Tag Archives: bakery

Why Young Chinese Consumers Prefer Online Bakeries

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In Shanghai, bread has become an indispensable part of young people’s lives, whether it’s gathering with friends, exploring every corner of the city on a City Walk, or at various social events, bread has become a must-have food companion.

With the popularity of the Internet and changes in lifestyle, young people in Shanghai are revolutionizing the way they buy bread. From queuing up in physical stores to buying bread online, this shift not only reflects the change in consumption patterns, but also drives the innovation and development of the entire baking industry.
Bread has always been loved by the public as a quick and delicious breakfast and snack, and more and more young people are no longer satisfied with buying bread in traditional offline bakeries, but choose to buy bread online.

Metropolis

In the fast-paced metropolis of Shanghai, traditional bakeries seem to be losing favour with younger consumers. According to Winshang Big Data, although Shanghai has more than 1,300 bakery shops, ranking first in the country, young people are more inclined to buy bread online.

Left-overs

Driven by the wave of digitalization, online shopping has become an important part of modern life. For busy young people in Shanghai, buying bread online is not only convenient and fast, but also enjoys more discounts and choices. Recently, a method of food sales called ‘leftover blind boxes’ has quietly emerged, which is highly sought after by young people because it is labelled as money-saving, fun, and environmentally friendly. In addition, bakery accounts on social media platforms have become a new front to attract customers. Through the release of activities such as ‘Discount Blind Box’ and ‘Free Tasting’, it has successfully attracted the attention and participation of a large number of young users. This seems to be the next step after the appearance of good boxes in previous years.

Buying bread is crazier than buying clothes

In Shanghai, the fashion capital, young people are just as crazy about food. Compared to traditional bakeries, online bakeries are more diverse in styles and flavours. Shanghai’s bakeries have a variety of cake styles, so many that they may be more than you can imagine: from classic baguettes to creative matcha breads, from healthy breads with low sugar and fat to rich sandwiches. From classic French desserts to innovative varieties infused with Chinese flavours, Shanghai’s bakeries cater to every taste. There is a wide range of styles to make people dazzled.

Blind boxes

In recent years, the blind box economy has risen rapidly in China, and major businesses have launched blind box products to attract consumers.  Blind boxes, as an emerging marketing method, have found its place in the food industry. The bread blind box packages launched by major merchants not only increase the fun of shopping, but also provide consumers with more opportunities to try unknown flavours. And under this trend, the bread industry is not to be outdone by launching the bread blind box. These mystery boxes often contain a variety of random styles of bread, making every opening full of surprises. Consumers don’t know exactly what styles and flavours of bread they will get when they buy it, and this sense of mystery and anticipation makes young people want to stop. For young consumers who are looking for novelty and curiosity, this way of buying has an irresistible appeal.

Recommended other posts:

Bread in China – from snack to staple, though still for the young urban

Some Chinese bakery statistics

Uncle and Aunty Xiong, French bakers in Beijing

 

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success. Peter has been involved with the Chinese food and beverage industries since 1985.

Exploring China’s Bakery Ingredient Market Trends

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The Chinese bakery business is booming, but the market is also extremely volatile. There is no better moment to enter the Chinese market for suppliers of any bakery ingredient than now.

I have collated a few statistics that are recent enough to give a rough impression of the size of the market.

The first table indicates the development of the value of the market and the projection of the near future.

Some interesting details about consumer behaviour:

  • Whether online or offline, women are still the main consumers of baked goods in China.
  • In terms of age, 70% of consumers are between the ages of 21 and 40.
  • In terms of price, consumers spending RMB 20 – 40 in a single consumption constitute the largest segment (35. 8%).

The next table shows the number of bakery shops in a selected group of major cities. This tells something about the geographic distribution. However, the smaller provincial cities currently show the highest growth.

We should not forget the focus issue of this blog: food ingredients. This graph shows the major cream suppliers to the Chinese baking industry. As you can see, the market still consists of a few major brands and a large number of small suppliers.

