Financial Report Watchroom | Mingming is very busy in 2025: Solid fundamentals, clear growth trajectory

Ask AI · How Can Mingming Very Busy’s Direct-to-Manufacturer Model Achieve a Gross Margin Increase Against the Trend?

On March 31, Hunan Mingming Very Busy Commercial Chain Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Mingming Very Busy”), a discount snack retail company, released its first annual financial report after listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In 2025, the company delivered impressive results with strong growth across the board in GMV (gross merchandise value), revenue, and net profit. Its store footprint surpassed 21k locations, with both gross margin and net margin increasing in tandem, and cash flow continuing to thicken.

As China’s largest chain retail operator, measured by the GMV of leisure food and beverage products in 2024, in 2025 the company optimized its supply chain. Leveraging a direct-to-manufacturer business model, an efficient warehouse-to-distribution (warehouse and delivery) supply chain, and a nationwide store network, it achieved simultaneous improvements in scale expansion and operating quality. Going forward, as the store network continues to expand, supply-chain efficiency is further optimized, and digital operations are increasingly empowered, Mingming Very Busy is expected to maintain steady growth momentum and continue to solidify its leading position in the industry. At the same time, it will also help the discount snack retail sector develop toward standardization, large-scale operations, and high-quality growth.

A Jump in Profitability Quality

According to the financial report, in 2025, Mingming Very Busy’s store total merchandise transaction value (GMV) reached 21k yuan, up 68.5%; operating revenue was 93.57B yuan, up 68.2%; net profit was 66.17B yuan, up 180.9%; and adjusted net profit was 2.33B yuan, up 194.9%, indicating steady operations and growth with high quality progressing in parallel.

Mingming Very Busy operates two brands: “Snack Very Busy” and “Zhao Yi Ming Snack.” “Snack Very Busy” was founded by Yan Zhou in March 2017 in Changsha, Hunan. “Zhao Yi Ming Snack” was founded by Zhao Ding in January 2019 in Yichun, Jiangxi. In the leisure snack industry, the discount snack channel has grown rapidly. As a product of channel change, its core advantage is improved channel efficiency, with representative features including low pricing and fast new product introductions. Starting in 2023, the discount snack channel continued to gain favor from leisure food companies. After riding the wave of rapid rise in the discount snack category, the two companies completed a merger in November 2023 and integrated into “Mingming Very Busy,” a company with greater scale and network advantages. The “discount-to-value model” led by Mingming Very Busy achieves rapid development by reconstructing the supply chain, developing innovative products, and creating a fun and comfortable in-store shopping experience.

On January 28, 2026, Mingming Very Busy listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. After sprinting in less than one year, this company—China’s largest chain retailer of leisure food and beverage products—completed its listing goals.

Among the first annual results it delivered after listing, the continued improvement in profitability is one of the key highlights. In 2025, Mingming Very Busy’s overall gross margin increased to 9.8%, and the adjusted net margin rose in parallel to 4.1%. This directly reflects that the company’s operating structure continues to improve and its cost-control capabilities strengthen, while economies of scale gradually come into effect. Against the backdrop of rapid store expansion and intensifying industry competition, the upward move in profitability indicators goes against the trend, proving that its business model has a solid foundation for earnings—not simply a rough growth strategy built on increasing the number of stores.

In terms of financial health, the company’s cash flow and capital reserves continued to thicken, laying a solid safety cushion for long-term development. By the end of 2025, Mingming Very Busy’s monetary funds were 2.69B yuan, up 93.0%. With ample cash reserves, it can not only support day-to-day operations, supply-chain investment, and store expansion, but also provide stronger risk resilience and strategic initiative during industry consolidation. Its steady financial position, combined with continuously improving profitability, indicates that Mingming Very Busy has entered a phase of high-quality development with coordinated growth in scale and profit.

Leading in Store Scale

Stores are a core asset for chain retailers and the foundational carrier of performance growth. In 2025, Mingming Very Busy continued to push its nationwide store-expansion strategy. With the coordinated synergy of its two brands, “Snack Very Busy” and “Zhao Yi Ming Snack,” the number of stores achieved leapfrog growth. Its coverage continued to penetrate deeper, forming a store network that links online and offline and connects urban and rural markets.

