Economists analyze the "Baker's Miracle": Creating high-quality consumption through effective supply

Ask AI · How does Kaijiang the “product主义” approach avoid price-war churn and overreaction?

While the catering industry is trapped in a fierce price-war quagmire, a grilled fish shop outside its door still has long lines, with even scenes like “there are people waiting in line at 5:00 a.m.”

The brand, named “Kaijiang Spicy Grilled Fish,” opened its first store in Shanghai on January 30, 2026. On the second day after opening, it took a number for 6,300 tables, with the longest wait time reaching up to 15 hours. What’s worth noting is not the temporary queues, but the fact that it has been queuing continuously: since it was founded in 2013, Kaijiang has maintained a widespread in-store queuing phenomenon for 13 consecutive years.

Well-known economist Jia Kang noticed this phenomenon and proposed: “In a social environment that has said goodbye to the era of a shortage economy, a so-called shortage appears in its local areas.” What lessons are behind this?

The catering market lacks new supply

Many companies today are stuck in intense competition—busy waging price wars, chasing traffic—while overlooking product differentiation and quality improvement itself.

“Now we often stress insufficient effective demand, but I believe our new supply is also extremely scarce.” Economist Ma Guangyuan pointed out, “Homogenization in the catering industry is very obvious.”

Data from Red餐 shows that as of March 2025, the total number of catering outlets nationwide is close to 8 million. Currently, the overall capacity of the catering market has reached an unprecedented scale and is beginning to enter an era of competition in inventory.

Kaijiang’s development path offers another way of thinking: not overly pursuing scale and low prices, but focusing on the niche category of spicy grilled fish. From flavor, ingredients, to the experience in different scenarios, it refines repeatedly and builds a distinctive competitive moat—its core lies in the extreme polishing of the “product” and multiple rounds of adjustments.

Jia Kang also believes that insufficient effective demand often reflects that “effective supply has not generated the vigor it should have.” Different from the past, in the current relationship between supply and demand, a new character—one more “new”—should be added to the equation. The market needs distinctive and innovative catering.

Kaijiang’s founder, Leng Yanjun, led the team to conduct in-depth research in the origins of grilled fish such as Chongqing Wanzhou and Leshan. They found that the classic flavor that survives across cycles is spicy, so they strategically focused on “rebuilding the classic spicy grilled fish.” They blended three types of chili and three types of Sichuan pepper to create a “golden flavor profile,” and searched for the best companion for spicy grilled fish. After more than 8 months of R&D, they ultimately chose Northeast black soybeans with a low slurry yield rate but a tight, firm texture to make handmade black tofu pudding.

Even to solve the issue that traditional square grill plates cause uneven heating and affect the taste, Kaijiang was willing to spend nearly a year, pioneering a round grilled fish plate to ensure the tofu pudding and side dishes are heated evenly. This kind of deep attention to every detail of a signature product—without compromise—is precisely the hard-core moat that breaks the deadlock at the supply end.

Ma Guangyuan summarizes its characteristics as “no price wars, wholehearted effort, and direct operation.” These three points together ensure stability in product quality and the strength of the experience. It is precisely this commitment to “new supply” that lets it stand out in a highly homogenized catering market.

Create high-quality consumption

In Ma Guangyuan’s view, “the final endpoint of the economic cycle is consumption.” He believes that without high-quality consumption, it would be impossible to achieve high-quality economic growth.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in preliminary accounting, the country’s gross domestic product for all of 2025 first broke through 140 trillion yuan, up 5.0% year on year; the total retail sales of consumer goods exceeded 50 trillion yuan, up 3.7% year on year. Among them, nationwide catering revenue reached 1.4M yuan, up 3.2%, accounting for 11.6% of total retail sales of consumer goods, up 0.2% from the previous year.

China’s economy has already bid farewell to the era of shortages. What consumers truly pursue are the satisfaction and emotional value brought by products and experiences. The catering industry is creating this emotional value through deep scenario innovation and emotional connection.

Kaijiang keenly captured the “birthday” scenario—a strong demand for socialization and strong emotion—and systematically upgraded its service process, from reservation, setup, and dedicated set menus, to photo keepsakes and handwritten greeting cards, creating a differentiated birthday experience of “no social embarrassment, but with surprises.” In 2025, across its nationwide stores it hosted over 330k tables, with a positive feedback rate above 99%.

