298元一顿星星人下午茶 泡泡玛特“杀”进甜品赛道

This article introduces that Pop Mart, China's leading designer toy brand, has launched POP BAKERY, an independent dessert brand that opened its first directly operated store in Aranya. The new store has seen strong initial popularity, and this article analyzes the advantages of this new venture and unresolved challenges ahead.

1. Core products and marketing: POP BAKERY develops shaped desserts featuring Pop Mart's popular IPs including Molly and Labubu, with a product portfolio covering packaged desserts, fresh-baked pastries and beverages. The new store adds an in-dining dining experience, and launched a limited-time 298 yuan Star Guy themed afternoon tea with only 70 servings available daily via in-store queuing for pickup. This延续了Pop Mart's signature strategy of manufacturing scarcity, and drew long lines on opening day, indicating strong initial consumer acceptance.

2. Rationale for the cross-industry move: Pop Mart targets over 37 billion yuan in revenue in 2025, but nearly 40% of its revenue comes from a single IP, and its growth slowed in the first quarter of 2026. To diversify revenue risk and increase consumer touchpoints with its IPs via the high-frequency dining scenario to drive overall growth, the company chose to enter the food and beverage sector.

3. Unproven questions to answer: The current model relies heavily on existing IP heat. As the first store is located in the resort destination Aranya, it remains to be seen whether this premium pricing strategy can be replicated for everyday consumption scenarios in mainstream cities.

This article analyzes Pop Mart, a leading designer toy brand, entering the dessert and F&B sector as a cross-industry expansion, offering reference insights and risk warnings for brands planning similar expansion.

1. Rationale for cross-industry expansion: Pop Mart's original business faces structural risk from over-reliance on a single super IP, and designer toys are inherently a low-frequency consumption category. Entering the high-frequency F&B sector extends IP consumer touchpoints, turning IPs from low-frequency collectibles into a daily-accessible experience, which both optimizes revenue structure and drives overall brand growth. This logic is highly referential for many brands with established IPs.

2. Replicable marketing tactics: Pop Mart延续了 its core strategy of building scarcity and ritual, driving buzz through limited stock, time-blocked access and in-store queuing pickup. Its multi-IP portfolio also allows continuous product theme updates to sustain user engagement, delivering high customer acquisition efficiency for this model.

3. Pitfalls to avoid: Many past IP cross-over F&B ventures failed because brands mistakenly treated one-off visit traffic as repeat purchase potential. IP premiums have a clear ceiling, and F&B has a far more challenging cost structure and operational complexity than retail. Over-reliance on IP heat at the expense of product quality and operations will inevitably lead to a fade in popularity, and the initial store's scenario model cannot be directly copied to other markets.

Pop Mart's foray into F&B delivers clear opportunity signals, actionable lessons and risk warnings for sellers with existing IPs or those looking to enter new sectors.

1. A new path for growth: When growth stalls in your core sector, leveraging existing IP momentum to enter a high-frequency consumption category is a viable way to break through. This extends IP value, optimizes revenue structure and diversifies risk from over-reliance on a single business, making it an attractive new growth avenue for IP-based sellers with an existing fan base.

2. A low-risk trial-and-error approach to learn from: Instead of opening capital-heavy brick-and-mortar stores immediately when entering a new sector, brands can follow Pop Mart's example: test the concept via food truck pop-ups across multiple cities for more than a year, accumulate first-hand experience in product development, supply chain alignment and user feedback before opening a permanent direct store, effectively cutting trial-and-error costs.

3. Key risks to watch: IP cross-over ventures cannot rely on traffic buzz alone. Brands must prioritize product quality and F&B operations. F&B faces far higher costs for food waste, rent and labor than retail, and requires building a dedicated quality control and operational system. Brands must also note scenario fit: the premium pricing model that works for resort destinations may not adapt to regular commercial districts, and requires adjustments.

Pop Mart's entry into the dessert sector creates new business opportunities for dessert and food manufacturers, and offers insights for digital transformation.

