Chinese restaurants have changed, but buns have always been national foods that cut across geographical areas and span the memory of generations. A small bun, wrapped in a variety of geographical features, also carries the simplest dietary needs of the chinese。
However, this traditional category, which has been in history for millennia, is being redefined by a name that is not perfect. A recent investigation by journalists found that a restaurant brand called "backs" is rising rapidly in many parts of the country, with heavy layouts in lower-door shops and a surge in online sales. However, the market has a large number of door shops under the banner of “bunking buns”, with different operators behind them. An ip battle over “bunking buns” has been raging, exploring in depth the development context behind it, and the difficulties and opportunities facing china’s traditional food and catering transformation are emerging。
♪ i'll be back ♪
Jenan's "breeds"
“i know there's a ‘breeding’, and i thought it was all a brand, and then i looked at it, and several of them had different prefixes to know that they were not one.” according to mr. Li, “i thought once about the house that i had eaten before, the result was wrong, and it was a little different, but the door and the packaging looked almost identical”
Journalists' investigations have found that the “backs” store is expanding at an alarming rate. From the centre of the orthodox to harmony square, from the grandview garden to wanda king street, dozens of door shops with the brand of “black buns” appeared in the streets of jinan as springs after rain。
“there is no significant difference between the taste and the ordinary bun store, as recently opened in the vicinity of the district.” the journalist was informed by ms. Wang, a citizen living near the left bank of the henda river in the tianbashi district of jenan city。
In situ, journalists have visited the core business circles and communities in several jurisdictions in the city of jenan and have found that there are several independent brands in the market, such as the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blanche, and the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blank, the jubilee blank, the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blanche, the jubilee blank blank, the jubilee clan, the jubilee clan, and the leak blank blank blanche, with dozens of doors。
Not only do these doors share the word “blacky”, but the visual system is almost entirely duplicated: clean concrete walls, bare red brick table, simple log tables and chairs, white red slogans with the word “breathing oil” on the wall, and creating a rough public well smoke. Even the core front design uses a highly uniform "red" "red and black" colour, almost identical in fonts and layouts. Without careful identification of the prefixes, ordinary consumers are simply unable to distinguish they are not a chain of brands。
With regard to the origin of the name "black bun," the shopkeeper explained to the press: "we have a very thin, plume, oil leaks in the steam, and looks a little broken, so it's called a bag." there are brands that raise it to the height of brand philosophy: “no flowers, no fancy, no fancy, just real buns.”
Distinguished from the single breakfast business of the traditional buns, most “battered” stores extend their product lines by adding to the buns, porridges, sour spicy powders, clouds and zhongqing noodles, etc., fast foods to be available all day。
For almost 20 years, mr. Chu, who worked in chinan's deep-growing restaurant industry, told reporters: “the type of bun is too traditional, and everyone is much more sophisticated and beautiful than who's bun, and `blacking' goes the other way, creating strong contrasts and memories with a `blacking' word. “the journalists note that this “scribbling” designation is not an example. In recent years, similar brands have emerged in the catering industry, such as “fat shop” fat clams, “bad” hotpots, “fat” buns, “ghost” buns, etc., which have had a good market response。
There are over 800 front-line stores in the country
This wave of “battered buns” swept across the country, beginning with shenyang in the northeast. Among the many brands of “battered buns”, the so-called “bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bread-bow-bow-bow-bow-bow-bow-bow-bow-bow”。
Open business information indicates that the hyena is part of the broken circle (shenyang) catering management company ltd., established on 23 may 2024, with the legal representative yang zhongqing, with a registered capital of $1 million, and its registered address in shenyang city peace zone, liaoning province. Wang shiwei owns 51 per cent of the shares, which are in the hands of companies and 49 per cent of the shares in the top, covering a wide range of areas such as food sales, food internet sales and catering services。
In an online interview, journalists learned that the brand founder, wang shiwei, was a tunnel man from the northeast and had four years of experience in the deli trade before entering the catering industry. In 2024, the first family fell in liao ning shenyang in the flood zone. With differentiated brand positioning and a highly standardized model of union expansion, the booming growth of the scavenging buns was achieved in less than two years。
In recent days, journalists, in their capacity as business associates, have asked mr. Li, the chief of the national union operations, about the details of the shop. Mr. Lee told journalists that, as of june 2026, more than 800 shops were officially open throughout the country, covering 22 provinces and over 200 cities。