At the same time, Kaijiang revived the “late-night snack” cultural gene inherent to the grilled-fish category. In Sichuan-Chongqing stores, operations run until 2:00 a.m.; in Beijing and Shanghai, some stores even extend until 5:00 a.m. It fills the city’s night economy with the hot, lively atmosphere of fireworks, meeting young people’s emotional needs for night-time socializing.

Worth mentioning is that Kaijiang’s first store in Shanghai was “voted in” to Wujiaochang with 45k votes from students and faculty of Fudan University and Tongji University. Relevant leaders of Yangpu District, Shanghai said, “As long as you listen to young people’s advice and fulfill young people’s wishes, this district has a promising future for development.”

Jia Kang also pointed out that companies should advance through “long-termism and patient capital-style progress,” using effective supply to guide and create new demand. Kaijiang doesn’t wage price wars, yet it makes consumers willingly line up for hours—because it not only works painstakingly to improve product quality, but also gives consumers a form of high emotional value and a strong, experience-rich consumption content. Don’t do low prices, fight against over-competition. This kind of “high-quality consumption” is becoming a key link in promoting a virtuous economic cycle.

From “internet celebrity” to lasting popularity

The catering industry is good at creating internet celebrities, but hard to sustain long-lasting popularity.

From the temporary barriers that malls replace periodically, to internet-celebrity brands that vanish almost instantly after “opening stores everywhere,” too many “internet-famous” brands appear for a moment and then fade away. In the “cutthroat competition” of the catering market, most brands are not thinking about development, but survival.

According to data, the survival cycle of outlets across the entire catering industry has been shortened to 15 months. Only in 2025 alone, the number of stores expected to close nationwide is over 3 million—meaning roughly 6 stores leave the market every minute without a fight. Ma Guangyuan also observed that in China’s catering industry, some brands can’t turn a profit, yet brands that keep drawing people to queue still exist. How can we achieve a transition from a brief burst of popularity to long-term healthy development?

Jia Kang recalled that long-lasting popularity and innovation often come down to “being earnest and thinking with your head.” This “long-termism” is not only reflected at the product level, but also runs through brand operations and deep local cultivation.

Kaijiang’s journey is a model of “deeply cultivating the Sichuan-Chongqing region and becoming a local signature food card.” After the brand was founded, for the first 11 years it focused on the Sichuan-Chongqing market, adhered to direct operation, and controlled the pace—without pushing the accelerator. By combining the slogan “If you don’t eat hot pot, you eat Kaijiang” with an extreme level of experience, Kaijiang successfully defined three standards for a “Sichuan-Chongqing culinary business card”: locals truly love it, locals are willing to recommend it to friends from out of town, and out-of-town tourists come specifically to check it out.

Research data shows that its brand awareness in the Chengdu market has already exceeded 90%. This deep foundation-building has helped it accumulate strong brand momentum and a repeat purchase rate as high as 60%. It has become a solid basis for expanding nationwide—city by city, igniting demand in each place.

Today, Kaijiang’s membership system has nearly 8 million users, with an average age of 22.5, and a repeat purchase rate of 22.3%. This directly confirms the “youth economy” that was first written into the Sichuan provincial government work report this year—namely, recognizing young people’s consumption vitality and social desire.

Ma Guangyuan also emphasized the importance of “doing things seriously,” citing Charile Munger’s view: “The macro is something we must accept; the micro is where something can be done.” No matter how economic cycles change, if you do one thing to the extreme, you can get through the cycle and keep acquiring customers.

“Don’t just complain about insufficient demand. For the supply side, you should think about how to both better realize your own life value and meet the needs of the general public.” Ma Guangyuan summarized. Under the macro proposition of boosting consumption and expanding domestic demand, the Kaijiang case offers a microscopic but powerful footnote: it’s not that consumption can’t work, but that supply hasn’t fully kept pace with the march of consumption upgrading; it’s not that the market is weak, but that too many companies are stuck in low-level competition and lack the product主义 spirit that truly creates value.

From “price wars” to “value wars,” and from “traffic thinking” back to “product thinking,” may be the simple truth for China’s consumption to break the deadlock and for companies to develop sustainably for the long term. Kaijiang’s queueing phenomenon is not only evidence of one brand’s success, but also an enlightenment of a sustainable business model: in an era of competing on price, those who persist in raising value and boosting consumption will ultimately win the market and the future.