Uniting island stores, "Rumuling" reconstructs the cake business with new approaches | Early-stage project

The baking industry is accelerating its reshuffle.

After the early cheese cakes, toasts, and croissants, soufflés, dorayaki, bagels, and scones have taken turns on the stage, and now innovative products like butter rice cakes have become extremely popular. Since 2013, the baking market has gone from hot to boiling, and more and more niche products have been discovered. Single - product specialty stores have risen in popularity one after another and then quietly faded away in batches. The trends are changing, the products are changing, and consumers' preferences are also constantly shifting.

Moreover, the market is still heating up. Data from iiMedia Research shows that the retail market size of Chinese baked goods reached 561.42 billion yuan in 2023, a year - on - year increase of 9.2%, and it is expected to reach 859.56 billion yuan in 2029. In addition, the concentration of the baked goods industry is relatively low. As of 2022, the revenue of the top 9 listed companies in the Chinese baked goods industry accounted for less than 6% of the industry's market size.

There is still plenty of room for development, but the pace has accelerated. To innovate and gain a firm foothold, one must carry out refined operations within the niche market. "Rumuling", an oriental mousse cake brand that 36Kr recently came into contact with, has targeted the niche market of oriental mousse cakes within the broad category of baking.

The Chinese - style outer packaging box used by "Rumuling"

Chinese - style 0 - calorie mousse, the meaning carried by a single cake

For a long time, when people think of mousse cakes, they often associate them with the Western style. For example, the brand "Three and Three Mountains", established in 2022, has rapidly expanded to more than 500 stores nationwide in three years with its exquisite packaging and high - value appearance, becoming a representative brand of Western - style mousse cake chains in recent years.

In contrast, "Rumuling", established at the end of 2024, has chosen a completely different path: it deconstructs the imported concept of "mousse" in the context of the East, integrating the artistic conception of ancient poems, ancient buildings, and classical stories into the cake design, thus creating a Chinese - style niche market that is more culturally appealing and more suitable for the domestic market. The founder of "Rumuling", Fu Xiaohu, graduated from the University of Warwick in the UK and is a serial entrepreneur. The core members of his team are all post - 95s.

They found that for the young consumer group, cakes are essentially emotional consumption products. Buyers usually don't purchase them to satisfy their hunger but for the sense of ritual on a certain occasion or to convey blessings to others. Therefore, cakes not only need to taste good and look good but also carry "good omens". The "Rumuling" team realized early on that in the "oriental mousse" market, the cake's shape must carry emotional expressions in the Chinese context.

Products of "Rumuling"

"Consumers actually care a lot about the meaning of the cake," recalled Guo Qinglin, the co - founder of "Rumuling" in charge of the product section. Therefore, when designing each cake, they focus on "straight - forward" cultural symbols. For example, they integrate Eastern visual elements such as "wealth coming", "peace buckle", and "Zhuangzi's dream of a butterfly" into the shape, so that people can understand the meaning immediately when they open the box. There is no need for extra explanation or guessing.

This design concept is not only to create "high - value" and "photo - worthy" products with social attributes but also to make the cake a medium for expressing emotions. In fact, during sales, they found that many consumers would specifically ask before placing an order: "What's the meaning of this cake?" To some extent, this cultural added value is redefining the value logic of Chinese - style cakes.

In addition to the Chinese - style elements in terms of vision and culture, "Rumuling" also responds to the growing health needs of young consumers in flavor development. Its cakes are mainly made with "0 - calorie sugar", using sugar substitutes such as erythritol. This positioning not only satisfies the sweet taste of the cake but also targets the consumer group that is more and more sensitive to healthy diets. For those users who want a sense of ritual but don't want to consume too many calories, "Rumuling" has found a balance between "tasty" and "light - burden".

"Joint operation + home delivery", a new model for uniting scattered cake shops

In the past, the cake industry emphasized the model of "central kitchen + in - store self - made", where cakes were made on - site. The store not only needed equipment but also had to hire cake masters who were good at icing and knew the recipe and keep training them. This model was difficult to standardize because making cakes relied on people rather than processes. Therefore, it was difficult to expand across the country like milk tea shops or fast - food restaurants.

