China’s Two New Shelves for Imported Food: Membership Clubs and Bulk Snack Chains
Updated
Sixty-three Sam’s Club stores in China sold more last year than one hundred thousand forward warehouses belonging to Meituan and Taobao combined. At the other end of the market, two bulk snack chains have opened more than forty thousand stores between them and are now telling each other publicly to stop competing so hard.
These are the two shelves that matter for imported food in China right now, and almost every foreign brand I meet is still planning around supermarkets and Tmall. I am Jon Wang, founder of SEO Agency China. We work with food and drink brands selling into China without a local office. Here is what these two channels are, what they buy, and which one your product belongs in.
The numbers that frame this
- Sam’s Club China: 63 stores, over 140 billion RMB in annual sales, an average of 2.22 billion RMB per store, with paid membership passing 10.7 million (BXTData, 2026).
- Meituan Shangou and Taobao Shangou together: over 100,000 forward warehouses, around 118.2 billion RMB a year. Sixty-three stores out-sell the entire forward warehouse network (same source).
- Mingming Henmang, which owns Lingshi Henmang and Zhao Yiming: 21,948 stores at the end of 2025, after opening 7,554 in a single year (Guancha, January 2026).
- Wanchen Group: over 19,500 stores by the end of February 2026, with 2025 retail sales above 73.3 billion RMB and revenue of 51.46 billion RMB, up 59.2% year on year (21st Century Business Herald, April 2026).
- The bulk snack sector entered its “quality and efficiency” phase in 2025, after an expansion phase in 2021 and 2022 and a consolidation phase in 2023 and 2024. Opening a store no longer guarantees a profit (same source).
The questions brands ask me about these two channels
Is a membership club just a supermarket with a fee?
No, and the difference is the reason it is hard to get in. Section two.
Are bulk snack stores just discount shops that will destroy my price?
They will squeeze your price, but the volume is real and the buyer is not who you think. Section three.
Which one takes a brand nobody knows?
One of them does, easily. The other almost never does. Section four has the comparison.
Do I approach them directly?
Almost never. Both buy through a supplier who already holds local stock and can handle returns. Section five.
What margin do I have to give up?
More than in general trade, in both. The business reminder at the end explains when that is worth it.
Membership clubs: few products, huge volume per product
A Sam’s Club store in China carries a few thousand SKUs. A Chinese hypermarket carries tens of thousands. That single fact explains everything about how they buy.
When a store has one slot for imported butter, the buyer is not selecting a brand. They are selecting the butter. The volume that goes through that slot is enormous, and the brand that wins it gets a scale most imported brands never see in China. The brand that loses it does not get a smaller share, it gets nothing.
Two consequences follow, and foreign brands usually understand the first and miss the second.
The first is that you need real supply capacity. Winning a slot and then failing to ship is how a brand gets permanently delisted. The second is that the membership model makes the retailer ruthless about quality in a way a normal retailer is not. A member pays a fee up front and renews or does not. Sam’s membership fee income grew more than 35% quarter on quarter, which means renewals are working, which means the buyer’s job is to protect the reason people renew. A product that disappoints does not just sell badly, it threatens the membership.
That is good news if your product is genuinely better than the local alternative, and bad news if your pitch is that you are European and therefore premium. Being imported is not a differentiator in this channel any more. It was in 2015.
Bulk snack chains: forty thousand doors, and the land grab is over
The bulk snack format, 量贩零食, is a Chinese invention that most Western brands have never walked into. A small, bright store, a few hundred square metres, packed with snacks and drinks sold loose or in small packs at prices well below a convenience store. It started around 2010, exploded in 2021 and 2022, consolidated in 2023 and 2024, and is now in what Chinese analysts call the quality and efficiency phase.
| Group | Stores | 2025 performance | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mingming Henmang (Lingshi Henmang + Zhao Yiming) | 21,948 at end 2025, +7,554 in the year | 66.1 billion RMB over nine months, heading for a Hong Kong listing | Scale secured, now optimising |
| Wanchen Group | 19,500+ by end Feb 2026 | Retail sales above 73.3 billion RMB, revenue 51.46 billion RMB, +59.2%, adjusted net profit 2.57 billion RMB | Profitable at scale |
| Regional chains | Hundreds to low thousands | Squeezed | Consolidating or exiting |
The important signal is not the store count. It is that in 2026 both leaders publicly called for an end to disorderly competition, and that Chinese trade press now writes that opening a bulk snack store no longer means making money. The land grab is finished. The two groups have stopped competing mainly on how fast they open and started competing on what is in the store.
That is the opening. A chain that needs differentiation rather than more doors needs products its rival does not have. An imported snack nobody else carries is worth something to that buyer in a way it was not worth anything two years ago.
Which channel takes your product
| Membership club | Bulk snack chain | |
|---|---|---|
| Doors | Tens | Tens of thousands |
| SKUs per store | A few thousand | A few thousand, rotating faster |
| Ticket per item | Medium to high, large pack sizes | Low, small pack sizes |
| Takes an unknown brand | Rarely, and only with a strong product argument and supply proof | Yes, this is how they differentiate |
| Volume if you win | Very high per SKU | High in aggregate, spread thin per store |
| Price pressure | Hard but stable | Constant |
| Pack format needed | Bulk, family size, often China-specific | Small unit, single-serve, low shelf price |
| Best fit | Dairy, meat, oils, coffee, wine in volume, anything where quality is provable | Biscuits, chocolate, crisps, candy, small drinks, novelty formats |
If you make a premium single-origin chocolate bar, the snack chain is your route and the club is not. If you make butter or beef, it is the reverse. If your answer is that you want both, you will need two pack formats and two price positions, and most small brands cannot fund that in year one.