You can find more information in earlier posts, e.g. about flour (improvers), baking enzymes, leading bakery Holiland, a small private bakery in Beijing, bread, and you can find more by using the search function in this blog (try pastry, cake, biscuit, etc.). Contact me for proprietary studies.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success. Peter has been involved with the Chinese food and beverage industries since 1985.

Uncle and Aunty Xiong, French bakers in Beijing

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A longer stay in China offers the opportunity to get to know a wide variety of people. At an organic products market, we met an older couple, Mr. and Mrs. Xiong, who set up a French bakery. Both are retired civil servants, but still work daily in their own bakery, with their son, where they bake authentic European bread and related things.

Bread

Bread is not a traditional product in China. Chinese eat steamed bread (mantou). When European communities began to form in a number of large cities at the end of the 19th century, this also attracted bakers. As a result, bread gradually became known in China, but when the Chinese also started baking bread, it was of a different type than what Europeans like to eat. Chinese bread, like bread in many other Asian countries, has the consistency of cotton wool, is snow-white and quite sweet. It’s more like cake than bread.

Foreigners

Over the course of the nineties and later, foreign communities arose again in the larger Chinese cities. This created a need for firmer bread and bread with more fibre. Western fast food chains and hotels also needed bread, which had to come fresh from a local oven. A number of European entrepreneurs started baking European bread. However, as usual, it didn’t take long for Chinese entrepreneurs to start seeing opportunities in this market as well.

French connection

The history of the business of the Xiong family started, when their son opted to study at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. There he got to know all aspects of gastronomy, but chose patisserie as his specialty. His parents came to visit him in Paris and also fell under the spell of French culture in general and gastronomy in particular. That is also so surprising, when you consider that food and drink occupies a central place in both cultures.

Suburb

The Xiongs set up their first bakery in a suburb in eastern Beijing. There was no place for a store there yet. They sold their bread through third parties. It was also still in the hobby stage at the time. When they went on holiday, baking also stopped temporarily. That did make many of their customers grumble. When they had to close that bakery because the local government had other plans with the area, they moved the company to its current location near Beijing’s embassy district. That was a success, as the French embassy is one of Xiong’s regular customers.

Three in one

The bakery, officially called Uncle and Aunt Xiong in Chinese and La Maison de Xiong in French, shares a space with a coffee shop and a bar. The space itself is again part of a co-worker space, a space where small independent entrepreneurs can (co-)work. Upon entering, it feels like you are back in Europe. However, appearances are deceiving. Where Europeans would work together on the basis of strictly agreed rules, the various entrepreneurs there mainly work on the basis of mutual respect and trust. For example, we talked to the Xiongs in the bar for more than an hour, because the bar attracts few customers during the day. We drank coffee from the coffee shop that fitted perfectly with a fresh scones from Xiong.

Product range

The store’s showcase offers a completely different image than that in most bread chains in China. You can buy several types of sturdy brown bread. Most do have extra ingredients such as figs or walnuts, but it has a firm bite and is not so sweet. There is white bread, but also sturdy in structure, available in various shapes. An invention of the Xiongs is soy milk bread, bread made with soy milk instead of cow’s milk or water. It is a successful attempt to make higher protein bread that fits better into the Chinese flavour palette. We didn’t see much patisserie that day apart from two types of scones. You can of course place an order from the brochure and pick it up later in the store or have it delivered to your home.

Enterprising

The Xiongs are now in their seventies, but when you hear them talk about their plans, they seem thirty or more years younger. They start early in the bakery every working day and are not ready until after noon to take it down a bit. In addition, they have also bought a property near the Great Wall that they want to furnish as a holiday home. There, guests can enjoy not only fresh bread, but also other local, organically grown products. The air is cleaner than in Beijing due to its high elevation. All this fits into the increasing interest among Chinese consumers in organic products. There is also a branch in Shunyi, a northeastern suburb of Beijing with much more expensive residential areas.

