Traditional Brand's New Battlefield: Quanjude Enters the Fast Food Sector, Zhou Yanlong Discusses Transformation Logic | Spring Sugar Trend

What is the strategic logic behind Quanjude’s transformation into fast food?

This report (chinatimes.net.cn) by reporter Huang Xingli from Chengdu

“This year, the overall negotiation at the hotel exhibition involved nearly 2,000 clients, with effective clients accounting for about one-third.” On March 26, at the venue of the 114th National Sugar and Wine Products Exchange Conference, Zhou Yanlong, Party Secretary, Director, and General Manager of Quanjude (Group) Co., Ltd., revealed the results of their first participation in the Spring Sugar Hotel Exhibition just a few days prior in an interview with the “Huaxia Times.”

Unlike previous years when they only exhibited at the main venue, this year Quanjude made its debut at the hotel exhibition, choosing the Tibet Hotel as its location. This adjustment in exhibition strategy stems from Zhou Yanlong’s keen capture of market opportunities, “Last year I attended the liquor hotel exhibition at Jin Jiang Hotel, mostly for observation; this year I stayed for more than half a day, and it was a wave of discussions one after another. For a time-honored brand aiming to penetrate the market and also a new brand in the food sector, this atmosphere is very valuable. We will participate again next year if we have the chance.”

Entering the Fast Food New Track

Driven by consumer upgrades and the iteration of dining formats, the time-honored brand Quanjude is accelerating its breakthrough beyond dine-in scenarios, formally entering the fast food sector with the opportunity presented by the 2026 Chengdu Spring Sugar and Wine Conference. The remarkable performance at this exhibition has laid a good foundation for its new track layout.

At this Spring Sugar event, Quanjude focused on launching duck blood vermicelli soup as a strategic new product, aiming to deepen its food product layout in the catering sector. Behind this new product is Quanjude’s strategic consideration to accelerate its exit from Beijing and break regional limitations.

As a time-honored catering brand with over 160 years of history, Quanjude’s layout in the food sector has already quietly begun, serving as a core tool for breaking through the limitations of dine-in scenarios and promoting brand transformation. In earlier years, Quanjude relied on its core product of roasted duck to launch vacuum-packaged roasted duck and other pre-packaged products, becoming one of the first catering companies in China to explore food packaging, accumulating valuable experience for its current entry into the fast food sector.

Zhou Yanlong admitted that although Quanjude has national brand influence, breaking regional barriers and achieving deep penetration in the national market has always been a strategic topic for the team to delve into. According to reports, in 2023, Quanjude clearly proposed a “food productization” strategy, with hand-sliced roasted duck becoming the first successful product under this strategy, addressing the pain point of significant taste differences between traditional vacuum-packed roasted duck and dine-in offerings, and validating the feasibility of converting catering products to the retail end, providing a replicable model for subsequent new product development. The launch of duck blood vermicelli soup is a continuation and deepening of this strategy.

The development logic of duck blood vermicelli soup revolves around Quanjude’s core advantages. Zhou Yanlong revealed that duck soup, as a core accompaniment to the roasted duck consumption scene, is a unique competitive barrier of the brand, and the key to food productization is “reasonable extension,” meaning that consumers must recognize the quality of the product itself while achieving a high degree of alignment with the main brand’s tone. The natural connection between duck soup and roasted duck makes duck blood vermicelli soup the optimal conversion choice following hand-sliced roasted duck, maintaining the brand’s gene while accurately tapping into the market demand for fast food.

Regarding the market response to this product, Zhou Yanlong told reporters that the signing results during the Spring Sugar event were significant. “Unlike the business negotiations at the main venue, the clientele at the hotel exhibition is more down-to-earth.” He explained that many were individual business owners or sole proprietors, making it more like direct communication with decision-makers regarding purchase intentions. Therefore, Quanjude timely introduced on-the-spot signing and first-order discounts, which were well received, resulting in immediate contracts. He also mentioned that the main venue is more about overall cooperation at the distributor level, requiring more cautious negotiations when it comes to product customization needs. The two exhibition areas complement each other, providing diverse channels for penetrating the new product market.

