餐饮店 越来越不专一了

This article highlights that China’s food and beverage (F&B) industry has abandoned the long-held rule of focusing on a single category positioning, and cross-category expansion has become the new norm. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Current industry landscape: Leading brands that built their reputations on clear single-category positioning are now expanding into adjacent categories. Tea chains sell coffee, braised pot restaurants add burgers, and pickled fish brands pivot to full Sichuan cuisine, blurring traditional category boundaries.

2. Drivers of the shift: Today’s F&B market is oversaturated, with far more stores than the market can reasonably support. Single-category players face severe customer dilution and stagnant growth. In addition, brands are adding new categories to enable all-day operations and spread fixed costs such as rent and utilities, matching diverse demand across different day parts.

3. Practical guidance: Cross-category expansion is not just adding random new products. Operators should first identify unmet consumer demand, assess their own capabilities, and leverage existing resources wherever possible. Small and medium-sized operators should avoid jumping on the bandwagon blindly; when they lack a competitive edge, it is a better strategy to focus on their core business and serve existing customers well.

Category boundaries in China’s F&B industry are dissolving, and cross-category integration has emerged as a core industry trend. Key insights for F&B brands are as follows:

1. Shifts in consumer demand: The market has shifted from undersupply to oversupply, giving consumers far more choices. It is increasingly difficult for single-category brands to maintain a stable customer base, as consumer demand has become more scenario-driven and diversified. Demand for all-day operations has grown significantly.

2. Actionable takeaways from successful players: Most leading brands enter high-traffic, highly standardized categories. For example, tea chains are adding coffee, and fast casual brands are adding power bowls, allowing them to reuse existing supply chains and store space to cut costs and boost efficiency. After Tai Er repositioned as a fresh-ingredient Sichuan cuisine brand, it delivered double-digit same-store sales growth. When bubble tea chain Guming expanded into coffee, it lifted per-store GMV by 20% year-over-year. These models offer strong reference value.

3. Risk warnings: Brands should not expand cross-category blindly. They must first confirm the existence of unmet consumer demand, assess their own competitive strengths, and avoid adding unnecessary fixed costs that would raise their break-even point, leveraging existing resources to play to their strengths.

The F&B industry is facing a supply-demand imbalance, with single-category players facing stagnant growth. Cross-category integration has opened up a new path for growth. Key insights for F&B sellers are as follows:

1. Untapped growth opportunities: Sellers can prioritize entering highly standardized, popular categories such as burgers, coffee, and power bowls. They can also build out all-day operations to fill demand gaps for breakfast, afternoon tea, and late-night dining, spreading fixed costs such as rent and labor to effectively lift per-store revenue.

2. Core operational principles: Before expanding cross-category, sellers should first verify that unmet consumer demand exists, assess their competitiveness against incumbent players in the new category, and reuse existing store space, supply chains, and equipment. Sellers should follow the "four no's" rule: no extra space, no extra staff, no extra equipment, no extra costs, to control operational risk.

3. Key risk warnings: Small and medium-sized F&B sellers should not blindly follow the cross-category trend. Without supply chain cost advantages or brand momentum, the odds of success are very low. It is wiser to double down on core operations, refine existing products, and serve loyal customers well.

Cross-category integration has become a mainstream trend in China’s F&B industry, bringing new demand, business opportunities and transformation insights for upstream suppliers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Shifts in product and production demand: As more F&B brands pursue multi-category portfolios, demand has risen sharply for flexible, standardized, multi-category compatible raw materials and semi-finished products. For example, tea chains expanding into coffee need matching coffee supply, while multi-category all-day operators need standardized semi-finished products adapted for different consumption scenarios. Demand for general-purpose raw materials is far higher than in the past.

2. New business opportunities: Factories can develop standardized general-purpose raw materials and semi-finished products tailored to meet F&B brands’ needs to reuse existing supply chains and cut costs. Examples include general-purpose marinade semi-finished products for braised meat brands that can also be used for staple foods, and general-purpose ingredients for hot pot brands that can also be used for malatang (spicy hot pot). This opens up entirely new growth avenues for suppliers.

3. Transformation insights: Factories need to invest in building flexible production capabilities to meet F&B brands’ demand for multi-category, small-batch flexible supply. They can also onboard more F&B clients across different categories to reduce their own operational risk.

The F&B industry is undergoing a major shift toward category integration, bringing new industry trends and derivative demand. Key insights are as follows:

1. New industry trends: The F&B market is oversupplied, and most single-category players have hit growth ceilings. The vast majority of brands now need to unlock new growth, so cross-category integration will remain a mainstream industry trend for the foreseeable future. Leading brands have already completed initial layouts, and a large number of small and medium-sized brands also have latent demand for cross-category transformation.

2. Core pain points for clients: Most brands lack the capabilities to assess viable cross-category directions, select promising new tracks, and control expansion costs. Many end up blindly overinvesting, which raises their break-even point and amplifies operational risk. This pain point is particularly acute for small and medium-sized brands.

3. Potential service opportunities: Service providers can develop customized solutions for brands of different sizes: for example, conducting new-track demand research for leading brands, and delivering cross-category feasibility assessments and cost control plans for small and medium-sized brands. This helps brands leverage their existing resources and play to their strengths, improving their chances of successful cross-category expansion.

Cross-category integration has become a leading trend in China’s F&B industry, bringing new demand and adjustment opportunities for platform operations and merchant recruitment. Key insights are as follows:

1. New demand from brands on the platform: F&B brands operating across multiple categories and scenarios need platforms to adjust their category tagging rules and scenario-based traffic allocation mechanisms to fit cross-category operators’ needs. For example, all-day operators need scenario-based traffic support across different day parts, and multi-category brands need more flexible tagging and display.

2. Adjustments to platform recruitment and operations: On the recruitment side, platforms can increase onboarding of brands aligned with the category integration trend. On the operations side, they can launch targeted scenario-based marketing campaigns, and offer dedicated traffic support for multi-scenario stores such as "tea + coffee" or "full-service dining + late-night snacks" to help brands boost revenue.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms need to guard against onboarding a flood of low-quality stores that blindly follow the cross-category trend. These stores carry high operational risk and are far more likely to close. Platforms should build targeted entry assessment mechanisms, and provide cross-category operational guidance for onboarded brands to improve store survival rates and reduce platform operational risk.

This article sorts out the latest industrial changes in China’s F&B industry, summarizes new trends and business models, and provides rich reference for industry research:

1. Latest industry developments: For decades, the F&B industry followed positioning theory, which held that "a brand equals a category". Today, leading brands across the board are breaking category boundaries: from tea chains and fast food to full-service dining and braised snacks, all are expanding cross-category into popular tracks and rolling out all-day operations. Category boundaries are gradually dissolving, representing a major transformation driven by shifting industry supply and demand dynamics.

2. Underlying logic of the shift: The core driver of this industry change is a reversal in supply and demand dynamics. Positioning theory worked effectively during the era of undersupply, but today market supply far outpaces demand. Single-category players face severe customer dilution and stagnant growth, so brands need to expand cross-category to unlock more consumption potential from their existing stores and spread fixed costs.

3. Summary of the new business model: This article outlines leading brands' "baked sweet potato" cross-category model: brands reuse existing supply chain, store, and customer resources to test new categories with low risk. Successful expansions unlock new growth, while failed tests have little impact on the core business. The article also summarizes core principles for category integration, providing new research samples and theoretical support for industrial research.