A man in a Chinese suburb picks up a packet of braised duck, flinches at the price and realises he can no longer afford his habitual snack. The branch of Juewei — the company behind the ubiquitous “duck neck” snacks that once punctuated every shopping street in China — is dark the next day. What looks like an isolated closure is part of a far bigger contraction.
Juewei’s store network has been shrinking fast. Independent data shows the chain now runs roughly 10,713 outlets nationwide, a drop of more than 4,000 stores since mid-2024; that works out to an average of about seven closures a day over the last 18 months. The company’s troubles have spilled into its accounts: it warned investors that full-year 2025 net profit attributable to shareholders will likely be between a RMB 160m and RMB 220m loss — its first annual loss since listing in 2017.
The downfall is the product of several interacting pressures. Juewei built its business by aggressively franchising into smaller cities and residential neighbourhoods, expanding to more than 10,000 stores by 2019 and turning scale and visibility into market power. That strategy ran into its own limits: dense clusters of franchisees cannibalised each other’s sales, average daily turnover per shop slid, and a maturing market reduced the upside of simply opening more outlets.
Operational and governance failures have compounded the pain. Regulators concluded that Juewei underreported revenue from franchise refurbishment services between 2017 and 2021, prompting fines of RMB 4m for the company and further penalties for former executives, bringing the total regulatory sanctions to about RMB 8.5m. The stock was given an ST label in September 2025, restricting trading and signalling serious financial or governance risk to investors. The market punished the company: its market value has fallen by hundreds of billions of yuan from its peak.
Food-safety scares have dealt another blow to consumer trust. Incidents that include forged health certificates at a franchise store and a Listeria scare in products sold in Hong Kong, together with more than a thousand consumer complaints on grievance platforms, have chipped away at the brand’s reputation at a time when reliability matters more than ever.
Macro factors and shifting consumer behaviour have amplified Juewei’s woes. China’s luwei (braised snacks) category grew only modestly in 2024 and shows signs of saturation; consumers have become more price-sensitive and more willing to choose independent stalls or DIY recipes found on social platforms. Street vendors and small operators often undercut chain prices while producing similar flavours, and social-media tutorials have made replication easier.
Competitors paint a mixed picture. Peers such as Zhou Hei Ya and Huangshanghuang have also closed stores, but they show signs of recovery in profitability or are deliberately pruning low-performing outlets. The industry is experimenting with “hot luwei” — freshly prepared, dine-in or quick-serve formats — as a potential growth vector, but whether such innovation can offset structural decline remains uncertain.
Juewei has tried other avenues. Investments in food and beverage brands and a push into adjacent categories have not paid off: the company’s non-core investments lost more than RMB 370m from 2022 to 2024. New products such as a low-cost “hot braised cup” saw strong initial traction online, but one hit does not fix problems of scale, governance and quality control.
The story is a cautionary tale about the limits of scale in China’s consumer markets. Rapid franchising can deliver fast growth, but it also magnifies quality control, governance and franchisee-alignment problems. For global investors and brands watching China, Juewei’s slide underlines how quickly consumer loyalty and investor confidence can erode when unit economics deteriorate, regulation tightens and product reliability falters.