By the end of 2025, the total number of stores across the company’s two major brands reached 21,948, successfully crossing the 20k-store threshold. It covers 30 provinces nationwide and all city tiers. From a city layout perspective, Mingming Very Busy’s stores not only penetrate first-tier, new first-tier, and second-tier cities, but also go deeper into lower-tier markets, building a dense end-point terminal network in counties, towns, and other lower-tier areas. Broad store coverage, on the one hand, brings it closer to everyday consumption scenarios and improves consumer convenience. On the other hand, it creates regional density advantages, lowers delivery costs, strengthens brand recognition, and builds channel barriers that are difficult for other competitors to replicate.

By combining a scalable store network with standardized operational management, Mingming Very Busy maintained strong and stable terminal execution during the industry’s rapid expansion phase, providing sustained momentum for overall performance growth.

To ensure a rich supply of terminal products, Mingming Very Busy applies standardized and mandatory requirements to store SKU counts, clearly requiring each store to maintain product displays of no fewer than 1,800 SKUs. This product scale not only ensures richness on store shelves and space for consumer choice, preventing foot-traffic loss caused by category singularity, but also increases average order value and sales per store through multi-category combination selling—supporting stable store operations. Under a rapidly expanding store network, a unified SKU count standard also ensures consistent product supply quality and consumption experience across regions and city tiers nationwide, helping the brand achieve its operational goal of “10,000 stores, one standard.”

A strong assortment selection system is the core guarantee for continuous optimization of product structure and precise matching of consumer demand. By the end of 2025, Mingming Very Busy had built a professional assortment selection team of 281 people, providing solid human support for product screening, iteration, and customization. This skilled and experienced assortment selection team, when conducting selections for fine-grained categories and making decisions on introducing specific SKUs, does not rely on subjective judgment. Instead, it is based on data-driven scientific analysis, with its core research conducted through systematic study of consumer purchasing behavior data.

Linking Production and Sales at Both Ends

Mingming Very Busy’s rapid growth stems from its unique business model and core operational capabilities. Based on a lightweight model of direct-to-manufacturer connections, supported by an efficient supply chain and digital capabilities, it connects the full value chain from the production side to the consumption side, achieving cost optimization and efficiency improvement and forming a sustainable core competitive advantage.

According to the financial report, on the supply side, Mingming Very Busy adopts a cooperation model of direct connections with manufacturing suppliers, reducing multiple layers of intermediaries found in traditional distribution systems. The company has established direct connections with more than 2,500 suppliers. Through large-scale centralized purchasing and direct engagement with production sources, it effectively compresses distribution costs and improves its bargaining power. This “disintermediation” model enables consumers to access leisure foods with high value for money, maintaining price competitiveness. At the same time, it retains channel profits within the company, driving an improvement in gross margin and achieving win-win outcomes among consumers, suppliers, and the company.

The supply-chain system is the core pillar that supports the efficient operation of its 10,000-store network. To ensure product supply for more than 20k stores nationwide, Mingming Very Busy continuously improved its warehouse-and-distribution network layout. By the end of 2025, it had built a nationwide warehouse-and-distribution system, enabling efficient product circulation through 56 warehouse-and-distribution centers. Relying on a mature warehouse-and-distribution layout, most stores can receive products within 24 hours, greatly improving replenishment efficiency and inventory turnover. An efficient supply chain not only ensures product freshness and reduces stockout rates, but also reduces inventory backlogs and lowers logistics costs—further optimizing operating efficiency and providing support for improvements in profitability.

China’s leisure food and beverage retail market has broad room for growth, and the industry scale continues to expand. According to reports from the National Bureau of Statistics and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the market is expected to grow to 4.9 trillion yuan by 2029. In a multi-trillion-yuan industry landscape, leading companies with solid operating capabilities and an efficient supply-chain system are expected to continue to capture development opportunities. With its steady growth, Mingming Very Busy is continuously strengthening the market position of an industry leader.

In the future, Mingming Very Busy will steadily advance store expansion and structural optimization nationwide. It will continue to prioritize store locations on streets with high foot traffic and easy visibility/access, continuously strengthening its ability to reach consumers across all city tiers—especially consolidating and deepening its coverage advantages in sinking markets such as counties and towns—to further release the scale effects and network efficiency generated by its extensive and deep store network layout. Mingming Very Busy will also continue to meet consumers’ demand for diversified products and high value for money by offering rich product categories, high-quality and price-competitive items, and high-frequency new releases.

By Wang Ziyang

Edited by Li Yan

Proofread by Liu Baoqing