蜜雪冰城、喜茶、茶颜悦色都在卖 茶饮圈的零食生意有多火？

This article outlines how Chinese modern tea drink brands are collectively entering the packaged snacks sector, with key takeaways as follows:

1. Two established expansion models have emerged in the industry. The first adds in-store snack shelves to existing tea shops to capture incremental impulse purchases with low-priced products. The second opens standalone hybrid stores that position snacks as an independent core business, built around a one-stop consumption scenario combining tea drinks and fresh food.

2. For consumers, this trend offers snacks that complement existing tea drink flavors from familiar brands, with a wide price range from RMB 1 to RMB 10. Snacks work well for adding to delivery orders or pairing with casual leisure time, and many brands have added interactive perks such as blind bags and scratch cards to improve the customer experience.

3. The sector still faces challenges including product homogenization, food safety risks and inventory waste. Short-shelf-life fresh snacks pose particularly high preservation difficulties, so consumers need to pay close attention to expiration dates when purchasing these products.

Cross-sector expansion into snacks has become a new growth trend for China's modern tea drink industry, with key takeaways for brands as follows:

1. For product development: Brands can adapt products to leverage their existing tea drink DNA, creating snacks that complement tea flavors. Brands can either position snacks as affordable mass-market items for incremental revenue, or develop in-house signature tea pairings that align with their overall brand positioning.

2. For pricing and marketing: Value-focused brands can price individual items between RMB 1-3 to drive volume growth, while mid-to-premium brands can cap prices at under RMB 10 and offer bulk boxed options to expand use cases. Co-branding collaborations and blind bag promotions can also help boost sales.

3. For channel expansion: Brands can start by adding snacks to existing in-store shelves to leverage existing foot traffic and keep customer acquisition and trial costs low. Once the model is validated, brands can expand to standalone hybrid stores. Operators should also proactively mitigate risks including product homogenization, food safety incidents and inventory waste.

Selling snacks has emerged as a clear second growth curve for modern tea drink sellers, with key insights as follows:

1. Opportunity outlook: Snacks fit naturally into the same leisure consumption scenarios as tea drinks, and meet consumer demand for add-on purchases and casual snacking. This effectively lifts average order value and expands consumption scenarios. China already has a mature packaged snack supply chain that keeps new product trial costs low, allowing sellers to generate additional revenue directly from existing in-store foot traffic. The overall snack market is expanding rapidly, creating clear first-mover advantages in the sector.

2. Expansion path reference: Two models are available for reference. Early-stage sellers can start by adding snack shelves to existing stores, selecting products that complement tea flavors and following a high-frequency, low-price strategy. Sellers can also launch co-branded products with established snack brands to gain traction quickly. Larger, well-resourced sellers can test opening standalone hybrid fresh snack stores to build a one-stop consumption scenario.

3. Risk warning: Sellers need to mitigate product homogenization, food safety risks and inventory waste. If offering short-shelf-life fresh snacks, operators must solve preservation challenges in advance to control product loss.

The wave of modern tea drink brands entering the snack sector has created new business opportunities for snack manufacturing factories, with key insights as follows:

1. Product and design demand: Tea drink brands' snack requirements fall into two main categories. The first is mass-market pre-packaged snacks, which require a mature, stable supply chain capable of fast new product iteration, with a preference for savory and spicy flavors that complement tea drinks. The second is short-shelf-life fresh snacks, which have stricter requirements for preservation technology and production turnaround time, covering categories such as marinated foods, baked goods and nuts.

2. Business opportunity outlook: A growing number of tea drink brands are expanding into snack lines and even opening standalone snack stores, requiring anywhere from dozens to hundreds of SKUs. Leveraging their large existing store networks, these brands offer significant order growth potential. Multiple brands already have individual SKUs with sales exceeding one million units, which can deliver stable, large-volume orders for factories.

3. Strategic takeaways: Factories can partner with tea drink brands across different positioning tiers: they can supply mass-produced stable inventory for value-focused mainstream brands, and offer customized short-shelf-life production solutions for brands focused on signature fresh food. Factories can also support brands to scale up by coordinating with online distribution channels.

The trend of modern tea drink brands expanding into the snack sector has become a major industry shift, creating new business opportunities for relevant service providers, with key insights as follows:

1. Industry development trend: Tea drink brands' snack business has evolved from an incremental side business occupying leftover shelf space to an independent hybrid business model. The tea + snack hybrid format will likely become a standard offering across the modern tea drink industry, leading to continuous expansion of the sector and sustained growth in demand for related service providers.

2. Core client pain points: Tea drink brands expanding into snacks currently face three core pain points. First, severe product homogenization and lack of differentiated competitiveness. Second, high difficulty of food safety regulation and associated risk. Third, hard-to-control inventory waste, especially for brands focused on short-shelf-life fresh snacks, which commonly lack advanced preservation technology and face high loss rates.

3. Strategic business opportunity directions: Service providers can develop targeted solutions for these pain points: for example, offering customized product R&D services to help brands build differentiated products aligned with their tea drink DNA; and providing preservation technology solutions and intelligent inventory management systems for short-shelf-life fresh food operations to help brands reduce waste and control operational risk.

The trend of modern tea drink brands entering the snack sector has created new growth opportunities for retail and e-commerce platforms, with key insights as follows:

1. Brands' demand for platforms: Beyond their own offline stores, tea drink brands expanding into snacks need support from online and offline public domains to scale sales. Several brands have already hit millions in monthly snack sales via Douyin E-commerce, as brands have clear demand for online content marketing and traffic monetization. For offline commercial properties, adding tea drink-affiliated snack stores can help enrich their tenant mix.

2. Operational guidance for platforms: Platforms can launch dedicated recruitment programs to attract tea drink snack brands of all positioning tiers. Online platforms can build dedicated traffic pools for tea-affiliated snacks to match brands' demand for content marketing and sales conversion. Offline commercial properties can bring in hybrid-format fresh snack stores to create new consumption scenarios that attract foot traffic.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms need to update relevant rules to help brands manage food safety risks, guide brands to build differentiated product lines to avoid homogenized cutthroat competition, and remind brands to prepare for inventory waste challenges in advance to maintain healthy, orderly operations on the platform.

This article outlines the latest growth trend in China's modern tea drink industry, with key insights for industry research as follows:

1. New industry动向 and business models: China's modern tea drink industry is transitioning from a pure made-to-order tea business to a hybrid tea + snack format. Two mature business models have emerged: one leverages existing stores by adding snack shelves to build a low-price, high-frequency incremental business, unlocking a brand's second growth curve; the second opens standalone hybrid stores that upgrade snacks to a core business, building a one-stop leisure consumption scenario.

2. Core logic behind the sector's growth: Three main drivers are behind this trend. First, snacks have high natural alignment with tea drinks in both consumption scenarios and flavor pairing, meeting consumers' diverse leisure demand. Second, China has a mature packaged snack supply chain that keeps new product trial costs low, and existing tea store foot traffic gives these brands far lower customer acquisition costs than dedicated snack brands. Third, the overall leisure snack market is expanding rapidly, creating clear sector-wide growth opportunities.

3. Current challenges and future outlook: The sector currently faces three core issues: product homogenization, food safety risks and inventory waste, with the preservation challenge for short-shelf-life fresh snacks being particularly prominent. Going forward, the hybrid format will likely become an industry standard, and serve as a core battleground for brands to widen competitive gaps and achieve long-term sustainable growth.