Egg tarts, fought over by the giants.
There are no secrets to egg tarts.
Pour the tart filling into the tart shell, put it in the oven, and the finished product is ready when it comes out. With a mature supply chain, anyone can get involved, and it can be replicated at home at low cost.
However, it's precisely this thing that "anyone can make" that has become one of the most fiercely contested businesses in the current food circle.
#01
Everyone Is Making Egg Tarts
"Shocking! McDonald's has finally launched egg tarts."
In the 22nd year since KFC started selling egg tarts, McDonald's has finally entered the market. In March this year, McDonald's officially launched a pilot sales of egg tarts, and consumers in more than a dozen cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Xi'an were the first to taste them.
This is a well - proven business. KFC has turned egg tarts into a super single product with an annual sales volume of over 3 billion yuan, so much so that consumers joke that it is "a egg tart shop delayed by fried chicken".
As a latecomer, McDonald's egg tarts are similar in specifications to KFC's, with a lighter sweetness and a thinner tart shell. In terms of pricing, a single egg tart costs 8 yuan, a pack of 6 costs 29.9 yuan, and the McCafé and egg tart combo during the afternoon tea time only costs 12.9 yuan.
Egg tarts are not only a favorite dessert for children but also a popular choice for afternoon tea group orders and family sharing. They give consumers a reason to enter the store during non - meal times and have become a piece of the puzzle for brands to fill idle hours.
In front of the JD 7Fresh supermarket, egg tarts are serving another purpose - attracting customers.
There is always an egg tart stall in front of the 7Fresh supermarket. The freshly made egg tarts are sold in boxes of 4, and there are labels of 9.9 yuan/14.9 yuan beside them.
Picture | The egg tart stall in front of the 7Fresh supermarket
The person in charge of the bakery procurement and sales at 7Fresh introduced that as early as the end of last year, 7Fresh started using egg tart stalls to attract customers when new stores opened in Shijiazhuang and Beijing LOHAS Mall, and the daily sales volume of a single store could reach 4,000 - 5,000 boxes. In April this year, this strategy was further extended to more old stores in North China.
"Putting it at the entrance is to let consumers see that we bake them fresh - when they smell the fragrance and feel hungry, and the purchase cost is low, they will naturally be willing to try." In his opinion, egg tarts not only drive their own sales but also enhance the shopping atmosphere and stimulate new customer consumption.
Some players have made an egg tart the face of an entire brand.
What really made Yulian Teahouse stand out is a 12 - yuan caramel croissant egg tart. The mille - feuille croissant tart shell is made with Ash butter, and it is freshly baked and sold. It goes on sale at 12 noon every day, with a new batch produced every 40 minutes, and each person is limited to a certain amount per day.
Limited availability creates scarcity, scarcity leads to queuing, and queuing itself is a form of promotion. The combination of "an egg tart and a cup of tea" is easily shared on Moments. Here, the egg tart is not just a dessert but also a form of social currency.
An egg tart has redefined itself from a daily snack to a luxury dessert and has become the core fulcrum for Yulian Teahouse to build brand recognition and premium space.
Attracting customers, filling idle hours, and creating brand premium. For the same single product, different players are solving completely different business problems.
#02
Behind an Egg Tart
Among baking single products, Japanese milk bread, Swiss rolls, and soufflés have their moments of popularity and then fade away. Egg tarts are different. It's not the first to be popularized, but it's the most long - lasting.
Behind this, three things are true simultaneously: The process is stable enough, the supply chain is mature enough, and there is enough room for innovation.
Let's start with the stable process. In 2004, KFC officially launched Portuguese egg tarts in the Chinese mainland. Its recipe is authorized by Margaret's in Macau. There is a rumor that the authorization fee is as high as 600 million, but in fact, it requires an annual donation of millions to a designated charity.
The egg tart shell needs to be slowly awakened at low temperature and fermented at a constant temperature. It takes multiple folding and rolling to create a crispy shell structure as thin as a cicada's wing. These steps cannot be completed on - site in fast - food restaurants, and there are core suppliers like Qianwei Yangchu behind it.
At the same time, the oven is not an ordinary device. KFC uses the commercial steam oven from German Rational, which was rare in the domestic catering market at that time and was more commonly seen in high - end hotels and professional kitchens.
KFC has a significant advantage over ordinary bread and pastry shops. Most of the latter only sell twenty or thirty egg tarts a day. The problem lies in the unstable process and lack of standardization. The proportioning of light cream, milk, sugar, and eggs is all done on - site, and the egg tart filling is prone to collapse, making it impossible to guarantee the stability of the output.
The development of the supply chain has changed this situation. Yang Xiaoqing, the founder of Zhongbei Egg Tarts, developed a "four - in - one" frozen tart filling in 2011, which greatly improved the production efficiency of egg tarts, and the stability of the quality no longer depends on the skills of the store chefs.
Picture | Zhongbei Egg Tarts
Traditional egg tarts are best eaten fresh out of the oven. Once cooled, they quickly become soft. In 2019, Zhongbei Egg Tarts overcame the industry pain point of "becoming soft after leaving the counter" with a 64 - layer handmade crispy Portuguese tart shell, achieving 8 - hour long - lasting crispness at room temperature. Whether eaten hot or cold, the taste is always excellent.