Next step

The Xiongs want even further. Their concept is well suited for franchising, where others take over the entire concept for a fee, from products to the layout of the store, etc., for a fixed amount per period. A change in management will be required for such a step. First of all, you have to hire an experienced professional manager for this; not necessarily someone who can bake bread, but someone who can lead the staff and supervise the, growing, number of franchisees. It’s not that far yet and the Xiongs are behind the ovens almost early every morning with great pleasure.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success

Enzyme applications in the Chinese food and beverage industry

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I have a weak spot for enzymes, as this was one of the first type of food ingredients I worked with, when I started to get involved in the Chinese food industry. That was in 1985.

China is a huge market for food enzymes, possibly the largest. This is not only due to the size of the country and the therefore equally large food and beverage industry. Fermentation has been an organic part of Chinese food processing since the Chinese starting recording their history in writing. All the ways one can change the flavour, texture and preservability of raw foods with microorganisms all boil down to the enzymes secreted by the bacteria and moulds. While identifying and producing single enzymes did not start in China, most applications found an eager market there. If you can brew more beer from the same volume of raw materials, than by all means do so. No considerations like Reinheitsgebote in China.

Apart from the use of enzymes in innovative production processes, enzymes can also be employed to turn offal from the food processing industry into valuable ingredients. And again, because of the mere size of the country, the domestic food and beverage industry produces an awful lot of offal each single day.

The road from the first attempts of producing indigenous single enzymes in China took off slowly in the early 1980s, but within a decade, the first exports of Chinese made industrial enzymes took place. Today, multinationals in this industry have to compete with a growing number of local manufacturers, whose R&D efforts generate more and more proprietary enzymes for specific applications. China produced approximately 750,000 mt of enzymes in the first half of 2018; up 8% compared to the same period of 2017.

The graph shows the growth of the Chinese enzymes industry according to a recent analysis by Mcinsey.

I have mentioned some enzyme applications in earlier posts, like the production of steamed bread (mantou). In this post, I will provide an overall summary the most important application areas of food enzymes in China.

Brewing

Adjunct cooking

Rice is relatively cheap in China, while most of the barley has to be imported. Virtually all Chinese brewers therefore use rice as adjunct, which calls for a thermostable alpha-amylase to properly liquefy the rice, before mixing it with mashed barley. 30% is the typical ratio of rice to malt, but with a really thermostable enzyme, you can increase up to 50%. Multinational suppliers still rule in this market, but the number of local producers of this enzyme is increasing.

Mashing

Unlike the liquefaction of the rice, enzymes, single beta-glucanases or compound products, are not obligatory in the mash tun. Compound enzymes as provided by the main multinationals are used in China, but not by all brewers. The larger the plant the more added value can be generated from using such products. Domestic enzyme producers are slowly gaining ground in this market as well.

Other

Adding papain for clarification and glucose oxidase for keeping beer fresh longer are very common in Chinese breweries. Both enzymes are produced in high quantity and quality domestically.

Spirits (baijiu)

As a traditional Chinese product, data for this industry are scarce and unreliable. Enzymes are reportedly widely used in the saccharification of the raw materials, but I assume that it will be mainly domestic generic enzymes, the cheaper the better.

Research from 2025 reports success with a compound of acid protease, alpha-amylase and lipase. According to the researchers, methanol was reduced by 6.45%, the yield increased with  2.46% and the flavour of the endproduct was slightly sweeter.

Rice wine

Some rice wine producers use glucoamylase to improve the saccharification of the fermentation broth. Thermostable alpha-amylase, cellulase and neutral protease are also used, the latter for improving the flavour. In view of the positive publications, it can be expected that the use of enzymes will increase in this application, possibly to 100%. The reason for the slower adoption is probably that this is an indigenous Chinese application, which has escaped the radar of the multinationals. As this is a traditional Chinese product, this is mainly a segment for domestic enzymes.

Wine

Part of the wineries use enzymes, but figures indicating penetration and who are the main suppliers are lacking. Based on Chinese practice, we may assume that the smaller wineries will be more willing to use enzymes, in particular for clarification, than the larger ones that are preoccupied with creating an image of being (able to compare with) classic wine makers. All international suppliers are investing in marketing their enzymes for this application, but I have not found indications for serious use in practice.

