排队8小时！“县城网红”在北京开的韩料店火了

This article introduces ZhengTan Fried Chicken, a viral fried chicken brand originating from Yanji, Northeast China. The brand has launched a new "Fried Chicken + Korean Cuisine" model, and its newly opened Beijing location has become an instant hit, with some consumers waiting in line for up to 8 hours. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. New Beijing store overview: Located in Wudaokou, a university gathering area, the store targets college students and young office workers. Its per capita spending is 70 RMB, 20 RMB higher than standard ZhengTan Fried Chicken locations. It has added over 30 new SKUs covering traditional Korean hot pots, staple foods, small plates, specialty alcoholic drinks and beverages, and introduced single-person sets paired with fried chicken. The larger dine-in space follows a minimalist Korean style and can accommodate 30 to 40 diners at the same time.

2. Brand development and model outlook: Starting as a street-side shop in Yanji, ZhengTan Fried Chicken now operates more than 200 stores across over 20 Chinese provinces. This product expansion is a response to fierce competition in the fried chicken segment, aimed at diversifying consumption scenarios. However, its new offerings are dominated by traditional Korean dishes that face significant homogenization, and repeat purchase rates after the initial hype remains unproven.

This article provides multi-dimensional actionable insights for food and beverage brands, covering all key links of brand operation. Core takeaways are summarized below:

1. Industry and consumer trends: The fried chicken market continues growing, with a 9.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019 to 2024. But competition is extremely intense, with domestic Chinese fried chicken brands, cross-sector players and international fried chicken brands all squeezing into the market. Single-category fried chicken brands suffer from limited consumption scenarios and constrained growth potential, so expanding into multiple categories and scenarios has become a core strategy to unlock new growth.

2. Product and pricing: Single-category brands can enrich their product portfolio and boost average order value (AOV) through SKU expansion. ZhengTan Fried Chicken raised its per capita spending from 50 RMB to 70 RMB by adding Korean dishes and alcoholic beverages, while also expanding into new scenarios including full meals and casual social drinking, and extending daily operating hours.

3. Site selection: Brands can flexibly choose locations to match their target customer groups. Entering high-end shopping malls is not a must; locating in university areas with dense young foot traffic can also generate strong customer flow.

4. Risk warning: New category expansion requires clear differentiation. Traditional Korean cuisine suffers from severe homogenization, and the lack of unique brand identity will hurt long-term repeat purchases.

ZhengTan Fried Chicken's product expansion experiment offers plenty of actionable insights for food and beverage sellers, and clarifies current market opportunities and risks. Core content is as follows:

1. Market and opportunity: The fried chicken segment is still growing at a 9.4% CAGR, with ample remaining market space. Single-category snack sellers can break growth bottlenecks by expanding into multiple categories, extending their business from a single snack scenario to full meals, friend gatherings, casual drinking and other scenarios. This move also increases AOV, extends operating hours and drives higher overall revenue.

2. Actionable operational takeaways: Sellers can adjust site selection flexibly to match their target customer positioning; high-end shopping malls are not the only option, and university towns and food courts with dense young foot traffic can also deliver strong customer flow. Sellers can also launch combo sets that pair new offerings with existing core products, lowering the barrier for consumers to try new items.

3. Risks and warnings: Sellers need to avoid homogenization when expanding into new categories. If entering mature segments such as traditional Korean cuisine, brands must build unique differentiated identity. Otherwise, after the initial viral hype fades, it will be very difficult to maintain solid repeat purchase rates, and the long-term competitiveness of ZhengTan's new model remains unproven.

ZhengTan Fried Chicken's multi-category expansion strategy brings valuable insights and new business opportunities for food supply chain factories. Key takeaways are summarized below:

1. Product development and design demand: A growing number of single-category food and beverage brands are expanding their product portfolios to unlock new growth, leading to surging demand for multi-category supporting ingredients. With over 30 new Korean cuisine and beverage SKUs, ZhengTan Fried Chicken needs its supply chain to provide stable supporting products for hot pots, bibimbap, specialty drinks and more. Factories can develop semi-finished products tailored to this type of demand.

