Bulk snack track welcomes another Hong Kong-listed player: Huitongda teams up with Snack Preferred

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The capital landscape of the bulk snack industry has once again stirred.

On February 28, the Hong Kong-listed company Huitongda Network and Snack Youxuan signed a strategic cooperation agreement. According to the announcement, the two parties will establish a joint venture company as the sole operating entity for the "Snack Youxuan" brand chain.

In the future, Snack Youxuan will maintain regional autonomy, continuing to focus on the hard discount bulk snack track; Huitongda will provide support in platformization, ecosystem building, capitalization, and AI capabilities.

As a result, the bulk snack track has gained another participant with a listed company background.

This cooperation comes at a time when the industry structure is becoming increasingly consolidated. The business logic of bulk snacks is not complicated: the more stores there are, the more concentrated the procurement, the stronger the bargaining power, and the more stable the gross margin; once scale is achieved, it's quickly difficult for newcomers to catch up.

Since 2023, the two leading companies in bulk snacks have continued expanding through integration and mergers. Their combined store scale is now approaching 40,000, with a combined market share of over 70%.

Among them, Mingming Henmang has completed its Hong Kong IPO, and Wancheng Group's "A+H" listing process is also underway. The overlap of capital and scale further strengthens the Matthew effect.

Compared to this, although Snack Youxuan, as a regional brand, has a certain scale foundation, it faces constraints in nationwide expansion and capital operations.

What Huitongda values may be the offline network expansion space brought by the high-frequency consumption scenario of bulk snacks.

As an industrial internet platform, Huitongda has promoted the integration of AI and offline store scenarios in recent years, strengthening its systematic support for physical retail terminals.

On the supply chain side, its membership store system is expected to access Snack Youxuan's hard discount product resources, optimize product structure, increase customer flow and repurchase rates, and explore standardized replication paths for "fast-moving consumer goods upgrade + small store, large chain," thereby enhancing stickiness and profitability between the platform and stores.

In terms of AI and digitalization, Huitongda, revolving around its self-developed "Qianchengyun AI large model" and related AI Agent, has already realized commercial applications in retail chain scenarios.

After this cooperation, the relevant systems can be quickly deployed to Snack Youxuan's 2,800 stores, connecting data, decision-making, and operations, achieving more refined management from product selection, warehousing and distribution, to store operations and community management.

The high-frequency consumption properties and community stickiness of bulk snacks will also help Huitongda complete an important piece of the hard discount track.

Whether taking the lead on the curve can be achieved remains to be seen. But what is certain is that, in the context of continued industry concentration, expansion in a single dimension is no longer enough to shake the established pattern; the focus of competition will ultimately shift to a contest of supply chain efficiency and system capabilities.

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