排队两小时 火遍“琼东西”！这杯咸饮走向全国还差几步？

This article introduces the current development of aged salt water, a popular salty beverage that has gone viral in Hainan, Guangxi and Guangdong, organizing key takeaways for general readers.

1. Basics: Aged salt water is a salty beverage made by mixing seasonal fruits with aged salt, sugar and water. Originating in Hainan, it has already become a sensation in Guangxi and is expanding into Guangdong. Leading brands include Juren Lao Yan Shui and Lao Yan Ji, with a per-unit price of around 10-19 yuan. Popular locations see wait times of 1 to 2 hours during peak hours.

2. Tasting guide: Different aged salt water drinks vary in accessibility for first-time tasters. Beginners can start with the entry-level aged salt lemon, move on to aged salt wampi, and try aged salt jackfruit for an advanced experience. Consumers in northern China are advised to order a small portion first to avoid an unpleasant flavor surprise, as most non-local first-timers find the beverage overly salty and hard to accept.

This article analyzes growth opportunities and challenges of the aged salt water category, providing insights for tea beverage brands looking to enter the space.

1. Consumer trend opportunity: Salty tea beverages are growing in popularity, with salty new product launches among sampled tea brands projected to hit 15.6% in 2025. Brands have strong incentives to enter the segment, and consumers are gradually adopting salty tea options. As a differentiated regional specialty beverage, aged salt water perfectly aligns with the flavor trend and has room to scale into a major category.

2. Core existing challenges: Aged salt water faces three major structural issues: First, non-local consumers, particularly in northern China, have low acceptance of purely salty aged salt water, making repeat purchases hard to achieve. Second, the category relies on locally-sourced seasonal fresh fruits, resulting in high cross-regional transportation costs and inconsistent quality. Third, production relies on manual hand-cutting of ingredients, making standardization difficult and leading to slow service during peak hours that hurts customer experience.

3. Recommended paths forward: Brands need to adjust product formulas to balance signature flavor with broader national consumer acceptance. On the marketing side, they can highlight the perceived health benefits of mineral salt to build consumer awareness.

This article organizes the current state of the aged salt water category, outlining opportunities, risks and operational guidance for sellers looking to enter the business.

1. Current opportunities: Salty beverages are a growing trend in the tea beverage market. Aged salt water, with its differentiated regional identity, has already gained massive traction in Hainan, Guangxi and Guangdong. Priced between 9.9 and 18 yuan per serving, it fits mass consumer budgets, and popular locations deliver solid profit margins. No national brand has emerged in the space yet, so early movers have an opportunity to capture market share.

2. Risk warnings: Cross-regional expansion is challenging due to low flavor acceptance among non-local consumers, which makes building repeat custom difficult. Specialty fresh fruit ingredients are both seasonal and geographically constrained, leading to higher operating costs and inconsistent quality for non-growing regions. Manual production also makes standardization hard, and slow service during peak hours easily damages a brand's reputation, all of which are key issues operators need to address.

3. Operational guidance: New entrants are advised to focus first on their local market, test local consumer acceptance, validate their profit model, and expand gradually. Operators should also optimize production workflows in advance to improve order fulfillment speed.

The rise of the aged salt water category brings new business opportunities and transformation insights for tea beverage-related processing factories.

1. Shifting market demand: As the salty beverage trend grows and aged salt water expands beyond Hainan, Guangxi and Guangdong, market demand for aged salt water-related ingredients, including compliant specialty salt and specialty fresh fruits like wampi and green mango, is growing steadily, opening up larger market space.

2. Existing industry pain points: Aged salt water outlets currently face core pain points around ingredients and production. The category relies on freshly harvested, seasonal produce, leading to high cross-regional transportation and storage costs. Preprocessing fresh fruits, such as deseeding wampi, is also labor-intensive and slows down order fulfillment.

3. Recommended transformation paths: Factories can develop pre-cut, pre-processed standardized frozen fresh ingredients tailored to the category. This preserves aged salt water's signature flavor while reducing outlets' production complexity and enabling standardized operations. Factories can also build digital supply chains, implement demand-driven capacity planning in advance, and serve brands across different regions to capture the upside of the rising category.

This article's analysis of the aged salt water category provides insights into industry trends, client pain points and growth directions for tea beverage-related service providers.

1. Industry development trend: Salty tea has become an established long-term segment in the broader tea beverage market. As a distinctive sub-category of salty beverages, aged salt water is still in the early stage of cross-regional expansion. More brands will enter the space in the coming years, driving steady growth in demand for corresponding service provider support.

2. Core client pain points: Aged salt water brands currently face three core pain points: First, there is no unified, compliant standard for the salt used in the beverage. Second, cross-regional supply of specialty fresh fruits comes with high costs and inconsistent quality. Third, manual production makes standardization difficult, and slow order fulfillment hurts customer experience.

3. Recommended service directions: Supply chain service providers can take the lead in establishing compliant standards for aged salt water specialty salt, and develop standardized pre-processed fresh fruit ingredients. Operations service providers can help brands develop semi-automated production workflows to boost efficiency, and develop marketing campaigns centered on the health benefits of mineral salt to help brands build consumer awareness.

The rise of the aged salt water category brings new growth opportunities for tea beverage platforms, along with notable risks to watch for.

1. Current industry demand: Many regional aged salt water brands are in the expansion phase, requiring platforms to provide services including onboarding support and traffic promotion. The emergence of this new niche category also brings new merchant growth for platforms and enriches their category mix.

2. Recommended platform operations: Platforms can launch targeted support programs for niche regional beverages like aged salt water, attract leading regional brands to onboarding, build dedicated category discovery and content sections to boost category momentum, attract more small and medium-sized merchants, and expand overall platform merchant scale.

3. Risk mitigation guidance: Consumer acceptance of aged salt water remains inconsistent across regions, so platforms should avoid large-scale nationwide promotion prematurely. Instead, they can first test the market in southern regions with similar flavor preferences, verify consumer acceptance, and scale up gradually. Platforms should also prompt participating brands to conduct local flavor testing in advance to reduce operational risk for both parties.

This article documents the development of the aged salt water category, providing a new case and reference for research on the national expansion of regional tea beverage categories.

1. New industry trend: The tea beverage market is seeing a clear trend toward flavor diversification, with salty new product launches already accounting for 15.6% of all new products. Regional specialty aged salt water, which rose from its origin in Hainan to popularity across Guangdong and Guangxi, is now attempting cross-regional expansion. This represents a new development for tea beverage niche categories, and aligns with consumers' current demand for novel, unique experiences.

2. New industry challenges: The growth of aged salt water highlights common challenges for the national expansion of regional beverages, including cross-regional flavor adaptation difficulty, insufficient supply chain support for specialty fresh ingredients, standardization challenges for manual production processes, and low consumer awareness of salty tea beverages.

3. Research takeaways: For regional beverages looking to go national, first movers must align with broader market trends, second, leading brands need to concentrate resources on promotion, third, brands must adjust products to fit national flavor preferences, solve standardization challenges on the supply chain side, and build consumer awareness through marketing. These conclusions offer valuable reference for similar research.