From an industry trend perspective, the continuous expansion of the fast food sector also offers broad space for Quanjude’s new layout. Data from Huibo Intelligent Terminal indicates that from 2016 to 2026, the market transaction scale of China’s convenient fast food industry continues to grow, increasing from 394.8 billion yuan in 2016 to 673.6 billion yuan in 2023, with an expected reach to a trillion-level market by 2026. However, for Quanjude, which has just entered this track, this presents both opportunities and challenges. How to break through among numerous established brands tests not only product strength but also the depth and speed of the brand’s transformation towards youthfulness.

To seize this market opportunity, Quanjude has formulated an all-channel penetration strategy for duck blood vermicelli soup. Zhou Yanlong revealed that its online channels have completed stock preparations, allowing for quick connections with mainstream e-commerce platforms and community channels; offline, they are using the Spring Sugar event as a starting point to integrate resources from traditional key accounts, new retail channels, chain supermarkets, etc., enabling consumers to purchase conveniently anytime and anywhere, further lowering the brand’s reach threshold and promoting the new product’s market implementation in an all-encompassing manner.

“Jumping Out” of the Old Brand

Against the backdrop of stabilizing the main catering business and accelerating food productization transformation, Quanjude’s transformation has not stopped at product and channel expansion but is brewing a deeper change: jumping out of the existing framework of “time-honored brands” and rethinking its development path.

In Zhou Yanlong’s view, Quanjude’s existing resources are time-honored, but the new resources it needs to create in the future may not necessarily be time-honored. “No one says that Quanjude must necessarily be a time-honored brand group. It is a dining group. In the future, we should strive to possess and create more resources in this sector.” This concept has also become the core guiding principle for Quanjude’s subsequent development.

This strategic vision is also directly reflected in Quanjude’s food business planning. Discussing the future, Zhou Yanlong revealed that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Quanjude’s food business aims to accelerate development, focusing on creating explosive products, while he also provided clear quantitative goals: “Generally, explosive products should start at least 5 million yuan in sales, with tens of millions being the main force.” He also mentioned that the food sector will continue to advance new products, enriching the product matrix and strengthening market competitiveness.

The stable performance of the main catering business provides solid support for Quanjude’s transformation. In the interview, when discussing the performance of the main catering business, Zhou Yanlong summarized it as “stabilizing,” while also mentioning two morale-boosting highlights: over the past three months, Quanjude has welcomed its best New Year’s Day and best New Year’s Eve in eight years, and the Spring Festival period also showed bright performance. This achievement confirms the initial effectiveness of the brand’s transformation.

Optimizing store layout is another important reflection of the stabilization of the main catering business, with the most noticeable change being the accelerated pace of new store openings. “This year, new stores opened earlier in the first quarter compared to previous years, with one in Sanya and two in Beijing.” Zhou Yanlong admitted that in previous years, store openings were concentrated in the third quarter, with some even dragging into the fourth quarter. Opening stores earlier not only generates revenue sooner but also effectively reduces the pressure of investment amortization, improving store operational efficiency.

According to Zhou Yanlong, Quanjude is using “+ catering” as an important lever to actively explore integration models with diverse scenarios such as sports, cultural tourism, exhibitions, and commercial complexes. The stores that opened early in the first quarter are vivid practical examples of this concept: the Beijing Quanjude Wanli store entered a commercial complex, ranking upper-middle among popular restaurants in the business district during the Spring Festival; the Sichuan Hotel Beichen store settled in the National Conference Center, exploring the “exhibition plus catering” model to meet the needs of exhibition clientele; and the Quanjude Sanya store leveraged the development opportunities of Hainan Free Trade Port to enhance its tourism scenario layout.

From the diversified innovation of store models to the precise layout of the food business, Quanjude, with over 160 years of history, is using a series of pragmatic explorations to try to move out of Beijing and towards a broader market, redefining itself.

Editor: Lu Xiao Chief Editor: Han Feng