A bright shopfront on a residential street in Changsha once sold snacks for a few yuan a pack. Eight years later the business built from that shop — after merging with a rival — listed in Hong Kong on January 28th and briefly traded at a valuation north of HK$95bn before settling around HK$86.2bn, making it by far the largest IPO in China's snack sector this year.
The company, formed by the 2023 merger of Zero Snack Busy (零食很忙) and Zhao Yiming Snack (赵一鸣零食) into a single group called MingMing Busy (鸣鸣很忙), reported blistering growth: revenue scaled from RMB 10.3bn in 2023 to RMB 39.3bn in 2024, with the first three quarters of 2025 already bringing in RMB 46.4bn. Its store network exploded from just over 6,500 outlets at the time of the merger to 21,041 by November 30, 2025 — a feat achieved largely by pushing into county, township and village markets where incumbents had weaker reach.
Investors rewarded the story. Cornerstone backers including Tencent, Temasek, BlackRock and Fidelity committed about US$195m during the IPO process, and retail demand sent the stock sharply higher on debut. The two founders, Yan Zhou and Zhao Ding — both born in the mid‑1980s and with modest educational backgrounds — emerged from the listing as paper billionaires on the Hong Kong exchange, owning roughly 24% and 21% of the company respectively.
MingMing Busy’s playbook rests on three pillars: ultra‑competitive pricing, a sprawling and lean supply chain, and aggressive physical expansion into lower‑tier and rural markets. The company buys directly from more than 2,500 manufacturers, operates 48 logistics warehouses and claims an 11.6‑day average turnover from warehouse to shop. Its SKU count approaches 4,000, many products are custom sized and nearly 40% are sold loose or by weight to lower consumers’ trial cost.
The economics are thin but scaleable. Gross margin has historically hovered around 7.5%, inching to 9.7% in the first nine months of 2025, yet adjusted net profit jumped from RMB 81m in 2022 to RMB 913m in 2024 and to RMB 1.81bn in the first three quarters of 2025. Crucially, franchise fees are negligible: roughly 0.5% of revenue comes from traditional franchising while the company’s main profit pool is the margin on goods it sells to its ~20,000 franchised and company stores.
That business model — low unit margins multiplied by massive throughput — mirrors other Chinese value‑oriented chains that have scaled rapidly by prioritising price and distribution density over per‑unit profitability. It also exposed MingMing Busy to familiar tensions: brand complaints surfaced online, and intense store density in some urban corridors has begun to squeeze single‑store returns, extending the payback period for franchisees.
Those stresses point to the next phase of the company’s challenge. Investors have bought the growth story; now the firm must prove it can convert sheer scale into sustainable unit economics and defend brand trust. If it fails, a dense, low‑margin network risks cannibalising itself and alienating the franchisees who are its last‑mile sellers.
MingMing Busy’s listing is notable beyond the company itself. It signals persistent investor appetite for scaled consumer staples that can claim growth through penetration of lower‑tier China, and it underlines how offline retail, when paired with efficient logistics and supplier bargaining power, can remain a value‑creation engine despite e‑commerce’s dominance in higher tiers.
Yet the valuation also invites scrutiny. A premium accorded at IPO presumes further margin improvement, stronger same‑store economics and sustained demand in down‑market geographies; any derailment on those fronts could trigger a sharp re‑rating. For now, the story remains one of a low‑tech, high‑scale operation winning by sheer density and discipline — an emblem of China’s evolving consumer landscape where price, proximity and assortment still matter greatly.