Recently, a new entrant to the Chinese ice cream industry caused a stir on social media, the Chinese luxury Baijiu brand Moutai.
The company opened two ice cream stores within ten days and sold pre-packaged ice cream on its App. For now, it released five SKUs, three pre-packaged ice creams priced at CNY 59 (USD 8.78) to CNY 66 (USD 9.82), and two freshly made ice creams priced at CNY 39 (USD 5.8).
Despite the high prices, these new products were super popular, and sales reached CNY 200,000 (USD 19761) within seven hours. Long queues can be seen in its offline stores.
Chinese consumers’ demand for high-end ice cream has risen in recent years, and the whole ice cream market is being upgraded as more brands emerge and consumption habits change. According to the Chinese Ice Cream Industry Trend Report (2022), the ice cream market size reached CNY 160bn (USD 23.8bn) in 2021, ranking the first in the world.
Although the total consumption of ice cream in China ranks among the top in the world, Chinese per capita annual consumption is about 3.5 litres, lower than that in Western countries (6-8 litres), implying Chinese ice cream market still has space to explore.
