海外品牌接连败退 这门餐饮生意却被中国玩家盘活了？

This article outlines the latest developments in China's donut industry, with key takeaways as follows:

1. The domestic donut segment is heating up again. A wave of new local brands has gained rapid popularity, with many stores seeing queues even on weekdays and third-party代购 for their products. Some new stores in second- and third-tier cities have generated over 200,000 yuan in GMV in their first opening week, and multiple established chain bakery brands have also entered the market to position themselves in the segment.

2. Compared to traditional American donuts, the raw donuts that new brands focus on are lower in oil and sugar for a healthier profile. They are also visually appealing, perfect for social media sharing, and come in a wide range of sweet and savory flavors. Most are priced between 8.9 yuan and 14.9 yuan per piece, with an average per-customer transaction of 20 to 30 yuan. The low entry barrier makes them popular among students and office workers.

3. It is worth noting that most of these new brands only offer donuts as their core product, and their popularity is largely driven by influencer traffic. Like many previous viral bakery hits, they may cool off quickly, leaving their long-term development uncertain. Consumers are advised to approach "check-in visits" rationally.

The resurgence of China's donut segment offers new insights for bakery brands, with key takeaways as follows:

1. On the consumer trend front: today's consumers prioritize both health needs and social shareability. Traditional high-oil, high-sugar categories have fallen out of favor, while products that are low in oil and sugar, visually attractive, and suitable for social sharing gain more traction.

2. On product development and pricing: brands can draw on the improvement approach behind raw donuts, adapting traditional categories for local consumers and expanding room for flavor innovation. It is also important to keep the entry barrier accessible: pricing single items around 10 yuan, with an average transaction of 20 to 30 yuan per customer, aligns with mass consumers' purchasing power and attracts a broad audience.

3. On risk mitigation: brands should avoid the pitfalls of a narrow product portfolio and over-reliance on influencer traffic. Following the examples of established brands like Boss Bao and Guanglong Egg Tart King, brands can expand their product matrix around a core hit product to build sustained repurchase capacity, avoiding a steep drop in foot traffic once initial hype fades.

The current heating up of the donut segment brings new opportunities for sellers looking to enter the bakery industry, along with clear risk warnings, with key takeaways as follows:

1. On opportunities: after traditional donut brands exited the market one after another, a market gap has opened up. Improved raw donuts align with today's demand for healthier, social-media-friendly products, with a moderate price point that appeals to a wide audience, including both students and office workers. The current go-to-market model of locating in core business districts paired with influencer marketing has already been validated, with many new stores delivering solid revenue in their first week and strong initial results.

2. On risks: most current new brands have clear weaknesses. First, they rely on a single product category, only making minor adjustments to donuts, making it hard to compete with new viral hits that emerge later. Second, their popularity is heavily dependent on influencer traffic: purchases are driven by content virality rather than underlying demand, so foot traffic tends to plummet once social media buzz fades.

3. For sellers looking to enter the market, it is necessary to plan for repurchase systems and product expansion in advance, rather than relying solely on traffic to sustain operations.

The new wave of growth in China's donut segment brings new business opportunities and insights for bakery production and processing factories, with key takeaways as follows:

1. On product production and design: market demand has shifted significantly. Traditional high-oil, high-sugar American-style donuts have become obsolete. Today's mainstream raw donuts require dough with higher water content, less oil absorption during frying, and lower sweetness. They also need to support a hole-less design to hold fillings, with room for a wide range of sweet and savory filling combinations, which puts forward new requirements for production processes and formulas.

2. On business opportunities: a number of emerging donut brands are expanding stores rapidly, and leading chain bakery brands are also launching new donut-focused lines. This has created strong new demand for contract manufacturing and raw material supply. Factories can seize the window of this category's rise to meet these new demands.

3. On strategic insights: factories need to adjust their R&D and production directions to keep up with consumer trends, and adapt their product lines to match demand for healthier, more personalized offerings, to capture new growth opportunities brought by category iteration.

The new wave of growth in the donut segment reflects new characteristics of the bakery industry and points to new directions for bakery-related service providers, with key takeaways as follows:

1. On industry development trends: the single-hit specialty store model still retains market vitality in the bakery sector. Traditional legacy categories can reactivate market demand through localization improvements, and influencer traffic remains a core driver for new brand launches. Meanwhile, iteration in niche segments is accelerating.

2. On core pain points of brands: the current wave of newly emerged donut brands generally share two core problems. First, they over-rely on public domain traffic from social platforms, lacking the ability to continuously acquire customers and retain users for repeat purchases. Second, their narrow product structure leaves them with poor risk resilience, making it hard to retain users when competing with new viral hits.

3. Service providers can develop targeted solutions: for example, offering brands full-funnel marketing services that combine long-term content operations with private domain user retention. They can also provide technical support for formula improvement and flavor innovation to meet brands' product development needs, helping brands完善 their product matrices.

The growth of the new wave of donut brands offers new reference for the investment attraction and operations of commercial platforms such as shopping malls, with key takeaways as follows:

1. On brand demand: newly emerged donut brands do not require large store areas, and generally prefer high-traffic locations in core mid-to-high-end shopping malls, and are willing to enter leading business districts across regions. These influencer-backed brands can attract young consumers to the mall, which aligns with platforms' goal of boosting foot traffic.

2. On existing risks: most of these new brands launch via influencer traffic, so their lifecycle has high uncertainty. They generally suffer from a single-product structure, and are likely to close once their popularity fades, leaving platforms facing the risk of vacant storefronts.

3. On investment attraction and operational suggestions: platforms can appropriately introduce these viral niche single-product brands to leverage their popularity to boost mall foot traffic, but should control the proportion of similar viral single-product brands. During investment assessment, platforms should prioritize examining brands' product iteration capabilities and long-term operation plans, and prefer brands with multi-product line layout strategies to reduce operational risk.

The ups and downs of the donut segment serve as a new case study for the development of China's bakery industry, bringing many notable new trends and research questions, with key takeaways as follows:

1. On new industry trends: traditional, declining niche categories can reactivate the market after localization improvements. Former leading overseas brands exited the market because their products failed to match domestic consumer demand, while local players have revitalized the donut segment through product adjustments. The single-hit specialty store model still has room for survival, but it also faces new development challenges.

2. On newly exposed industry problems: a large number of new bakery brands currently over-rely on social influencer traffic, with consumer demand driven by content virality rather than genuine rigid demand. They generally have narrow product structures and weak risk resilience. The lifecycle of viral bakery hits is getting shorter and shorter, and most brands struggle to achieve long-term stable operation.

3. On business models: new brands have developed a go-to-market formula of "core business district location + influencer marketing + low-threshold single core product". This model allows new brands to scale quickly, but lacks long-term sustainability. How to build a repurchase system and expand a complete product matrix after the initial traffic-driven launch remains a core question for future research.