1. New product demand and business opportunities: Young consumers today are highly receptive to IP-collaborated, IP-shaped food and desserts. All products under Pop Mart's new brand are designed around its popular IPs, and the company owns more than 10 established IPs that enable continuous SKU iteration. For factories capable of IP product design and customized production, this represents a long-term, stable source of incremental orders.

2. Prepare early to gain first-mover advantage: Pop Mart tested and refined its products and supply chain via more than a year of pop-ups before opening its permanent store. Manufacturers can proactively partner with these cross-industry brands, participate in early product testing and alignment, build experience in IP dessert production, and lock in early cooperative advantages.

3. Insights for digital transformation: Dessert and F&B have far higher requirements for output standardization, freshness and waste control than standard packaged retail food. Manufacturers need to accelerate digital transformation for production and supply chain management to improve output consistency and reduce production waste, so they can meet the standardized requirements of brands and secure long-term cooperation.

A growing number of non-F&B brands are entering the food sector, creating new industry opportunities for all types of F&B service providers. This article outlines core pain points of these new clients and directions for growth.

1. A new growing industry trend: Cross-industry F&B entry by retail brands with established IPs and existing traffic has moved from concept testing to full-scale launch. Pop Mart, a leading designer toy brand opening its first independent direct F&B store, signals that cross-industry demand is growing rapidly, with broad market space, making this a high-potential incremental customer segment for service providers to expand into.

2. Core pain points of cross-industry brands: These brands come from a retail background and lack professional F&B operational capabilities. They need external support to build store operation systems, standardize output processes and implement end-to-end food safety control. They also require flexible supply chain and operational solutions to support rapid product iteration across multiple IPs, and need to adapt store models for different scenarios.

3. Direction for solution development: Service providers can build customized service packages tailored for cross-industry brands, covering the full process from early supply chain alignment, operational system setup, staff training and quality control to store scenario adjustment. This meets the needs of these new entrants and allows providers to capture first-mover market share.

Pop Mart's entry into F&B brings new investment attraction opportunities for catering platforms and commercial property platforms, and clarifies adjustments platforms need to make and risks to avoid.

1. New leasing and attraction opportunities: More and more big non-F&B brands with established IPs like Pop Mart are entering the F&B sector. These brands bring built-in traffic and a large existing fan base, can drive strong footfall for platforms and commercial districts, and boost district brand awareness. Platforms can develop customized attraction packages to draw these high-quality cross-industry brands to locate with them.

2. Adapt platform offerings to new requirements: Stores from these cross-industry brands typically combine IP retail display and in-dining F&B, and have special requirements for space planning and footfall management. For example, Pop Mart's first store has separate zones for collectibles and dining, and requires limited queuing management for its limited products. Platforms can develop tailored operational management tools to support these brands.

3. Operational risks to avoid: IP-led F&B currently relies heavily on IP heat, and product strength and operational stability remain unproven. When onboarding these brands, platforms can help connect them with professional F&B operational resources to reduce the risk of failure. They should also monitor the impact of IP popularity fluctuations on store performance, and prepare adjustment plans in advance to avoid long-term vacancy losses.

Pop Mart's launch of an independent dessert brand is a new attempt by the designer toy industry to break through growth bottlenecks, serving as a highly representative research sample with many notable new trends and open research questions.

1. New industry development trends: After a period of rapid growth, China's designer toy industry now faces clear pain points at the leading firm level, including over-reliance on single IPs, slowing growth and inherently low consumption frequency. Leading brands have begun to extend IP value and optimize revenue structure by entering high-frequency consumption scenarios, which is a defining new trend for the industry's new stage of development.

2. Exploration of a new business model: The "multi-IP portfolio + pop-up testing before permanent store launch + low-frequency designer toys + high-frequency F&B" model Pop Mart is testing increases consumer IP exposure via F&B scenarios and extends IP value from retail to experiential consumption. This is an entirely new business model experiment for IP commercialization, with high research value.

3. Open questions for future research: Many questions about this model remain unproven, including the ceiling for IP-led F&B premiums, how cross-industry incumbents build F&B operational capabilities, and model adaptability across different consumption scenarios. Future tracking of this venture can research the model's long-term sustainability, providing research references for the entire IP retail cross-industry sector.