to surface: When “freshness” becomes the sign of a store, do consumers who enter the store have the awareness and ability to distinguish which products are truly short-term guarantees?

Especially when a puffed food with a shelf life of several months is placed in the same store as braised food with a shelf life of only three to five days. The “fresh” image created by the brand through store displays and product packaging, in addition to its differentiated positioning in commercial competition, will it also become a general consumption hint, attracting uninformed consumers to continue consumption amid misunderstandings?

In addition to the mixed sales of long-term and short-term guarantees, “ready-made products” are not as new as people think. “Economic Observer” mentioned in relevant reports that there are differences between freshly made drinks in fresh snack shops and tea shops. According to Wang Zhigang, vice president of the Shanghai Chain Store and Franchise Association, a large number of raw materials for this kind of freshly made drinks are uniformly distributed from central factories, and the recipes have been prepared in advance. The stores have only completed the last few steps of assembly.

Not only is the freshness of the freshly made drinks questionable, but product descriptions such as “directly prepared from our own factory every day” are also watery. In January this year, the OEM contracted by Jinlimen was exposed to false propaganda and hygienic chaos. According to reports from the China Food Safety Network, the “Lemon Spicy and Sour Boneless Chicken Feet” sold by Jinlimen is labeled as “Own factory, daily direct preparation, self-developed formula”. The actual manufacturer is a company in Anhui, and the foundry involved repackaged the product before putting it on the market. In addition, the foundry will label the remaining products from the previous day with the production date of the current day.

*Screenshot of China Food Safety Network report

After the incident, Jinlimen officially issued a notice to publicly apologize, admitting that the brand had omissions in supplier management and production supervision. However, this incident has exposed that the so-called “own factory” and “daily direct distribution” are not as reliable as the brand promotes.

Is it “really healthy” if you don’t read the ingredient list?

If “freshness” is a card that attracts consumers into the store, then “health” is another trump card that allows consumers to walk out of the store carrying large and small bags. In the past, consumers were most concerned about taste and price when buying snacks. But nowadays, more and more people are beginning to study the ingredient list, pursuing no additives, low oil, low salt and no sugar. Fresh snacks have just caught this wave of market demand.

Jingzhe Research Institute saw in Jiduoquan’s offline stores that “Here, you don’t need to check the ingredient list” was clearly written on the wall of the store. The reason why it dared to shout this slogan was because Jiduoquan had launched an “ingredient purification level” to classify the food in the store and marked it on the product packaging.

*Jiduo’s slogans throughout the store (photographed by Jingzhe Research Institute)

It should be pointed out that this method of grading food is not the first in the country. As early as December 2022, Singapore began to classify commercially available beverages into four grades: A, B, C, and D based on sugar content and saturated fat content. In 2023, Chinese netizens also started heated discussions because many domestic beverages were rated C-level and D-level.

However, the reference standard for “ingredient purification level” is not “content” but “quantity”. For example, its A-level standard is “foods that only use natural food ingredients or are only lightly processed (such as cutting, drying, freezing, baking, etc.)”; B-level standards are “based on natural food ingredients, adding a small amount of salt, sugar, oil or traditional processing accessories (such as vinegar, yeast)”; C-level and D-level standards The standards are “adding an appropriate amount of food additives” and “adding no more than 5 limited food additives”; Class E and F standards are “adding 1 preservative or 5 to 10 limited food additives” and “adding 2 or more preservatives or more than 10 limited food additives.”

*How many complete levels of food ingredient purification are there?

For customers who enter the store, this set of “ingredient purification levels” allows them to identify which products are “healthy” based only on the grade letters on the product packaging without looking at the ingredients. But whether this set of standards is really scientific or not, ordinary consumers have no way to verify.

However, if you think about it for a moment, you will find that it is not reliable to use the number of additives to distinguish whether food is healthy. For example, the ingredient list of foods such as pickles can be “clean” with only vegetables and salt, but pickles themselves are not healthy as a high-salt food. In fact, a common criterion for judging whether a food is healthy is actually the nutritional label.

Since 2011, the National Food Safety Standard General Principles for Nutritional Labeling of Prepackaged Foods issued by the National Health Commission has mandated that prepackaged foods label the content of core nutrients such as protein, fat, carbohydrates and sodium. And according to the “Dietary Reference Intake of Nutrients for Chinese Residents”, the NRV% value is used to express the percentage of energy or nutrients contained in each unit of food to the daily nutrient reference value (NRV).

For example, if the protein NRV% value per 100g of food in the nutrition information table is 50%, it means that the protein intake of 100g of the food accounts for 50% of the standard intake of the whole day. If you use the nutrition facts table as a basis for judging whether a food is healthy or not, and re-compare the “ingredient purification levels” of several complete ones, you will find many contradictions.

For example, the “Melon Seeds and Yams Crispy” product from Jiduoquan is marked as Grade B on the label, which may be perceived as “relatively healthy” by consumers. However, the NRV percentage of fat per 100 grams in its nutrition facts table reaches 78%, and the net content of this product is 240 grams. This means that the fat intake after eating this box of “Melon Seeds and Yams Crisps” has reached 187.2% of the standard intake for the whole day, nearly twice as much.

*Ji Duoquan’s “Crispy Melon Seeds and Yams” (photo taken by Jingzhe Research Institute)

Another “Tangerine Peel and Wild Dates Cake” also marked as Grade B has a sodium NRV percentage of 40% per 100 grams in its nutritional label. Calculated based on the net content of 280 grams, the sodium intake after all consumption reaches 112% of the standard intake for the whole day.

