The bread is still there, but the bakery is gone.

Zebra Consumption Ren Jianxin

Bread is very fragrant, but bakeries may not be.

A 100-square-meter freshly baked bakery has a monthly turnover of 270,000 yuan, which is considered a good business. However, according to calculations by Huaan Securities, after excluding raw materials, rent, water, electricity, labor and other expenses, the final net profit was only 24,000 yuan. As long as there is a slight fluctuation in operations, this store may face losses.

This is the survival line for bakery stores today. Narrow Food Eye monitoring shows that since 2026, there has been a net decrease of 101,000 domestic bakery and bakery stores that can be tracked, which intuitively presents the current survival status of bakery and bakery stores.

In fact, consumer demand for bread and pastries is still there. According to Euromonitor International, the domestic bread market will exceed 200 billion yuan in 2025 and is expected to reach 280 billion yuan in 2030.

The scale of the industry still maintains steady growth, but consumers are entering other stores.

Veteran players spend the winter together

Christine’s fall is the most obvious footnote of the cold weather of the chain bakery industry.

Founded in 1993, Christine is one of the earliest foreign-invested chain baking companies to enter China. At its peak, the brand had more than 300 stores in Shanghai alone, and the total number of stores nationwide was about 1,000.

In 2012, Christine landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and became the “No. 1 baking stock”, ushering in her own highlight moment. However, after going public, the company continued to suffer losses, and finally delisted at the end of 2024 and went bankrupt the following year.

Not only Christine, but many veteran players in the baking chain chain have begun to shrink for the winter in recent years.

BreadTalk is a bread brand founded in Singapore in 2000. It entered the Chinese market in 2003 and had more than 400 stores nationwide at its peak. Starting from 2024, the brand will implement strategic adjustments and shift to a business strategy that emphasizes experience over expansion. In 2025 and 2026, it will withdraw from Chengdu, Beijing and other markets one after another, and the latest number of stores nationwide has only a hundred or so.

85 degrees C from Taiwan, China. Since 2022, stores in mainland China have shrunk rapidly, withdrawing from Wuhan, Changsha, Beijing, Nanjing and other markets, and basically withdrawn from the North China and Southwest markets. Its mainland stores have shrunk from 460 to about 300 currently.

Internet celebrity baking rises quickly and collapses even faster.

Internet celebrity brands such as Hutou Bureau and Momo Dim Sum Bureau have all experienced violent liquidations after the capital ebb. In 2021, the market popularity of Chinese baking reached its peak. Hutou Bureau intensively completed multiple rounds of financing that year, and the valuation of Momo Dim Sum Bureau was raised to 2 billion yuan. At that time, the most important thing for capital was speed. With the help of capital, many Chinese bakery brands were rapidly gaining ground.

The following year, investment in the consumer market suddenly cooled down, financing channels were closed, and a wave of store closures followed.

KUMO KUMO, which became famous for its cheesecake, has had more than 200 stores nationwide in just a few years. In the past year, brands have suddenly closed stores intensively. The latest data from Narrow Door Restaurant shows that the brand currently has only 37 operating stores.

Youhe, which started in Wuhan, focuses on the fresh baking model of one store and one workshop. Most of its stores are opened in large shopping malls and core commercial streets. The investment in a single store is huge, which puts a huge test on its operational capabilities and cash flow. Although the brand is still expanding, the pace of store purchases has accelerated significantly.

Historical data from Narrow Door Restaurants shows that in November 2025, there were approximately 298,000 traceable bakery stores across the country, and this dropped to around 250,000 by mid-2026.

The performance of listed companies in the baking industry presents the current situation of the industry more directly.

In the first three quarters of this year, Yiming Food opened 258 new stores and closed 390, a net decrease of 132 stores; Q3 suffered a single-quarter loss of 5.21 million yuan, and the net profit attributable to the parent company in the first three quarters was 33.7992 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 2 7.17%; Yuanzu Co., Ltd.’s net profit attributable to its parent company during the same period was 83.19 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 36.53%; Taoli Bread’s revenue in the first three quarters was 3.96 billion yuan, and its net profit attributable to its parent company was 204 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 31%.

The illusion of high gross profit

The baking industry gives the outside world the impression of high gross profit. It is true that the cost of bread ingredients itself does not account for a high proportion, but this is not the case when it comes to the daily operations of the store.

