On January 6, 2017, the first Guoquan store opened on Fuyuan Road in Zhengzhou, Henan. It originated from a real family scenario experienced by Guoquan’s founder and chairman, Mingchao Yang —a 14-year-old teenager and an elderly family member staying at home alone, unable to cook well, finding dining out expensive, and grocery shopping inconvenient.
At the time, Guoquan—then named “Hotpot & BBQ Ingredients Supermarket”—pioneered what it called a “third at-home dining solution,” beyond traditional wet markets and food delivery. Guided by its mission of “sourcing great ingredients worldwide and sharing global flavors,” Guoquan connected 3,000 households with a 70-square-meter store, entering the market with the founding belief of offering the best products, the lowest prices, and exceptional service.
In this way, Guoquan unintentionally created an entirely new category: “at-home dining.” In 2020, Guoquan relocated its headquarters to Shanghai and carried out a self-driven transformation of “shedding labels”—redefining itself not as a convenience store selling ingredients, but as a community dining service provider. What Guoquan delivers is not products, but a worry-free, hassle-free meal.
That same year, GenBridge Capital invested in Guoquan, recognizing its strong advantages in product capability and supply chain strength.
Operating in the food industry, Guoquan Shihui is firmly rooted in product excellence. Its founding team brings decades of deep experience in hotpot and barbecue, pursuing product R&D with meticulous rigor. At the same time, Guoquan Shihui has continuously invested in its supply chain—identifying the best suppliers nationwide for each category while building high-standard, capital-intensive food industrial parks for in-house production.
We believe that in the buyer-driven era, companies like Guoquan—where manufacturing and retail are tightly integrated—represent the direction of future development.
Entering its tenth year, Guoquan has grown from a small hotpot shop in Zhengzhou into a new-generation national chain with over ten thousand stores, and will continue to bring the concept of “eating at home” to every corner of the world.
On the evening of December 31, 2025, Guoquan’s founder and chairman Mingchao Yang delivered a New Year’s Eve speech themed “Marching Forward with Full Commitment,” lasting over two hours and attracting 44,000 concurrent online viewers.
Below are selected highlights from the speech:
A decade as a boundary
Over the past nine years, we made no major mistakes, though we advanced cautiously and unevenly. The question is: how should Guoquan walk its own path in the next decade?
For the next ten years, we remain a community dining business—we must never forget that.
We must move toward an integrated model of manufacturing, distribution, and retail.
We have already achieved 20% in-house production, and Guoquan was the first company to make all products private-label—starting from our very first year. What we optimize for is supply chain efficiency and total cost leadership.
We must stay committed to offline retail and upgrade to larger-format stores.
Without offline retail, there is no Guoquan. Looking at hard-discount giants in 2025—Meituan, Hema, JD—everyone is moving into offline community retail. No one can leave offline. We have stayed the course for nine years.
And there is our value proposition. Proximity is our advantage. With total cost leadership, we convert efficiency gains into margin and pass those benefits to consumers. Low margins are our core competitive moat.
What do we have?
Over the past ten years, Guoquan has spent nine years building infrastructure. With ambition and vision, we reinvested all profits back into the industry, and today we have four major infrastructure pillars.
1) 11,500 offline stores.
Over the past decade, our stores have been relatively small—now, they need to become larger.
2) Industrial parks, Huading, and the Guoquan large model.
At present, six Chengming Industrial Parks have been established. Over the next five years, we will complete the layout of 12 parks nationwide to support the development of 300–500 enterprises in the future.
Huading Cold Chain is already among China’s top ten cold-chain companies. It serves Guoquan, is rooted in Guoquan, yet goes beyond Guoquan to serve society at large—becoming an inevitable choice for China’s lower-tier markets.
Huading Cold Chain operates 43 central warehouses nationwide, ships 1.2 million parcels daily, has over 50,000 refrigerated trucks on its platform, and serves nearly 400,000 terminal outlets—of which Guoquan’s 11,500 stores account for only one-fortieth.
In terms of digitalization, we will establish an independent business unit in 2026.
Every day, tens of thousands of orders are generated at Guoquan. We will feed this data into Guoquan’s AI large model to guide product R&D, scenario applications, category expansion, and decisions on product and store selection.
3) Sustained Investment in brand building.
We have accumulated ten years of brand equity. Guoquan has evolved from a brand we created into one that consumers recognize as “For eating at home, choose Guoquan.”
4) A base of 60 million members.
We are full of optimism for 2026, with more methods and channels to reach and engage a broader consumer base.
I believe that by next year, our membership may exceed 100 million, reaching 100 million households across China.
In the next decade, we will not be a flat, plain-type enterprise—we will become a three-dimensional enterprise deeply rooted downward.
Guoquan has not yet fully penetrated the Chinese market. Our 40,000 community central kitchens are not yet fully opened, nor have we covered 48,000 townships and 650,000 administrative villages. There remain vast untapped markets—more than enough to fuel another decade of expansion.