However, such high-fat and high-salt foods are classified into a “more acceptable position” within the standards set by the brand itself. Even when the products are on display, Jiuduoquan does not forget to remind consumers entering the store that “AB products have cleaner formulas.”

*How many “Crispy Melon Seeds and Yams” are on the shelves (Photographed by Jingzhe Research Institute)

How long can fresh snacks stay popular?

In addition to using “clean ingredient lists” to confuse perceptions, fresh snacks also play word games on packaging slogans.

For example, “non-fried” implies “no oil”, but in fact “non-fried” can only mean that the production process of frying is not used, while baked foods can still add oil by spraying, mixing, etc. Jingzhe Research Institute saw in several offline stores that the packaging of the “Popcorn Double Crisp Hug Bucket” stated in red fonts “Adhere to clean formula” and “Non-fried technology”, and also marked “0 trans fatty acids”, but it itself is an “oil-containing puffed food”.

*Jiduoquan’s “Popcorn Double Crispy Hug Bucket” (photo taken by Jingzhe Research Institute)

In addition, many foods will emphasize “original flavor” on the packaging, but seasonings themselves need to be added to the flavored snacks. For example, Jinlimen’s “Authentic Pork Breast” uses the words “100% pure pork”, “fresh meat cut into cubes and grilled” and “authentic taste and meaty texture” on the packaging. If you look carefully at the ingredient list, you will find that in addition to white sugar, this product also uses seasonings such as fish sauce (compound seasoning) and meat marinade.

*Jinlimen Spicy Dried Pork (photo taken by Jingzhe Research Institute)

Therefore, compared with the clean ingredient list that has been deliberately “cleaned”, the high-fat, high-salt, and high-sugar numbers in the nutritional label are the truth about “fresh snacks.” In addition to the traps on products and marketing packaging, there is an inherent contradiction between snacks and health.

Looking through the recommendations and reviews of fresh snacks on social media platforms, the “must buy list” items repeatedly mentioned are almost exclusively spicy braised foods, sweet baked goods, and puffed foods. It seems that consumers have completely forgotten that the original motivation for walking into the store is the health behind “freshness”.

It can also be seen from the real behavior of consumers that the essence of fresh snacks is to take advantage of the ambivalence of consumers who want to enjoy delicious food but do not want to feel guilty about health, and use the “fresh” label on the packaging to offset consumers’ anxiety about buying and consuming snacks, thereby satisfying consumers’ dual needs at the material and psychological levels.

Although the product logic of fresh snacks is tenable, it does not mean that the business model will continue. Research data from Huachuang Securities shows that the average monthly sales of a Jinlimen store is 1.5 million yuan, and the best store can achieve 4 million yuan, with a gross profit margin of about 35%. According to the ideal model calculation of a single store investment of 2 million to 3 million yuan, monthly sales of 2 million yuan, and a net profit rate of 15%, the payback period is 7 to 9 months – which seems not bad.

However, the losses, inventory turnover and quality management caused by short-term warranty products are also risks that cannot be ignored for fresh snacks. Orient Securities mentioned in a research report in May this year that the average loss rate of the fresh snack industry is between 8% and 15%, while traditional packaged snacks are only 1% to 3%.

Previously, Jiemian News quoted retail practitioners in a report as saying that the shelf life of baked products in some stores is only three days. In order for consumers to accept new products, stores need to invest in a large number of tastings. In some stores, the daily loss of baked products alone may reach thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan. If short-term guarantee products cannot be sold in time, they will face losses, so customer flow has become a key factor affecting the profit balance. This also explains why most fresh snack stores are opened on the B1 floor of shopping malls, occupying the flow of people in subways and parking lots, and why there are always long queues when opening new stores.

*How many offline stores (photo taken by Jingzhe Research Institute)

However, while the sustainability of the business model has not yet been fully verified, fresh snack brands have launched large-scale competition. Since the second quarter of this year, Jiduo has fully opened its doors to franchising and plans to add 600 to 1,000 stores throughout the year; Mama Pu plans to open 200 new stores; Hao Miss You has incubated the fresh snack store “Baipinhao·Original Flavor” and opened it to franchises; Juewei Fresh Snacks will launch nationwide expansion in July after completing pilot projects in Changsha and Chengdu.

It is worth noting that fresh snacks, which are expanding, seem to have taken the script of mass-selling snacks.

iiMedia Research data shows that from 2021 to 2026, the number of stores selling snacks in bulk will increase from 2,500 to more than 62,000, a 24-fold increase in four years. Especially in 2024, the mass-selling snack industry has entered the era of thousands of stores. Mingming is very busy, adding nearly 8,000 stores in one year, and the total number of stores exceeds 14,000; Wanchen Group, which has successively integrated the five major snack retail brands of Lu Xiaoyan, Haoxianglai, Laiyoupin, Andi Aidi, and Wife, has opened a net of 9,776 stores in a year at an average rate of 26 stores per day, bringing the total number of stores to 14,100.

However, as the two major oligarchs collectively occupy more than 75% of the market share, the industry has entered a stock game, and small and medium-sized snack brands have begun to withdraw from the market. According to data surveyed by China Business News, in the first quarter of 2026, the comprehensive store closure rate of mass-selling snack brands reached 25% to 30%, and the store closures were concentrated in small and medium-sized brands.

The hottest fresh snacks at the moment have undoubtedly entered the moment of “racing and staking”. But as all brands expand blindly and strive to become industry oligarchs, the hidden worries of fresh snacks have become increasingly obvious.