{"id":10972,"date":"2022-09-28T07:30:37","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T07:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=10972"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:37:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:37:22","slug":"how-to-enter-the-chinese-food-and-drink-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/how-to-enter-the-chinese-food-and-drink-market\/","title":{"rendered":"How to succeed in China’s food and beverage market"},"content":{"rendered":"

From functional foods to plant-based milks, Andrew Cameron<\/strong>, Head of Insights and Strategy at The Silk Initiative<\/strong>, tells RedFern Digital<\/strong> about the current trends in the food and beverage market in China, and what new brands entering the market need to know<\/h2>\n

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What general developmental trends are you seeing in the food and beverage category in China?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

One trend I\u2019d like to discuss is the growth of functional foods and beverages. When we asked consumers the kind of functional benefits that they expected from food & beverage products, the responses ranged from \u2018boosting energy\u2019 and \u2018relieving tiredness\u2019, to \u2018increasing immunity\u2019 and \u2018boosting digestion.\u2019<\/p>\n

A unique characteristic about functional food and beverages that we hear from consumers has to do with beauty. As an example, years ago, we were working with a probiotic brand and spoke to a woman who had been having digestive and constipation issues for about five years. The only reason she finally acted on it was that it started to impact her beauty and her skin. This example highlights the importance of beauty for a subset of consumers, which means that these consumers expect or look for food and beverages that can add extra benefits addressing this point.<\/p>\n

We are also seeing more brands starting to speak on sustainability in China, with varied success. We\u2019ve done studies on sustainability, speaking to consumers to understand what it means to them, how they view brands that act sustainably, and what brands they consider to have acted sustainably. Broadly, we see that there isn\u2019t much detailed knowledge on what really counts for sustainability, so we saw a lot of consumers talk about Starbucks, for instance, because they changed their straws from plastic to paper recently. That was a tangible initiative towards sustainability, so many consumers held Starbucks up as the gold standard for sustainability, leaving aside the fact that they use a lot of plastics for the cups.<\/p>\n