Uphold “food equality,” bringing global flavors into ordinary households;
Use the “single-store profitability model” as the backbone to ensure franchisee profitability;
Take “industrial chain efficiency and total cost leadership” as the soul, building an ultimate value-for-money moat;
Use “AI retail” as the brain, empowering decision-making with data from thousands of stores;
Actively explore “embodied intelligence,” allowing technology to enhance flavor and experience;
Stay true to our original aspiration. In the next ten years, we will continue to root downward and remain steadfast in becoming a warm, trusted “good neighbor of China consumers.”
2026: Marching forward with full commitment
In 2026, we march forward with full commitment.
First, strategic conviction.
We remain firmly committed to community dining, firmly committed to large-format offline stores, firmly committed to integrated manufacturing-retail, firmly committed to embracing AI and intelligence, and firmly committed to innovating scenarios and emotional value.
Second, we will continue to uphold product excellence, enhance value for money, and break through Guoquan’s emotional value.
This year, I will personally return to the product center to further enrich and elevate our product quality.
Third, four store formats launched in parallel, advancing together with focused momentum.
1. Community flagship stores
In 2026, on the store front, Guoquan plans to renovate 3,000 stores into large-format outlets and open another 3,000 new large stores.
Our 70-square-meter small stores generated nearly RMB 5 million in annual revenue per store, proving the value of Guoquan. Today, we are moving toward so-called “large stores” of 150 square meters, but the ultimate vision is a 400-square-meter community central kitchen, delivering Chinese cuisine solutions that encompass China’s profound 28 cooking techniques.
2. Camping flagship stores
The nationwide rollout of camping stores will significantly elevate the Guoquan brand, connecting urban and suburban life, and bridging experiences inside and outside the home.
We have established a dedicated team for our camping business. Through years of exploration—particularly in 2025—we have launched urban camping, suburban camping, homestay camping, and scenic-area camping formats.
We will become China’s largest camping chain, delivering Guoquan’s value to everyday consumers in pursuit of better living, weekend getaways, holiday economies, emotional fulfillment, and a sense of relaxation.
3. Guoquan stir-fry
Guoquan Stir-Fry represents a true smart-kitchen revolution—an ambitious exploration from robotic stir-frying in kitchens to robotic cooking inside homes.
It carries another core mission of Guoquan: bringing Chinese flavors to the world.
We are full of imagination in this area, and in 2026, we will open exploratory Guoquan stir-fry stores. At our experimental base in Zhengzhou, we are testing how to cook four dishes in 90 seconds using chips and intelligent robots developed by Xiongmao Master, across 1,000 Chinese dishes.
4. Township flagship stores
In China’s vast market, more than 40,000 townships are still waiting for Guoquan, along with connections to 650,000 administrative villages.
Leveraging our strong production capabilities, deep cold-chain infrastructure, and forward warehouses, we aim to meet the protein ingredient needs of consumers in China’s lower-tier markets.
Fourth, the strategic significance of larger store formats.
From “transaction point” to “experience space”: the 150-square-meter community flagship store is no longer just a pick-up point to “buy and leave,” but a community kitchen and culinary solution showroom worth exploring. Ample space allows us to showcase a wider range of global ingredients, letting products speak for themselves and scenarios spark demand.
From “single category” to “four meals a day”: larger spaces accommodate a broader assortment, enabling Guoquan to systematically address all daily meal scenarios—from hotpot and barbecue gatherings to solo bento meals, as well as breakfast and late-night snacks. Spatial expansion directly drives category breadth and higher average ticket sizes.
From “shelf display” to “mindshare dominance”: large-format stores are the strongest offline touchpoints for brand equity. The emotional value of “hotpot freedom” and “barbecue freedom” becomes tangible, allowing consumers to directly experience the relaxed, warm community lifestyle Guoquan advocates. These stores serve as the largest brand billboards and a strategic stronghold for reinforcing the “community central kitchen” concept.
Efficiency upgrades and model iteration: large stores are not simply scaled-up versions of small ones. Through pilot renovations in the Greater Bay Area, Zhengzhou, and other locations, Guoquan has validated a complete data-driven model covering labor efficiency, space efficiency, product efficiency, and profitability.
Fifth, the relaunch of alley warfare.
“Open large stores, fight alley battles.” These six words define our 2026 blueprint and mark the beginning of the next decade.
Guoquan’s new chapter will unfold over the next decade—from 11,500 stores to 20,000, then 30,000, and eventually 40,000; expanding from provincial capitals and tier-one cities to prefecture-level cities, counties, townships, and vast rural administrative villages.
Through our infrastructure, we aim to contribute Guoquan’s value to China’s domestic demand and the well-being of everyday people.
In 2026, let us continue to gather at Guoquan—championing food equality together, sharing the warmth of everyday life, and journeying toward a brighter horizon.