Huaan Securities once calculated that a bakery store with an area of ​​100 square meters had a monthly turnover of 270,000 yuan, which is already at the upper-middle level in the industry. The raw materials, rent, water, electricity, and labor expenses were 95,000 yuan, 60,000 yuan, and 91,000 yuan respectively. The final actual net profit was 24,000 yuan, and the net interest rate was less than 9%. Once passenger flow declines, profits may turn negative.

Shrinkage is the biggest gnawer on profits. The shelf life of bread is short, and the losses in freshly baked stores are greater. In order to maintain a full display, some online celebrity stores are aggressive in stocking up, and some stores report a loss rate of close to 40%. The toast and croissants that were not sold that day had to be taken off the shelves after the store closed, and this part of the cost was sunk directly.

More importantly, the context in which consumers buy bread has changed.

In the past, professional bakeries were the first choice when buying bread. Nowadays, when you visit Sam’s or Hema, you can pick up a box of Swiss rolls; order a cup of milk tea and buy a bagel as well. Bread has changed from a core product in specialized stores to a popular category in general retail.

The cost structure of supermarket baking is completely different from that of independent bakeries. The baking area is just a section in the supermarket, and the rent and labor are shared by the customer flow of the entire store. The logic of tea shops is lighter. Baking is just an add-on to increase customer orders, forming asymmetric competition with professional bakeries.

The resulting price gap makes consumers feel more intuitive. Eight packs of Sam’s Swiss rolls sell for more than ten yuan, which is less than two yuan each. Similar products are usually priced three to five times higher in professional bakeries. Most of the main products in the baking areas of Hema and Yonghui are priced in the single-digit range.

The current supply chain of the baking industry is converging, and it is difficult for popular products to truly form barriers. In recent years, a series of popular items such as mochi, cheesecake, and raw toast have emerged in the industry. But once a single product becomes popular, the entire industry can keep up with the replicas. KUMO KUMO’s cheesecakes used to have queues, and soon various replacements were put on the shelves through various channels, diverting KUMO KUMO’s customers. Brands can only continue to provide traffic and launch new products to maintain popularity. Once the traffic stops, the pressure will be immediate.

Bread returns to shelves

Bakery stores are closing at an accelerated pace, but demand has not disappeared, but has just flowed to different channels.

Taoli Bread does not open its own store. It relies on a central factory to produce short-term bread and supplies it to supermarkets and convenience stores, growing into the “King of Bread”. Theoretically, the customer flow lost by bakeries will overflow into supermarket channels, bringing opportunities to such factory brands. The answer given in Taoli Bread’s financial report is not optimistic. Since 2024, the company’s scale has continued to shrink and its performance has declined sharply.

Channel transfer is not market expansion, but closer to a zero-sum game. Shopping malls and supermarkets continue to lower prices, and competing products from the same industry are squeezed out. The space for those who undertake the demand is also limited.

The industrialization of frozen baking is accelerating the reshaping of the supply side. Aokun, a subsidiary of Ligao Food, supplies semi-finished products such as mochi, egg tarts and Swiss rolls to stores and tea drink brands. Stores only need simple re-baking. The threshold of baking is gradually moving away from manual skills and towards supply chain procurement and inventory control. Sam’s Swiss Roll and Hema Baking Area are all behind this standardized foundry system. Discount bakeries such as Hearthside Pippi only keep ovens in the back kitchen, and all the dough comes from the central factory, making bread into discount fast-moving consumer goods.

The results of batch clearing of downstream stores are also reflected in the upstream. Ligao Food’s profits are under pressure this year, and inventory pressure has increased significantly.

In the long term, the trend of “de-bakerism” in baking has not changed. Luxihe has nearly 700 stores, and its core relies on the combination of central factories and stores with freshly baked goods; Master Bao has a restrained pace of expansion and relies on long-term stable repurchases of pork floss and small shellfish single products. What the two have in common is that baking is regarded as a supply chain business, and fresh baking in stores is just a front-end presentation.

The most squeezed area is the middle of the track. Ordinary freshly baked bakeries on the street do not offer a differentiated experience and cannot withstand the low prices of supermarkets and frozen bakeries. They are the main force in this wave of store closures.