Fruit juice

Apple

China is good for almost half of the global apple production. The country is therefore also the producer of apple juice concentrate (AJC). All apple juice concentrate (AJC) in China is processed with enzymes. 100% for clarification and probably also close to 100% for maceration. Domestic production of pectinases started later that those for starch processing as used in brewing, but quantity and quality are improving. The Chinese fruit processing industry is huge and therefore forms a lucrative market for pectinases.

Apples sometimes contain so much starch, that you need to add a little amylase to avoid problems during clarification and concentration.

Some companies use special enzymes to clean the ultrafilter.

Other fruits

Enzymes are used as well, but no reliable data are available. The general trend that Chinese processors will prefer to use enzymes, provided they are cost efficient, applies very strongly in this industry.

Bakery/Cereals:

Bread, baked and steamed

Growing demand for bread and other baked goods is presenting the local baking industries with major challenges. Enzyme design for bakery products plays an important role in overcoming these. However, the fluctuating raw material situation demands individual solutions and prompt responses from the enzyme producers.

Most to all bread in China is produced with enzymes. However, this is realised in the form of compound flour/bread improvers. These will typically include fungal alpha-amylase and sometimes xylanase, glucose oxidase and lipase, roughly in that order of frequency.

After China prohibited the use of chemical whiteners like benzoyl peroxide, industrial producers of steamed bread are coping with the problem that their product is often not as white as the customers (have learned to) accept. Lipase, or more precisely: lipoxygenase, can reduce the betacarotene in flour and thus produce whiter steamed bread. Fungal amylase and xylanase are said to produce steamed bread with a smoother surface, which gives a shiny impression.

An interesting development is taking place in this industry in China. A number of domestic enzyme producers have sprung up specialising in enzymes of the bakery industry, offering products specially formulated for a particular type of biscuit, cake, bread or traditional Chinese baking product, like steamed bread. These products can be best described as formulated enzymes, something in between single enzymes and the traditional flour improvers. This is an interesting development and a potential threat for the traditional suppliers of flour improvers, once the Chinese producers dare to bring those products to the international market.

Flour (wheat) and flour-based products

As introduced in my earlier post on flour and flour improvers or those on traditional Chinese foods like dumplings, some Chinese flour companies have developed specially formulated flours for dumplings, fried dough sticks (youtiao) or steamed bread (mantou). However, these companies hardly ever add pure enzymes, but compound flour improvers as well. The workers in this sector are not really trained to handle enzymes, while adding a standard pack of flour improver to a standard bag of flour does not require any education. The top companies like Guchuan (Beijing) will have proper R&D departments that may experiment with single enzymes, but only in small quantities.

Biscuits

The most typical enzyme application in this industry is protease (papain) for the production of crispy biscuits. Domestic enzymes do that trick very well. Some companies have developed specially formed enzyme products for a broad range of biscuits, cookies and wafers.

noodles

Lipase is the typical enzyme for noodles, or better: flour improvers for noodles. Xylanase, glucose oxidase and transglutaminase are occasionally used.

Traditional pastry

Many flour manufacturer produce specialty flours for cake and traditional pastry, but only very few domestic producers of baking enzymes have so far developed special products for this category. The flagship product among the traditional pastries is still the moon cake. One domestic enzyme producer is supplying a ‘moon cake crust improver’, consisting of compound enzymes and emulsifiers, so again more an improver than an enzyme product.

Dairy

Cheese

As mentioned in my earlier post about this topic, cheese production in China is still in its infancy and most of it is processed imported cheese. However, there definitely is an emerging market for rennet and as it is a new thing in China, that market can be expected to be interested in microbial rennet rather than the natural product.

Some domestic companies offer bromelain for cheese making, but these are generic bromelains and not specially formulated products for that application. Multinationals are mentioning it in their marketing in China, but it is not likely that they are putting in much effort.