This breakthrough has freed egg tarts from the time constraint of "baked and sold immediately" - both the inventory pressure and the loss rate of merchants have decreased, and consumers can enjoy them at any time and in any scenario.
In addition, with the popularization of small kitchen appliances such as ovens and air fryers in families, the sales volume of frozen egg tart filling on the consumer side has started to increase. E - commerce and short - video platforms classify frozen egg tarts as "quick - fix breakfasts". With a well - established low - temperature distribution network, frozen egg tarts can reach families in third - and fourth - tier cities.
After twenty years of penetration, standardization and the supply chain have laid a solid foundation, and egg tarts have completed the market education for the whole population. Continuous product innovation has allowed it to constantly break through its own limitations.
Egg tarts are naturally suitable for transformation. The tart shell and the tart filling are two independent variables: the tart shell can be Portuguese, lacy, croissant, or square; the tart filling can be original, salted egg yolk, taro paste, or matcha. The combination of these two variables is almost infinite, and there can be further toppings on the tart.
This kind of innovation is essentially a low - risk experiment. If a new flavor doesn't sell well, it can just be taken off the shelves without shaking consumers' trust in the category itself. Compared with other baking single products, the shape of croissants is fixed, and the filling of puffs has limited room for transformation, but egg tarts have almost no boundaries.
Small, affordable, good - looking, and shareable. The "affordable luxury" of egg tarts precisely hits the consumption psychology of contemporary young people, which is also the underlying logic for it to cross cycles and continue to stand out.
#03
Easy to Enter, Hard to Stay
Egg tarts will not become the next MIXUE lemonade.
The core of MIXUE lemonade lies in the extreme low price under extreme efficiency, and finally it overwhelms everything with scale. The logic of egg tarts is exactly the opposite. Any player can enter the market with extremely low thresholds, and no one can build a real moat with egg tarts.
Currently, almost all channels related to food, such as bakeries, tea shops, fast - food restaurants, full - service restaurants, convenience stores, and supermarkets, are selling egg tarts.
Supply chain enterprises such as Zhongbei Egg Tarts, Qianwei Yangchu, Ligao Aokun, Nanqiao Food, and Hairong Technology have long customized solutions according to the needs of different channels and merchants, and delivered products, supply chains, and operation plans in a package to solve all problems at once.
The more mature the supply chain, the lower the entry threshold. This is good for the entire category because the market is expanding, but it's a different story for individual players.
As affordable egg tarts from retail channels such as convenience stores and supermarkets flood the market, the pricing space for egg tarts is continuously compressed; core raw materials such as eggs and butter are affected by market cycle fluctuations, and the pressure on the cost side can hardly be fully passed on to consumers.
When every player can attract customers with affordable egg tarts, there are only two directions for market competition: becoming trendy and being healthy.
HEYTEA's Lab store has translated classic milk tea flavors to egg tarts, such as taro paste, mango pomelo sago, and matcha. 7Fresh supermarket keeps track of consumption trends in real - time. According to the person in charge, the self - developed egg tarts may be iterated according to seasonal fruits. For example, whole fresh lychees are added during the lychee season, followed by blueberries and green grapes.
Picture | Trendy egg tarts in various shapes. Image source: Internet
Of course, the life cycle of trendy egg tarts is extremely short. The more trendy a product is, the younger the corresponding consumer group may be, and their consumption emotions change quickly. A trendy product usually has a life cycle of only two or three months.
Consumers will be attracted by the trendy popularity, but they will never stay for a product without sincerity. Merchants need to continuously launch high - quality new products to maintain freshness and topic - worthiness.
In addition, the online hot meme "The calories from eating 33 egg tarts are enough to climb Mount Everest 5 times" reflects consumers' increasing sensitivity to food health. Zhongbei Egg Tarts has launched clean - label and low - GI versions.
Clean formulas, high - quality materials, and simplicity are the inevitable direction of consumption upgrading. However, for now, the health attribute is only an added bonus. Zhongbei Egg Tarts ranks consumers' demands as follows: safety is the absolute bottom line, taste is the core driving force, health is an important premium, and price is the threshold for the general public.
Some industry insiders also said that the main reason consumers choose baking products is to pursue a sense of pleasure. Blindly chasing popular concepts such as sugar reduction and low - calorie is likely to make the baking lose its original deliciousness.
The market for egg tarts is still expanding and is even on the verge of an explosion. Zhongbei Egg Tarts estimates that the daily consumption of egg tarts in China has reached 40 million, and it is expected to increase to 60 million by 2027, with a compound growth rate of over 10%.
"60 million sounds like a huge number, but the actual calculation is not complicated: as long as each target consumer of egg tarts in China eats an average of two egg tarts per month, this volume can be achieved." Yang Xiaoqing said.
There are no secrets to egg tarts, but those who make good egg tarts all have their own answers.
The supply chain has leveled the entry threshold, but it can't level the persistence in quality, the insight into scenarios, and the understanding of consumers. In a business where anyone can get involved, the real barrier has never been the recipe, but being clearer than others - what problem this egg tart is actually solving for consumers.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhengu Research Institute" (ID: zhengulab). Author: Liang Xiang, Editor: Zhang Duo. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.