9年卖出2亿桶 食族人为何守不住酸辣粉基本盘？

This article introduces the development history of viral instant food brand Shizuren and the growth challenges it currently faces. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Development achievements: Founded in 2017, Shizuren caught the outbreak wave of the hot and sour instant noodle (suan la fen) category. It broke through the competition by launching a differentiated product with six ingredient packets and running refined online marketing campaigns. Over 9 years, it has sold more than 200 million barrels of suan la fen. In 2023, its annual sales exceeded 1 billion yuan, securing its leading position in the niche suan la fen market. Today, its products are available in more than 200 Chinese cities across over 400,000 offline retail outlets.

2. Current challenges: Shizuren is excessively reliant on its blockbuster suan la fen product. The sales volume and repurchase rates of the multiple new products it has launched since all fall far below those of its flagship item. At the same time, the brand suffers from weak quality control, with a large number of consumer complaints on e-commerce platforms about poor taste, foreign objects in packaging and spoiled products. Combined with the shrinking online traffic dividend and cutthroat industry competition, Shizuren has experienced declining market share, churn among its core customers and significant pressure to maintain growth.

This article sorts out Shizuren's development experience and current problems, offering valuable reference for brand operators in the instant food sector. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Replicable success factors: Shizuren accurately timed its entry to capitalize on the category's growth boom, positioned its differentiated six-ingredient-packet product, and targeted core consumer groups of students and young office workers. Online, it penetrated young consumer circles through KOL seeding marketing, celebrity endorsements and live streams with top influencers. After building online brand awareness, it laid out offline channels in special scenarios such as school campuses and residential communities in advance, reducing the risk of short lifecycle common to internet-famous brands. It has now achieved full omnichannel coverage.

2. Pitfalls to avoid: Brands should not over-rely on a single blockbuster product. Product expansion should keep pace with channel layout to avoid growth stagnation caused by long-term over-dependence on one star product. While scaling up, brands must upgrade supply chain quality control management and after-sales systems simultaneously, as quality defects directly erode brand reputation. In addition, brands need to continuously track changing consumer taste preferences and adjust product formulations in a timely manner to avoid customer churn caused by misaligned taste positioning.

This article analyzes the current market status, opportunities and risks of the instant suan la fen track, providing clear reference for instant food sellers. Key content is as follows:

1. Current market opportunities: The suan la fen category remains a blue ocean market with considerable growth potential. Domestic consumer trips for suan la fen will exceed 1.863 billion by 2025, with consumers aged 15 to 39 contributing 80% of total consumption, and young consumers maintain stable demand for suan la fen. In offline channels, campus stores and community convenience stores see strong sales performance: a single middle school campus store can steadily move more than 300 cases per month. Barreled instant food also has a low loss rate, bringing lower operational risk for channel operators.

2. Risks to note: The category has low entry barriers and severe homogenization, and has become a fragmented battlefield with multiple players. Established food giants, restaurant chains, cross-sector snack brands and new internet-famous brands are all entering the market, leading to extremely fierce competition. The online traffic dividend has shrunk, consumer taste preferences are iterating faster, and an increasing number of consumers are shifting to lighter flavors. Offline dine-in suan la fen restaurants also divert consumers. Sellers need to adjust product strategies in advance and prioritize quality control to avoid falling into a growth bottleneck.

This article analyzes changing consumer demand and brand pain points in the instant suan la fen industry, offering multiple insights for processing manufacturers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Product design and production demand: Early consumers preferred extra spicy instant products with multiple ingredients, but today more consumers are shifting to lighter flavors and have higher requirements for product quality and safety. Factories need to develop new products adapted to changing taste preferences, while strengthening quality control in production links to reduce incidents of foreign objects and spoiled products.

2. Business opportunities: There are a large number of players in the current suan la fen track, and most brands have widespread demand for product line expansion. Leading brands have already established three production bases and adopted advanced production technologies such as powder coating processing and aerospace freeze-drying. Factories with multi-category production capacity, advanced production processes and high-standard quality control systems are much more likely to secure OEM cooperation opportunities with brands.

3. Insights for digital e-commerce: Online is the core customer acquisition channel for instant food brands. Factories need to cooperate with brands to develop standardized blockbuster products that meet online sales requirements, guarantee consistent product quality across different batches, and satisfy brands' needs for rapid volume growth.

This article sorts out development trends and brand pain points in the instant suan la fen industry, helping relevant service providers clarify their business directions. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry development trends: The suan la fen track is still expanding continuously and is a core growth segment in the convenience food industry. Young consumers are the core consumer group, and integrated online-offline layout and full-category expansion are common development directions for brands. Industry competition has shifted from competing for traffic to competing on product strength and supply chain capacity.

2. Core brand pain points: Most brands, especially internet-famous ones, generally suffer from over-reliance on a single blockbuster product and difficulty scaling new products. After the end of the online traffic dividend, customer acquisition costs have risen. For most brands, supply chain and quality control management capabilities cannot keep up with the pace of scale expansion, and they struggle to match the fast iteration of consumer taste preferences, lacking the ability to adapt to market changes.

3. Business opportunities: Service providers can launch targeted services to address these pain points, such as consumer taste research, consulting services for supply chain quality control system upgrading, and full-channel marketing operation agency services. These services help brands break through growth bottlenecks, adapt to changing consumer demand and improve product competitiveness.

This article analyzes instant food brands' channel demands and the current industry status, offering reference for platform operators in investment promotion, operation and risk control. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Brands' core demands for platforms: After achieving scale online, internet-famous instant food brands all have strong demand for offline channel expansion, with special channels such as campuses and communities as core sales scenarios. Leading brands also have demand for cooperation to supply goods to large retail platforms. Platforms can launch corresponding cooperation policies targeting these demands.

2. Key operation and management points: Convenience instant food is a刚需 product for offline terminals. Platforms can reserve core display positions for top blockbuster products to improve sales efficiency. At the same time, platforms should conduct strict quality control audits for entering brands, establish after-sales feedback tracking mechanisms, and timely manage brands that receive a large number of quality complaints to reduce the platform's reputation risk.

3. Investment promotion directions: Suan la fen is still a growing track with both incumbent and new players entering the market. Platforms can attract brands with different price points and unique features to meet the needs of different consumption scenarios. They can also launch channel support policies for new internet-famous brands to attract them to settle in and enrich the platform's product assortment.

This article uses Shizuren as a typical case to sort out the development history and current problems of China's industrialized instant suan la fen industry, offering high reference value for industrial research. Key content is as follows:

1. Industry development history and new trends: China's industrialized instant suan la fen started in the 1990s, began large-scale development in 2015, and entered an industry-wide boom in 2018. It is now in the stage of stock competition, with a diverse set of market participants including established food companies, offline restaurant brands, cross-sector snack brands and new internet-famous brands. By 2025, annual consumer trips for suan la fen will exceed 1.863 billion, and the market size is still expanding.

2. New emerging industry problems: The track inherently has low entry barriers and severe homogenization, making it difficult for brands to build stable differentiated moats. Internet-famous brands rely on a "traffic plus blockbuster" go-to-market model, and generally face problems of over-reliance on single star products and quality control capabilities that cannot keep up with scale expansion. After the end of the traffic dividend, most brands face growth bottlenecks, and the accelerating iteration of consumer tastes also puts forward higher requirements for brands' product update capabilities.

3. Insights for business model research: The "traffic plus blockbuster" model can help brands achieve rapid scale-up, but to achieve long-term growth, brands need to lay out multi-category product lines and full-channel coverage in advance, continuously upgrade supply chains and quality control systems, and align with changing consumer demand.