Hydrolised milk

Only a few manufactures: Yili (Inner Mongolia), Sanyuan (Beijing), New Hope (Sichuan), Bright (Shanghai) and only limited quantities. Yili seems to be the largest in this category, marketing its product to the elderly. This is still mainly a market for international suppliers, but domestic lactases have also appeared.

enz-DairyEnzymeTank

Enzymatic hydrolysis tank in a dairy company.

Oil extraction

During a recent industry meeting, it was reported that the enzymatic extraction of tea seed oil in China had already moved on from trial to regular production.

Savoury products and flavours

HVP/HAP, nucleotides, soy derivatives (incl. soy sauce), fish sauce, etc.

These are again mainly traditional Chinese seasoning products. As most of these typically include a fermentation step, they are highly interesting for introducing enzymes to make the production more efficient or cleaner, turn out better tasting and healthier products. Examples mentioned in earlier posts are: protease in the production of fermented beancurd (furu), fermented flour paste (jiang), and old soup (lao tang).

Although these are all bulk applications and therefore interesting for enzyme suppliers, the penetration of enzymes in each product group is still not very well documented. I will add more information to this post, whenever reliable data become available.

Fat hydrolosis

Maidele Food is a major producer of cow fat for the growing Chinese hot pot business. In particular the Chongqing hot pot, famous (notorious) for its spicy broth, cow fat is an important ingredient. The company has received an innovation award from Sichuan province in 2022 for its enzymatic process for increasing the aroma of cow fat for hot pot.

Meat

HAP

Hydrolysing meat with protease produces raw material for a wide range of meat-flavoured seasoning products. Considerable R&D is taking place in China to improve processes for teh production of HAP from a broad range of animal-derived raw material.

Stock

Proteases are regularly used to maximise the extraction of flavour from meat in the production of stock, like the ‘old soup (laotang)‘ introduced in an earlier post.

Tenderisation

Papain is the typical enzyme for this application, followed by bromelein. For both, China is now the main production region.

Reusing offall

With such a huge slaughtering industry, China is bound to be the world’s largest producer of meat offall. Treatment of it with proteases can produce a broad range of flavouring products.

Transglutaminase

TG is the fastest growing enzyme in the Chinese food industry. Applied in meat, it can help improving the structure  of meat, which i.a. makes it easier to cut thin slices of meat.

Aquatic products

HAP

Same as for meat. Some Chinese researchers are studying the synthesis of meat flavour by enzymatic hydrolysis (trypsin) of squid skin followed by maillard reaction. The skins are offal of squid processing.

Fish sauce

The traditional production process of fish sauce is very long. It can be speeded up considerably by hydrolyzing  (part of the raw materials with proteases).

Removing scales

A combination of collagenase and pepsin can decrease the damage to the fish during mechanical removing of scales.

Deoderisation

The flesh of some fish has a considerable urea content, which causes an unpleasant odour. Soy bean powder contains urease and treating fish meat with urease can remove enough of the urea to neutralise the odour.

Preservation

A number of enzymes can help the preservation of meat, in particular lysozyme, transglutaminase, lipase triglyceride hydrolase. Considerable R&D activity is taking place in China in this respect.

Food ingredients

Fructo Oligosaccharide (FOS)

The Chinese authorities have approved the use of β-fructofuranosidase to produce FOS from sugar in January 2018.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

Considerable R&D is also going on in China to develop enzymatic process for TCM. An example mentioned in an earlier post is enzymatic hydrolysis to produce sea cucumber powder.

New applications awaiting approval

The China National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment has listed the following enzymes to be assessed for use in food.

Enzyme production strain origin gene application
Polygalacturonase aspergillus niger aspergillus niger fruit juice extraction
Maltotetrahydrolase bacillus licheniformis pseudomonas stutzeri baking
Alpha-glucosidae Trichoderma reesei aspergillus niger cereal processing
Carboxypeptidase aspergillus niger aspergillus niger meat processing
Lipase aspergillus niger fusarium culmorum baking

Relevant parties need to react before Sept. 9, 2019.

Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation.