26 years after positioning itself as a budget alternative to McDonald's, Wallace has started selling premium high-priced hamburgers at 40 yuan.

26 years ago, the "King of County Town Burgers" that started by offering low-cost alternatives to McDonald's and KFC is now setting its sights on challenging Shake Shack?

Recently, market sources say that Wallace, a Western fast food chain focused on affordable burgers, has opened the first national outlet of its brand-new sub-brand "Hua LAB Burger Lab" (hereinafter referred to as "Hua LAB") on the second floor of the original site of its founding store in Fuzhou.

According to Times Finance, Hua LAB opened as early as the end of April. Its predecessor was "Weilai Restaurant", a Western restaurant under Wallace, which opened in 2024. Now, Weilai Restaurant has been transformed into the No.1 store of Hua LAB.

Wallace calls it "the burger lab of Wallace's founders". In the early stage of opening, Hua Huaiqing, one of the founders, even visited the store in person.

According to public information, Hua LAB takes beef burgers as its core product, covering snacks such as fried chicken and fries, as well as main meal categories such as pizza, pasta and salad.

In terms of meal serving mode, traditional Wallace stores process semi-finished products distributed by central kitchens to achieve standardized meal output; while Hua LAB adopts an open-kitchen made-to-order mode, where consumers can see the staff making beef patties through the glass window.

In addition, the pricing of Hua LAB is significantly higher. On the Dianping platform, the group-buying price of its most expensive Big Mac double beef burger is 40 yuan, which is equivalent to 20 yuan per piece after the buy-one-get-one-free offer. In contrast, the group-buying price of the most expensive crispy double spicy pepper burger of traditional Wallace is only 10.9 yuan, with a free snack or drink attached.

However, this "King of County Town Burgers" does not seem to intend to fully shift to the mid-to-high end. Instead, it tries to enter the made-to-order beef burger track with low pricing against the backdrop of consumption differentiation, to find a foothold in the new segmented market.

This time, the competitors that Wallace is targeting are beef burger brands such as Shake Shack and Five Guys, which are playfully called "the Hermès in the burger industry" by consumers.

Hua LAB is sold at a higher price, but still wants to adopt the low-price strategy

At present, there are 10 products available in the Hua LAB burger series, including 8 beef burgers with a single price ranging from 17 yuan to 40 yuan.

However, the actual consumption price is significantly lower than the marked price. On the Dianping platform, Hua LAB has launched a buy-one-get-one-free group-buying activity, the classic crispy fried chicken burger is equivalent to 8.5 yuan per piece, the Big Mac double beef burger is equivalent to 20 yuan per piece, and the Hawaiian pineapple beef burger is equivalent to 14 yuan per piece.

In contrast, Wallace has indeed expanded its price band through Hua LAB. Taking a traditional Wallace store in Fuzhou as an example, the store has 12 burgers on sale, with the original price of each burger ranging from 11 yuan to 15 yuan. But in practice, consumers usually only need to spend 10 yuan to 15 yuan to buy a basic filling set, which contains at least one burger, one snack or drink.

From the perspective of Wang Hongdong, Dean of Canbao Academy, the reason why Wallace sets a higher price for Hua LAB is related to the current market situation of its traditional business. "Wallace has already been deeply rooted in the sinking market, and further sinking will probably not even be able to cover the cost of ingredients", so it can only look upward for new market space.

Although Hua LAB has raised the marked price of its products, its underlying logic is still affordable competition. Times Finance noticed that Hua LAB once put forward its own positioning on its relevant social media account, claiming that Wallace provided affordable alternatives to McDonald's and KFC 26 years ago, and today, 26 years later, Hua LAB wants to "be the affordable alternative to handcrafted burgers".

This low-price strategy once helped Wallace stand out in the market.

In 2001, Wenzhou businessmen brothers Hua Huaiyu and Hua Huaiqing founded Wallace in Fuzhou. At the beginning of the business, facing the two international fast food giants McDonald's and KFC, Wallace launched the "Special 123" campaign, which offered cola for 1 yuan, chicken leg for 2 yuan and burger for 3 yuan, focusing on the sinking market in the gap between the giants and carving out its own track. In 2016, Wallace was listed on the NEEQ under the name "Huashi Food".

After that, Wallace expanded rapidly. In 2021, the number of its stores exceeded 20,000. In the same year, KFC had 11,788 restaurants in China, while McDonald's had 4,200 restaurants, and the sum of the two was still far less than that of Wallace.

In the past few years, the "King of County Town Burgers" has not had an easy time. On the one hand, McDonald's and KFC have accelerated their expansion into the sinking market, squeezing Wallace's market space with their advantages in brand, supply chain and scale; on the other hand, Tastien, which also focuses on the affordable route, has expanded rapidly with its differentiated positioning of "Chinese burgers" and become another strong competitor of Wallace in the affordable burger market.

With intensified competition, Wallace's operating pressure has gradually emerged. In the first half of 2025, the operating revenue of Huashi Food decreased by 0.49% year on year, marking the first negative revenue growth since its listing ten years ago. In February 2026, Huashi Food announced the termination of its listing, officially saying goodbye to the capital market.

At the same time, the scale of Wallace's stores has continued to shrink. According to data from OpenRice Eye, as of October 12, 2026, the number of operating Wallace stores has dropped to 18,878.

New and old players fight fiercely, can the low-price strategy replicate the past success?

Wallace is facing problems in scale and revenue, but China's burger track is only slowing down in growth, not reaching its peak.

According to the "Western Fast Food Trend Insight Report 2024" released by Redcuisine Industry Research Institute, the market size of the burger category reached 1.89 trillion yuan in 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 28.5%; it is expected to exceed 2.1 trillion yuan in 2024, with a growth rate of 11.0%; it is expected that the market size in 2025 will be 2.342 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 10.7%.

The burger track still has huge appeal. In the past year, from traditional domestic catering enterprises to international fast food giants, all kinds of players are increasing their layout in the burger track, even including cross-border "players" such as coffee brand M STAND.

In December 2025, Pizza Hut's independent burger brand "Pizza Hut Burger" opened its two first stores, and by August 2026, the number of stores had exceeded 300. In July 2026, Haidilao's new sub-brand "Huanxian Burger" opened its first store in Wuhan. Huang Ji Huang under Yum China also launched wok-flavored burgers in July 2026. In addition, Burger by M STAND, the burger brand under M STAND, has continued to open independent stores in many places across the country.

Foreign burger brands are also increasing their investment in the Chinese market. Wendy's announced its return to China in May 2026; Shake Shack, after entering the Chinese mainland market in 2019, recently announced the restart of its expansion.

In Wang Hongdong's view, the burger market is a relatively mature one with a large category scale and established consumer awareness. Compared with new concept categories, entering the burger track has lower startup cost and market education cost, and the operating risk is also relatively controllable. At the same time, burgers have a high degree of standardization, which is suitable for chain expansion, and the requirement for operation capability is lower than that of traditional Chinese food.

The burger market is still booming, but that does not mean all entrants can easily get a share of the pie. Wang Hongdong believes that the current competition in the burger track has more shifted to stock game, and brands need to seize market share through innovation. In his opinion, Hua LAB's "open kitchen, product upgrading, ingredient upgrading, and even some scene innovations, are all aimed at attracting more consumers in the stock competition."

However, the made-to-order beef burger track chosen by Hua LAB is actually full of strong competitors. Shake Shack, known as "the Hermès in the burger industry", focuses on made-to-order beef burgers, which often triggers long queues after entering the domestic market; Five Guys, which also focuses on high-end beef burgers, also has a notable presence in the domestic market.

Perhaps that is why Hua LAB has chosen differentiated competition in pricing. According to Times Finance, the unit price of Shake Shack's burgers ranges from 38 yuan to 84 yuan, and its signature beef burger is priced at 49 yuan per piece; the price of a single Five Guys burger is between 40 yuan and 85 yuan. In contrast, Hua LAB, whose signature burger has a group-buying price of only 14 yuan per piece, is very affordable.

However, the affordable beef burger market is no longer a blank field. Hua LAB not only has to face competition from high-end brands, but also compete for consumers with local brands that have already gained a firm foothold in this price range.

Among them, Niu Yue Burger is an unignorable competitor, and it is also a large-scale local affordable beef burger chain brand at present. According to the Niu Yue Burger mini-program, its classic beef burger series has 10 products in total, with the original price ranging from 21 yuan to 50 yuan per piece, and the discounted price after promotion is 13.8 yuan to 36 yuan per piece, among which 6 products are priced below 15 yuan after discount.

Among the competitors that Hua LAB is about to face is also Wendy's, which plans to return to the Chinese market. As the third largest burger chain brand in the United States, Wendy's also focuses on beef burgers, emphasizing the use of fresh non-frozen beef and hand-cut lettuce. In the US market, its pricing is aligned with mass fast food brands such as McDonald's and Burger King, but its core selling point is quality and cost-effectiveness.

Under the stock competition pattern of mixed battles between new and old players, can Wallace replicate the success it achieved 26 years ago through its familiar low-price strategy?

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Times Finance APP" (ID: tf-app), written by Chen Zexuan, and published with authorization from 36Kr.