The snack chain, Whole Foods, has also transformed itself into a community supermarket selling vegetables.

A few days ago, the first store of "Fresh Life" made by a commodity store was officially opened in Hankou City Square in Wuhan. In its form, the grocers-made community supermarket is relatively similar to the "Three Squirrel House" community supermarket made by the same resting-food brand, Three Squirrel. The same store size, community business district location, and the sale of meat dishes prepared for ready-to-eat meals with refrigeration and freezer cover consumers three meals a day, making the category structure of community kitchens.

The difference may be that community supermarkets made with three squirrels may now focus on developing markets in eastern China such as Nanjing and Yunnan, while grocers may focus on making markets in central China in the short term.

Earlier, in 2025, the Business Observer exclusively reported that various outlets and snack tracks were planning comprehensive and community supermarket projects. At that time, stores including grocers, the Wanchen Group, and specialty stores such as pan circles all commissioned headhunters to recruit general supermarket talents to participate in the supermarket project.

The Wanchen Group was planning to do the "All Around" supermarket projects and the "Whirlpool" supermarket projects, which have so far opened their first stores in South China and Central China.Now, the community supermarket project of 良品-mart has also officially debuted, and in terms of time cycle, 良品- Mart is a "follower" in the snack circuit to transform community supermarkets to sell vegetables.

The snack industry as a whole has a unique "scenic line": the end of selling snacks is all about selling vegetables.

flow

Overall, snack players are making the transition to community supermarkets, and there are likely to be three levels of consideration.

First, it could be traffic cost considerations.

Snacks are not in demand, and marketing traffic to this category is expensive. Products like grocers and three squirrels have large sales plates on the online top end, but they do not make much money in a year, because the profits are eaten by the traffic platform in the form of "high traffic costs and high marketing costs."

Now, comprehensive supermarket consumption scenarios that cover three meals a day in the community, such as cooking fresh and cooked food, can reduce traffic costs and improve traffic efficiency. Through high-frequency and low-frequency, immediate and non-immediate food products in community supermarkets, the "flow bottleneck" of non-immediate foods can be partially solved.

For example, young people attracted by desserts and baking can come into the store, and cross-marketing can be done in the supermarket. Consequently, generating associated consumption of other categories such as zero-food items, the traffic cost of snacks in the community supermarket scenario is lower, compared to other snack channels such as online and snack stores.

So, from the perspective of user traffic, snack brands do community supermarket projects, There are also some common characteristics. In addition to all selling vegetables, everyone is making greater efforts in ready-made baking and dessert categories, because the core value of baking categories is to attract young people, and dessert can bring young guests to the store for the first time.

Whole Foods is no exception, and its community supermarket project, Whole Food Fresh, is also focusing on its baking ready-made items and desserts.

The overall form of renovation, category structure, business style design, etc. is also a little more boutique and quality, which seems to be about making a new lifestyle, which may all have user traffic considerations.

Differentiation

Now, specialized zero-food chains are very extensive, and several snack chain brands will open stores in a shopping district, and everyone is offering low prices.

The essence of the roll is because there is a lack of high-quality supply, and all the products sold are similar, and the differentiation is not obvious.

Therefore, two new directions have been spawned in the development of the snack industry, one is to make fresh snacks, select 140-160 SKUs, increase the proportion of self-produced products, and make fresh snack products that are high quality, short-term, daily, and a little higher gross customer list. The consumer scenario for services is mainly impulsive purchases.

One is selling vegetables to make a community supermarket. Serves daily needs for three meals a day.

Where the two are similar, it is necessary to strengthen differentiation capabilities and improve quality to ensure high-quality supply to support gross profit.

Community supermarkets, for example, can create differentiation by selling a large number of non-standard items such as meat and vegetable fresh products, ready-made baked goods and ready-to-eat meals. This is true of grocers Fresh Life, which also sells a large number of ready-to-eat and short-shelf foods. Because at present, when it comes to making supermarkets in China, it is only in the two major categories of fast food and ready-to-eat food that it is possible to truly differentiate.

Fresh snacks achieve higher self-production by reducing SKU, and then bring more differentiation through high self-production. Like the champion of this circuit, Golden Gate, about 50% -60% of the goods in its stores are produced in its own factories.

These are the faults of traditional snack chains that are too clumpy, too homogeneous, and too narrow and single in their categories.

Some market participants told the Business Observer that "a lot of snack chains like these are going to do comprehensive community supermarket projects, mainly because the zero food categories are too narrow, too single, limited audience and the moat is too shallow."

The reason why grocers like these can become community supermarkets selling vegetables and ready meals is probably because the current fresh and ready food supply chain has matured, giving snack chain brands the opportunity to transform into comprehensive supermarkets.

scene

Making community supermarkets is also a way for snack chains to expand the consumption landscape.

For example, in today's snack sellers, the scene is still relatively narrow. Its customer base "threshold" is still relatively high, and older people will not enter snack stores, which does not exist if it is a community supermarket, which can continue to reduce the consumption threshold of snacks and expand the user scene.

For example, in past snack shops, there were few customers in the morning, because young people did not come to shop in the morning and usually did so in the afternoon or evening. Now that they have been upgraded from snack franchises to community supermarkets, there are also a lot of consumers in the morning, and young people can come in the morning to buy a fruit, buy some baked goods for breakfast, etc. Middle-aged and elderly people can also come in the morning to buy some food or something.

By extending the "time and space," we have not only expanded the customer base, consumers' stay time in the store, but also expanded the consumption scene, and expanded the unit price and unit volume.