On the shandong market, mr. Li revealed that there is currently only one shop in jenan, which is used mainly for local taste research, and that there are existing shops in the provinces of ningtao, camp east, tsui, jinin and suzawa。
According to the data provided by mr. Lee, journalists estimated that an 80 square metre front-loading package (covering union fees, bonds, brand royalties, management fees and procurement of refurbishing equipment) would cost between $160,000 and $200,000 without rent. In terms of profit expectations, mr. Lee indicated that the gross gross gross gross domestic product of brand stores was about 60 per cent, with an average daily turnover of $8,000 to $20 million for a single shop in qingdao and approximately $300,000 for a single month。
It's just a cranberry egg
Journalists have learned that, in order to sustain the pace of national expansion, which has opened more than 800 stores over two years, the hysteria has led to the establishment of two regional branches in hangzhou and guangzhou; and that the construction of a self-contained central production plant in beijing, guangzhou and shenyang, using the “prefabricated plant + regional sub-warehouse storage + near-harmonized distribution” model, has effectively reduced the logistics costs and post-cooking operating thresholds of the affiliated vendors。
Mr. Li, the head of the aforementioned coalition, described the fact that the headquarters provided the country's door store with nine standardized materials, with only a herring egg collage to be prepared by the door shop in situ, and the rest to be prepared by the central factory in advance bulk and delivered to the store for the entire cold chain. The door shop is responsible only for the site and face, as well as for the packaging and steaming of the buns. In fact, most shopkeepers can only see the process of hand-made, evaporated buns by employees, by default that all the pies are in place at the door, and do not know about the fact that the vast majority of the pies are distributed by the plant。
"at times, i see employees in buns and evaporates, and i never thought that the pies were delivered early in the cold chain." the consumer, mr. Xu, who was eating at the door, told the journalist。
During a field visit, journalists observed three or four staff members in the area of the chef-in-chief who had been working on the knapsacks without one-time gloves; one employee would also pick up the slag that fell on the table and feed it at the entrance。
It should not be overlooked that food safety management has become a focus as scale expands. The black cat complaints platform shows that, in recent times, many consumers in different regions have responded that different objects such as steel ball chips, stabbing fish bones and metal fragments have been eaten from the buns or porridges of grazed buns。
On 5 june, an inner mongolia generalist posted a video on a short video platform stating that he had purchased a cheesy-paste plaque with almost one half of its internal plastered white fat, with virtually no skinned meat; several consumers in guangxi and hebei, among others, had shown that the same plaque was too fat and greasy. In addition, a consumer in tianjin posted that he had eaten a transparent plastic line of about 5 cm in a shrimp bag purchased on the online platform, which had not been satisfactorily addressed after feedback to the door shop。
The market under the battle
“three days before the opening of the business, we were able to sell more than 2,000 buns a day, basically a group purchaser who came in with a loud voice.” “one week before the opening of the business, we put in a local information stream, as almost all our colleagues did.”
As stated by the above-mentioned staff, in addition to differentiated brand names, another central driver of rapid nationwide expansion is the mature standardized online marketing system。
The line has become the core guest position for the “bunk-up” class. Searching for “zinan blank” on the shivering platform has exceeded 100 million times on related topics and has resulted in hundreds of thousands of visitors and door shop videos。
Mr. Lee also confirmed to journalists that brand headquarters would have full responsibility for the promotion of the national door shop's entire platform, including account-building, video clippings, live operations, etc., and that, unlike the traditional "door-to-door" model of the bungalow, the door shop would start to pre-heat during the preparatory phase of the renovation, by pre-locking the customers ' accounts。
However, online marketing festivities are accompanied by consumers who are caught in the trap of “unrecognizing and dissimilar”. "now that we're out of here, there's a lot of buns, and we can't tell which one is real, which one is wind." mr. Zhang told reporters that “some of the shops are thick, others eat fresh meat, and after two strikes, they don't want to go in”
More crucially, as a traditional product of breakfast and fast food consumption, “breeds” have to bear the heavy pressure of the home-grown mature fast food market if they are to have a real place. Whether it is a national chain of brands, or an old local name, or a community-wide couple's shop, in a highly saturated market, “breeding” not only falls into the same category, but also competes with these rivals, who have been working for many years, for a limited flow of customers, which continues to increase。
(shangdong business news)