"Rumuling" has broken the traditional cake industry model in two aspects.

First, it relies on cold - chain technology. Cakes are first made in the central factory in advance and then transported to various places through the cold - chain, ensuring that every cake that appears in front of customers is consistent in taste and shape. This makes it possible to mass - replicate cakes, a category that was originally difficult to standardize.

With technological upgrades and changes in consumption habits, the frozen baking market is releasing huge potential. However, the penetration rate of the domestic frozen baking industry is still relatively low. Data shows that in 2020, the penetration rate of frozen baked goods in China was only 10%, while in 2018, the penetration rates in Japan and North America had reached 31% and 83% respectively. From this data, it can be seen that there is still much room for improvement in the domestic frozen baking market.

Second, in terms of store layout, "Rumuling" chooses to go light, focusing on the "home delivery" scenario and delivering cakes directly to consumers. Consumers don't even need to visit the store to select cakes. They only need to place an order online, and the cooperative stores and delivery staff will complete the last - mile delivery. This light - operation model allows "Rumuling" to connect the originally scattered small cake shops in cities through the "joint operation" method, turning them into a distribution network for the brand.

The cake industry has a fast - paced iteration. According to Meituan data, the average survival time of cake shops nationwide is 32 months, 57.7% of the shops close within two years, and only 23.8% of the cake shops can survive for more than four years. Traditional cake shops run by individuals are facing even greater operational pressure.

However, in the view of founder Fu Xiaohu, this crisis is actually an opportunity. There are tens of thousands of individual cake shops in the Chinese baking industry. They already have the space and manpower but lack brand, product, and operational capabilities and are facing difficulties in growth, remaining outside the mainstream brand system. "These are the people who really need to be united," he said.

"Rumuling" is targeting these types of stores. Based on the "S2B2C" model, it can distribute standardized cakes to these physical stores through the cold - chain, enabling lightweight access. As long as the store has refrigeration capabilities, it can access "Rumuling" products, and almost no additional training is required to sell the finished cakes. Fu Xiaohu said that in the future, this approach can even be extended to other non - standard retail channels such as tea houses.

For these originally isolated offline stores, the entry of "Rumuling" is like a timely help. It provides a complete product, packaging, and brand platform, obtaining traffic through online operations and brand exposure, shaping users' minds, bringing stable orders to the stores, and helping store owners save trial - and - error costs.

Yang Qiuchen, the co - founder in charge of the online brand traffic operation of "Rumuling", is good at grasping the rhythm of content dissemination. Her titles often combine current hot memes or emotional words to accurately capture users' attention. The video covers are selected from the most tense moments, such as the frame of cutting a cake or knocking a sugar wafer with a hammer. "Some of our products come with sugar wafers that customers can break with a small wooden hammer, which is also a sense of ritual and participation." Without any advertising investment, a single piece of content she created can receive millions of views.

In addition, compared with the high - cost model of traditional stores that rely on manual production by masters and heavy decoration, "Rumuling" focuses on "cold - chain + joint operation and home delivery", eliminating the need for bakers and saving rent and labor costs, giving it a price advantage in the unit price of similar products. Fu Xiaohu believes that this will help "Rumuling" quickly expand in the sinking markets outside the third - and fourth - tier cities in the future.

It can be said that this is a redefinition of the industry's distribution model: instead of relying on high - density store openings or burning money on heavy assets, it penetrates every corner of the city like capillaries. Fu Xiaohu said that once the single - store model is successful, the replication speed in the later stage will be very fast, and it is expected to expand to hundreds or even thousands of stores in a short period.

Currently, "Rumuling" has opened 3 stores in Beijing. One of the joint - operation stores in Guomao has doubled its GMV and brought in an additional revenue of about 100,000 yuan in less than half a year after accessing "Rumuling" products. "Rumuling" is planning to launch a 2.5 - million - yuan angel - round financing, aiming to expand to 100 stores within two years and achieve a monthly revenue of over 8 million yuan.

In the future, perhaps a cake is not just a cake. It can even become a distributable "content product" and a medium that can connect cities, stores, brands, and consumers. And "Rumuling" is the connector that wants to weave them into a network.