2. Business opportunities: The fried chicken market is growing rapidly, with a 9.4% CAGR from 2019 to 2024. A large number of domestic, cross-sector and international brands are accelerating store and product expansion. Supply chain factories can proactively partner with single-category brands looking to expand their product lines, grow their customer base and secure more orders.

3. Transformation insights: As consumption scenarios become increasingly diversified, factories should design products to fit multi-scenario needs, develop products suitable for combo sets and different dining occasions, and match brands' all-day operation demands.

This article reflects new trends and core pain points in China's current food and beverage industry, and points out clear development directions for food and beverage service providers. Core content is as follows:

1. Industry development trends: Viral single-category snack brands are all searching for a second growth curve, and are exploring multi-category, multi-scenario operation models. This trend is particularly prominent in the fried chicken segment, where leading brands are breaking the limits of their original single-category positioning to expand into full meals and all-day operation, and the whole industry is moving in this direction.

2. Core customer pain points: Competition in the fried chicken segment is extremely intense, with domestic brands, cross-sector players and international brands all entering the market. Most single-category brands face common problems of limited scenarios, low AOV and stagnant growth. After expanding into new categories, they also generally struggle with product homogenization and lack of differentiated identity, making it hard to maintain repeat purchases after the initial viral traffic fades.

3. Solution direction: Service providers can develop targeted offerings to meet these brands' needs, including differentiated product R&D and design, private domain operation for converting viral public traffic, and store scenario design, to help brands solve pain points during product expansion and improve long-term operational capabilities.

ZhengTan Fried Chicken's growth and viral new store success offer many insights for catering marketplace operators on merchant recruitment and operation. Core content is as follows:

1. Brands' demand from marketplaces: When expanding stores, viral single-category brands have differentiated location demands. On one hand, some brands pursue high-end positioning and need space in high-end shopping malls such as Mixc and Wanda; on the other hand, stores targeting young consumers expanding into new categories prefer locations in university towns and food courts with dense young foot traffic. Platforms need to provide matching space options for different needs.

2. Merchant recruitment direction: The fried chicken segment is growing rapidly, and many viral brands already have built-in traffic. Their new stores can bring large traffic volumes to platforms, so platforms can proactively partner with viral snack brands to attract their stores and boost overall platform foot traffic.

3. Operation and risk mitigation: Viral new stores often see extremely long wait times, so platforms need to prepare customer flow management plans in advance to maintain order. At the same time, the long-term competitiveness of new viral brand models remains unproven, so platforms should evaluate a brand's product differentiation capability during recruitment to avoid store vacancies after initial hype fades, which would hurt platform revenue.

This article reflects new trends and emerging issues in China's current snack catering industry, offering high research value for industry researchers. Core content is summarized below:

1. New industry trends: The fried chicken segment has maintained continuous growth in recent years, with a 9.4% CAGR in market size from 2019 to 2024, attracting entries from domestic Chinese fried chicken brands, cross-sector catering players and international fried chicken brands, leading to intensifying competition. Against this background, viral single-category snack brands have begun exploring a new "core single category + extended categories" business model: they expand into full meal categories to diversify consumption scenarios and seek new growth. ZhengTan Fried Chicken's "Fried Chicken + Korean Cuisine" model and Xiaohai'aizha's full-category all-day operation are typical examples of this exploration.

2. New industry problems: Current new models still face clear pain points. Most brands add traditional products when expanding, leading to severe homogenization and a lack of differentiated identity. They rely only on initial viral traffic to attract consumers, so repeat purchase rates cannot be maintained after hype fades, and the long-term competitiveness of these new models remains to be validated by the market.

3. Research insights: Future in-depth research can focus on the success logic of product expansion for single-category brands, the conversion path from viral traffic to long-term repeat purchases, and the actual impact of multi-scenario expansion on brand revenue.