A second opinion from the distribution side
Both channels buy through intermediaries, which is where most foreign brands get lost. I asked John Parker, E-Commerce Director at E-Commerce China Agency, who spends his weeks between brands and Chinese distributors, what he sees on these two channels:
Brands keep asking me for an introduction to the buyer. That is not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that the buyer will ask your distributor three questions: can you ship this volume every month, who pays for the returns, and what happens if it does not sell. If your distributor cannot answer all three without calling you, the meeting is over. Sort the supply answer before you chase the shelf.
John Parker, E-Commerce Director, E-Commerce China Agency
That matches what we hear from the brand side, usually after the fact. The deal that falls apart rarely falls apart on price. It falls apart on the return clause and on whether the brand can commit to volume twelve months ahead.
How to actually get in
Find the supplier, not the buyer
Both channels work with a limited set of suppliers who already hold stock, manage returns and carry the credit risk. Your job is to become an easy addition to one of their lines, not to pitch a retailer directly. Our guide to finding a reliable Chinese distributor covers how to tell a serious one from a broker, and the category detail for specific products sits in pieces like our cured meat and ham distributors list.
Fix the pack before the pitch
A bulk snack chain needs a low shelf price, which usually means a smaller unit than you sell at home. A membership club needs a bigger one. Arriving with your domestic format and asking the channel to adapt is the most common reason a first meeting does not produce a second. Decide which channel you are for, then make the pack for it.
Be findable in Chinese before the buyer looks you up
This is the part we handle, and the part that is invisible until it costs you a deal. A category buyer at either of these groups will search your brand name in Chinese before the second meeting. So will the distributor deciding whether to carry you. If nothing exists, you are an unknown risk with a foreign name.
We build the Chinese-language layer that answers that search: what the product is, where it comes from, what the certifications are, who already sells it, with sources attached. That runs through Baidu SEO and AI search, because Chinese buyers now also ask DeepSeek and Doubao, and through Chinese PR when the category needs third-party credibility rather than your own words.
Business reminder: the margin you give up and what you buy with it
Both channels cost you margin. The question is what the margin buys, and the answer is different for each.
What a membership club costs. A hard price, a China-specific pack, and a volume commitment you have to honour in a bad month as well as a good one. You will also be asked to fund in-store sampling, which works in this format and is not cheap. The hidden cost is opportunity: a slot at this scale can absorb your entire China production capacity, and then you are a single-customer business in a foreign market. That is a real strategic risk and very few brands price it.
What it returns. Volume that changes the economics of your factory, and a credential. Being listed in a Chinese membership club is the single most persuasive thing you can say to the next distributor, the next retailer and the next market. Brands use it for years.
What a bulk snack chain costs. Constant price pressure, small unit economics, and a buyer who can replace you next quarter. Wanchen made 2.57 billion RMB of adjusted net profit on 51.46 billion RMB of revenue in 2025. That is around a 5% net margin at the chain level, which tells you precisely how much room they have to be generous with you. None.
What it returns. Distribution that would take a decade to build any other way, and trial at a scale that makes a brand known. Forty thousand doors between two groups is more physical retail presence than most foreign food brands will ever assemble in China through traditional wholesale. If your product is genuinely likeable and repeatable, trial at that scale is worth accepting a thin margin for a while.
Our recommendation. Pick one, deliberately, based on your pack and your capacity, and negotiate a floor price you can live with in year three rather than year one. The brands that get hurt are the ones that take the first listing they are offered, at whatever price, and then discover they cannot fund the second market because the first one set the price for everyone.
The question worth arguing about
One view: these channels are volume traps. They take your margin, own your customer, and drop you when a Chinese manufacturer copies the product cheaper. Stay in specialist retail and build the brand slowly.
The other: specialist retail in China is too small to build anything, the mass channels are where Chinese consumers actually shop now, and a brand that waits will find the category defined without it.
I have seen both go right and both go wrong. What decides it is usually whether the product can survive being copied. Where do you stand? Tell me, I read every reply.
Sources
- BXTData, 2026, on Sam’s Club China: 63 stores, over 140 billion RMB in sales, 2.22 billion RMB per store, 10.7 million paid members, and the comparison with the forward warehouse networks.
- Guancha, January 2026, on Mingming Henmang’s 21,948 stores at the end of 2025 and its Hong Kong listing process.
- 21st Century Business Herald, April 2026, on why opening a bulk snack store no longer guarantees a profit, with Wanchen’s store count and financials.
- 36Kr, 2026, on the 66.1 billion RMB nine-month figure and the second half of the bulk snack race.
- Our own channel piece: China, the number one food importer.
Jon Wang founded SEO Agency China and spends most of his time with imported food and drink brands choosing between Chinese channels that all look attractive on a slide and behave very differently in practice. Connect with Jon on LinkedIn.
Working with us on this
We are a small Shanghai team working with food and drink brands that have no China office. We do not negotiate your listing, your distributor does that. We make sure that when the buyer and the distributor look you up in Chinese, they find a brand that looks real: product facts, origin, certifications, third-party coverage, all in Chinese and all sourced.
One anonymised example. A European biscuit brand had been talking to a snack chain supplier for four months with no decision. The supplier’s honest feedback, when we asked, was that nobody at the chain could find anything about the brand in Chinese and it made the listing feel risky. We built the Chinese brand basics and got two trade articles published. The listing went through the following quarter. The product had not changed at all.
If you are in a conversation with either channel and it has stalled, tell us where it stalled. Often the blocker is not the one you think.